Songwriter Ingo Insterburg is dead

With his band Insterburg & Co. he was a role model for artists like Otto and Mike Krüger - now the singer-songwriter Ingo Insterburg died at the age of 84 years.

Ingo Insterburg was on stage with Karl Dall and Klaus Kinski, calling himself a music comedian - now the singer-songwriter is dead. He died after a short illness at the age of 84, as his longtime manager Frank Nietsch confirmed. He accompanied the musician until his death last Saturday in a Berlin hospice.

The singer-songwriter founded the band Insterburg & Co. together with comedian Karl Dall, actor Jürgen Barz and author Peter Ehlebracht at the end of the sixties. At a time when the term "stand-up comedy" did not exist in Germany, the band gained cult status with a new type of entertainment: junk music and parodies of simple humor. She was a role model for artists like Otto and Mike Krüger.

The best-known song of the band was that presented by Insterburg "I loved a girl from ...". Even today, countless fans parody the endless rhyme in Youtube videos.

Occasionally Insterburg & Co were called "Blödelbarden". The musician could not have started so much with it. He had seen himself more as a "music comedian" and talked about "blundering with music," said his longtime manager.

Insterburg was on stage for more than 55 years. In his apartment in Uhlandstraße in the old west of Berlin, he lived room after room with the now deceased actor Klaus Kinski. His Brecht ballads he accompanied musically. As "Guitar-Ingo" Kinski announced him on stage.

A "music-jackass" was Insterburg, so Nietsch. Among other things, he has mastered guitar, violin, flute and saxophone. In addition, he built bizarre instruments: a flute from a brush, a saxophone from a sewage hose and a banjo from a bucket. "Everything that you can make sound, I do," he said. This has brought him much admiration in his industry, so his manager. Above all, Insterburg had been one thing: "A hard-working man with an incredible sense of music."