Frl. Menke

One of the most popular artists to emerge from the Neue Deutsche Welle scene, German singer Franziska Menke (November 4, 1960) began performing in the early 1980s under the stage name Frl. Menke. The daughter of songwriter, producer, and publisher Joe Menke, she was raised in Maschen and then relocated to Berlin shortly after graduating high school. Following the release of the disco-tinged single "Wie du bist" in 1980, she adopted the pseudonym Frl. Menke while working with producer Harry Gutowski in Hamburg. "Hohe Berge," her first single under her new alias, appeared in 1982 and quickly became an instant classic of the NDW genre, reaching the Top 10 of the German Singles Chart. Follow-up singles "Traumboy" and "Tretboot in Seenot" also entered the charts and an eponymous full-length album saw the light later that year. During 1982 and 1983, she sold over 3 million records and became the first NDW artist to ever perform on the music program ZDF Hit Parade. In the years that followed, Frl. Menke shied away from the spotlight to form a family and worked writing jingles for radio stations and advertisement campaigns. She returned in the 1990s with a couple of techno remixes of her earlier hits and has starred in several musicals in Hamburg since 2001. In 2017, she participated in the reality show Ich bin ein Star – Holt mich hier raus!

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