On December 31, 1989, David Hasselhoff played a part in celebrating the reunification of Germany after the borders were opened in November of that year. Silvester Show, a popular music program in Germany, invited the actor and singer to perform at the first ever German-German New Year’s Eve party at the Brandenburg Gate.
Videos by American Songwriter
Dressed in a lit-up leather jacket and a piano scarf, Hasselhoff performed to the thousands of people assembled on both sides of the Berlin Wall and by Brandenburg Gate. The Wall began being officially dismantled in widespread fashion in June 1990; communism was in retreat in Eastern Europe.
This is supposedly the moment when the Hoff’s musical cache rose in Germany because many people witnessing the event associate him with that time period and moment. He has been a star there ever since. There is even a small David Hasselhoff Museum in a corridor at the Circus Hostel in Berlin.
One morning in June, some twenty years ago
I was born a rich man’s son
I had everything that money could buy
But freedom, I had none
I’ve been looking for freedom
I’ve been looking so long
I’ve been looking for freedom
Still the search goes on
The TV performance is him doing a solo rendition of “Looking for Freedom” from his 1989 album of the same name, which reportedly sold 500,000 copies in Germany. The song is actually a cover of the 1978 hit co-written by Gary Cowtan and Jack White (not of The White Stripes). It was originally recorded by Marc Seaberg and then in German by Tony Marshall (both in 1988), which both charted in the Top 20 in West Germany, but it was Hasselhoff’s version that was first released in December 1988 that hit No. 1 in West Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and No. 4 on Europe’s Hot 100 Singles chart in 1989. The Brandenburg Gate performance appears to be a lip-synced rendition of the song to a backing track—he’s standing on a crane with no band in sight—but that’s no surprise given the television tactics of the time. People did not seem to care; they were singing along happily.
One thing that is amusing: At the 3:17 mark, someone shoots what looks like a roman candle past his head and it just misses him. “I saw that tape of it just recently,” Hasselhoff told Time magazine in November 2019. “Luckily I pulled away or I would have been hit in the head with a firework. But a firework hit me in the leg, which nobody saw. I just put it out. When it’s below zero, you don’t give a damn.”
When Hasselhoff spoke to Time, he had just finished a three-week German trek called Freedom! The Journey Continues Tour 2019. He still remembered performing at the Wall like it was yesterday.
“I had a pretty amazing experience,” Hasselhoff said. “I have a plethora of stories, of people who come to me and testified that ‘Looking for Freedom’ was an anthem or a hymn of hope that they would sing. A 45-year-old man cried. He said he was 15 years old and he grew up in Rostock, a city in East Germany, and he said, ‘You really had something to do with bringing down the wall.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t. I was just singing a song about freedom, and I went behind the wall and met some girls.’ He said, ‘No, it was a song of hope.’ My whole tour was basically about [how] we’re still looking for freedom, because we are.”
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Photo by Christian Kaspar-Bartke/Getty Images
