In response to the wave of American and British rock & roll that made its way into Germany following the Second World War, kitsch, home-grown pop entertainers began to flood the charts with their own cheery, wholesome romantic hits sung in their native tongue. Known as 'schlager music', Claudia Jung became one of the genre's big stars in the 80s and 90s, scoring a long list of top 40 albums and being dubbed 'the great lady of German pop'. Growing up in Ratingen, near Dusseldorf in West Germany, Jung (real name Ute Krummenast) was a dental nurse and laboratory technician before moving to Italy to work as a travel agent and sing in local bars and hotels. She returned to Cologne and began working with producer Adam Schairer and songwriter Jean Frankfurter in 1984, and four years later released debut album Halt' Mich Fest through EMI. Ten years of hit singles included her duet with Cliff Richard on his Christmas song Mistletoe and Wine and a collaboration with French pianist Richard Clayderman on Je T'aime Mon Amour, while her regular output of albums reached peak success with the 1996 album Sehnsuckt, 1997's Augebblicke and Claudia Jung of 1995. Though her style has sometimes been derided as unfashionable by some and she struggled for radio airplay, her loyal fan base continued to support her and she celebrated her 50th birthday with covers record Seitensprung (meaning 'fling' in English) in 2015. Away from music she also tried her hand at politics and was elected as a councilwoman in Gerolsbach and to the state legislature of Bavaria in 2008.
