Monika Martin-The Silent Star (Der Stille Star)

Editor's Note: With this article we introduce the Chicago Schlager Music Review's UK Correspondent, David Hillier. Mr. Hillier, a longtime British government operative and avid schlager music fan, will regularly report on schlager from a British perspective.)

Monika Martin

By David Hillier
CSMR UK Correspondent

LONDON -- One of the artistes featured in the Chicago Schlager Music Review's 2 May analysis of schlager singers who had covered American hits, was the sweet-voiced Austrian, Monika Martin.

She is a rare example of someone who has made a career move from practising academic to stage performer. She is known to her fans as "Der Stille Star" (the Silent Star), on account of her reticence about her private life.

Monika has a long track record of hitmaking that began in the mid 1990’s and has risen to become one of the most successful female schlager singers in the German speaking world, ranking behind only Andrea Berg and Helene Fischer in popularity.

While generally classified as a schlager performer, she can also be considered one of the leading Austrian practioners of volkstumliche musik, a variant of volksmusik which incorporates contemporary themes and styles as distinct from the Alpine motifs generally associated with the genre.

Born Ilse Bauer on May 7, 1962, in Graz, Styria, a part of Southern Austria best known for its pumpkin oil and aromatic white wines, Monika numbered amongst her childhood hobbies making model aircraft and looking after homing pigeons. Now an older and wealthier adult, she collects old Meissen porcelain.

Her first live stage performance came at the age of ten when she had a small part in the opera “Carmen”, performed by the children's choir of the Grazer opera.

She went on to study solo singing at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz from 1982. To pay for her studies, from 1986 until 1992 she sang lead vocals in a band known as “The Heart Breakers mit (with) Dr. Ilse Bauer.”

Monika Martin went on to study art history and ethnology, obtaining a doctorate of philosophy in 1990. She has made it very clear, however, that her perceived status as an “intellectual” should not make her fans, with whom she has established a great rapport, shy about coming up to talk to her.

The only schlager star with a PhD

After 1990 she worked as an art teacher and, in addition, launched her own ceramics business in Graz in 1994.

Martin embarked on a solo singing career in 1995, releasing her debut album “La Luna Blu” the next year. This title track became one of her greatest all-time hits and came second amongst Austrian participants in the prestigious Grand Prix der Volksmusik.

Here is her groundbreaking hit, La Luna Blu (Blue Moon):



Monika’s second album, “Immer Nur Sehnsucht” (1997) included the major hit "Goodbye Farewell." while her third, “Klinge Mein Lied” (1999), reached gold sales status despite not featuring an individual hit on the scale of the previous two.

Having become established as a hitmaking singer with considerable commercial appeal, Monika gave up teaching in 2000 to concentrate full time on her singing career and has continued to produce a string of popular albums at regular intervals.

Monika is a devout Christian and has always included a considerable number of devotional songs in her repertoire. Most recently she has taken to performing wearing glasses, which only serves to add to her modest charm.

Like Helene Fischer, from whom she is otherwise very different, she has performed some material in English "translation" with sometimes similarly disappointing results. In 2002 a 12 track CD in English also entitled “La Luna Blu” was released in South Africa. Six of those songs formed a bonus CD in the deluxe edition of her 2008 album “Du Hast Mich Gekusst”.

Monika’s soft and gentle voice does, however, seem particularly well suited to performing early BeeGees's songs and her English versions of “Massachusetts” and “Don't Forget to Remember Me” are sublime.

Here is her cover of the BeeGee's big hit, Massachusetts:



Clearly, having combined a formidable academic background with her extraordinary talent as a musical performer, Monika Martin ranks as one of the most fascinating figures in the schlager music firmament.