1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites

Peter Maffay, Rock star

August 10, 2012

Talking Germany presenter Peter Craven talks with Peter Maffay about Tabaluga, drinkers and tattoos.

https://p.dw.com/p/15nkY
Peter Maffay
Peter Maffay

Peter Maffay is one of Germany’s most popular musicians. With more than 40 million albums sold and fourteen times at the top of the German charts, plus a number of gold and platinum records, he's a superstar of German rock.
In 1963 Peter Makkay emigrated with his ethnic Hungarian father and ethnic German mother from Brașovin Romania to Germany. There he founded his first band at the age of nineteen and played in pubs in Munich before music producer Michael Kunze discovered him in 1968. After first hits with pop songs such as "Du", in the 1970s Maffay changed his image radically, becoming a rock musician.  His album "Steppenwolf" sold some 1.5 million copies. The rock fairy tale Tabaluga, which he developed in 1983, with a small green dragon as its hero, was a success as well. Now 62, Maffay uses his popularity for worthy causes such as the Tabaluga Foundation, which he founded to help disadvantaged children. Nowadays Peter Maffay lives with his fourth wife and eight-year-old son Yaris in the small town of Tutzing in Bavaria and on Majorca, where he has an organic farm.