Höhner Feat. Hans Nieswandt, Justus Koehncke, Mathias Schaffhäuser – Die Karawane Zieht Weiter

Alternative title: The gods of Karneval

I can point to the exact time and date when “Die Karawane Zieht Weiter” morphed from a curiosity, a little novelty running gag in my shelves to make fun of, to one that I can’t live without. It was on the 25th of December, a few minutes before midnight when I played “Part 1: Indeep” of Mathias Schaffhäuser’s “Kara-Ware-Mix” of “Die Karawane zieht weiter” at Cologne’s lovely Gewölbe club. What followed is too weird to even begin to describe (TLDR: conga line).

Here’s the quick context: Gewölbe is probably the most prestigious club in Cologne and they take pride in booking smart DJs that play sets with some depth. It’s usually a somewhat House-y affair with some Techno nights sprinkled in, which in my experience reflects the median of the city’s scene. The collective Phonovision, which my friends HiHat and Various Identities co-run, hold a residency there, and it’s probably fair to say that they represent the harder end of Gewölbe’s spectrum. And once I’d mentioned they booked smart DJs for clever sets you probably already guessed that I’d never really expect to DJ there. And until last Xmas, you would’ve been right.

But after HiHat nagged the club’s management for ages, they agreed to have HiHat, Philo (who is a DJ and producer extraordinaire and a Rheinisch local in exile like me) and myself play all night on Christmas day. This was ideal, since I was back in that part of the country for family business anyways, and so were many other people I grew up with. And screw how the party was going to go, I was simply psyched to get a glimpse at these hallowed halls from the booth – well, technically it was a bar night meaning we weren’t playing the large dance floor reserved for “proper” parties, but the spacious bar room. But honestly this did not dampen the fun at all, and actually some very fun parties have supposedly used this space, such as the already legendary Sunday parties called “Research”. Never been, but if it’s only half as good as our shindig you really can’t miss it if you’re in the area.

A clown car on the silk road

So why did a conga line break loose when I played this fairly reserved and chill House track with its hypnotizing guitar-y loop, its minimal progression, and its vocals that are so laid back they sound almost arrogant? 

Well, for one it’s very catchy. But it’s also a cover version of “Die Karawane Zieht Weiter” by Höhner, a foundational piece of Karneval music. 

For the purpose of this text let’s put Rio de Janeiro and international paganism aside for a second and focus on Germany: Karneval is something Wikipedia calls a festive season, which technically starts in November but is mostly celebrated around February along the Rhine river with differing local rituals and traditions. There are an infinite amount of things to say about it. About its cultural roots, about its relationships to christianity, to fascism, to racism, to misogyny. But what you need to know for now is that for the people who grow up in its sphere of influence, it involves dressing up in costumes, parades, lots of heavy drinking and a very specific kind of music that drifts between somewhere Schlager, marching band music, folkloric drinking songs and pop music. It’s (mostly) as terrible as it sounds. 

BUT if a lot of your formative memories are attached to certain songs, if you’ve had your first kiss or your first puke with one of those things playing far away, your brain can’t really detach itself.

Released in 1997, “Die Karawane Zieht Weiter” is one of the most famous Karneval songs, one that brings out nostalgic memories for elderly drunkards, but is catchy and memorable enough for the kids, much like “Viva Colonia”, also by Höhner, or “Superjeilezick” (please don’t dive deeper into this music). 

Metaphorically it’s about how, when one bar runs out of alcohol, a crowd of people moves to another one. It is also about a thirsty sultan who takes his caravan (in the nomadic/ bedouin sense) to another oasis. A group of boomer Germans singing about their image of the “orient”? You can see where this is going. That metaphor might not be enough to turn the track “problematic” on its own, but the way it plays with “exotic sounding” instruments and harmonies, especially in its intro before it turns full accordion Schlager, are definitely uncomfortable. And I’m not even going to start on this brownface-heavy live video that features a flying carpet routine.

Diamonds and pearls before swine and nerds

Given that context the right thing to do would probably be to get as much distance between myself and that piece of music. But as I said: if you grew up along the Rhine river chances are that this song has been hammered deep into your subconsciousness. So when I saw this remix version in a 1€ bin of some record store, it was a no-brainer to buy it. I expected some Euro-Schlager-Hardtrance version of the original which I might whip out at a Karneval gig – until I looked at the artists involved.

Hans Nieswandt, Justus Koehncke and Mathias Schaffhäuser are Cologne dancefloor royalty. They all emerged during the 90s and became integral parts of the city’s (still) buzzing 00s minimal house and techhouse scene. All of them have done so, so many things, meaning the following summary will be very superficial: 

Koehncke and Nieswandt got their big break as part of Whirlpool Productions of “From Disco to Disco” fame – something which they don’t let you forget on this EP as they splice moments from that track almost randomly into the A1, A2, and B1 tracks. Nieswandt went on to focus his efforts more on writing than on music, authoring several books and contributing countless articles to magazines like Groove or SPEX for which I also used to write before its end of the latter in 2018. Meanwhile Koehncke’s far-reaching career as DJ, producer and remixer is closely tied to the Cologne’s Kompakt label that has been highly influential and commercially successful in connecting minimal and melodic 00s house with Pop-sensibilities – a task for which Koehncke himself has proved extremely suited.

Mathias Schaffhäuser, the third of the amigos on remix duties, caused the conga line. Or rather the Ware founder’s remix on B2 is the track that I played to cause the conga line. A1, A2 and B1 are basically Koehncke and Nieswandt screwing around with some disco house loops and synth sounds, occasionally splicing in the unlikely Karneval-sample whether it works out harmonically (or not), almost making fun of the source material, and justifiably so. 

But on his Kara-Ware-Mix on the B2 Schaffhäuser does the unthinkable: He turns the slapstick schlager vocals of the original into a hypnotic, almost touching electro-y house track that sound almost like the intro sequence to a melancholic yet comedic coming of age set in the suburbs. Schaffhäuser sings the vocals in an almost detached way that is the perfect antidote to the original and manages to evoke the nostalgic association while also severing every tie with that song, and justifiably so.

The record leaves me with many unanswered questions: Why did EMI put out this official remix record by those three popular DJs years after the original track was released? What was the reception, and what were the intentions behind it? Did it make a splash? The Discogs stats certainly suggest that no one really cared for the record, and that to this day no one really does. But I care, and for one night in 2025 so did the whole Gewölbe dancefloor.

Sidenote: I did not actually want to play the track, but a friend of Philo’s pestered me for hours after I jokingly mentioned that I had it in my bag. Luckily I gave in. 

Also I was not even part of the conga line, and I wasn’t able to witness it from behind the booth. While I was mixing in the track my old friend Lewon walked up to the booth, and I saw him for the first time after more than a year, a time during which he became a father, too. So once I’d mixed in the track I immediately ran to the dancefloor to greet my buddy. We were half-drunkenly hugging in the middle of the dancefloor for minutes, and in the meantime the ecstatic Polonäse as you’d call it in Karneval parlance formed around us. I didn’t think the track would go down well at all, so witnessing it pop off through a crowd forming around us while experiencing such an emotional moment with a friend has got to be one of my most intense and bizarre DJ – and maybe even human – moments. Thanks to everyone who was there.

There were many more memorable moments during that all-nighter with Philo and Hihat, and I’m sure I’ll bring it up again. As a little favor I have uploaded Schaffhäuser’s two mixes of the track to YouTube.