Peter Petrel

Peter Petrel, born Peter Sauer on 14 April 1940 in Bad Frankenhausen in Thuringia, was a German singer whose career stretched across jazz clubs, Schlager television and Dixieland stages for more than six decades. He died on 18 September 2026 at his home in Koblenz at the age of 86.

He first appeared in public in 1958 and from 1960 sang with Johnny's New Orleans Jazzband in clubs and at festivals. In 1968 he received the Goldenes Mikrophon as Germany's best jazz singer, and that November he released his first single, "Viel zu spat", on Polydor under his birth name. In 1970 he represented himself at the first International Song Festival in Tokyo, finishing eighth among 46 national entrants.

His commercial breakthrough came in 1972 as one half of the duo Windows, with singer Jeannie McKinlay. Their recording of "How Do You Do?" reached number one in Germany; the German-language version sold about 1.3 million copies and the English version hundreds of thousands more. From 1974 he joined the Hamburg group Rentnerband, scoring a long chart run with "Hamburger Deern", a German cover of The Scaffold's "Liverpool Lou" that earned the Goldene Europa award. He then built a solo career on Hansa Records with hits such as "Ich bin viel zu bescheiden" and "Ich fahr so gerne Rad", and he appeared regularly on the ZDF Hitparade. In 1981 he won the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis for the Dixieland album "Happy Music Every Day" with the Sir Gusche Band.

Even at the height of his Schlager fame he kept returning to jazz, swing and Dixieland, performing with The Swinging Petrels, the Old Merry Tale Jazzband and Lulu Reinhardt's Gypsy Swingtett, and travelling as far as Canada, the United States (where he was made an honorary citizen of New Orleans in 2000), the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong. In 2004 the Windows catalogue was reissued and several songs were re-recorded with singer Tina Wulf, after which he continued as Windows with her.

Petrel suffered a stroke in 2015 but recovered and kept working, appearing on "Schlager-Spass mit Andy Borg" in May 2021 and at the SummerJazz Pinneberg festival in 2022. He died peacefully at home in Koblenz on Friday 18 September 2026, surrounded by family. His wife Tina told the newspaper Bild that he had been able to say goodbye to his son by telephone and that his passing was calm and free of pain. No official cause of death has been published. He is survived by Tina and by his children, including son Kai Peterson and daughters Sandra and Sintha Asmara.