[1] After nearly 25 years of negotiating his performing career around and with the East German authorities, early in 1989 he was stripped of his citizenship and expelled to West Berlin.
[2] Peter Gläser was born in Leipzig, then administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone in what was left of Germany when the war had ended, a little under four years earlier.
Gläser worked under the stage-name "Cäsar" which had been his nickname at school, where contemporaries had apparently thought that he resembled the Roman dictator, Julius Caesar.
Later Gläser moved on to study, between 1975 nd 1980, at the Musikschule Friedrichshain in East Berlin, and here he finally received the professional qualification which he needed for his work as a musician.
Gläser was the composer of many of its most popular titles, including "Ehrlich will ich bleiben" / "I'll stay true", "Autostop" / "Hitchhiking", "Whisky" and "McDonald", which caught the mood of the country's youth for the post-hippie generation.
Karussell started out as a Rockband with "Blues" aspirations, but increasingly absorbed more recent mainstream pop influences, which gained it a stronger media presence.
However, the media in general and East German television in particular did what they could to downplay or conceal Karussell's origins as a successor to the banned "Renft" group.
In the context of widespread travel restrictions on East German citizens, in 1981/1982 Gläser and the band were nevertheless able to undertake an extensive tour, covering the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria and Finland.