Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Anne Haffmans at Mute, Mareike Hettler at Grönland, Sean Newsham at Bureau B, and Sandra Podmore at Spoon for support in obtaining band images and rights clearance. As several image rights holders refused to grant permission, some band chapters sadly contain no illustrations. Particular thanks, though, go to Heinrich Klaffs and Wolfgang Wigger for making available great live images they took during the heyday of Krautrock. Jacques Schumacher contributed a cool photo of Inga Rumpf while Ilona Ziok helped with fine pictures of Ash Ra Tempel and Manuel Göttsching.

Göttsching also helped to clarify several facts pertaining to his career in an uncomplicated way – thanks! Lucy Renner-Jones checked my translation of Jens Balzer’s contribution. As goes without saying, this volume would not have been possible without the invaluable and reliable support of Kate Brett at Cambridge University Press.

Finally, acknowledgments are due to the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) London office. A three-year grant under the Promoting German Studies scheme, running from 2018 to 2021, was supposed to kickstart ongoing collaborative research in German pop music, bringing together the British and German academic communities. In addition to the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit put a spanner in the works. The strategic decision to discontinue modern languages at my former institution finally made sure that all future research projects were rendered impossible.

I am delighted, though, that at least this volume could be completed. Leaving academia and England for good after thirty years, I like to think of this Companion to Krautrock as my farewell gift. Best of British to you all!