Christian Anders

Antonio Augusto Schinzel came into the world on January 15, 1945, in Austria, though much of his early life unfolded in Italy because of World War II. As a teenager he assembled the band Christian Anders & the Tonics and obtained his debut recording contract at age 21. Full recognition as a teen idol throughout the German-speaking territories arrived with the 1969 sophomore effort Geh' Nicht Vorbei, which moved more than one million copies inside five months and led him to launch his own Chranders label in 1972. A steady stream of further albums and television spots over the next twenty-five years cemented his position as a major presence in German pop.

The opening decades of his career, running through the 1960s and 1970s, centered on baroque pop numbers such as “Du Hast Sie Verloren.” Later years brought a marked turn toward new age music under the name Lanoo together with sustained literary work. Discontented with his existing path, he sold his publishing house in 1987 and settled in Los Angeles. There he assumed the Lanoo persona and reportedly lived briefly on the streets before releasing Lanoo: Alive in America in 1991, the first of several new age albums issued across the following decade. His books from that time include the controversial The Man Who Created AIDS, which claimed the virus had been created in a laboratory. In 1994 he returned to Germany and resumed both recording and writing.