Der W

Der W serves as the performing alias for Stephan Weidner, the vocalist, composer, instrumentalist, and studio craftsman who fronted the long-running German hard rock ensemble Böhse Onkelz. The group originated in 1980 as a punk outfit, went on to issue more than a dozen studio sets, achieved widespread commercial success tempered by persistent controversy over its right-wing lyrical content, and reached the summit of the German albums chart on numerous occasions.

Following the 2005 dissolution of Böhse Onkelz, Weidner—who entered the world on May 29, 1963, in Alsfeld, Hesse, Germany—launched his solo career under the Der W moniker with the 2008 album Schneller - Höher - Weidner. That debut reached number two domestically, yielded the top-five single “Geschichtenhasser,” and registered on the Austrian and Swiss charts at more modest positions. Two years afterward he delivered the sophomore effort Autonomie!, and after extensive touring he unveiled the third Der W album, III, in 2012.

Böhse Onkelz staged a concert reunion two years after that release and returned to the studio for their sixteenth long-player, Memento, which appeared in 2016; Weidner handled a central production role on the project. Also in 2016 he issued his fourth Der W album, IV, before redirecting his energies to Böhse Onkelz. Their self-titled 2020 release climbed to number one on the German albums tally for an eleventh time—an achievement unmatched by any other hard rock act—while early the following year saw the arrival of Operation Transformation, a double-disc, forty-track anthology collecting Der W’s signature studio cuts alongside exclusive live recordings and lesser-known material ahead of his fifth studio album, V.