He was one of the biggest stars of the Neue Deutsche Welle. Former Ideal drummer Hans-Joachim Behrendt has died at the age of 68. Corresponding media reports have now been confirmed by his long-time colleague Annette Humpe (72) in an interview with the RBB radio station Radio Eins. According to Humpe, her former band member was a "fun-loving, humorous person": "He was a very close confidante of mine. And we talked a lot, heard a lot of music together." Behrendt was "very inspiring" for the ideal singer. She knew that he was "very ill".

Hans-Joachim Behrendt, known as Hansi, celebrated huge success with the style-defining band Ideal in the early 1980s. The biggest hits included the songs "Berlin" and "Blaue Augen". In 1983 the band broke up at the height of the musical movement. In addition to Humpe and Behrendt, the other members included bassist Ernst Ulrich Deuker (68) and guitarist Frank Jürgen Krüger (1948-2007), who had also died.

After the successful Ideal-Zeit, Behrendt only appeared occasionally as an artist and took part in a few smaller musical projects without striving to return to the spotlight. In Berlin he lived a middle-class life and worked as a building contractor.