In front of more than 10,000 enthusiastic fans, the Toten Hosen played an emotional benefit concert for the earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria on Friday evening in Düsseldorf. "It's a terrible event that brings us together here," frontman Campino told the fans. "And it's not an evening of mourning, but an evening of struggle. We fight with you for every donation."

After almost two hours, 400,000 euros in donations had been received. The Toten Hosen thus achieved their goal of raising at least one million euros for the earthquake victims. From the ticket sales, they had already transferred 600,000 euros for earthquake aid to the aid organizations Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and Medico International.

Live on the radio and online

The fundraiser will continue in the coming weeks. In order to create additional reach for the appeal for donations, the concert was broadcast nationwide by six radio stations and streamed live. The Toten Hosen were supported by the punk rock band Donots, the singer Thees Uhlmann and Broilers frontman Sammy Amara.

The benefit concert fell on the anniversary of the start of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. "It's hard for all of us here to somehow endure this perversion, that in a country a dictator (...) is raging with war and destruction, and 2000 kilometers away people have to fight death because of a natural disaster," said Campino. The punk rockers and all fans commemorated the dead in Europe with a minute's silence.

Two and a half weeks after the earthquake disaster in the Turkish-Syrian border area, the number of dead has now risen to more than 50,000.