Hansa Records (also known as Hansa, Hansa Musik Produktion or Hansa International) was a record label based in Berlin, Germany founded in 1962.
History
In the early 1960s, brothers Peter and Thomas Meisel, grandchildren of Will Meisel, who was the founder of German music publisher Edition Meisel & Co. GmbH, assumed responsibility of the family's publishing company upon their grandfather's retirement, and founded Hansa Musik Produktion company and the Hansa record label in 1962.[1] The label's name (and the name of the related recording studio) was inspired by the Hanseatic League, a medieval Northern European maritime trade network.
In 1977, the label signed an early lineup of The Cure (known at that time as Easy Cure),[2] but wasn't happy with the band's demos and refused to release "Killing an Arab",[3] suggesting that the band record cover songs instead. The band refused, and Hansa dropped them.[4]
In the mid-1980s, after a decline in sales both domestically and internationally, Hansa Records was eventually purchased by Bertelsmann Music Group, who merged them with several other labels like Ariola-Eurodisc to form BMG Berlin Musik GmbH/BMG-Ariola, later to become part of international conglomerate Sony Music Entertainment, under which it was phased-out in 2009. It is used today only for reissues of its previous releases.[5][6]
When it became difficult for Hansa to book sufficient recording studio time at the Ariola-Eurodisc studio to keep up with their growing production schedule, the Meisel brothers built Hansa Studio One in Tiergarten in West Berlin. In 1972, the Meisel brothers acquired Ariola's historic building at Köthener Strasse 38, home of the historic Meistersaal concert hall, naming it Hansa Tonstudio Two. Initially intended to record only Hansa Records projects, Hansa's studios gradually started booking non-Hansa clients, most notably Iggy Pop and David Bowie, who in 1977 recorded their respective albums Lust for Life and Low at the studio. In the late 1970s they closed the first studio and consolidated operations to the second, simplify referring to it as Hansa Tonstudio.[6] The Meisel family retained ownership of Hansa Tonstudio, who run it as part of the Meisel Music group.[7]
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