You can rarely say that David Hasselhoff was the reason behind anything's success. He was decidedly everyone's least-favorite part of Baywatch and the third-best thing in Knight Rider (after KITT and the evil version of himself). Still, by being in the right place at the right time, Hasselhoff, his ridiculous-even-for-the-1980s light-up leather jacket, and his music will forever be tied to directly helping bring down the Berlin Wall.
To be clear, Germans aren't nearly as fanatic about the Hoff as pop culture has led you to believe. They know of the stereotype, and they hate it. But they can't deny that for eight weeks in the summer of 1989, they made Hasselhoff's anthem "Looking For Freedom" the No. 1 song in what was then West Germany.
People in Communist East Germany heard the song as well, and even though the lyrics are actually about a son getting out from under the shadow of his rich father, they took it as a rallying cry -- or in the Hoff's words, as their "song of hope." A few months later, people started tearing down the wall with their bare hands. To thank him for his inspiring song, they invited Hasselhoff to sing there on New Year's Eve. One piano-key scarf later, and the rest is history.
Or Hoffstory, if you will.
These days, Hoff is still involved in German culture, but now he's trying to keep the wall standing as a memorial to the people who died attempting to cross the border. Only a few sections are left, and he lends his celebrity and association with it to save them from developers when necessary. He even still belts out "Looking For Freedom" if people ask him to.
