Carlo Karges

Carlo Karges was a German musician who became a guitarist and songwriter for the rock band, Nena. He wrote the lyrics of Nena's most famous song, "99 Luftballons", released in 1983. He was attending a 1982 Rolling Stones concert at the Waldbühne in West Berlin, when they released a large mass of helium balloons into the air. He wondered how East German or Soviet forces might react if the balloons crossed the Berlin Wall, and thus he conceived the idea for the song about a major war resulting from misidentification of a mass of balloons.