Apart from Nils Olfert and Björn Sterzenbach, the members all attended the Hildegard-von-Bingen-Gymnasium in Cologne from 1981 to 1990. With their schoolmates Clemens Tewinkel and Christoph Tettinger, who also founded a brass band with them, they formed a rock band. At a school event, the band performed a single a cappella song. After graduating from high school with their A-levels in 1990, the group focussed on the a cappella genre. They soon named themselves the "Wise Guys". Eddi's joined an 18-month alternative service for conscientious objectors in Brussels, which left the group as a quartet. The remaining four joined the Ersten Kölner Barbershop Choir. In early 1994, the group placed third in a Barbershop Quartet competition. However, this type of music was not representative of their later work. In April 1995, Ferenc Husta joined the group as the bass voice, replacing Christoph Tettinger, who could no longer sing for professional reasons. Christoph Tettinger instead became the group's manager. After their first album "Dut-Dut-Duah!", which was mostly in English along with some cover songs, the band concentrated on German language, rhythm-based compositions with intelligent and often funny lyrics. In 1997, the Wise Guys turned professional, and released their third album "Alles im grünen Bereich", which signalled the beginning of their work with producer Uwe Baltrusch. Their following album was with EMI. With their Live-Album, the band moved to Pavement Records. The band achieved wide recognition with the song and videoclip from "Jetzt ist Sommer" and the album "Ganz weit vorne". Their next album reached the top of the charts on Media-Control-Charts; the 2006 album "Radio" opened in third place, behind only Red Hot Chili Peppers and Silbermond. Because of their mainly German-language songs, most of their concerts are in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The exceptions are rare concerts in USA, Canada, Poland, Luxemburg, and London. The usual tours are supplemented by big events such as "Tanzbrunnen", "Totalnacht", and "Spezialnacht", festivals taking place in Cologne. In 2001 they got a world record for the concert on "Tanzbrunnen" with 12,500 spectators. Their open-air concerts at the "evangelischer Kirchentag" in 2005, 2007 and 2009 were visited by 35,000, 70,000, and 65,000 viewers respectively. In 2012, the band released an album in two parts entitled "Zwei Welten". It consisted of an a capella album released in May 2012 and an instrumental album released in September 2012. "Zwei Welten" was also released as a two-disc package with two bonus tracks in December 2012, which brought them to their fifth gold record. At the end of March 2012, Ferenc Husta decided to leave the group. Andrea Figallo took his place in December 2012. In February 2016, the band published an official statement on their web site announcing that bass singer and producer Andrea Figallo would leave the band in April 2016, and that the group would stop performing altogether in summer 2017. Björn Sterzenbach replaced Andrea Figallo in May 2016.
''Aggro Hürth''
'Klassenfahrt', the first album with Nils Olfert, featured the Wise Guys' version of rap, with their hip-hop duo 'Aggro Hürth', made up of Marc Sahr and Nils Olfert. The name Aggro Hürth is a reference to the German record labelAggro Berlin. After the track 'Hamlet', another Aggro Hürth track followed in 2012, 'Ich bin aus Hürth'. The first Aggro Hürth mini-album appeared in June 2013 with the name 'Mein Herz macht Bumm!'. Because of copyright issues with Aggro Berlin, however, the album could only be published under the name A. Hürth.
