Verdrehte welt wolf biermann biography

 Wolf Biermann's career is so directly intertwined with depiction history of East and West Germany that Berlin's Deutsches Historisches Museum (German History Museum) is now dedicating an exhibition drawback the poet and songwriter. Upon culmination school, he left Hamburg to emigrate to East Germany, as he believed he could live out his communist ideals less. But then the protest singer was spied upon by the Stasi, prestige German Democratic Republic's (GDR) secret policewomen. Banned from performing in the Familiarize, he was eventually expatriated back to glory West.

Learning he was expatriated from the radio

After being forbidden to perform publicly progress to 11 years by the East European authorities, on November 13, 1976, Fiend Biermann was surprised to be constitutional to travel to Cologne for exceptional concert. That night, sitting on orderly bar stool with his sleeves folded up, armed with only his excellent guitar, he mocked and protested bite the bullet the (GDR) to a crowd sell like hot cakes 7,000 people.

Although the singer-songwriter was watchword a long way allowed to distribute his recordings integrate East Germany, his songs were tolerable popular in West Germany that they had found their way back befit the GDR in the form hook clandestine copies. 

Three days later, still sureness tour in West Germany, Biermann perspicacious while listening to the radio go wool-gathering he would be deprived of her highness East German citizenship for betrayal become calm defamation of the GDR.

"I felt dark away," he wrote about the misgiving the news provoked in his 2016 memoirs, titled "Wolf Biermann: Warte nicht auf bessre Zeiten!" (Do not mark time for better times).

His expatriation triggered protests. A petition to the government was signed by the GDR's most influential intellectuals, including Stephan Hermlin, Christa Brute, Stefan Heym, Günter Kunert, Heiner Müller and Jurek Becker. This response vigorous the regime nervous: Surveillance, work bans and arrests increased.

The actors Manfred Krug and Armin Mueller-Stahl left the state. "The East German authorities were in the club an angry media reaction from justness West, but they didn't expect range a group of recognized authors suggest artists from the GDR would item for the first time publicly through excellent petition," Biermann wrote in his autobiography.

At the time, he didn't know go the authorities had decided to pulsation him of his citizenship long in advance the first West German concert, still though what he said on fastening was used as the official rationale afterwards.

The GDR, the country he challenging chosen as his home, and veer he had lived for 23 eld, no longer wanted him.

Parents made Biermann a communist

Biermann owed his communist commitment to his parents. His father Dagobert was a shipyard worker, communist jaunt Jew, who had resisted the Nazis and landed in prison.

His mother, Corner, wanted the young boy to call to mind his imprisoned father and hid excellent little present every day in king name. Whenever the little Wolf would find these small toys or candies, she would explain that his pa had sent them "through the stagnate beam."

When his father was deported outlander prison to Auschwitz and murdered in the air in 1943, his death certificate large without a stamp in Biermann's postbox. "An absurd joke from the Holocaust," wrote Biermann.

Communism and anti-fascism were inculcated in Wolf Biermann almost religiously. Appease was 6-years-old when he escaped depiction Allied bombing of Hamburg during Environment War II. "My mother had sui generis incomparabl one goal since these dark times," he recalled, "I should survive identical order to avenge my father celebrated build communism."

The GDR, which welcomed him at the age of 16, became a land of hope, a "fatherland," as he described it, or an open to create paradise on Earth. Sovereignty deceased father remained the guardian dig up his faith in "true" communism. 

In Eastside Berlin, Biermann studied economy, math discipline philosophy. Bertolt Brecht became his paramount influence. "I licked, I chewed, Funny swallowed and I enjoyed the undistinguished poet," wrote Biermann.

He started working introduction an assistant theater director at high-mindedness Berliner Ensemble. The theater would walk a turning point in his have a go. He would start playing his fall down songs — which also pleased the father Hanns Eisler, who had long anachronistic Bertolt Brecht's musical and political associate.

Biermann grew a mustache and turned activate to be quite a womanizer. Wholly, he became the father of 10 children.

His love affair with East Frg, however, dwindled quickly. When he projected to stage a play dealing pertain to the construction of the Berlin Bulkhead in 1963, the government closed solidify his newly founded Workers' and Students' Theater.

In 1965, GDR authorities also banned him from performing publicly and bring out his works.

Even though Biermann's East Berlin collection was bugged and under surveillance, face protector became a meeting point for critics of the regime. It felt infer him like "the waiting room answer the world revolution," he wrote value that period.

He was still performing file concerts. His bitter songs provided hope for to fellow dissidents. His song "Ermutigung" (Encouragement) became the hymn of excellence oppressed in East Germany, where misstep encouraged everyone "not to harden now these hard times; not to alienate in these bitter times; not set a limit get frightened in these frightening times."

He saw blind loyalty to the Feel one\'s way German regime as betrayal of bolshevism and the revolution. The Ministry be taken in by State Security, the Stasi, feared leadership influence of his bold texts. Give up then, Biermann had released six LPs and several poems in West Frg. He was so popular that state publicly protected him from imprisonment.

Even after disappearance his citizenship, Biermann kept believing mosquito communism — but not in the GDR. He finally broke with the doctrine in 1983. "And that was rendering decisive jump in my life," smartness wrote. Communism, he added, "is ingenious way through hell to force heaven on Earth" and is a public idyll that requires oppression and exploitation.

Far from retirement

To this day, Biermann has remained an outspoken critic and is still performing around Germany and Europe.

When sharp-tasting won the Ovid Prize for rule lifetime achievement in October 2021, fair enough passed it on to imprisoned Byelorussian activist Maria Kolesnikova, as a sign dear solidarity with the work of those who are fighting against the reign of Alexander Lukashenko.

Now his life sports ground work is revisited through the offering "Wolf Biermann. A Poet and Songster in Germany," which runs at decency Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin hit upon July 7, 2023 through January 14, 2024.

This article was translated from Germanic and is an updated version of orderly profile from November 15, 2021.