Born in 1936 in Hamburg as the son of a Jewish deckhand, Biermann was confronted with totalitarianism, prosecution and loss as a young child.
His father, who was active in the communist resistance, was murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. In the same year, he and his mother fled Hamburg as the Allies bombarded it.
Some 300,000 people left East Germany for the west in 1953, but 17-year-old Biermann went against the flow. He settled in the socialist German state out of political conviction and, two years later, began studying economics, philosophy and math at Humboldt University in Berlin.
With the support of composer Hans Eisler, Biermann began to write songs and poems and perform cabaret. He also worked as an assistant producer at the famed Berliner Ensemble for two years.
After publishing his some of his works in East German magazines and anthologies, he endeavored to found a small theater of his own.
Just before the first performance, the theater was shut down by the state and Biermann was expelled from the communist party and banned from practicing his profession for half a year. The play was about the building of the Berlin Wall.
Conflict with the GDR authorities only compounded. After his first concert tour in West Germany and the publication of his poetry book “Die Drahtharfe” (“The Wire Harp”) by a West Berlin publishing house, the singer-songwriter-poet was accused of being a traitor and banned from performing, publishing and traveling abroad.
For 12 years, Biermann sang for himself or for small, private audiences in his East Berlin apartment on Chausseestrasse. Some of his albums, however, were smuggled over to the west and his songs became more popular there than in the east.
In September 1976 Biermann was finally permitted to perform publicly again in the GDR and two months later he was given a visa to go on tour in West Germany.
Three days after his legendary concert in the Cologne sport arena, he was expatriated by the East German party leaders for his “hostile performance” and not permitted to return to the GDR.
Over 100 artists, writers and actors in the socialist German state staged public protests. When the authorities responded with intimidation, jail sentences and bans, masses of intellectuals picked up and left the GDR.
Biermann saw his expatriation as a catastrophe. “I thought it was all over with my life as a singer and poet,” he said later.
Indeed, the first years in exile weren’t easy. Nevertheless, the “Troubadour of inner German conflict,” as the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” called him in a 1987 article, carried on with his career. He published several volumes of lyric and prose and settled old scores with both East and West Germany on concert tours at home and abroad.
Biermann was enthusiastically received at his first performance in eastern Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He’d already broken with the socialism his former homeland was shedding.
In the 1990s he began exploring his Jewish roots more extensively and was active in politics and media. He campaigned against the Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor to the East German communist party and became head cultural correspondent for the daily newspaper Die Welt in 2003.
Today, Biermann is still an uncomfortable and controversial coeval. He’s not afraid to stick his finger in open wounds and stir up discussion. Even if not everyone likes his message, at least it comes across.
“I can’t complain that I’ve been fundamentally misunderstood. I’ve generally always been well understood,” he told Deutsche Welle reporters.
“Warte nicht auf beßre Zeiten” was the second album by Wolf Biermann, released in 1973. This cd reissue completes the 8 tracks of the original album by 3 re-recorded tracks, originally released in 1968 on the single “4 neue Lieder” (Wagenbachs Quartplatte).
Wolf Biermann – Warte nicht auf beßre Zeiten (1973) & 3 tracks
(256 kbps, cover art included)
“Alive and Kicking in L.A.” is Hazel O’Connor’s live album, released in 1990 and then re-released under other names such as “L.A. Confidential”. This live album includes hits like “Will You! and “D-Days” plus other rare tracks.
Zero G Sound 