Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Reception of Vormärz and 1848 Revolutionary Song in West Germany and the GDR
- 2 Mühsam, Brecht, Eisler, and the Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Heritage
- 3 Narrative Role-Play as Communication Strategy in German Protest Song
- 4 The Burg Waldeck Festivals, 1964–1969
- 5 The Folk and Liedermacher Scene in the Federal Republic in the 1970s and 1980s
- 6 Konstantin Wecker: Political Songs between Anarchy and Humanity
- 7 Wolf Biermann: Die Heimat ist weit
- 8 Political Song in the GDR: The Cat-and-Mouse Game with Censorship and Institutions
- 9 The Demise of Political Song and the New Discourse of Techno in the Berlin Republic
- Works Cited
- Notes on the Editor and Contributors
- Index
7 - Wolf Biermann: Die Heimat ist weit
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Reception of Vormärz and 1848 Revolutionary Song in West Germany and the GDR
- 2 Mühsam, Brecht, Eisler, and the Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Heritage
- 3 Narrative Role-Play as Communication Strategy in German Protest Song
- 4 The Burg Waldeck Festivals, 1964–1969
- 5 The Folk and Liedermacher Scene in the Federal Republic in the 1970s and 1980s
- 6 Konstantin Wecker: Political Songs between Anarchy and Humanity
- 7 Wolf Biermann: Die Heimat ist weit
- 8 Political Song in the GDR: The Cat-and-Mouse Game with Censorship and Institutions
- 9 The Demise of Political Song and the New Discourse of Techno in the Berlin Republic
- Works Cited
- Notes on the Editor and Contributors
- Index
Summary
Wolf Biermann remains perhaps the best-known and most influential political song-maker in German history: a central figure against whom all other political songwriters must be measured, both lyrically and musically. Peter Graves has commented that “his poetry has a compelling verve and an infectious candor, a power to sting and to challenge, as well as to amuse.” As Sabine Brandt has also said, his “Gedichte mobilisieren das Hirn, seine Lieder auch das Herz. Sie ergreifen den Menschen total […].” For many he was the best example of what David Bathrick has called the almost libidinal attraction of communism and the GDR in all its contradictions. From the time when he first arrived in the GDR from West Germany in 1953 — just as millions were moving in the opposite direction — to the present day, his songs and thoughts have undergone radical change but have also demonstrated quite clear and definable continuities.
This chapter will attempt to trace Biermann's geographical, personal, and political journey, demonstrating how, for him, all three aspects of his life are intimately entwined and represented in his songs and poems. It will also investigate a further intertwining: Biermann's is, after all, a German life expressed in German song, but it is, or was, also a communist life expressed in communist song. And the songs carry within them both the horizontal community of his fellow Germans, communists and Jews as well as the vertical community of the history and genealogy of his family, his class, his nation, and his people.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Protest Song in East and West Germany since the 1960s , pp. 199 - 226Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007