Overview
- On his 90th birthday Wolf Biermann remains publicly active with a newly released album, a feature documentary in cinemas, and commemorative concerts planned in Berlin and Leipzig.
- His childhood shaped his life: his father was murdered in Auschwitz and he survived the deadly 1943 bombing of Hamburg, experiences he has said set his lifelong commitment to freedom.
- The GDR suppressed Biermann for decades, imposing a performance and publication ban in 1965 and placing him under intensive Stasi surveillance that generated vast files on him.
- A 13 November 1976 concert in Cologne was followed days later by his official exile from East Germany, a punitive act that provoked protests and is widely seen as a turning point in the regime's loss of legitimacy.
- Commentary on his 90th year mixes celebration with reassessment, with some critics placing his work in a German-Romantic, poète-chanteur tradition rather than the standard 'Liedermacher' label, a debate the new documentary and concerts are likely to revive.