The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was followed by German reunification in 1990. In celebrating the 20th anniversary of the peaceful revolution that brought down the Wall, we will profile over the course of 2009 important East Germans who have shaped beyond all physical borders the cultural, intellectual and political life of postwar Germany and Europe.

Karl Wolf Biermann was born in Hamburg on November 15, 1936. His father, a communist and a Jew, was murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. In 1953, Biermann settled in the GDR, where he studied economics, philosophy, and mathematics at Humboldt University in Berlin.

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Biermann after receiving the Joachim Ringelnatz Award of the city of Cuxhaven in June 2006.

(© picture-alliance/ dpa)

The initial attraction to the GDR – Biermann even wanted to become a member of the governing party, the Social Unity Party (SED) – quickly waned, and Biermann eventually stated “that red gods are also only people/swine/dogs” in his song Only Those Who Change Remain True to Themselves.

In 1960, he began to write poetry and songs in which he occasionally expressed criticism of the party dictatorship in the GDR. Yet he also always took the position of a communist, not that of an “enemy of the state;” his concern was to reform the GDR.  After publication of the poetry collection Die Drahtharfe [The Wire Harp], the record album Wolf Biermann (Ost) zu Gast bei Wolfgang Neuss (West) [Wolf Biermann (East) visits Wolfgang Neuss (West)], and the poem Deutschland - ein Wintermärchen [Germany – A Winter Fairytale], he was banned from performing and publishing. The ban, however, failed to achieved its desired purpose. Biermann’s henceforth illegal songs and poems were secretly circulated even more readily through countless handwritten copies and tape recordings. And Biermann, who perhaps for tactical reasons had held himself back in the hope of landing an East German recording contract prior to the ban, now felt liberated and relieved by it. “I no longer had to chop off a foot in order to get ahead,” he said as he described his reaction to the ban during a speech at a ceremony awarding him with an honorary doctorate from Humboldt University in Berlin in November 2008.

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Biermann at his first concert in Eastern Germany after the collapse of the GDR-regime on December 1, 1989.

(© picture-alliance/ ZB)

His enormous popularity and his prominent relationships protected him from prison and enabled him to get by, despite the ban. In November 1976, Biermann was invited to travel to West Germany to perform at a concert. He was granted a travel permit and appeared at the Cologne sports arena. After the concert, he was no longer permitted to return to the GDR.  According to the East German authorities, he had egregiously violated his civic duties, reason enough to strip him of his citizenship. In response, West German television broadcasted the concert in its entirety, which allowed many East Germans to see Biermann in concert for the first time.

Biermann’s expatriation was perceived in both East and West Germany as an arbitrary act and quashed all hope of liberalization and freedom of expression. Protest movements, unprecedented in size and number, ensued. Among the initial protesters were numerous prominent figures such as Heiner Müller, Stefan Heym, and Christa Wolf. Well-known figures such as Manfred Krug, Jurek Becker, and Sarah Kirsch consequently left either voluntarily or under pressure by the GDR.

Biermann’s expatriation was “the beginning of the end of the GDR,” as author Jurek Becker put it following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Biermann himself described his disappointment in the following ballad to Eva-Maria Hagen:

               Doch als ich nach Hause an die Mauer kam

               Und mich der Grenzer beiseite nahm

               Da half mir kein Lächeln kein Bitte

               Da stand ich so elend vorm Posten.

Even in the West, Biermann continued to engage in political commentary through his songs and poetry. On numerous concert tours, he expressed his resentment over the past, proclaimed his dissatisfaction with the new circumstances, and articulated his sense of inner German conflict through provocative, sorrowful, and ironic lyrics. In January 1990, he was among the people who occupied the Stasi headquarters on Normannenstrasse in East Berlin and prevented the further destruction of the secret police's files.

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Biermann together with Oscar Lafontaine, the former Minister of Finance, and others who occupied the East Berlin headquarters of the secret police on Normannenstraße in September 1990.

(© picture-alliance/ ZB)

Wolf Biermann was never solely East German or West German, rather, as Jochen Hieber wrote in the German daily newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he was always an “all-German phenomenon.” His courageous and passionate criticism of recognized injustices and ills was consistently marked by clarity, eloquence, and poetry and was always directed toward the broad masses and not just a small “alternative” group.

On Wolf Biermann’s 70th birthday in 2006, German President Horst Köhler presented Wolf Biermann with Germany's highest public award, the Federal Order of Merit. Biermann currently lives with his family in Hamburg-Altona. His latest book Berlin du deutsche deutsche Frau (Berlin, You German, German Woman), which appeared in 2008, is a compilation of his most beautiful poetry about Berlin.