What’s that for? A Harmonium for Wolf Biermann
Verena Günther and Sarah Sporys | 12 October 2023
On 13 November 1976, the songwriter Wolf Biermann took the stage in the sold-out Cologne sports arena before more than 8,000 spectators. After 11 years of a performance ban in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), he gave his first “real” concert – with far-reaching consequences. On the stage stood a harmonium. This very instrument welcomes visitors in the prologue to the DHM exhibition “Wolf Biermann. A Poet and a Songwriter in Germany” and is an eyecatcher for young and old. Verena Günther and Dr Sarah Sporys from the Deutsches Historisches Museum’s department of Education and Communication take a look at the interesting history of the instrument and its importance for developing special programmes for children in the museum.
The trade union IG Metall invited Wolf Biermann to Cologne for the concert on 13 November 1976. Born in Hamburg, the artist had lived in East Germany since 1953, where from 1965 onwards the government had forbidden him to perform or publish in the GDR, but then in 1976 gave him permission to leave the country for concert performances in the Federal Republic of Germany. Biermann could finally give concerts and later described the event as follows: “For so many years I had been told not to sing that I now had to be told to stop singing.”[1] The concert in Cologne lasted for more than four hours. Biermann played many of his best-known songs, such as “Ermutigung” (Encouragement), but also new ones like the “Kunze” song, in which he expressed his solidarity with the writer Reiner Kunze.
This moment of happiness for the artist had far-reaching consequences: on 16 November 1976, while still on tour in West Germany, Wolf Biermann learned that he had been deprived of his GDR citizenship. He continued his tour, stayed in the Federal Republic, and moved back to his native city Hamburg. Wolf Biermann experienced his denaturalisation and especially his first years in West Germany as exile.[2] In an open letter, more than 200 East German citizens – among them many intellectuals and artists – protested against the revocation of Biermann’s GDR citizenship and the refusal of the government to let him return.
There are not only fascinating stories to be told about the concert, but also about the harmonium. It was provided to him by a friend of Biermann’s, the filmmaker Carsten Krüger. He had purchased it from a church parish in West Berlin for around 300 Marks and transported it – on the roof of his Volvo estate car – to all cities where the concerts took place. To be sure, Wolf Biermann was at first not at all enthusiastic about the harmonium. Looking back, Krüger reported that Biermann first had to get used to the new harmonium and then complained that it sounded not at all like the one he owned. That harmonium was still in his apartment in Chausseestrasse 131 in East Berlin, where he had sung songs for guests and made recordings in the privacy of his living room until had was ousted from the GDR.[3]
The harmonium from the Cologne concert is an eyecatcher in the prologue of the museum’s exhibition and refers to central topics, people, and moments in Biermann’s life. This instrument, which was built in the 1960s, also raises questions: What kind of an instrument is it and how does it sound? Is it a piano or an organ? How is it played? The harmonium is particularly interesting for children and is therefore a central element in the conception of communication programmes for children.
A special signet was designed for the exhibition: a wolf symbol can be found at selected object texts. These symbols lead to hands-on stations and can also be seen in the exhibition notebook for children. The notebook encourages young visitors to take a closer look at the objects and study them carefully. The interactive stations, for their part, offer creative areas to deal with central topics of the exhibition. The main intention is for the young people to acquire knowledge about Wolf Biermann’s life and the history of divided Germany in a playful way.
The harmonium played a different role in the two formats for young visitors. In the exhibition notebook, children are encouraged in an associative exercise to link different concepts with the harmonium. This approach offers connecting points with the experience and knowledge of the target group and provides a starting point for an examination of Wolf Biermann’s music. Our intention is to show that the harmonium looks somewhat like a piano, but sounds and functions more like an accordion. Taking the instrument as a starting point, we want the children to use the interactive stations to examine the songs that Biermann wrote and sang. Our approach in encouraging them to deal with Wolf Biermann’s language is aided by a magnetic panel on the wall where the children can rearrange different excerpts from Biermann’s songs and in this way create their own song texts. The harmonium is also one of the objects that inspired the board game “Sweet Life – Sour Life”. It invites young visitors to follow the course of Wolf Biermann’s life and to get to know the most important stages in his biography by means of the event fields in the boardgame, one of which, for example, deals with the Cologne concert and its consequences. These play stations show that his biography is closely connected to the history of the two German states.
Through play the young visitors gain knowledge of how Wolf Biermann got involved in a conflict with the GDR government, how he was no longer allowed to work in his profession, and how he was deprived of his East German citizenship. Wolf Biermann clearly saw the danger that he might be ousted or arrested in East Germany. He therefore carefully chose the songs that he was to sing at the Cologne concert on 13 November 1976 and which ones he would not use. He wanted to express his criticism of the GDR “in solidarity” with the country in order not to offer the state a pretence for repressive measures.[4] He describes it as follows: “I not only simply wanted to return, but to return so that I would not be arrested at the border and not land in an even deeper hole than before the tour.”[5] This precautionary measure, however, was in vain. The possibility of denaturalisation had been deliberated in the highest government circles for a long time – the decision lay with the top leadership of the GDR.[6] Erich Mielke, Minister for State Security, reported about the Cologne concert in a handwritten memorandum, in which he complained that Biermann agitated against the GDR and depicted the Ministry for State Security in a negative light. In the session of the Politburo on 16 November, Erich Honecker, General Secretary of the SED, recorded in the minutes the decision that Biermann’s citizenship was to be revoked and that it was to be announced on the evening of 16 November 1976.[7] In this way Wolf Biermann and the general public first learned from the news reports that he had been deprived of his GDR citizenship and could not return to East Germany as he had planned. He was forced to remain in the Federal Republic against his will. He no longer wanted to have anything to do with the harmonium that had accompanied him on his concert tour. In 1976, Carsten Krüger transported it back to West Berlin, where it remained in his apartment until the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship acquired it and made it available to the DHM for the exhibition in 2023. In this way the instrument came to its historical significance and became a demonstrably vivid piece of contemporary history.
[1] Quoted from: WDR. 13.11.2016. 13. November 1976 – Konzert von Wolf Biermann in Köln, link: https://www1.wdr.de/stichtag/stichtag-wolf-biermann-konzert-koeln-100.html (last accessed on 04.09.2023).
[2] Cf. Holger Böning, 2023. Wolf Biermann in der Bundesrepublik: Wirken, Rolle und Selbstverständnis. In: Dorlis Blume, Monika Boll, Raphael Gross, Wolf Biermann. Ein Lyriker und Liedermacher in Deutschland. Berlin: Ch.Links Verlag, p. 138.
[3] Interview by the author Verena Günther with Carsten Krüger on 31.08.2023.
[4] Wolf Biermann, 2016. Warte nicht auf bessre Zeiten! Die Autobiographie. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, p. 329.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Vgl. Heribert Schwan, 2001. Ausbürgerung, in: Fritz Pleitgen (ed.), Die Ausbürgerung. Anfang vom Ende der DDR, Berlin: Ullstein Verlag, pp. 259-281.
[7] Cf. Frankfurter Rundschau, 1.2.2019. Falsches Lob des Kommunismus. Link: https://www.fr.de/politik/falsches-kommunismus-1-11652351.html (last accessed on 9.10.2023).
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Dr. Sarah SporysDr. Sarah Sporys is an education officer in the Education and Outreach Department of the DHM. |
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Verena GüntherVerena Günther is an education officer in the Education and Outreach Department of the DHM. |
