Wolf & Pamela Biermann
The Harbour Front Literature Festival is looking forward to a special evening, a joint concert by Wolf Biermann & Pamela Biermann. As in life, and especially when the sky darkens, songs provide comfort, support, and weapons. Wolf Biermann & Pamela Biermann sing their favorite songs, against despondency and for more optimism in the world's struggles. Is it permissible to sing in the face of the serious state of the world? It is even encouraged! Because: "We will not let our mood – or any suffering be spoiled!" Biermann wrote as early as 1972 in the GDR.
About the program:
The evening is illuminated by the titular song "Ah, the first love..." by Bulat Okudzhawa – a song about the eternal poles of privacy and politics. Some of Biermann's most beautiful songs, such as "The Ballad of the Prussian Icarus," "When will there finally be peace?" or "The Huguenot Cemetery," which says: "How close some of the dead are to us, yet how dead some of those who live are!" stand alongside international classics like Louis Aragon's "Happy Love," the dreamy revolutionary hit of the Paris Commune, "The Time of Cherries," or the mocking ballad about the love couple "Johnny Sand and Betsy Bucht." Songs about love stand in contrast to songs about war. The latter is told in the anti-war song "Johnny I hardly knew you" or the ancient Russian soldier's song "Rabe Rabe." A musical journey through time from the end of the 19th century to the present day.
"The mood is the best part of this evening," reports rbb: "It is an event. A concert that unfolds a whole century and is comforting precisely in the sadness of the songs, in not sugarcoating things." (rbb, 1.4.2025, Barbara Berendt)
About Wolf Biermann & Pamela Biermann:
Wolf Biermann, born in 1936. First songs and poems from 1960. Biermann became the most radical critic of the party dictatorship of the GDR. In 1965, he received a total ban on performing and publishing and was exiled in 1976. His exile triggered an unexpectedly large protest movement in East and West and is considered the beginning of the end of the GDR. Wolf Biermann has received all major German literary awards. He gives concerts in many countries around the world and is known for his sharp-tongued essays, with which he provocatively intervenes in current politics.
Pamela Biermann, born in 1963, singer, editor, literature and concert agent, screenwriter, and painter. As a singer, she first appeared in public in 2012. The song evening at the Berliner Ensemble with Wolf Biermann was followed by numerous concerts in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Publications by Pamela Biermann/Wolf Biermann: "Ah, the first love" in 2013; together with the free jazz band Neues Zentralquartett "... turning a few angular rounds!" in 2016, as well as in the compilation "Encouragement," Clouds Hill, 2024.
Entry: 7:00 PM
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
