The German singer-songwriter was awarded the “Arik Brauer Journalism Prize” for his life’s work by Mena-Watch in Vienna.
Wolf Biermann is history, German history. The 86-year-old singer-songwriter and poet was awarded the “Arik Brauer Journalism Prize” for his life’s work by the Middle East think tank Mena-Watch in Vienna on Thursday. The award was created by Mena-Watch founder Erwin Javor in memory of the artist and singer who passed away more than a year ago.
The award is given to journalists who stand out in the Austrian and German media landscape with objective and factual reporting on Israel and the Middle East. The first winners in the media category are the head of the foreign policy department of the daily newspaper Die Presse Christian Ultsch and the German journalist and commentator Esther Schapira. Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen also took the opportunity to send a greeting to the award winners.
The jury chose Biermann unanimously
Wolf Biermann was unanimously honored for his life’s work by the jury, which included Standard founder Oskar Bronner, former ORF correspondent Ben Segenreich, director of the Jewish Museum in Vienna Danielle Spera and religious scholar Adnan Aslan.
According to the jury, Biermann distinguished himself throughout his life for not taking the path of least resistance. Biermann was born in Hamburg in 1936 and has been publishing songs and poems since 1960. He became known in the 1960s as a radical critic of the GDR party dictatorship, and his expatriation caused a stir. Biermann has won numerous literary awards and his volumes of poetry are among the best-selling in post-war German literature.
Expatriated from the GDR
He is also famous for his concerts and his sharp-tongued essays. Biermann, whose father and most of his relatives were murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust, has a life story that comes chillingly to the present given the current war in Ukraine. Biermann, who did not want to live in the land of his father’s murderers, voluntarily immigrated from West to East Germany in 1953. The initially ardent communist turned into the harshest critic of the GDR in his songs. The regime saw him as an enemy, his songs were banned, and Biermann was banned from performing.
His expatriation took place in 1976 in his absence during a concert tour in the West. He learned that from the radio, says Biermann. Only later did he renounce communism, although he has retained his keen criticism of those in power to this day. His songs, such as the “Soldatenlied” (soldiers see each other the same, alive and dead), are more timeless today than ever. Biermann sees the war in the Ukraine as a threat, and what’s more, it scares him, who “as a little boy in Hamburg barely survived the Allied bombings”, as he says. At his only concert in Vienna in the almost sold-out StadtTheater, he actually wanted to play his love songs, said Biermann. But due to the current war in Europe, “his earlier pieces have contacted him so that he can perform them once more”.
West not absolved of responsibility
The West, said Biermann at his concert, should not be left out of responsibility. Putin was allowed to have his way during his campaign in Georgia, in Chechnya, but also when he had entire regions and cities devastated on behalf of a dictator in Syria. Back then, says Biermann, the war was far away, but now it’s back among us, although we thought we’d never have to experience it once more.
Nevertheless, he closes his celebrated concert with a slight form of optimism. He will come back to Vienna, he announces, to then play his planned love songs.