Autobiography
“Comrade Honecker has read your letter” – Roland Kaiser quarreled with the GDR leadership
Roland Kaiser will be 70 years old next year. His autobiography “Sunny Side” was published this week.
© Soeren Stache / DPA
He once wrote a letter to Erich Honecker: Roland Kaiser reports in his autobiography about a dispute with the GDR leadership. It was about an appearance.
“You caused us a lot of trouble, Comrade Honecker read your letter”. With this sentence, Roland Kaiser once decided a dispute with the GDR government for himself. In 1987 he was supposed to perform together with his band in the Friedrichstadtpalast in East Berlin on the occasion of the 750th anniversary celebrations. But that almost never happened. Because Kaiser threatened to burst everything.
In his autobiography “Sunny Side”, published on Monday, the singer reports on his correspondence with Erich Honecker. The occasion was an imposed performance ban on his keyboard player Franz Bartzsch. The SED was a thorn in the side that the musician had fled the GDR in 1980 and therefore did not want to allow him to enter the country. However, Kaiser did not want to accept that and let it be known that he would not appear then either.
Honecker responded immediately to Kaiser’s letter
“Definitely, I would have pulled it off,” writes the 69-year-old in his book. The head of the artist service remained tough despite the threat. Thereupon Kaiser, whose real name is Ronald Keiler, wrote Erich Honecker a letter and complained. “I sent it off with a lot of tension. I hope he will write back, I thought. At least I was almost certain that he would read the letter.” The original documents are printed in the book.
In fact, Honecker read the letter, which Kaiser apparently absolutely wanted to have in the GDR. Honecker must have made an announcement to his officials. The people concerned with the matter received a rebuke from the top. The order was issued through Stasi chief Erich Mielke that Franz Bartzsch was allowed to enter the country after all. However, with one caveat: he had to appear under a pseudonym. Bartzsch became Daniel Matthi.
Kaiser becomes very personal in his book
In his book, Kaiser also reports for the first time about the tragic death of his foster mother. When he was 15, she suffered a stroke while hanging up the curtains and fell off the ladder. She died in the hospital three weeks later. Kaiser also describes the personal experiences of his COPD illness, who kept the diagnosis and the subsequent lung transplantation secret from the public for a long time. Kaiser told the German Press Agency: “I expected my family not to talk about the disease. From today’s perspective that was wrong. I underestimated the empathy of people. My wife had advised me much earlier to make it public to go. “