To say that Wolf Biermann would look up to Heine would be correct, but an unpardonable understatement. The songs and poems of the poet, singer-songwriter and literary prizewinner are filled to the brim with criticism, satire, crude humor and inner conflict about his homeland, about Germany. Heine, although born 139 years before and 380 kilometers away from Biermann, could not give up satire, politics and a love-hate relationship with Germany. To speak of spirit brothers would perhaps be presumptuous, after all Heine did not accompany his verses on the guitar. In the attribution of the “cheeky cousin”, which Biermann gives him in his poem “Germany. A Winter’s Tale”, one can confidently leave it at that.
Both poets are spiritual relatives who rub shoulders with a repressive state and a sleepy population – and thus put themselves in danger. After Heine in his “Winter’s Tale” of 1844 humorously fumed about Prussian mustaches and spiked helmets, militarism and reactionary politics, of course in rhyme, the epic poem was immediately confiscated and censored. Heine was defamed as a traitor to the fatherland, although he was already living in France at the time because he had been denied a work permit because of his Jewish faith.
Biermann, who was born in Hamburg, had been living in the GDR for ten years while his text was being written, and already in the first chapter he mentions the deaths of the Wall, the bigwigs and Nazi Germany. Like Heine, he nevertheless sees Germany, in his case the GDR, as a fatherland and would find himself in Heine’s self-ascription of a “critical patriot”. When Wolf Biermann comes to Munich on September 15 to speak to Heine with guitar and microphone, he has a conglomerate of common themes to choose from: anti-Semitism, censorship, revolution and communism, poetry and language. It remains exciting what the man will choose, about whom Marcel Reich-Ranicki once said: “Creating harmony is not his thing.” It’s a good thing that Biermann doesn’t have to create harmony between himself and his beloved Heine.
Wolf Biermann in dialogue with Heine, Thursday, Sep. 15, 7 p.m., Jewish Community Center, St.-Jakobs-Platz 18, registration by phone 089/202400491