Book launch with Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk
16 November 1976: The singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann is travelling from Cologne to Bochum in a Mercedes belonging to the IG Metall trade union. IG Metall has invited the singer – who moved from Hamburg to East Berlin in 1953 and has been banned from performing in the GDR for the past eleven years – to give concerts in the West.
Image gallery
Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer
Three days earlier – on the birthday of his father, who had been murdered at Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 – Biermann had given his legendary concert at the Cologne sports hall. His second concert in the West was due to take place in Bochum. Suddenly, the artist heard the news on the car radio that ‘the relevant authorities of the GDR’ had ‘revoked his right to remain in the German Democratic Republic’.
The GDR authorities’ plan to weaken the opposition within the country by expatriating Biermann backfired: the petition signed by 12 prominent GDR writers, calling for a reconsideration of the ‘expatriation measure’, triggered an unexpected wave of protest.
To mark the 50th anniversary of his expatriation and his 90th birthday, the historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk – a friend of the singer-songwriter – is publishing excerpts from his extensive diaries. He will be presenting the book at the Berlin Wall Memorial.
Moderator: Doris Liebermann, member of the Friends of the Berlin Wall Memorial
The event is part of the ‘Life under Dictatorships’ series organised by the Friends of the Berlin Wall Memorial.
In cooperation with the Friends of the Berlin Wall Memorial and the Centre for Eastern European and International Studies (ZOiS)
IN GERMAN
Additional information
Dates
November 2026
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