Wolf Biermann
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Wolf Biermann
Karl Wolf Biermann (; born 15 November 1936) is a German singer-songwriter, poet, and former East German dissident. He is perhaps best known for the 1968 song "Ermutigung" and his expatriation from East Germany in 1976. Early life Biermann was born in Hamburg, Germany. His mother, Emma (née Dietrich), was a Communist Party activist, and his father, Dagobert Biermann, worked on the Hamburg docks. Biermann's father, a Jewish member of the German Resistance, was sentenced to six years in prison for sabotaging Nazi ships. In 1942, the Nazis decided to eliminate their Jewish political prisoners and Biermann's father was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was murdered on 22 February 1943. Biermann was one of the few children of workers who attended the Heinrich-Hertz-Gymnasium (high school) in Hamburg. After the Second World War, he became a member of the Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend, FDJ) and in 1950, he represented the Federal Republic of Germany at the ...
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Chausseestraße 131
''Chausseestraße 131'' is the second LP recorded by East German Liedermacher and poet Wolf Biermann, after ''Wolf Biermann (Ost) zu Gast bei Wolfgang Neuss (West)'', an album recorded together with Wolfgang Neuss. It was his first album released after the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Socialist Unity Party officially blacklisted him from performing or releasing music through the East German music monopoly VEB Deutsche Schallplatten. Due to being blacklisted, Biermann was unable to use a professional recording studio to record the album, forcing him to record in his apartment at Chausseestraße 131 using a Grundig tape recorder and a Sennheiser Microphone#Omnidirectional, omnidirectional microphone smuggled in from West Germany. Because of this, the sound of traffic outside his apartment can be heard in the background. Wolf Biermann: ''Chausseestraße 131'', 1968. Booklet included in 1996 re-release on CD. In 1969, Biermann received the Theodor Fontane, Fontane Prize, an award ...
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Berliner Ensemble
The Berliner Ensemble () is a German theatre company established by actress Helene Weigel and her husband, playwright Bertolt Brecht, in January 1949 in East Berlin. In the time after Brecht's exile, the company first worked at Wolfgang Langhoff's Deutsches Theater and in 1954 moved to the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, built in 1892, that was open for the 1928 premiere of ''The Threepenny Opera'' (''Die Dreigroschenoper''). Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble Brecht's students Benno Besson, Egon Monk, Peter Palitzsch, and Manfred Wekwerth were given the opportunity to direct plays by Brecht that had not yet been staged. The stage designers Caspar Neher and Karl von Appen, the composers Paul Dessau and Hanns Eisler, as well as the dramaturge Elisabeth Hauptmann, were among Brecht's closest collaborators. After her husband died in 1956, Weigel continued managing the Berliner Ensemble until her death in 1971. The Berliner Ensemble achieved success through long and meticulous rehears ...
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Cicero (magazine)
''Cicero'' is a monthly German magazine focusing on politics and culture. The magazine, which has a liberal-conservative political stance, is based in Berlin. It is similar to ''The Atlantic'' and ''The New Yorker'' in terms of its coverage. History and contributors ''Cicero'' was launched in Potsdam in March 2004. The magazine was later moved to Berlin. The first editor-in-chief of the magazine was Wolfram Weimer, who also served as the editor of the daily newspaper ''Die Welt'' from 2000 to 2002. Alexander Marguier was the editor-in-chief of ''Cicero'' until 2010. Michael Naumann is among the former editors-in-chief of the magazine. As of 2012 the editor-in-chief of the magazine was Christoph Schwennicke. The magazine has eleven editorial staff. From 2007 to 2009 Alexander Görlach served as the executive editor of the online edition. Among its columnists are Bela Anda, Philipp Blom and Amelie Fried. A conservative journalist Bettina Röhl also contributed to ''Cicero''. In ...
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Zersetzung
''Zersetzung'' (, German language, German for "decomposition" and "disruption") was a psychological warfare technique used by the Ministry for State Security (East Germany), Ministry for State Security (''Stasi'') to repress political opponents in East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. ''Zersetzung'' served to combat alleged and actual dissidents through covert means, using secret methods of Abusive power and control, abusive control and psychological manipulation to prevent anti-government activities. People were commonly targeted on a pre-emptive and preventative basis, to limit or stop politically incorrect activities that they may have gone on to perform, and not on the basis of crimes they had actually committed. ''Zersetzung'' methods were designed to break down, undermine, and paralyze people behind "a facade of social normality" in a form of "silent repression". Erich Honecker's succession to Walter Ulbricht as Leadership of East Germany, First Secretary of the Social ...
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Stasi
The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the Intelligence agency, state security service of the East Germany from 1950 to 1990. The Stasi's function was similar to the KGB, serving as a means of maintaining state authority, i.e., the "Sword and Shield of the Party" (). This was accomplished primarily through the use of a network of civilian informants. This organization contributed to the arrest of approximately 250,000 people in East Germany. The Stasi also conducted espionage and other clandestine operations abroad through its subordinate foreign intelligence service, the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, Office of Enlightenment, or Head Office A (german: Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung). They also maintained contacts and occasionally cooperated with West German terrorists. The Stasi was headquartered in East Berlin, with an extensive complex in Lichtenberg (locality), Berlin-Lichtenberg and several smaller facilities throughout the c ...
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Class Traitor
Class traitor is a term used mostly in socialist discourse to refer to a member of the proletarian class who works directly or indirectly against their class interest, or against their economic benefit and in favor of the bourgeoisie. It applies particularly to soldiers, police officers, bounty hunters, loss prevention, vigilantes, security guards (mainly those hired by private security companies), workers who cross and refuse to respect picket lines during a strike and anyone paid a wage who actively facilitates the ''status quo''. According to Barbara Ehrenreich: "Class treason is an option at all socioeconomic levels: from the blue-collar man who becomes a security guard employed to harass striking workers, to the heirs of capitalist fortunes who become donors to left-wing causes". In Russia before and during the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks and other socialist revolutionary organizations used it to describe the Czarist Army and any working class citizen who opposed the ...
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Wolfgang Neuss
Wolfgang Neuss (3 December 1923 – 5 May 1989) was a German actor and Kabarett artist. Beginning in the mid-1960s, he also became famous for his political engagement, first for the SPD, then for the extra-parliamentary opposition, ''APO''. He died in 1989 from a longtime cancer. At the age of 15 he went to Berlin to become a clown but was dismissed. When Germany entered into the Second World War Neuss was drafted, first to the Reich Labour Service where he was occupied with road construction. Later he was sent to the Eastern Front where he became injured and was rewarded with the Iron Cross. It was during his stays in military hospitals and, after the war during military detention that Neuss began to discover his interest in acting and for Kabarett. Filmography * (The man in search of himself) (1950) * (Who drove the grey Ford?) (1950) as Uwe Lauterbach * (You have to be beautiful) (1951) as Moritat singer * (1952) as Ballman * (Mikosch comes in) (1952) as Franzek * ...
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Frankfurt Am Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its namesake Main River, it forms a continuous conurbation with the neighboring city of Offenbach am Main and its urban area has a population of over 2.3 million. The city is the heart of the larger Rhine-Main metropolitan region, which has a population of more than 5.6 million and is Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr region. Frankfurt's central business district, the Bankenviertel, lies about northwest of the geographic center of the EU at Gadheim, Lower Franconia. Like France and Franconia, the city is named after the Franks. Frankfurt is the largest city in the Rhine Franconian dialect area. Frankfurt was a city state, the Free City of Frankfurt, for nearly five centuries, and was one of the most import ...
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Federal Commissioner For The Stasi Records
, commonly known as the ) , dissolved = June 17, 2021 , superseding1 = , agency_type = Former Secret Police Archive , jurisdiction = , status = Dissolved, now part of the German Federal Archives , headquarters = Karl-Liebknecht-Straße31/33Berlin-Lichtenberg, Germany , coordinates = , motto = , employees = 1,313 () , budget = , chief1_name = Roland Jahn , chief1_position = Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records , parent_department = , parent_agency = , website = (in English) , agency_id = , map = , map_size = , map_caption = Location on a map of Berlin. , map_alt = , footnotes = , embed = The Stasi Records Agency (german: Stasi-Unterlagen-Behörde) was the organisation that administered the archives of Ministry of State Secu ...
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Die Wende
The Peaceful Revolution (german: Friedliche Revolution), as a part of the Revolutions of 1989, was the process of sociopolitical change that led to the opening of East Germany's borders with the West, the end of the ruling of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) (communist regime) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR or "East Germany") in 1989 and the transition to a parliamentary democracy, which later enabled the reunification of Germany in October 1990. This happened through non-violent initiatives and demonstrations. This period of change is referred to in German as ' (, "the turning point"). These events were closely linked to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's decision to abandon Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe as well as the reformist movements that spread through Eastern Bloc countries. In addition to the Soviet Union's shift in foreign policy, the GDR's lack of competitiveness in the global market, as well as its sharply rising national debt, hastened the dest ...
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Der Spiegel
''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner, a British army officer, and Rudolf Augstein, a former Wehrmacht radio operator who was recognized in 2000 by the International Press Institute as one of the fifty World Press Freedom Heroes. Typically, the magazine has a content to advertising ratio of 2:1. ''Der Spiegel'' is known in German-speaking countries mostly for its investigative journalism. It has played a key role in uncovering many political scandals such as the ''Spiegel'' affair in 1962 and the Flick affair in the 1980s. According to ''The Economist'', ''Der Spiegel'' is one of continental Europe's most influential magazines. The news website by the same name was launched in 1994 under the name ''Spiegel Online'' with an independent editorial staff. Today, the content is ...
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Socialist Unity Party Of Germany
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (german: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, ; SED, ), often known in English as the East German Communist Party, was the founding and ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany) from the country's foundation in October 1949 until its dissolution after the Peaceful Revolution in 1989. It was a Marxist–Leninist communist party, established in April 1946 as a merger between the East German branches of the Communist Party of Germany and Social Democratic Party of Germany. Although the GDR was a one-party state, some other institutional popular front parties were permitted to exist in alliance with the SED; these parties included the Christian Democratic Union, the Liberal Democratic Party, the Democratic Farmers' Party, and the National Democratic Party. In the 1980s, the SED rejected the liberalisation policies of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, such as '' perestroika'' and '' glasnost'', which would le ...
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