Wolf Biermann (born November 15, 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.
Biermann was born in Hamburg, Germany.
His mother, Emma, 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 22, 1943.
In 1976, while Biermann was on an officially sanctioned tour of West Germany, the GDR government stripped him of his citizenship.
He was not allowed to return to the GDR.
Biermann's exile provoked protests by leading East German intellectuals, including actor Armin Mueller-Stahl and novelist Christa Wolf.
In 1977, he was joined in West Germany by his wife at the time, Christine Barg, as well as actress Eva-Maria Hagen, her daughter Catharina (Nina Hagen), and Sibylle Havemann, the daughter of Robert Havemann and mother of two of Biermann's children.
In West Germany, his manager was the musician Diether Dehm, who was secretly a Stasi informer reporting on Biermann's activities to the GDR authorities.
He now lives in Hamburg and in France.
Biermann is the father of ten children, three of them with his second wife Pamela Biermann.
Story Sources:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Biermann
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ermutigung
Wolf Biermann ~ Ermutigung (Live 1976)