Wolf Biermann was born to Communist parents in Hamburg on 15 November 1936. His father, a Jewish Communist, was involved in the resistance against the Nazis and was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. Wolf Biermann emigrated to the GDR at the age of 16, shortly before the 17 June uprising in 1953, but after Stalin’s death in March of 1953. After finishing schooling at the Gadebusch Boarding School, he began to study political economics at Berlin’s Humboldt-Universität. He interrupted his studies in 1957, and he worked for two years as an assistant to the director at the Berliner Ensemble, the theatre company that his great role model, Bertolt Brecht, had co-founded and led as artistic director until his death in 1956. Biermann returned as a student to Humboldt-Universität (1959–1963), where he studied philosophy and mathematics/physics. This was the period in which he wrote his first songs and poems. In addition to Bertolt Brecht, his role models were François Villon and Heinrich Heine.
In 1960, Wolf Biermann met the composer Hanns Eisler, who supported him. This was when Biermann coined the term “Liedermacher” (song-maker), analogous to the term “Stückeschreiber” (playwright). He became a candidate for membership in the SED in 1961 but was not accepted as a party member at the end of the candidacy period due to political differences. His university diploma was also withheld. 1961–1963, he started a theatre company called the Berliner Arbeiter- und Studententheater (b.a.t.), but it was banned before it could give its first performance. He gave poetry readings at the Academy of Arts in 1962, at the suggestion of Stephan Hermlin, and again in 1963 at a cultural centre but his poems were officially rejected by the party, which branded them “quixotic” and “inward looking”. Biermann began working as a freelancer in 1963; his development was certainly hampered by bans on performing, though not completely thwarted. In March of 1964, he gave a concert in the philosophers’ club of the university in East Berlin amidst the public clashes over his friend Robert Havemann. The same year, he performed with Wolfgang Neuss in West Berlin (his first album, released in 1965, was a recording of this concert), later performing in other Western countries as well.
In December of 1965, the SED renewed its attack on Biermann following the release of his first volume of poetry “Die Drahtharfe”: Walter Ulbricht criticised and insulted him (“We have ... no freedom for crazy people”) at the 11th plenary session of the central Committee of the SED held in December of 1965 (notorious as the “Kahlschlag”, or “clear-cutting” session, during which other artists were also targeted). Despite protests from the West, the SED leadership imposed a general ban on performance and publication on Biermann, which remained in effect until he was stripped of his citizenship in 1976.
In 1965, Biermann’s years of state-enforced isolation in his flat at East Berlin’s Chauseestraße 131 began. Nonetheless, he was able to release multiple books and records with his songs in the West, to perform in Western television and radio broadcasts and give numerous interviews. Publications of his works and about him were equally numerous: his poems were printed in 26 anthologies, and the publications in which his songs and poems appeared are practically beyond count, and myriad pieces were written about him books, magazines and newspapers. By 1986, approximately 30 televised pieces about him had been aired. He was awarded numerous prizes and honours (e.g. the Fontane Prize in 1969, the Jacques Offenbach Prize, the German Record Award). His play “Der Dra-Dra” had its world premiere in Munich in April of 1971.
Within the GDR though, Biermann’s existence as an artist was effectively hushed up – apart from the occasional outburst against him by SED leadership (Kurt Hager, Erich Honecker, Horst Sindermann, Paul Verner and others). His circle of friends or acquaintances included many intellectuals critical of the regime during these years, though, and he had an incalculable number of fans who loved his poems and songs, passing them around in the form of typewritten copies or cassettes. The Ministry of State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS) kept him under observation from 1965 onwards, first in operation “Lyriker” (lyricist) and later in what was known as a “central operation” (Zentraler Operativer Vorgang). By the GDR’s demise, the MfS “file” on Biermann consisted of a total of approximately 40,000 pages collected in about 100 volumes. The only person about whom the secret police amassed more material was Wolf Biermann’s closest friend, Robert Havemann.
For all his criticism of the SED and what he saw as a bourgeois priggishness in GDR society, Biermann considered himself a Marxist and a Communist, an anti-fascist, anti-militarist and an opponent of capitalism, and this was the basis of his friendship with Robert Havemann. Later, he identified with Eurocommunism. He combined this political commitment to building a better world that was based on solidarity with irrepressible joie de vivre, sensualism and love of freedom and humanity.
The SED leadership began trying to rid itself of this meddlesome singer-cum-critic in 1973 (originally, they planned to strip him of his citizenship while he was in Hamburg in 1974). Despite the ban on performances, Biermann gave a concert in a church in Prenzlau in the autumn of 1976 – it would be his last appearance in GDR. On 13 November 1976, he gave a concert in Köln before an audience of 7,000, at the invitation of the West German metal industry trade union (IG Metall), that was broadcast live by the public radio broadcaster WDR (and televised in full three days later by the public broadcaster ARD). Three days later, the SED politburo announced the revocation of Biermann’s citizenship. It was a step that had been in the planning for some time but one that was destined to have unanticipated and far-reaching consequences.
An initial protest by thirteen well-known artists was followed by an enormous wave of solidarity for Biermann, and a simultaneous set of counter-protests orchestrated by the government. Jürgen Fuchs, Gerulf Pannach, Christian Kunert and many others were arrested; Robert Havemann was sentenced with 8-months house arrest and legal proceedings were initiated against several writers. There the GDR literary scene grew highly polarised, and an exodus of important authors and artists began.
The loss of his citizenship plunged Biermann himself into a period of crisis. His manager, the man who advised him on contacts and appearances, was taking instructions from the MfS (and regularly informed on him to the Stasi, which continued to keep Biermann under observation in West Germany). He received hate-mail and threats from right-wing groups. The confrontation with a new set of political forces and tensions required Biermann to rethink his identity. Continuing to see himself as a socialist and became a harsh critic of Western society, he became a frequent presence in the media, released one album after the next and gave concerts in West Germany and other countries. During his exile in Hamburg, Biermann evolved from a political songwriter into a poet and essayist, a transformation that can be compared with that of Heinrich Heine in Paris. In 1982, the SED leadership permitted Biermann to pay an extremely low-profile visit to take final leave of his friend, Robert Havemann, a few days before the death of the latter. In many ways, Havemann was like a father to Biermann.

Wolf Biermann visits Robert Havemann at his home in Grünheide, outside Berlin, during the last days of Havemann’s life. Biermann was permitted to enter the GDR in secret for this visit.
Biermann returned to the stage in the GDR during the Peaceful Revolution in 1989. Egon Krenz, then general secretary of the still ruling SED, was able to prevent his appearance and the mass rally on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz on 4 November 1989, but he gave a concert to an enthusiastic audience of 4,000 in Leipzig on 1 December that was broadcast on GDR television. From that point onwards, Biermann followed the unification process with a critical eye. He publicly renounced communism of any variety, explaining in his typical fashion why he had been mistaken for so long, and yet still proven right in the end.
In early September 1990, Wolf Biermann supported the protest of human rights supporters who had occupied the Stasi headquarters in Berlin, exposed the Stasi informer Sascha Anderson (“Sascha Asshole”) and voiced his opinions on the Stasi question several times. On 17 June 1996, Biermann joined former human rights activists, such as Bärbel Bohley, Ehrhart Neubert, Ralf Hirsch, Jürgen Fuchs, Katja Havemann, Wolfgang Templin, Konrad Weiß, Arnold Vaatz and Freya Klier, and prominent FRG politicians from all democratic parties, in founding the Berlin-based association Citizens’ Bureau (Bürgerbüro), whose purpose is to advance the understanding and acknowledgement of the injustices perpetrated by the SED regime. In addition to his engagement for this cause, Wolf Biermann continues to publish political essays and statements designed in equal measure to polarise readerships and inspire people to form their own opinions. However, the main focus of this father of ten continues to be his work as an artist. He has released a total of more than two dozen albums and several volumes of poetry, essays and other texts. In recent years, Biermann has been increasingly active in disseminating eye-witness accounts and artistic works by Jewish artists dealing with the Holocaust. His impressive autobiography, “Warte nicht auf bessere Zeiten” (Don’t wait for better times), earned great praise and respect upon its release in 2016.