Word: biermann
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...apparent purpose of the new crackdown is to so intimidate the country's intellectuals that they will stop the embarrassing practice of criticizing Party Boss Erich Honecker's regime from inside East Germany. A case in point is Balladeer Wolf Biermann, 40, a poet and songster who regards himself as a dedicated Communist and actually emigrated from West Germany to East Germany in 1953 because he wanted to live in a Communist-run state. Since then he has become an outspoken critic of what he regards as East Berlin's distortion of Marxism, and accuses the East...
That apocalyptic allegory is the plot of Der Dra-Dra, the latest work of one of Communism's most controversial artists. Wolf Biermann, 34, a sad-faced East Berlin balladeer, is the spiritual heir of Bertolt Brecht, who spent his last years in the city. But while Brecht directed most of his barbs at the abuses of capitalism ("Don't rob a bank. Own one"), Biermann aims his satire at the political dictatorships of both left and right. Biermann's approach has hardly endeared him to Communist Party Boss Walter Ulbricht and East Germany...
Parasite Power. Despite his Orwellian unperson status, Biermann continues to turn out songs and poems. He lampoons the Bilroelephanten (bureaucratic elephants), who quake in fear before his guitar, or pokes fun at the effects of the Wall on East Germans ("When I die, I'll become a guard and patrol the border between heaven and hell. Show your pass, please.") In Der Dra-Dra, he attacks what he describes as "parasitic power of all sorts"-which suggests Franco and Papadopoulos as well as Ulbricht and Brezhnev...