Wolf Biermann and the Berlin legislators

Singer and poet Wolf Biermann deserves honorary citizenship of the city of Berlin, writes Thomas Steinfeld. After all, his denaturalisation by East Germany in 1976 heralded the downfall of the state: "Wolf Biermann - he was the newly militant Biedermeier Bohemia of the GDR, the crowing peacock and self-absorbed rebel who suddenly jumped out of his upholstered armchair in Chausseestraße 131 and with trembling moustache was just as prone to sing soothingly of the 'socialist way' as he was to bark at it... Nothing could have hurt the GDR more at any time than the prophecies that Wolf Biermann delivered, both in his appearances and on his records... The Berlin Social Democrats and Socialists don't want to hear about it any more... The last body to act as incompetently with Wolf Biermann as the Berlin legislature was the politburo of the East German Communist Party."

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