What does Nina Hagen have to do with politics? We could find a lot of them. Besides the fact that she was born in the GDR, that she was banned from drama school by the Stasi for the critical positions of her father-in-law, the dissident singer Rolf Biermann, that she was a punk and is still a mystic, she performed the famous “My way”. “.
The first English version of the song “Comme d’habita” – also intended for Hervé Villard before Claude François – was recorded by Franck Sinatra (released in 1969). It was so successful that it was reproduced in all styles and in a number of languages: in Italian, Japanese, Greek, Arabic, Russian, Catalan. Nina Hagen took it up in 1978, mixing English and German.
And the relationship to politics? When she left the German chancellery in 2021, Angela Merkel chose three German songs, including one by Nina Hagen, “Du hast den Farbfilm vergesen” (1974) which smacked of GDR Schlager. Before her, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had chosen “My way” for his farewell. But not by Nina Hagen, by Franck Sinatra.
The song was covered in German in 1971 by Mary Roos (born Marianne Rosemarie Schwab).
What is German culture in songs?
“Germanic culture in songs” is the Sunday series of the bilingual German-French magazine Rheinblick to discover a vast musical panorama from all eras: songs in German performed by French people, pieces with bilingual lyrics, the essential German hits of a subjective musical education, rowdy melodies in Alsatian… Don’t hesitate to share your favorites that meet these criteria.
AV
