Nina Hagen
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Catharina "Nina" Hagen (born 11 March 1955) is a
German singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her theatrical
vocals and rose to prominence during the punk and new wave movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Born in the former East Berlin, German Democratic Republic, Hagen began her career as an actress when she appeared in several German films alongside her mother Eva-Maria Hagen. Around that same time, she joined the band Automobil and released the single "Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen". After her stepfather Wolf Biermann's East German citizenship was withdrawn in 1976, Hagen followed him to Hamburg. Shortly afterwards, she was offered a record deal from CBS Records and formed Nina Hagen Band. Their self-titled debut album was released in 1978 to critical acclaim and was a commercial success selling over 250,000 copies. The band released one more album, Unbehagen, before their break-up in 1979.
In 1982, Hagen signed a new contract with CBS and released her debut solo album NunSexMonkRock, which became her first record to chart in the United States. She followed it with two more albums: Fearless (1983) and Nina Hagen in Ekstasy (1985), before her contract with CBS expired and was not renewed. In 1989, she was offered a record deal from Mercury Records. She released three albums on the label: Nina Hagen (1989), Street (1991), and Revolution Ballroom (1993). However, none of the albums achieved notable commercial success. Hagen made her musical comeback with the release of her album Return of the Mother (2000).
Besides her musical career, Hagen is also a voice-over actress. She wrote three autobiographies: Ich bin ein Berliner (1988), Nina Hagen: That's Why the Lady Is a Punk (2003), and Bekenntnisse (2010). She is also noted for her human and animal rights activism.
Nina Hagen
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Hagen at the premiere of The Seventh Dwarf, September 2014
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Catharina Hagen
11 March 1955 |
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| Years active | 1971–present |
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| Partner(s) |
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| Children | 2, including Cosma Shiva Hagen |
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| Musical career | |
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| Website | ninahagen |
Born in the former East Berlin, German Democratic Republic, Hagen began her career as an actress when she appeared in several German films alongside her mother Eva-Maria Hagen. Around that same time, she joined the band Automobil and released the single "Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen". After her stepfather Wolf Biermann's East German citizenship was withdrawn in 1976, Hagen followed him to Hamburg. Shortly afterwards, she was offered a record deal from CBS Records and formed Nina Hagen Band. Their self-titled debut album was released in 1978 to critical acclaim and was a commercial success selling over 250,000 copies. The band released one more album, Unbehagen, before their break-up in 1979.
In 1982, Hagen signed a new contract with CBS and released her debut solo album NunSexMonkRock, which became her first record to chart in the United States. She followed it with two more albums: Fearless (1983) and Nina Hagen in Ekstasy (1985), before her contract with CBS expired and was not renewed. In 1989, she was offered a record deal from Mercury Records. She released three albums on the label: Nina Hagen (1989), Street (1991), and Revolution Ballroom (1993). However, none of the albums achieved notable commercial success. Hagen made her musical comeback with the release of her album Return of the Mother (2000).
Besides her musical career, Hagen is also a voice-over actress. She wrote three autobiographies: Ich bin ein Berliner (1988), Nina Hagen: That's Why the Lady Is a Punk (2003), and Bekenntnisse (2010). She is also noted for her human and animal rights activism.
Life and career
1955–1975: Early life and career beginnings
Hagen with Magdi Body, Manfred Krug and Tatjana Archipowa, April 1976
When Hagen was 11, her mother married Wolf Biermann, an anti-establishment singer-songwriter. Biermann's political views later influenced young Hagen. Hagen left school at age sixteen and went to Poland, where she began her career.[2][3] She later returned to Germany and joined the cover band, Fritzens Dampferband (Fritzen's Steamboat Band), together with Achim Mentzel and others. She added songs by Janis Joplin and Tina Turner to the "allowable" set lists during shows. From 1972 to 1973, Hagen enrolled in the crash-course performance program at The Central Studio for Light Music in East Berlin. Upon graduating, she joined the band Automobil.
In East Germany, she performed with the band Automobil, becoming one of the country's best-known young stars. Her most famous song from the early part of her career was "Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen" (You Forgot the Colour Film)", a subtle dig mocking the sterile, gray, Communist state,"[4] in 1974. Hagen performed comic songs like "Hatschi-Waldera" and "Was denn" in Karel Gott´s Czech TV show in Slaný.[5] and "Wir tanzen Tango" in 1976.[6] Her musical career in the DDR was cut short, when she and her mother left the country in 1976, following the expulsion of her stepfather.
1976–79: Migration to West Germany and Nina Hagen Band
The circumstances surrounding the family's emigration were exceptional: Biermann was granted permission to perform a televised concert in Cologne, but denied permission to re-cross the border to his adopted home country. Hagen submitted an application to leave the country. In it, she claimed to be Biermann's biological daughter, and threatened to become "the next" Wolf Biermann if not allowed to rejoin her father.[clarification needed] Just four days later her request was granted,[citation needed] and she settled in Hamburg, where she was signed to a CBS-affiliated record label. Her label advised her to acclimatise herself to Western culture through travel, and she arrived in London during the height of the punk rock movement. Hagen was quickly taken up by a circle that included The Slits and the Sex Pistols.[citation needed]Back in Germany by mid-1977, Hagen formed the Nina Hagen Band in West Berlin's Kreuzberg district. In 1978 they released their self-titled debut album, Nina Hagen Band, which included the single "TV-Glotzer" (a cover of "White Punks on Dope" by The Tubes, though with entirely different German lyrics), and "Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo", about West Berlin's then-notorious Berlin Zoologischer Garten station. The album also included a version of "Rangehn" ("Go for It"), a song she had previously recorded in East Germany, but with different music.
The debut album gained significant attention throughout Germany and abroad, both for its hard rock sound and for Hagen's theatrical vocals which drew heavily from her operatic training, far different from the straightforward singing of her East German recordings. However, relations between Hagen and the other band members deteriorated over the course of the subsequent European tour, and Hagen decided to leave the band in 1979, though she was still under contract to produce a second album. This LP, Unbehagen (which in German also means "discomfort" or "unease"), was eventually produced with the band recording their tracks in Berlin and Hagen recording the vocals in Los Angeles. It included the single "African Reggae" and "Wir Leben Immer... Noch", a German language cover of Lene Lovich's "Lucky Number". The other band members, sans Hagen, soon developed a successful independent musical career as Spliff.
Meanwhile, Hagen's public persona was steadily creating media uproar. She became infamous for an appearance on an Austrian evening talk show called Club 2, on 9 August 1979, on the topic of youth culture, when she demonstrated (while clothed, but explicitly) various female masturbation positions and became embroiled in a heated argument with other panelists, in particular, writer and journalist Humbert Fink. The talk show host, Dieter Seefranz, had to step down following this controversy.[7][8]
She also acted with Dutch rocker Herman Brood and singer Lene Lovich in the 1979 film Cha Cha. Brood and Hagen would have a long romantic relationship that would end when Hagen could no longer tolerate Brood's drug abuse. She would refer to Brood as her "soulmate" long after Brood committed suicide in 2001.[9]
1980–88: International breakthrough
Hagen in 1980
In late 1980, Hagen discovered she was pregnant, broke up with the father-to-be Ferdinand Karmelk,[10] and moved to Los Angeles. Her daughter, Cosma Shiva Hagen, was born in Santa Monica on 17 May 1981. In 1982, Hagen released her first English-language album: NunSexMonkRock, a dissonant mix of punk, funk, reggae, and opera. She then went on a world tour with the No Problem Orchestra.
In 1983, she released the album Angstlos and a minor European tour. By this time, Hagen's public appearances frequently included discussions of God, UFOs, her social and political beliefs, animal rights and vivisection, and claims of alien sightings. The English version of Angstlos, Fearless, generated two major club hits in America, "Zarah" (a cover of the Zarah Leander (No. 45 USA) song "Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen") and the disco/punk/opera song, "New York New York" (No. 9 USA). During 1984 Hagen spent a lot of time in London and UK based MusicSzene magazine chief-editor Wilfried Rimensberger, in conjunction with Spree Film, produced a first TV feature on her and what was remaining from London's 70 Punk movement induced by artist and model Frankie Stein.
Hagen in 1985
Wilfried Rimensberger and award-winning film director Lothar Spree produced a TV documentary for the German television station ZDF. This was followed by a launch of Nina's UFO fashion underwear at anti-SAFT in Zurich, where again Rimensberger joined her up with New Romantic icon Steve Strange performing on stage. Simultaneously fashion photographer Hannes Schmid produced a Nina Hagen cover for German Cosmopolitan magazine. This also coincided with leading music publications like BRAVO and MusicSzene running cover stories that all put Hagen back on the forefront of something that, in retrospect, became a final highpoint of what the punk movement was all about. At the end of 1986, her contract with CBS was over and she released the Punk Wedding EP independently in 1987, a celebration of her marriage to an 18-year-old punk South African nicknamed 'Iroquois'. It followed an independent 1986 one-off single with Lene Lovich, "Don't Kill the Animals" (see Animal Liberation).[12]
1989–1994: Nina Hagen, Street, and Revolution Ballroom
In 1989, Hagen released the album, Nina Hagen, which was backed up by another German tour. In 1989 she had a relationship with French make-up artist Franck Chevalier which yielded their son, Otis Chevalier-Hagen (b. 1990).[13]In the 1990s, Hagen lived in Paris with her daughter Cosma Shiva and son Otis. In 1991 she toured Europe in support of her new album Street. In 1992 Hagen became the host of a TV show on RTLplus. Also in the same year (1992) she collaborated with Adamski on the European smash and minor UK hit single "Get Your Body". The following year, she released Revolution Ballroom. In 1994, Hagen starred in the acclaimed San Francisco Goethe Institut's The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber, playing the singer version of "Anita" alongside dancer Darla Teagarden who portrayed the other "professions" of "Anita". Also, her voice was heard on the Freaky Fukin Weirdoz single "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick". 1995 brought the German-language album Freud Euch, equally recorded in English as BeeHappy in 1996. Nina returned to San Francisco to star in another San Francisco Goethe Institut show, "Hannusen, Hitler's Jewish Clarvoyant". Hagen also collaborated with electronic music composer Christopher Franke, along with Rick Palombi (credited as Rick Jude) on "Alchemy of Love", the theme song for the film Tenchi Muyo! in Love.
1995–99
In 1998, Hagen recorded the official club anthem Eisern Union for FC Union Berlin
Also in 1998, she recorded the official club anthem (Eisern Union !) for FC Union Berlin and four versions were issued on a CD single by G.I.B Music and Distribution GmbH.
In 1999, she played the role of Celia Peachum in The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, alongside Max Raabe. She also regularly performs songs by Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau set to Brecht's texts.
2000–2009: Return of the Mother
Hagen performing in Denmark, October 2003
Hagen dubbed the voice of Sally in the German release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare before Christmas, Yubaba/Zeniba in Spirited Away and she has also done voice work on the movie Hot Dogs by Michael Schoemann. Due to the death of Elisabeth Volkmann (†2006), the German voice of Marge, during the dubbing of the hit TV show "The Simpsons" 17th season, Nina was a strong contender for the role, which eventually went to Anke Engelke. Hagen has been featured on songs by other bands, for instance on Oomph!'s song "Fieber". She did a cover of Rammstein's "Seemann" with Apocalyptica. Later albums include Big Band Explosion (2003), in which she sang numerous swing covers with her then husband, Danish singer and performer, Lucas Alexander. This was followed by Heiß, a greatest hits album. The following album, Journey to the Snow Queen, is more of an audio book — she reads the Snow Queen fairy tale with Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker in the background. In 2005 Nina Hagen headlined the Drop Dead Festival in New York City. Hagen was an active protester against the war in Iraq. In 2006 she was a part of the Popstars team. She is a vegetarian.[16] In August 2009 she was baptized in the Protestant Reformed church of Schüttorf.[17] On 21 October after seven years passed she visited Moscow[18] again.
2010–present: Personal Jesus and Volksbeat
After a four-year lapse her next album, Personal Jesus, was released 16 July 2010, followed by Volksbeat, released 11 November 2011.Discography
- Nina Hagen Band (1978)
- Unbehagen (1979)
- NunSexMonkRock (1982)
- Fearless / Angstlos (1983)
- Nina Hagen in Ekstasy / In Ekstase (1985)
- Nina Hagen (1989)
- Street (1991)
- Revolution Ballroom (1993)
- FreuD euch / BeeHappy (1995)
- Om Namah Shivay (1999)
- Return of the Mother (2000)
- Big Band Explosion (2003)
- Irgendwo auf der Welt (2006)
- Personal Jesus (2010)
- Volksbeat (2011)
Filmography
- Heiraten/Weiblich (1975)
- Heute ist Freitag (1975)
- Liebesfallen (1976)
- Unser stiller Mann (1976)
- Bildnis einer Trinkerin (1979)
- Cha-Cha (1979)
- Pankow '95 (1983)
- Der Albtraum vor Weihnachten (The Nightmare Before Christmas) (1993)
- Lilien in der Bank (1996)
- Vasilisa (2000)
- 7 Dwarves – Men Alone in the Wood (2004)
- 7 Zwerge – Der Wald ist nicht genug (2006)
- Buying the Band (2013)
- Gutterdämmerung (2016)
See also
References
- "Russian media about Nina in Moscow". Nina-hagen.ucoz.ru. Retrieved 15 July 2012.
External links
Nina Hagenat Wikipedia's sister projects
Categories:
- Nina Hagen
- 1955 births
- Living people
- People from East Berlin
- Singers from Berlin
- Converts to Christianity
- German Protestants
- Female rock singers
- Female new wave singers
- Female punk rock singers
- German people of Jewish descent
- German autobiographers
- Feminist musicians
- German female singers
- English-language singers from Germany
- German punk rock musicians
- CBS Records artists
- Mercury Records artists
- Women autobiographers
- Former Hindus
- Converts to Hinduism
- Converts to Protestantism from Hinduism
- German emigrants to the United States
- 20th-century German actresses
- German film actresses
- 21st-century women singers
- HIV/AIDS denialists
- Television controversies in Germany
Languages
Godmother of punk: Nina Hagen turns 65
Singer-songwriter, mother, activist, punk — Nina Hagen
has many facets. Even at 65, the unique artist with the unconventional
outfits continues to strut the very fine line between madness and
genius.
