Nina Hagen | |
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.jpg) Hagen at the premiere ofThe Seventh Dwarf, September 2014 | |
| Born | Catharina Hagen (1955-03-11)11 March 1955 (age 70) |
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| Years active | 1971-present |
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| Children | 2, includingCosma Shiva Hagen |
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Musical artist | |
| Website | ninahagendas |
Catharina "Nina"Hagen (German:[ˈniːnaˈhaːɡn̩]ⓘ; born 11 March 1955)[1] is a German singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her theatrical vocals and rise to prominence during thepunk andNeue Deutsche Welle movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She is known as "The Godmother of German Punk".
Born and raised in the formerEast Berlin,German Democratic Republic,[1] Hagen began her career as an actress when she appeared in several German films alongside her motherEva-Maria Hagen. Around that same time, she joined the band Automobil and released theschlager single "Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen". After her stepfatherWolf Biermann's East German citizenship was withdrawn in 1976, Hagen followed him toHamburg. Shortly afterwards, she was offered a record deal fromCBS Records and formed theNina Hagen Band. Theirself-titled debut album was released in late 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 albumNunSexMonkRock, which became her first record to chart in the United States. She followed it with two more albums:Fearless (1983) andNina Hagen in Ekstasy (1985), before her contract with CBS expired and was not renewed. In 1989, she was offered a record deal fromMercury Records. She released three albums on the label:Nina Hagen (1989),Street (1991), andRevolution Ballroom (1993). However, none of the albums achieved notable commercial success. Hagen made her musical comeback with the release of her albumReturn of the Mother (2000).
Besides her musical career, Hagen is also avoice-over actress. She wrote three autobiographies:Ich bin ein Berliner (1988),Nina Hagen: That's Why the Lady Is a Punk (2003), andBekenntnisse (2010). She is also noted for her human and animal rights activism.
Nina Hagen was born in what was thenEast Berlin,East Germany, the daughter ofHans Oliva-Hagen, a scriptwriter, andEva-Maria Hagen (née Buchholz), an actress and singer. Her father Hans survivedthe Holocaust, being held as a prisoner at a prison inMoabit between 1941 and 1945 until the liberation by theSoviet Army. Her paternal grandfatherHermann Carl Hagen, who was Jewish, was murdered at theSachsenhausen concentration camp on 28 May 1942, at age 56.[2][3][4] Hedwig Elise Caroline Staadt, Nina's paternal grandmother, was also murdered at Sachsenhausen. Nina's maternal grandfather Fritz Buchholz died during World War II.[5] Her parents divorced when she was two years old. During her childhood, she saw her father infrequently. At age four, she began to study ballet, and she was considered an operaprodigy by the time she was nine.
When Hagen was 11, her mother had a relationship withWolf Biermann, ananti-establishment singer-songwriter. Biermann's political views later influenced young Hagen. She later returned to Germany and joined thecover band Fritzens Dampferband ("Fritzen's Steamboat Band"),[1] together with Achim Mentzel and others. She added songs byJanis Joplin andTina Turner to the "allowable" set lists during shows. From 1972 to 1973, Hagen enrolled in the vocal training performance program at The Central Studio for Light Music in East Berlin (de). Upon graduating, she joined the band Automobil.[1]
InEast 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)", with words byKurt Demmler to music by Michael Heubach, a subtle dig mocking the sterile, gray, Communist state,[6] in 1974. Hagen performed comic songs like "Hatschi-Waldera" and "Was denn" inKarel Gott´s Czech TV show inSlaný.[7] and "Wir tanzen Tango" in 1976.[8] 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.
The circumstances surrounding the family's emigration were exceptional: Biermann was granted permission by East-German authorities to perform a televised concert inCologne, 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 inHamburg, where she was signed to aCBS-affiliated record label. Her label advised her to acclimatize herself to Western culture through travel, and she arrived in London during the height of thepunk rock movement.[1] Hagen was quickly taken up by a circle that includedThe Slits.[1]
Back in West Germany by mid-1977, Hagen formed the Nina Hagen Band inWest Berlin'sKreuzberg district.[1] They released their self-titled debut album,Nina Hagen Band in late 1978:[9] it included the single "TV-Glotzer" (a cover of "White Punks on Dope" byThe Tubes, though with entirely different German lyrics), and "Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo", aboutWest-Berlin's then-notoriousBerlin 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 itshard 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. ThisLP,Unbehagen (which in German 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"[1] and "Wir Leben Immer... Noch", a German language cover ofLene Lovich's "Lucky Number". The other band members, sans Hagen, soon developed a successful independent musical career asSpliff.
Meanwhile, Hagen's public persona was steadily creating media uproar. She became infamous for an appearance on an Austrian evening talk show calledClub 2, on 9 August 1979, on the topic of youth culture, when she demonstrated (while clothed, but explicitly) various femalemasturbation positions and became embroiled in a heated argument with other panelists, in particular, writer and journalistHumbert Fink. The talk show host, Dieter Seefranz, had to step down following this controversy.[10][11]
She also acted with Dutch rockerHerman Brood and singerLene Lovich in the 1979 filmCha 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.[12]
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A European tour with a new band in 1980 was canceled, and Hagen turned to the United States. A limited-edition 10-inch EP was released on vinyl that summer in the U.S. Two songs from her first albumNina Hagen Band were on the A side, and two songs from her second albumUnbehagen were on theB-side. All four songs were sung in German, although two had English titles and the other two were covers of English-language songs with new German lyrics.
In late 1980, Hagen discovered she was pregnant, broke up with the father-to-beFerdinand Karmelk,[13] and moved to Los Angeles. Her daughter,Cosma Shiva Hagen, was born inSanta Monica on 17 June 1981. In 1982, Hagen released her firstEnglish-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 albumAngstlos 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 ofAngstlos,Fearless, generated two major club hits in America, "Zarah" (a cover of theZarah 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-basedMusicSzene 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 modelFrankie Stein.
Her 1985 albumIn Ekstase fared less well, but did generate club hits with "Universal Radio" (No. 39 USA) and a cover of "Spirit in the Sky" and also featured a 1979 recording of her hardcore punk take onPaul Anka's "My Way", which had been one of her signature live tunes in previous years. She performed songs from this album during the 1985 version ofRock in Rio. While in Brazil she met and befriended Brazilian musicians as diverse as samba divaBeth Carvalho and Brazilian punk singerSupla (who was leader of a punk-new wave band named Tokyo), that invited her to contribute vocals to the hit 1986 song "Garota de Berlim" (Portuguese for "girl from Berlin") that received huge airplay in radio in Brazil. To this day, Brazilians remember Nina above all things as the Berlin Girl from Tokyo's song.[14]
Wilfried Rimensberger and award-winning film directorLothar Spree produced a TV documentary for the German television stationZDF. This was followed by a launch of Nina's UFO fashion underwear at anti-SAFT in Zurich, where again Rimensberger joined her up withNew Romantic iconSteve Strange performing on stage. Simultaneously fashion photographer Hannes Schmid produced a Nina Hagen cover for GermanCosmopolitan magazine. This also coincided with leading music publications likeBRAVO andMusicSzene 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 withCBS was over and she released thePunk 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 withLene Lovich, "Don't Kill the Animals" (seeAnimal Liberation).[15]
In 1989, Hagen released the album,Nina Hagen, which was backed up by another German tour. In 1989, she had a relationship with French stylist and music manager Franck Chevalier which yielded their son, Otis Chevalier-Hagen (b. 1990).[16]
In the 1990s, Hagen lived in Paris with her daughterCosma Shiva and son Otis. In 1991 she toured Europe in support of her new albumStreet. In 1992 Hagen became the host of a TV show onRTLplus. Also in the same year (1992) she collaborated withAdamski on the European smash and minor UK hit single "Get Your Body". The following year, she releasedRevolution Ballroom. In 1994, Hagen starred in the acclaimed San FranciscoGoethe Institut'sThe Seven Addictions and Five Professions ofAnita 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 albumFreuD euch, equally recorded in English asBeeHappy in 1996. Nina returned to San Francisco to star in another San Francisco Goethe Institut show, "Hannusen, Hitler's Jewish Clarvoyant". Hagen also collaborated withelectronic music composerChristopher Franke, along with Rick Palombi (credited as Rick Jude) on "Alchemy of Love", the theme song for the filmTenchi Muyo! in Love.
In May 1996, she married David Lynn, but divorced him in the beginning of 2000. In 1997 she collaborated with Germanhip hop musicianThomas D. In 1998, Hagen became the host of a weekly science fiction show on the BritishSci-Fi Channel, in addition to embarking on another tour of Germany. In 1999, she released the devotional albumOm Namah Shivay, which was distributed exclusively online and included an unadulterated musical version of theHare Krishna mantra. Hagen believes that the Hindu incarnation ofLord Vishnu known as Krishna was "the King of Jerusalem", and sometimes refers to Krishna as "Christ". She also provided vocals to "Witness" and "Bereit" onKMFDM'sAdios.
Also in 1998, she recorded the official club anthemEisern Union for1. 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 inThe Threepenny Opera byKurt Weill andBertolt Brecht, alongsideMax Raabe. She also regularly performs songs by Kurt Weill,Hanns Eisler andPaul Dessau set to Brecht's texts.
In 2000, her song "Schön ist die Welt" became the official song ofExpo 2000. Another cover of aZarah Leander song "Der Wind hat mir ein Lied erzählt" was a minor hit the same year. The albumReturn of the Mother was released in February 2001, accompanied by another German tour. Hagen wrote the song "Handgrenade" on the albumReturn of the Mother forChristine Maggiore.[17][18] In 2001 she collaborated withRosenstolz andMarc Almond on the single "Total eclipse"/"Die schwarze Witwe" that reached No. 22 in Germany. On 14 October 2002 Nina hit Moscow by coming there with her concert, while interviews with the eccentric singer were aired on many TV-channels.
Hagendubbed the voice of Sally in the German release ofTim Burton'sThe Nightmare Before Christmas, Yubaba/Zeniba inSpirited Away and she has also done voice work on the movieHot Dogs by Michael Schoemann. Due to the death ofElisabeth 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 toAnke Engelke. Hagen has been featured on songs by other bands, for instance onOomph!'s song "Fieber". She did a cover ofRammstein's "Seemann" withApocalyptica. Later albums includeBig Band Explosion (2003), in which she sang numerousswing covers with her then husband, Danish singer and performer, Lucas Alexander. This was followed byHeiß, a greatest hits album. The following album,Journey to the Snow Queen, is more of an audio book – she reads theSnow Queenfairy tale withTchaikovsky'sThe Nutcracker in the background. In 2005 Nina Hagen headlined theDrop Dead Festival in New York City. Hagen was an active protester against thewar in Iraq. In 2006 she was a part of thePopstars team. In August 2009 she was baptized in the ProtestantReformed church ofSchüttorf.[19] On 21 October after seven years passed she visited Moscow[20] again.
After a four-year lapse her next album,Personal Jesus, was released 16 July 2010, followed byVolksbeat, released 11 November 2011.
WhenAngela Merkel ended her 16-year chancellorship of Germany in December 2021, she chose Hagen's songDu hast den Farbfilm vergessen (You Forgot the Colour Film) as one of the three pieces to be played at herGroßer Zapfenstreich military leaving ceremony.[21]
In 1987, she caught the attention of the media by announcing her marriage to a 17-year-old South African punk named Iroquois, whom she met in Rome in 1985. The song "Punk Wedding" was written for the wedding and Hagen described the event as a marriage between the punk and new age movements. The wedding was scheduled on August 9, 1987.[22]
Nina Hagen band First week entry in the German Albums chart on 20 November 1978
