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Died at the age of 85: the Hamburg songwriter and cabaret artist Hans Scheibner
Photo: Daniel Bockwoldt / dpa
The Hamburg songwriter and cabaret artist Hans Scheibner is dead. He died on May 23 at the age of 85 after a short, serious illness, as his family announced on Wednesday evening.
This is reported by the German Press Agency and the North German Broadcasting Corporation, among others.
Scheibner had enjoyed nationwide success with songs like "I like to stand on the assembly line," his series "scheibnweise" or the NDR political satires "Walther and Willy."
However, the son of a small forwarding agent probably experienced his greatest time in the legendary "Hamburg scene" of the 1970s.
His lyrics to "Schmidtchen Schleicher" enabled singer Nico Haak to score a much-buzzed top ten hit in 1976.
Two years earlier, Scheibner had written the anthem »Hamburg 75« for Gottfried and Lonzo from the »Retirement Band«.
"I love Hamburg more than anything," the bearer of the Biermann-Ratjen Medal of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg, born on August 27, 1936, confessed on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
As a child, he experienced the bombing nights of the »Fire Storm« in the city, and later he identified with the well-groomed understatement of its inhabitants.
His role models Heinrich Heine and Joachim Ringelnatz once worked in Hamburg.
Scheibner always offends
Scheibner's title song of his LP "Achterndiek" became a hit of the anti-nuclear movement not only in Brokdorf.
However, the artist himself repeatedly caused career curbs.
In 1985, for example, he compared soldiers with murderers on the NDR talk show, whereupon he was dismissed for a long time "cheatwise".
The satirist, who also liked to take aim at everyday and interpersonal matters (“Who takes grandma?”), often appeared too conservative for the left and too left for conservatives.
Scheibner explained that he acquired a "humanistic view of man" through reading everything from Socrates and Plato to Lessing and Kierkegaard.
He renounced church and religion just as he later renounced Marxism, which conformed to the zeitgeist.
Critical awareness and enjoyment of life were never mutually exclusive for the artist, who had been married to the actress Petra Verena Milchert since 1990 and later became the enthusiastic father of four daughters.
He died at home surrounded by his family.
tfb/dpa
