I have his Ballads & Songs translated by Steve Gooch and published by Pluto Press in London in 1977. In the introduction he writes:

When did I begin so sing? I began to sing under the Nazis. During this time my mother taught me all the Communist workers' songs. That's the first thing. Then she got it into my head that I wasn't allowed to sing them and - so far as my child's head could understand - she also taught me why I wasn't allowed to sing them. And I obeyed everything she taught me. I knew all the songs and sang them - at home - knowing that I was forbidden to sing them. So I always sang them in the morning from 5 to 7. That sounds odd but there was a very simple reason for it. My mother went to work in a factory - my father was in a concentration camp, in fact he was killed by the time 1942 came round. So I lay in bed for two hours alone and was frightened and sang. Then at 7 my aunt came and fetched me to spend the day with her till my mother came home. And these two hours a day were, so to speak, my singing academy.


In 1953 he went to live in the GDR at a time when the tide was all the other way. In 1976, as Wolfgang describes, he was stripped of his citizenship while in the former 'West' Germany. I had just returned myself to England after a year in the GDR and was unable to understand why my erstwhile host home had behaved so cruelly towards such a fine artist. I understand a little better now.