Who was/is Karls Enkel ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Karls Enkel
Karl's grandson was a political singer-songwriter group that worked with theatrical means and therefore called itself a 'song theatre'. Texts for the group were written by Hans-Eckardt Wenzel (born 1955 in Kropstädt near Wittenberg), until 1979 Werner Karma (born 1952 in Berlin) and from 1979 Steffen Mensching (born 1958 in Berlin). The compositions came from Wenzel, Stefan Körbel (born 1953 in Berlin) and Rolf Fischer (born 1953 in Dortmund). But whose grandsons did they want to be? Which Karl was meant, Karl Marx, Karl Kraus, Karl Valentin? They were more likely to have the last two in their sights. Biermann's grandson, they were sometimes called. But they didn't want to be "idolaters, no matter whether the idols live in Wandlitz or in Chausseestraße" (Werner Karma). The group came from the singing movement, but rejected it critically. Hans-Eckardt Wenzel later said: "Karl's grandson was based on the concept of moving away from a fruitless, outwardly rigid, phrase-like attitude into which the singing movement had fallen. The beginning was the anti point that this cannot be continued. We wanted to approach again the old contradiction between our self and the environment, to fall back again on the authentic experiences." The group first turned to contemporary issues. Let's get closer together' was their first program, 'Vorfahrt' (1978) their second. That's where the song My Time came from. It refers to the painting 'Junges Paar' by Jens Heller, which caused quite a stir at the Dresden art exhibition.
Karl's grandchildren were celebrated and introduced a new phase of critical song culture after the ascent and descent of the singing movement. Klaus-Peter Schwarz considered them to be "calls, suggestions and attempts to see socialism, to see it grow into it and to sing about it - like grandchildren. Like grandchildren: with admiration, with doubts, respectful, inquiring, disrespectful, affirming the inherited and sometimes rejecting". The musicologist Günter Mayer praised "the strict economy in the use of means". The FDJ also welcomed her with open arms and awarded her its art prize, the Erich Weinert Medal, in 1979. But in the same year it came to the first collision. The 'Zieharmonie' programme pushed too far to the limits of what the FDJ considered tolerable. They kept their distance from each other. Karl's grandchildren looked for other venues and cooperation partners, but were still present at the festival of political song almost every year.
The group now turned to 'dead poets'. Wenzel's reason for this was: "Already during the elaboration of the first programs we noticed that one slides into provincialism if one confines oneself to immediate experience and lacks the philosophical thinking ahead. We had to begin to expand historically, see the French Revolution or later the Spanish Civil War, to develop arches that offer more than just a description of the moment."
In the following years numerous programs were created, among them 1980 'Von meiner Hoffnung laß ich nicht' or 'Der Pilger Mühsam' (an Erich-Mühsam evening), 1982 'Dahin! That way! A Göte-Abend', 'Hammer=Rehwü' (with Wacholder and Beckert & Schulz) and 1984 'Spanier aller Länder'. The group was very productive and played many gigs. In the media, however, it appeared rather rarely. Their own LP was not recorded, only on a sampler, the event recording 'Ein Kessel Rotes' from 1980, they were represented.
After the dissolution of Karl's grandson in 1985, some group members continued to work as soloists and in various other projects and formations, including Hans-Eckardt Wenzel and Steffen Mensching (until 1999 as Clownsduo Wenzel & Mensching), Stefan Körbel (songwriter, label Nebelhorn) and Rolf Fischer (Bolshevik Kurkapelle Schwarz-Rot, theatre music). In 1987, former Karls-Enkel members and other contributors joined forces for the joint project 'Die Sichel-Operette - Ein soziales Experiment mit viel Musik'.
Extract from
Various - songwriter in Germany
Vol.3, For whom we sing (3-CD)
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