Pannach, Fuchs & Kunert - Für uns, die wir noch hoffen (1977, vinyl rip)

Jürgen Fuchs (19 December 1950 - 9 May 1999) was an East German writer and dissident. He was born in Reichenbach (Vogtland) where he also grew up. After his military service he began to study social psychology at the University of Jena in 1971. In 1973, he joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), the ruling party of East Germany in order to study the system from inside. At the same time he started publishing dissident poems and prose. This led to his forceful disenrollment from the university shortly before graduation and his expulsion from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in 1975.

Fuchs married his wife Lieselotte in 1974. His daughter Lili was born in 1975 in Jena. In the summer of 1975 the family moved to Berlin where Fuchs became a social worker in a church charity, one of the few work options for a political dissident. Following his protest against the deprivation of East German citizenship of Wolf Biermann, he was arrested November 19, 1976. Fuchs spent 9 months in prison of the East German secret service "Stasi" in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen (but he was not sentenced until 1982). Following internation protests, Fuchs was released from prison and deported to West Berlin together with his family in August 1977.

After his arrival in West Berlin, he published protocols of his detention and he continued to be a target for the Stasi. In the early 1980s, Fuchs became involved in the peace movement. After the opening of the Berlin wall in 1989 and German unification in 1990, Fuchs was an activist in the clarification of the Stasi crimes.

He died of plasmacytoma, a rare kind of leukemia in 1999 in Berlin. His disease might have been caused by deliberate radioactive contamination by the Stasi during his imprisonment.

Born on June 24th, 1948 Gerulf Pannach became a highly influential German singer-songwriter and lyricist. In the early 1970's he worked together with the Klaus Renft Combo. Since 1972 he would work as a freelancer. In 1974 he began working together with Christian Kunert, a band member of Klaus Renft Combo too. After they were stage banned they performed occasional unofficially together with the dissident and poet Juergen Fuchs.

Viewing the expatriation of Wolf Biermann as an encroachment on their artistic freedom, twelve GDR writers expressed their solidarity with Biermann in an open letter on November 17, 1976. Among them were Stephan Hermlin, Stefan Heym, and Christa Wolf. Over the next few days, they were joined by over a hundred other artists, including writer Jürgen Fuchs and musicians Gerulf Pannach and Christian Kunert. Pannach and Kunert were members of the “Renft-Combo,” a group that had been banned since September 22, 1975, for writing texts critical of the regime. Fuchs was arrested on November 19, 1976; Pannach and Kunert were arrested on November 21, 1976. The three men were deported to West Berlin nine months later.

This album was released in 1977 by CBS in West Germany. It´s a recording of an unofficial concert with a small circle of friends in Leipzig, October 17, 1976. The Stasi observed the concert, the technical conditions for the recording were more than bad.Tracklist:

1. Überholen ohne einzuholen - Pannach
2. Das Erwachen (Prosa) - Jürgen Fuchs
3. Ballade vom schlechten Schlaf - Pannach
4. Eintragung 14. Februar (Prosa) - Fuchs
5. Zitat I - Fuchs
6. Eintragung 1. Juli I-III (Prosa) - Fuchs
7. Vom Vertrauensmann, der kein Vertrauen hat - Pannach
8. Eintragung 1. Juli, IV - Fuchs
9. Zitat II - Fuchs
10. Glaubensfragen - Kunert
11. Der Frühsport - Fuchs
12. Frage - Fuchs
13. Der Friseur - Fuchs
14. Friedenslied - Pannach
15. Du stehst an der Strasse - Fuchs
16. Vom Rot, das brennt - Pannach
17. Die jenischen Berge - Fuchs
18. Westberlin-Steglitz, Zitat - Fuchs
19. Gegen die Angst - Pannach
20. Der Stuhl - Fuchs
21. Für uns, die wir noch hoffen - Pannach




This photo shows (from left to right) Christian Kunert, Gerulf Pannach, Wolf Biermann, and Jürgen Fuchs in West Berlin in August 1977. Photo by Johanna Guschlbauer.

Pannach, Fuchs & Kunert - Für uns, die wir noch hoffen (1977, vinyl rip)
(ca. 244 kbps, cover included)