Cabaret artist Hans Scheibner dies at the age of 85

The satirist Hans Scheibner helped shape the spirit of the Federal Republic – especially in the 1970s. He became known, among other things, through the program “scheibnweise”. He has now died at the age of 85.

The Hamburg singer-songwriter, cabaret artist and author Hans Scheibner is dead. He died on Monday at the age of 85, as his family has now told the dpa news agency.

With songs like “I like to stand on the assembly line”, with his series “scheibnweise” (from 1979 in the first) or the NDR political satire program “Walther und Willy” (2001-2006) Scheibner had celebrated nationwide success. However, the son of a freight forwarder had his greatest time in the legendary “Hamburg scene” of the 1970s. In 1976, his lyrics to “Schmidtchen Schleicher” enabled singer Nico Haak to score a much-buzzed top ten hit.

Hit the anti-nuclear movement
The 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 the conservatives.

“I don’t want to go to heaven!”
Scheibner once explained to the dpa on a birthday that he had acquired a “humanistic view of man” through reading everything from Socrates and Plato to Lessing and Kierkegaard. He had renounced church and religion just as he later renounced Marxism, which conformed to the zeitgeist. He gave his autobiography, which he presented in late summer 2016 for his 80th birthday, the title “I don’t want to go to heaven!”

Scheibner was born in Hamburg in 1936 and was also the recipient of his hometown’s Biermann-Ratjen Medal. The artist, whose second marriage was to the actress Petra Verena Milchert and who was the father of four daughters, died at home in Hamburg surrounded by his family after a short, serious illness.