Hans Scheibner wrote hits like “Schmittchen Schleicher”, one of his songs became the anthem of the anti-nuclear movement. The Hamburg singer-songwriter and cabaret artist has now died at the age of 85.
Hans Scheibner is dead. The Hamburg singer-songwriter and cabaret artist died on Monday at the age of 85 after a short, serious illness, as his family announced to the German Press Agency (dpa) on Wednesday evening.
With songs like “I like to stand on the assembly line”, his series “Scheibnweiß” (from 1979 in the first) or the NDR political satires “Walther and Willy” (2001-2006) Scheibner had celebrated nationwide success. However, the son of a small forwarding company experienced his greatest time in the legendary “Hamburg scene” of the 1970s. In 1976, his lyrics to “Schmittchen Schleicher” enabled singer Nico Haak to score a much-buzzed top ten hit.
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 winner of the Biermann-Ratjen Medal from the Hanseatic City of Hamburg, who was born on August 27, 1936, confessed to the dpa 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 residents. His role models Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) and Joachim Ringelnatz (1883-1934) also worked in Hamburg.
Song by Hans Scheibner became the anthem of the Brockdorf opponents
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, after which “Scheibnerweise” was discontinued for a long time. 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 told the dpa that he acquired a “humanistic image of man” from 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.
