Anna German

Biography

Anna German was a Polish and Russian-language singer of a Russian-German family. She was born in Urgench, a city with a population of 22,000 in northwestern Uzbekistan in Central Asia, then Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union. Her mother, Irma Martens, was the descendant of Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonites invited to Russia by Catherine II. Her accountant father, Eugen (Eugeniusz) Hörmann (in Russian, Герман), was also of a Russian-German pastor family and born during travel in Łódź (Czarist Russian Empire) now Poland. Eugen Hörmann's father, Anna's grandfather, Friedrich Hörmann, who had studied theology at Lodz, was in 1929 incarcerated in Gulag Plesetsk by Communists for being a priest, where he died. In 1937, during the NKVD's anti-German operation, Eugen Hörmann was arrested in Urgench on false charges of spying, and executed (officially, sentenced to ten years in prison). Thereafter, Anna and her mother and grandmother survived in the Kemerovo Region of Siberia, as well as in Tashkent, and later in the Kyrgyz and Kazakh SSRs.

In 1946 her mother (who had married Herman Gerner, a Ludowe Wojsko Polskie soldier) was able to take the family to Silesia, first Nowa Ruda and then Wrocław in 1949.

Anna quickly learned Polish and several other languages and grew up hiding her family heritage. She graduated from the Geological Institute of Wroclaw University. During her university years, she began her music career at the Kalambur theater. Anna finally became successful when she won the 1964 II Festival of Polish Songs in Opole with her song "Tańczące Eurydyki". One year later, she won first prize in the international song contest in Sopot. She was invited to perform in Italy in the prestigious Sanremo Music Festival in 1967. In Italy Anna German survived a bad car crash, and fully came back to the stage only in 1972, after a long rehabilitation period.

On 23 March 1972 she married Zbigniew Tucholski. Their son, Zbigniew, was born on 27 November 1975. Anna performed in the Marché international de l'édition musicale in Cannes, as well as on the stages of Belgium, Germany, United States, Canada and Australia. In the last years of her life she composed some church songs. She died of osteosarcoma in 1982, and was buried at Warsaw evangelical cemetery.

She also sang in Russian, English, Italian, Spanish, Latin, German and Mongolian. In 2001 six of her Polish albums were reissued on CDs. In recent years many compilation albums of her songs have also been released in both Russia and Poland.

Albums

Singles

Later reprints and compilation albums

Filmography