1955-1976: Early life and career beginnings ,
Manfred Krug, and
Tatjana Archipowa, April 1976 , a villa owned by the Hagen family that was confiscated by the Nazis,
Potsdam, 2016 Nina Hagen was born in what was then
East Berlin,
East Germany, the daughter of
Hans Oliva-Hagen, a scriptwriter, and
Eva-Maria Hagen (née Buchholz), an actress and singer. Descended from a once prominent
Cologne banking family who founded Bankhaus A. Levy & Co., a bank that included
BMW among its customers, her great-grandfather
Carl Hagen was a banker and
philanthropist. Her father Hans survived
the Holocaust, being held as a prisoner at a prison in
Moabit between 1941 and 1945 until the liberation by the
Soviet Army. Her paternal grandfather
Hermann Carl Hagen, who was Jewish, was murdered at the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp on 28 May 1942, at age 56. Hedwig Elise Caroline Staadt, Nina's paternal grandmother, was also murdered at Sachsenhausen. Nina's maternal grandfather Fritz Buchholz died during World War II. The Nazis confiscated the Hagen family's properties, including
Villa Carlshagen and Birlinghoven Castle. In 2020, the Beratende Kommission recommended compensation to Hagen heirs due to the theft of a painting. Her parents divorced when she was two years old. During her childhood, she saw her father infrequently. At age four, she began to study ballet, and she was considered an opera
prodigy by the time she was nine. When Hagen was 11, her mother had a relationship with
Wolf Biermann, an
anti-establishment singer-songwriter. Biermann's political views later influenced young Hagen. In the early 1970s, she joined the
cover band Fritzens Dampferband ("Fritzen's Steamboat Band"), in 1974. Hagen performed comic songs like "Hatschi-Waldera" and "Was denn" in
Karel Gott’s Czech TV show in
Slaný. and "Wir tanzen Tango" in 1976. Her musical career in the DDR was cut short, when she and her mother left the country in 1976, following the expulsion of her stepfather.
1976–1979: Migration to West Germany and Nina Hagen Band The circumstances surrounding the family's emigration were exceptional: Biermann was granted permission by East German authorities to perform a televised concert in
Cologne, but denied permission to re-cross the border to his adopted home country. Hagen submitted an application to leave the country. In it, she claimed to be Biermann's biological daughter, and threatened to become "the next"
Wolf Biermann if not allowed to rejoin her father. Just four days later her request was granted, and she settled in
Hamburg, where she was signed to a
CBS-affiliated record label. Her label advised her to acclimatize herself to
Western culture through travel, and she arrived in London during the height of the
punk rock movement. it included the single "
TV-Glotzer" (a cover of "White Punks on Dope" by
The Tubes, though with entirely different German lyrics), and "Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo", about
West-Berlin's then-notorious
Berlin Zoologischer Garten station. The album also included a version of "Rangehn" ("Go for it"), a song she had previously recorded in East-Germany, but with different music. The debut album gained significant attention throughout Germany and abroad both for its
hard rock sound and for Hagen's theatrical vocals which drew heavily from her operatic training, far different from the straightforward singing of her East German recordings. However, relations between Hagen and the other band members deteriorated over the course of the subsequent European tour, and Hagen decided to leave the band in 1979, though she was still under contract to produce a second album. This
LP,
Unbehagen (which in German means "discomfort" or "unease"), was eventually produced with the band recording their tracks in Berlin and Hagen recording the vocals in Los Angeles. It included the single "African Reggae" She also acted with Dutch rocker
Herman Brood and singer
Lene Lovich in the 1979 film
Cha Cha. Brood and Hagen would have a long romantic relationship that would end when Hagen could no longer tolerate Brood's drug abuse. She would refer to Brood as her "soulmate" long after Brood committed suicide in 2001.
1980–1988: International breakthrough A European tour with a new band in 1980 was canceled, and Hagen turned to the United States. A limited-edition 10-inch EP was released on vinyl that summer in the U.S. Two songs from her first album
Nina Hagen Band were on the A side, and two songs from her second album
Unbehagen were on the
B-side. All four songs were sung in German, although two had English titles and the other two were covers of English-language songs with new German lyrics. In late 1980, Hagen discovered she was pregnant, broke up with the father-to-be
Ferdinand Karmelk, and moved to Los Angeles. Her daughter,
Cosma Shiva Hagen, was born in
Santa Monica on 17 June 1981. In 1982, Hagen released her first
English-language album:
NunSexMonkRock, a dissonant mix of punk, funk, reggae, and opera. She then went on a world-tour with the No Problem Orchestra. In 1983, she released the album
Angstlos and a minor European tour. By this time, Hagen's public appearances frequently included discussions of god, UFOs, her social and political beliefs, animal rights, and vivisection, and claims of alien sightings. The English version of
Angstlos, Fearless, generated two major club hits in America, "
Zarah" (a cover of the
Zarah Leander (No. 45 USA) song "Ich weiß, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen") and the disco/punk/opera song, "
New York New York" (No. 9 USA). During 1984, Hagen spent a lot of time in London, and UK-based
MusicSzene magazine chief-editor Wilfried Rimensberger, in conjunction with Spree Film, produced a first TV feature on her and what was remaining from London's 70 Punk movement induced by artist and model Frankie Stein. Her 1985 album
In Ekstase fared less well, but did generate club hits with "Universal Radio" (No. 39 USA) and a cover of "
Spirit in the Sky" and also featured a 1979 recording of her hardcore punk take on
Paul Anka's "
My Way", which had been one of her signature live tunes in previous years. She performed songs from this album during the 1985 version of
Rock in Rio. While in Brazil she met and befriended Brazilian musicians as diverse as samba diva
Beth Carvalho and Brazilian punk singer
Supla (who was leader of a punk-new wave band named Tokyo), that invited her to contribute vocals to the hit 1986 song "Garota de Berlim" (Portuguese for "girl from Berlin") that received huge airplay in radio in Brazil. To this day, Brazilians remember Nina above all things as the Berlin Girl from Tokyo's song.
Wilfried Rimensberger and award-winning film director
Lothar Spree produced a TV documentary for the German television station
ZDF. This was followed by a launch of Nina's UFO fashion underwear at anti-SAFT in Zurich, where again Rimensberger joined her up with
New Romantic icon
Steve Strange performing on stage. Simultaneously fashion photographer Hannes Schmid produced a Nina Hagen cover for German
Cosmopolitan magazine. This also coincided with leading music publications like
BRAVO and
MusicSzene running cover stories that all put Hagen back on the forefront of something that, in retrospect, became a final highpoint of what the punk movement was all about. At the end of 1986, her contract with
CBS was over and she released the
Punk Wedding EP independently in 1987, a celebration of her marriage to an 18-year-old punk South African nicknamed 'Iroquois'. It followed an independent 1986 one-off single with
Lene Lovich, "Don't Kill the Animals" (see
Animal Liberation).
1989–1994: Nina Hagen, Street, and Revolution Ballroom In 1989, Hagen released the album,
Nina Hagen, which was backed up by another German tour. In 1989, she had a relationship with French stylist and music manager Franck Chevalier which yielded their son, Otis Chevalier-Hagen (b. 1990). In the 1990s, Hagen lived in Paris with her daughter
Cosma Shiva and son Otis. In 1991 she toured Europe in support of her new album
Street. In 1992 Hagen became the host of a TV show on
RTLplus. Also in the same year (1992) she collaborated with
Adamski on the European smash and minor UK hit single "Get Your Body". The following year, she released
Revolution Ballroom. In 1994, Hagen starred in the acclaimed San Francisco
Goethe Institut's
The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber, playing the singer version of "Anita" alongside dancer Darla Teagarden who portrayed the other "professions" of "Anita". Also, her voice was heard on the Freaky Fukin Weirdoz single "
Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick". 1995 brought the German-language album
FreuD euch, equally recorded in English as
BeeHappy in 1996. Nina returned to San Francisco to star in another San Francisco Goethe Institut show, "Hannusen, Hitler's Jewish Clarvoyant". Hagen also collaborated with
electronic music composer
Christopher Franke, along with Rick Palombi (credited as Rick Jude) on "Alchemy of Love", the theme song for the film
Tenchi Muyo! in Love.
1995–1999 . In May 1996, she married David Lynn, but divorced him in the beginning of 2000. In 1997 she collaborated with German
hip hop musician
Thomas D. In 1998, Hagen became the host of a weekly science fiction show on the British
Sci-Fi Channel, in addition to embarking on another tour of Germany. In 1999, she released the devotional album
Om Namah Shivay, which was distributed exclusively online and included an unadulterated musical version of the
Hare Krishna mantra. Hagen believes that the Hindu incarnation of
Lord Vishnu known as Krishna was "the King of Jerusalem", and sometimes refers to Krishna as "Christ". She also provided vocals to "Witness" and "Bereit" on
KMFDM's
Adios. Also in 1998, she recorded the official club anthem
Eisern Union for
1. FC Union Berlin and four versions were issued on a CD single by G.I.B Music and Distribution GmbH. In 1999, she played the role of Celia Peachum in
The Threepenny Opera by
Kurt Weill and
Bertolt Brecht, alongside
Max Raabe. She also regularly performs songs by Kurt Weill,
Hanns Eisler and
Paul Dessau set to Brecht's texts.
2000–2009: Return of the Mother In 2000, her song "Schön ist die Welt" became the official song of
Expo 2000. Another cover of a
Zarah Leander song "Der Wind hat mir ein Lied erzählt" was a minor hit the same year. The album
Return of the Mother was released in February 2001, accompanied by another German tour. Hagen wrote the song "Handgrenade" on the album
Return of the Mother for
Christine Maggiore. In 2001 she collaborated with
Rosenstolz and
Marc Almond on the single "Total eclipse"/"Die schwarze Witwe" that reached No. 22 in Germany. On 14 October 2002 Nina hit Moscow by coming there with her concert, while interviews with the eccentric singer were aired on many TV-channels. Hagen
dubbed the voice of Sally in the German release of
Tim Burton's
The Nightmare Before Christmas, Yubaba/Zeniba in
Spirited Away and she has also done voice work on the movie
Hot Dogs by Michael Schoemann. Due to the death of
Elisabeth Volkmann (†2006), the German voice of Marge, during the dubbing of the hit TV show "The Simpsons" 17th season, Nina was a strong contender for the role, which eventually went to
Anke Engelke. Hagen has been featured on songs by other bands, for instance on
Oomph!'s song "Fieber". She did a cover of
Rammstein's "
Seemann" with
Apocalyptica. Later albums include
Big Band Explosion (2003), in which she sang numerous
swing covers with her then husband, Danish singer and performer, Lucas Alexander. This was followed by
Heiß, a greatest hits album. The following album,
Journey to the Snow Queen, is more of an audio book – she reads the
Snow Queen fairy tale with
Tchaikovsky's
The Nutcracker in the background. In 2005 Nina Hagen headlined the
Drop Dead Festival in New York City. Hagen was an active protester against the
war in Iraq. In 2006 she was a part of the
Popstars team. In August 2009 she was baptized in the Protestant
Reformed church of
Schüttorf. On 21 October after seven years passed she visited Moscow again.
2010–present: Personal Jesus, Volksbeat, Unity and Highway to Heaven After a four-year lapse her next album,
Personal Jesus, was released 16 July 2010, followed by
Volksbeat, released 11 November 2011. When
Angela Merkel ended her 16-year chancellorship of Germany in December 2021, she chose Hagen's song
Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen (You Forgot the Colour Film) as one of the three pieces to be played at her
Großer Zapfenstreich military leaving ceremony. In 2021, Hagen released a new studio album
Unity. The album is the singer's first album featuring English songs since 2010's
Personal Jesus. She released a new studio album,
Highway to Heaven, a gospel-rock-pop album, in March 2026. ==Controversies==