On February 14, 1936, Anna German was born, a singer whose life linked the USSR, Poland, and the international stage. On the 90th anniversary of her birth, writer and researcher Diana Dzis revisits the fate of an artist for whom love and hardship were part of real life, not a stage image.
German was born in Urgench in the Uzbek SSR. Her father, a man of German origin, Eugen German, was executed in Tashkent in 1937. Her family, part of the Russian German community, lived through repression, repeated moves, and personal loss. Her mother Irma later entered a formal marriage with Polish officer Herman Gerner, which allowed the family to leave for Poland after the war. There, Anna definitively became Anna German.
From childhood she moved between several languages and cultures: she spoke Russian, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz, and later quickly mastered Polish. After finishing school in Wroclaw, German enrolled in geology, although she loved drawing and singing. The turning point came in 1962, when an audition led to her acceptance into the Wroclaw stage scene.
Soon her personal story with Zbigniew Tucholski, whom she had met in 1960, also took shape. He remained her closest supporter for life. In those same years, she trained in Rome, becoming the first Polish pop singer to receive such a placement, and then rose to prominence with “Dancing Eurydices,” prizes in Opole and Sopot, and tours in the USSR.
Recording an album for the Melodiya label opened the way to songs by Soviet composers and a vast Soviet audience. Despite exhausting tours, German kept performing across Europe, the United States, and the Soviet Union, supported younger artists, and took part in musical and theatrical productions.
In 1980, she gave her last concert in the USSR, after which she was diagnosed with thrombophlebitis. Her condition worsened sharply in 1981, leading to further operations. In May 1982, German was baptized in the Seventh-day Adventist tradition and, already seriously ill, composed music for biblical texts. She died of osteosarcoma on the night of August 24 to 25, 1982. Her husband outlived her by more than 40 years; on April 11, 2025, he was buried beside her in Warsaw.
“It is not hard for me to leave… I am ready…”