Jürgen Walter (singer)

[1] Jürgen Walter Pippig was born in Fraureuth, a small town in Thuringia, a short distance across the state frontier to the west of Zwickau.

After passing his school leaving exams ("Abitur"), which opened the way for a university level education, Pippig trained for commercial work in the agriculture sector in order to please his father.

He already had a musical background, and when, following the customs of that time, during the long summer break the two of them went off to the countryside to help with the harvest, they came across more friends who taught him the basic guitar chords.

It was from these beginnings that he became a co-founder of the "Hootenanny-Klub", a political singing group with a difficult name that was quickly rechristened as the October Club, becoming known for a mixture of popular and chanson style songs, folk and Rock music.

There was a consciously political element, with a focus on singing western protest songs from performers such as Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie und Bob Dylan, whom he would later identify as among their role models.

He performed one by Jacques Brel which he sang in French, a second in Hungarian by Zsuzsa Koncz, and the third of which he wrote himself, using a (German language) text provided by the politically well connected lyricist Gisela Steineckert.

Because of his growing success he was, by now, frequently permitted the (relatively rare) privilege of travelling outside East Germany in connection with his work, and he was becoming aware that, especially in francophone countries, the name "Pippig" was at risk of being confused with the (even more) inappropriate word "pinkelig".

[2] In 1972 Jürgen Walter won third place at the International Schlager Festival of the Baltic Sea States with "Muss ich denn ein Clown sein?"