Anna German

Anna Wiktoria German-Tucholska (14 February 1936 – 26 August 1982) was a Polish singer, immensely popular in Poland and in the Soviet Union in the 1960s–1970s. She released over a dozen music albums with songs in Polish, as well as several albums with Russian repertoire. Throughout her music career, she recorded songs in seven languages: Polish, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, English and Latin.
Biography.
Anna German was a Polish and Russian-language singer. 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 German-Russian 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 Łódź, 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 "". One year later, she won first prize in the international song contest in Sopot.
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.
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.
Career in Italy.
In December 1966, German in Milan signed a contract with a small firm CDI to release the records, thus becoming the first performer from behind the "iron curtain", which was recorded in Italy. In Italy, Anna German has performed at the Sanremo Music Festival, starred in a television show, a recorded programme with the singer Domenico Modugno, performed at the festival of Neapolitan songs in Sorrento and received the award "Oscar della simpatia".
Car accident and treatment.
On 27 August 1967, while in Italy, on the road between Forlì and Milan, Anna German was involved in a severe car accident. At high speed, the car driven by the impresario of the singer crashed into a concrete fence. Anna was thrown from the car through the windshield. She suffered multiple fractures, internal injuries. The results of the investigation revealed that the driver of the car – her manager Renato Serio – fell asleep at the wheel. He escaped with a fracture of the hand and feet.
After the accident, German had not regained consciousness. After the plaster was taken off, the singer still lay in a hospital bed for half a year. Then it took her a few months to relearn to sit and walk.
Earlier in the 1960s, she released the autobiographical book "Come Back to Sorrento?"("Wróć do Sorrento?"), dedicated to the Italian period of her career. The book's circulation was 30,000 copies.
Personal life.
On 23 March 1972, she married Zbigniew Tucholski. Their son, , was born on 27 November 1975. In the last years of her life, she composed some church songs. Before she died of osteosarcoma at 46 in 1982, she joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church. German was buried at Warsaw Evangelical cemetery.
Anna loved to cook oriental dishes. Her favorite foods were boiled potatoes with herring, pickles, pies with cabbage, black tea with lemon, and oatmeal cookies. She did not consume alcohol.