Hagen Rether

Hagen Rether (Born October 8, 1969 in Bucarest) is a German cabaret artist. Rether was brought up by his parents of German descent in the Romanian Bucarest and Sibiu. In 1973 his family moved to Freiburg, Germany. Rether, having played the piano since age 8, went on to study at the Folkwang-Hochschule in Essen, where he lives to this day. Prior to touring with his own solo program, he played as a pianist in Ludger Stratmann's program, among others. Since 2003 he keeps performing with his solo program 'Liebe' [German for 'love'], which is constantly being updated and varied. His program -- consisting of him often eating a yogurt first, then accompanying his performance with the piano -- is primarily political. The catholic church and the pope, George W. Bush as well as Herbert Grönemeyer are among the important projection screens for his sarcastic mockery. Scheibenwischer-Gala Since 2005 Hagen Rether is doing an annual speech about the elapsing year in the gala of TV cabaret show Scheibenwischer. He critisises especially the media, church, politics but also the German society as a whole in an ironic, partly aggressively exaggerated fashion. In his annual review of December 29, 2007 he reproached several news magazines, especially the Spiegel, with their tendentious and biased coverage of the Koran and islamism. Among others, he called Ralph Giordano a "bitter and poor hardliner", who be "brimful of rage against the Islam that he gets applause from the nazis by now." Especially the following statements are critisised controversially: "Honour killing? We've had honour killings all along, we call it differently though: 'Familiendrama' [German for 'family tragedy'] we call it. And we get that for Christmas. Twofold." "An enlightened news magazine is really in a position to continually report on the Islam within a few months with a black picture on the cover. [...] 'The Koran - Most powerful book of the world' [referring to the Spiegel headline], and they continue to write in the articles that it is not only the most powerful but the most dangerous book in the world. We've already had a time in Germany when people deemed books to be dangerous - but that was in front of a brown setting, not a black one." Hagen Rether is the patron of the Verein für integrative Kulturarbeit [German for 'association for integrative cultural work'], which organises sociocultural projects in schools within a difficult social environment. Some of the main priorities include violence-prevention projects and cultural education at Hauptschulen [German for 'general school'; the type of secondary school in Germany with the lowest requirements on the students]. Awards * 2003 o Fohlen von Niedersachsen o Tegtmeiers Erben * 2004 o Stuttgarter Besen in Gold o Prix Pantheon - Jurypreis Frühreif & Verdorben (shared with Serdar Somuncu) o Paulaner Solo o Tollwood-Festival München - Kleinkunstpreis o Passauer Scharfrichterbeil o Zeck-Kabarettpreis - Newcomerpreis Fresh Zeck * 2005 o Bayerischer Kabarettpreis Senkrechtstarter o Deutscher Kleinkunstpreis Förderpreis der Stadt Mainz o Goldener Spaten Senkrechtstarter o Sprungbrett Förderpreis des Handelsblattes * 2008 o Deutscher Kleinkunstpreis in the category cabaret Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.