Jürgen Walter

Jürgen Walter (real name: Jürgen Pippig, born 7 December 1943) is a German popular singer and composer.

Biography Jürgen Walter Pippig was born in Fraureuth, a small town in Thuringia, a short distance across the state frontier to the west of Zwickau. Music featured strongly but not obsessively in his childhood. He was set to learn various musical instruments, but hated having to practice scales. Reflecting on his musical upbringing he later explained to an interviewer, "I'm hard working when I'm having fun but I'm lazy when I'm not" ("Ich bin fleißig, wenn mir etwas Spaß macht und bin faul, wenn mir etwas keinen Spaß macht"). Then as now, the village church was noted for its 1742 Silbermann organ, and for Jürgen Pippig there was joy to be had in the church children's choir, as a member of which he obtained an early grounding in choral and church music that also overflowed into popular songs.

Shortly before his sixth birthday the Soviet occupation zone, of which his home region had become a part in 1945, was relaunched as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany). It was in this new-style German one- party dictatorship that he now grew up and, till he was 57, made his career. 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.

While a student It was only in 1969 that he attended the official "Unterhaltungskünstler" training course at the state controlled Central Studio in East Berlin. The course ended with an audition which involved choosing and performing three songs. 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. His breakthrough album, premiered in 1976, was "Schallala, Schallali" An appearance with Götz George in the criminal comedy Der Bruch (The Breach) followed in 1989.

Awards and honours 1980 Art Prize of the German Democratic Republic