{"id":2901,"date":"2026-04-07T20:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T20:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/2901\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T20:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T20:42:07","slug":"how-god-a-near-death-experience-german-playwright-bertolt-brecht-and-gospel-music-led-to-nina-hagen-on-highway-to-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/2901\/","title":{"rendered":"How God, a Near-Death Experience, German Playwright Bertolt Brecht, and Gospel Music Led to Nina Hagen on \u2018Highway to Heaven\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nina Hagen died in the early 1970s. She remembers being somewhere in between life and death, before meeting the Almighty. \u201cI had a near-death experience in East Germany as a young teenager in a very difficult time in my life,\u201d recalls Hagen, on call from her home in Berlin. \u201cI died. I was stuck in the middle.\u201d <\/p>\n

The near-death experience, triggered by a bad trip, was the beginning of Hagen\u2019s connection to her faith. Years before joining her first band in East Berlin, Automobil, in 1974, Hagen sneaked into Poland at 16 and played in a blues band covering Tina Turner and Janis Joplin. \u201cI went to Poland secretly,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was an adventure trip for me. I met musicians there. I sang in a band. I wanted to escape to West Berlin through Poland, but it didn\u2019t work out, so I had to go back.\u201d<\/p>\n

On her 16th birthday, Hagen\u2019s friends from Poland visited and brought her some LSD to celebrate. \u201cDuring that LSD trip, I had a near-death-slash-baptism experience with Jesus Christ, and it was so sweet and so cool,\u201d remembers Hagen. \u201cAnd I met God.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lifelong connection to God, the spiritual and feminine course of Sister Rosetta Tharpe and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and the early marks from her days in the theater in Berlin, penetrated Hagen\u2019s new album, Highway to Heaven.<\/p>\n

From its opening rockabilly \u201cEverybody\u2019s Gonna Have A Wonderful Time Up There\u201d (also known as \u201cGospel Boogie\u201d), her take on Lee Roy Abernathy\u2019s 1947 song, made famous by Pat Boone and later covered by Tharpe and Johnny Cash, Hagen is in heaven. She embraces her many sounds, dipping into the avant-garde, reggae \u201cDust on the Bible,\u201d punk on \u201cSomebody Prayed for Me,\u201d originally a gospel song written by\u00a0Dorothy Norwood\u00a0and\u00a0Alvin Darling,\u00a0and a lightly dubbed take on \u201cThe Skeleton Dance Song\u201d on \u201cDry Bones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greek singer and friend Nana Mouskouri helps Hagen interpret the Johnny Cash cover of James C. Moore\u2019s 1914 gospel hymnal, \u201cNever Grow Old,\u201d which was also covered by Aretha Franklin and George Jones. Mouskouri and Hagen first met in 1989 in Paris and later performed Marlena Dietrich\u2019s WWII anthem, \u201cLili Marleen,\u201d together on the French Sunday morning TV show, Champs-Elys\u00e9es, in 1990.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the song soldiers heard on the radio stations on the battlefields during the Second World War,\u201d says Hagen of the song, written by German composer\u00a0Norbert Schultze\u00a0in 1938, using words from a 1915 poem penned by a German soldier, Hans Leip. \u201cWe were not shy,\u201d Hagen says about her first performance with Mouskouri. Their Dietrich-lookalike costumes, dressed in black tuxedos and topped with cylinder hats, were inspired by the actress\u2019s 1930 film Morocco.<\/p>\n

Another old friend, Danish singer and actress Gitte H\u00e6nning, joins Hagen on the title track \u201cThere\u2019s a Highway to Heaven,\u201d a gospel song Tharpe released, as a duet with Marie Knight,\u00a0in 1947. H\u00e6nning inspired Hagen since she first saw her on East\u00a0German television, singing the Old Testament gospel song, \u201cShadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, 71, Hagen jokes that she, H\u00e6nning, 79, and Mouskouri, 91, are the \u201cGolden Girls.\u201d She jokes that Mouskouri is faster than her on the stairs and reflects on being a heavy smoker all her life and how God also saved her from her addictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cCleanliness is my new high,\u201d says Hagen. \u201cGod\u2019s timing is good. It\u2019s a perfect schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

The third duet on the album features German blues rocker Daniel Welbat on the hymnal, \u201cHand It Over,\u201d with more blues tapped into \u201cWalk With My Jesus.\u201d
\u201cSince my childhood, I\u2019ve been studying the deepest attributes of God,\u201d she says. \u201cI was a very curious child, and I wanted to know, \u2018How is God like? What does he feel like? What does he feel about us?\u2019 And in the Bible, it\u2019s written, \u2018God is love,\u2019 and who loves knows God, and who doesn\u2019t love doesn\u2019t know God. I was always totally mesmerized by that thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Nina Hagen (Photo: Andjani Autumn Gatzweiler)<\/p>\n

All of this made sense to Hagen after her out-of-body experience as a teen. \u201cDuring that trip, I discovered the love of God in person, and he looked at me like he already knew me, so that\u2019s where my deep connection with Jesus comes from, that night when I truly met him, when I was saved by Him from a very painful pit of hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

The experience, she says, felt like she was stuck in \u201ca big black worm loophole,\u201d\u00a0while she kept \u201ccalling out to God\u201d to help her. \u201cGod let me understand that I had to die first to keep on communicating with him,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd that reminded me of the Bible and that a person has to be baptized to understand that one fine day, we leave our mortal shells behind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being a \u201cbig lover of God\u201d is also why, Hagen says, she was always drawn to gospel and black American spirituals since early childhood. Before the wall went up in 1961, Hagen remembers her mother bringing home vinyl records from West Berlin, including ones by Mahalia Jackson or Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong\u2019s \u201cOh, Doctor Jesus.\u201d <\/p>\n

During those years, Hagen also remembers the impact of seeing Jackson sing \u201cTrouble of the World\u201d to a white audience in the 1959 film Imitation of Life. She first covered Jackson\u2019s \u201cHold Me\u201d on her 1989 self-titled album and revisits \u201cTrouble of the World\u201d on Highway to Heaven, singing I\u2019m going home to live with God, another stamp of her faith, and mortality on the album.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a huge lover of Southern gospel and bluegrass gospel music, and we just threw everything in the pot,\u201d says Hagen. \u201cIt\u2019s a potluck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inspired by the gospel music of The Dixie Hummingbirds and bluesman Blind Willie Johnson, Baptist pastor Cleavant Derricks, and others, Hagen released her first gospel album, Personal Jesus, in 2010, then delved deeper on Volksbeat in 2011, a collection of original songs and German interpretations of some more spiritual releases by Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Larry Normal, Sonseed, and Solomon Burke.<\/p>\n

[RELATED: Lene Lovich on First North American Tour in 35 Years, Stalking Salvador Dali, and When to Stop the Music]<\/a><\/p>\n

Hagen says she felt connected to the spirit of Black America from childhood, and often thinks about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his messages around the civil rights movement. \u201cHe had such a constructively beautiful and always positive mindset with his people in the \u201860s,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I was a little child, I was always impressed by those beautiful people in America marching down the streets fighting for their rights to be equal people in an equal world. That music goes together with protest songs or freedom songs and social justice songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another early influence that guided Hagen, spirituality and creativity, was German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht, whom she\u2019s covered throughout her career, including a rendition of \u201cAus dem Gef\u00e4ngnis zu singen (Song to Sing from Prison)\u201d and later on Volksbeat, with the opening \u201cDie Bitten der Kinder\u201d (\u201cThe Children\u2019s Prayers\u201d). Brecht also made his way into Highway to Heaven with an added verse dedicated to him on the penultimate, \u201cAlle Wollen in Den Himmel,\u201d the German version of \u201cEverybody Wanna Go to Heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long considered the godmother of German punk, Hagen says she\u2019s more \u201cBrecht-tian.\u201d
A follower of Brecht\u2019s work since her \u201celeventh year on earth,\u201d in her youth, Hagen spent time at the Berliner Ensemble theater, which was founded by the playwright in 1949 with his wife, actress Helene Weigel, and has performed many of his works since the 1980s. Between 2013 and 2017, Hagen also celebrated Brecht\u2019s legacy of music with Brecht-Lieder-zur-Klampfe-Abend (Brecht song evenings with guitar), and other performances at the Berliner Ensemble.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During her earlier years at the theater, Hagen says she studied Brecht\u2019s works, including The Threepenny Opera and Schweyk in the Second World War.\u00a0\u201cThat was my study ground,\u201d said Hagen. \u201cThat\u2019s where I learned to dare to be the Nina Hagen the stage person that I became then shortly after. And I was not a punk in my youth. I was rather a hippie, but more likely a Brecht [Kurt] Weill-ian.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Hagen left East Germany at 21 and went to London in 1977, she was immersed in the \u201cpunk revolution,\u201d she says, and became friends with Ari Up and the Slits. A few years later, an invitation from Frank Zappa and his management brought Hagen to the U.S., where she started working on English-language albums. In 1982, NunSexMonkRock was her first album after leaving the Nina Hagen Band and her first release in English.<\/p>\n

\"\"Nina Hagen (Photo: Andjani Autumn Gatzweiler)<\/p>\n

From Brecht to punk and coming to America, Hagen always remained connected to her faith. She remembers swinging a giant cross above her head during Rock in Rio in 1985, singing Prepare yourself, you know it\u2019s a must \/ Gonna have a friend in Jesus from her song \u201cSpirit in the Sky.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t regret not being recognized as a Christian artist back in the day,\u201d says Hagen. \u201cI was still showing everybody that I\u2019m a child of God, and that God gave me this freedom to express myself so wondrously, and joyously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahead of a biopic in the works, and her 2010 autobiography, Bekenntnisse\u00a0(Confessions), rereleased in English, Hagen says she has more gospel songs to release. She\u2019d even like to bring more of Brecht\u2019s works to an English-speaking audience.<\/p>\n

Jumping back and forth between influences, Hagen reflects on Tharpe, whom she first discovered around the time she was working on Personal Jesus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI discovered her quite late in my life, the godmother of rock and roll,\u201d says Hagen. \u201cShe invented the electric guitar licks, and people like Elvis, and for all the other gentlemen and gentle women who entered the rock and roll music halls of fame, it all comes from Sister Rosetta. She was the first one who came up with those hooks.\u201d<\/p>\n

She adds, \u201cShe\u2019s such a great example and such a great teacher of what it\u2019s like to really follow God\u2019s wishes for all his creation, a joyous life. He wishes us a life to the fullest.\u201d<\/p>\n

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