Now living in the West, Biermann continued his musical career, criticizing East Germany's Stalinist policies. He was able to perform publicly again in East Germany on 1 and 2 December 1989 during the Wende that eventually toppled the Communist government. In 1998, he received the German national prize. He supported the 1999 NATO Kosovo War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the Arab–Israeli conflict he supports Israel and is critical of the fact, as he sees it, that, under the influence of antisemitic views, a majority of Germans lack both understanding and empathy for the Israeli side. He lives in Hamburg and in France. He is the father of ten children, three of them with his second wife Pamela Biermann, née Rüsche.