He follows in the tradition of François Villon, Heinrich Heine, Kurt Tucholsky, and Bertolt Brecht, with whom he shares both an acute political awareness and a biting, aggressive wit. As with these forerunners, art, life, and politics are virtually inseparable in Biermann’s work. He is, as one collection of critical essays refers to him in its title, a “Liedermacher und Sozialist,” both a “maker of songs” and a dedicated socialist; his poetry records with great feeling his own political struggle as a socialist poet and his personal political fate as a renegade and exile.