January 15, 2020
Averyanova Sveta
Anna German is a Polish singer who captivated the whole world with her unique transparent voice and unique soulful style of performance. Fate gave Anna a short life. The talented artist died in 1982. But her memory is alive and will live forever. Today, in the Polish city of Warsaw, husband and son Herman live and sacredly cherish the memories of their loved one. Today we will tell our beloved readers about how the fate of the singer’s only child turned out.
Wonderful talent and huge tragedy
Anna was born in Poland, in an ordinary family.
Neither mother nor father had the slightest connection to art. But nature, for reasons known only to her, made her choice, generously rewarding the girl with a truly unique voice and gentle nature. After graduating from school, Anna goes to college and upon graduation becomes a geologist. The girl’s amazing talent finds use during her student years. She first sings in a student ensemble, then gradually becomes the winner of various competitions.
Photo: cosmo
The girl has not only musical talent, but also a striking appearance: model height (184 cm), slender figure, sophisticated facial features. The singer's career is developing rapidly. Herman travels on tour, first to different cities of the Polish Republic, and then to many cities of the Soviet Union. At all concerts she receives thunderous ovations. The singer's voice sounds from all receivers and televisions of the Union. But, despite the enormous success and wild popularity, the singer’s earnings are negligible.
Photo: 24smi
One day, Herman receives an offer to sign a contract with Italy and work there for three months. The reward for this is much greater than in the Union. Anna signs the contract, but fate plays a cruel joke on her. A tour to Italy almost turns into the death of the singer. Anna gets into a terrible car accident, after which she is unconscious for two weeks, between heaven and earth. The artist comes to her senses, but a spinal injury confines her to bed for a long time. The body of the people's favorite is immobilized, but the soul is alive and still wants to sing.
Photo: persons-info
Anna does not give up; her favorite creativity inspires her to great deeds. She constantly trains, overcoming unbearable pain. Gradually, Anna learns to sit, then moves in a wheelchair, and finally gets to her feet. After the accident, the singer had to be born again, learn to walk again, but not to sing. The song lives with her even when her arms and legs do not obey.
Personal life
The personal life of the popular singer did not work out right away. She was surrounded by crowds of fans, but she never squandered time on short-term romances. Anna made her choice after 30 years. The singer chooses a simple engineer, Zbigniew Tucholsky, as her life partner. Zbigniew has long had tender feelings for Anna; he is a surprisingly reserved, intelligent and decent person.
Photo: e-reading
He is nursing his beloved after a car accident, when all the fans turn away from her. Tukholsky turned out to be an amazingly devoted person. In his life, he loved only Anna, and even after her death he never married, although worthy women more than once offered him their candidacies as life partners.
But Zbigniew didn’t even want to listen to anything. After such proposals, he began to hang his beloved wife’s dresses all over the house even more carefully.
Photo: baik-info
The only son of Anna and Zbigniew was born in 1970, when Anna was already 39 years old. Doctors feared for her life and said that it was unlikely that she would be able to give birth. But Anna safely carried the child to term. But the birth was really difficult. According to some reports, the boy was born autistic. The son was named after his father.
Photo: netsmi
Fate was preparing a new blow for Anna and her family. The singer was diagnosed with bone cancer. Herman could not overcome this terrible disease, and left this world in 1982.
Anna German's husband - Zbigniew Tucholski
After meeting Anna, the young engineer Zbigniew Tucholski for a long time did not dare to confess his feelings to her. The young people lived in a civil marriage for 10 years.
After Anna had an accident, Zbigniew did not abandon her, but finally decided to say that he wanted her to become his wife. Anna agreed, and a modest wedding took place. The young husband helped his wife recover from her illness. He rejoiced at her recovery and the birth of her son.
Anna German's husband, Zbigniew Tucholski, recently admitted that he stopped living exactly when his wife died. He lives only for his son. But he hopes that he will soon meet his beloved Anna in heaven.
The fate of the son
Zbigniew the youngest remained in the care of his father and grandmother. He grew up as a very smart and intelligent boy, but withdrawn and a little unsociable. Not once in his life did he make contact with journalists. The guy still hasn’t arranged his personal life, although he is now 45 years old. He still lives with his father and grandmother in the family home that Anna purchased.
Photo: youtube
Outwardly, the young man looks like his father. Zbigniew Jr. is the tallest man in Poland. His height is 2m 18 cm. Zbigniew plunged headlong into science. He has a doctorate and works at the Polish Academy of Sciences. The man has his own hobby. Since childhood, he has been interested in the railways, the guy collects rarities and also works as an appraiser at the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland.
Photo: 1ok
The guy inherited a wonderful voice from his mother, but had no intention of becoming a singer. At one time Zbigniew sang in a church choir, but has now abandoned this activity. Currently he lives in his parents' house with his father and grandmother. He is engaged in science; he has not yet met the girl with whom he would like to connect his life.
Anna German transported jewelry and garlic from Russia to Poland
By this date in the Moscow publishing house “Algori.
Its author, Ivan Ilyichev, is a biographer of the famous singer, the founder of an international club of her fans, a longtime friend of the German family, and a frequent guest in Warsaw. In the process of working on the book, the author managed to learn a lot of interesting information about the life of the star of the 70s. This information was not previously known to a wide range of readers. On the eve of the big anniversary concert in memory of Anna German, Ivan Ilyichev lifted some “veils of secrecy” over the life of the singer adored by millions for our correspondent.
ANNA GERMAN IS NOT POLIE
All biographies of Anna German begin with the words “Anna German is a Polish singer...”. This was the reason that people everywhere considered Anna not only a Polish subject, but also Polish by blood. However, Anna German does not have a drop of Polish blood! On her father's side she is a hereditary German, and on her mother's side she is Dutch. But in the USSR in the 30s, when German was born, families with such origins were treated unequivocally - they were considered enemies of the people, and therefore most of the relatives of the future Soviet star were shot or perished in Stalin’s camps. Anna's father, Eugen Hermann, was shot in one of the Siberian camps in 1937, when his daughter was only one year old... Then Anna's mother realized that the best way to stay alive was not to stay anywhere for a long time, so as not to become familiar. In the period from 1937 to 1946, Irma lived with Anechka and her grandmother in Tashkent, Orlovka, Rometan, Dzhambul... In Dzhambul, Irma entered into a fictitious marriage with the Pole Hermann Berner, and, taking advantage of the repatriation of Poles from Central Asia, the family left for Poland ... Post-war Poland was destroyed, there was poverty and hunger all around, and Irma, having settled in Silesia, secretly travels to the city of Lodz, where, through bribery, she corrects documents stating that Anna’s father is a Pole, born in Lodz. This step saved their lives then. And Anna German provided an impeccable “pedigree.” No security agencies - neither in Poland nor in the USSR - thought to check it. If the Union had learned that this family had fled the country secretly under the guise of Polish repatriates, then Anna German’s career would have developed, to put it mildly, differently. It is possible that she herself could have suffered the same fate as her relatives.
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SECRET LOVE
“At the dawn” of her career, in 1964 Anna came to Moscow for the first time and met composer Vadim Gamalia. In those years, the Gamaliya Orchestra accompanied all visiting foreigners, but the arrival of Anna German turned everything in the life of the young composer and conductor. He fell recklessly in love with a young singer with an angelic voice! In the very first days of their acquaintance, Victor Gamaliya gave her several of his songs (“City of Lovers”, “Picking Mushrooms”, “Without You”), and she recorded them on, and then there were long tours around the USSR. Gamalia did not leave Anna’s side at that time; sometimes she was even embarrassed by such an intrusive courtship.
Eyewitnesses say that Vadim, somewhere through connections, even managed to get an amateur movie camera and recorded all the singer’s steps behind the scenes and on stage... Anna did not reject his advances, but did not reciprocate. And when a rumor spread around the music scene that Herman and Gamalia were having an affair, Anna was indignant. She understood where this gossip “grew” from, and explained herself quite sharply to Vadim. But he didn’t care - he seemed to be in the clouds. And then the singer pointedly stopped noticing him. For example, I went into the control room of the Melodiya studio and said hello to everyone except Gamalia. She once said:
“I don’t like or respect men who flaunt their relationship with a woman. Vadim is exactly like that, that’s why we can’t communicate.”
By the way, during the recording of Vadim Gamalia’s song “Picking Mushrooms,” an interesting story happened. Here's what Melodiya's oldest editor, Anna Nikolaevna Kachalina, says about it.
— At the artistic council, when they listened to the song “Pick Mushrooms,” they said that if it had not been sung by Herman, it would have been vulgar. They found fault with the line “Oh, it’s scary, boys, to go into the forest alone.” They said, “this is not her song,” they say, why did she take it, and in general, “why are there three songs of Gamalia in one disc? What, aren’t there other composers?!” Both Anna and I explained that this song is part of Herman’s tour program, which is known in the USSR. “No one will buy from you. These are unknown things! — they said at the artistic council about this record. But they bought it! And how they bought it!
By the way, after Anna German, the same song was recorded by the young Alla Pugacheva, and later at Vadim Gamalia’s author’s evenings it was often performed by Valentina Tolkunova.
HOW ANNA GERMAN NEARLY KILLED SONGSWRITER ANDREA BOCELLI
In 1967, Anna German signed a three-year contract with an Italian record company and went to Milan. It should be noted that the singers of the then socialist camp even imagined what real show business was. Herman was one of the first to face this in Italy. Her arrival in Milan began with endless trips to boutiques and fashion houses, press conferences, advertising campaigns and filming. Anna had her own producer, Pietro Carriaggi, who was involved in promoting the young singer on the Italian market. Apparently, the producer expected to make good money on Herman’s voice if he invested money in numerous advertising campaigns - for example, at one point, envelopes containing a photo of Anna German with pleasant wishes appeared in the mailboxes of Italians. This publicity stunt worked well back then. The producer’s participation in the San Remo ’67 festival was also important to the producer. A round sum of half a million lire was paid for Anna German to be allowed to participate in this festival. She, of course, was not allowed to enter the finals, but a little later she received the Oscar della Sympathia as the most beloved singer by Italians and took part in the Neapolitan Song Festival.
But... Herman’s career in Italy was interrupted. On August 27, 1967, she was in a terrible car accident near Bologna on the way to Milan. At a speed of 160 km/h, the singer was thrown 20 meters from the car by a shock wave from a sports Fiat 850! Its driver, 20-year-old pianist Renato Serio, who fell asleep at the wheel of the ill-fated Fiat, escaped with minor bruises and is still alive. He writes music for films and is the author of compositions in the repertoire of Andrea Bocelli. But once he almost sent a great singer to the next world! Anna's left arm, left leg, collarbone were broken, and she received numerous severe head wounds. What saved her was that her spine was not broken. Anna German spent more than two months in Italian clinics, but the services were too expensive, and the producers refused to pay for her treatment... And if it weren’t for Anna’s mother Irma and Anna’s fiancé, Zbigniew Tucholski, then German would have gone to the other world back in 1967 Italy.
PROPOSED TO HUSBAND FIRST
All sources tell a beautiful story about how Anna’s fiancé Zbigniew Tucholsky proposed to her, sick after the disaster in Italy. However, in reality everything was completely different. Zbigniew recalls how in 1972 Anna had to undergo a rehabilitation course in the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane. Shortly before the trip, she told him:
“Take all the necessary documents and warn the registry office that we will be signing not in Warsaw, but in Zakopane. But no one should know - not even relatives! I want to do this act in my life on my own.”
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This was said as if the issue of the wedding had been decided long ago. Zbyshek did not ask unnecessary questions, but simply did as Anya said. On March 23, in Zakopane, they accidentally met one of their friends, Michal, who became their witness at the wedding. And the witness was... the singer's masseuse Zosya. There were no relatives, no journalists - no one was at this event. Their relatives learned that Anna and Zbigniew had married only later in Warsaw.
GAVE BORN A SON DESPITE DOCTORS' PROHIBITIONS
“If you decide to give birth, you may die. We are not responsible for the consequences,” the Warsaw doctors unanimously told Anna when she went for an examination in the early stages of pregnancy in the spring of 1975.
Objectively, the doctors were right - Anna was already 39 years old, the consequences of the Italian accident were dire, but she believed that nothing could happen to her and did not listen to the doctors. She even stopped going for tests and examinations. The artist came to the hospital only when it was time to give birth. In November 1975, Zbyshek was born, a son whom Anna fell madly in love with. She left the stage for almost 2 years, stopped touring, recording, filming and was only concerned with raising her son... When Anna recorded the famous “Lullaby” (“Sleep, my little sparrow, sleep, my little son, sleep, my dear little bell...”) - everyone decided that this is exactly the lullaby that Herman sings to his little son. But Anna herself debunked this rumor: “My son doesn’t like it at all when I sing to him. He prefers my husband’s fake bass voice... He doesn’t care that the bear stepped on daddy’s ear, he just likes the way he “sings.” But when I sing, my son cries.”
Zbyshek turned out to be far from music, far from art. He is a real technician, now a locomotive repair specialist with additional historical and theological education. He writes books, teaches, and turned his “locomotive” hobby into good income. Still, like many years ago, he practically does not listen to his mother’s songs. After all, she passed away when he was only 6 years old...
Anna really wanted a child, she dreamed of leaving a mark on the earth (in the photo - the singer with her son Zbyshek)
I BOUGHT A HOUSE BY SELLING JEWELRY
In 1978, Anna and Zbigniew purchased their own house in Warsaw, but “with a problem”: it was communal, and 5 families needed to buy apartments! It became a real torture! There was a catastrophic lack of money, and Anna was tired of living in a tiny apartment where she simply couldn’t turn around. And she decides to go on an exhausting tour of the USSR. In the spring of 1979 - for two months in Central Asia, in the winter - Ukraine, Leningrad, the Baltic states. In total, more than 70 concerts were sung, often 2 per day. The body could not bear such stress. Health problems began in Almaty... But Anna agreed to the persuasion of administrators for additional concerts. After all, it meant cash. And with money in hand, Anna could buy jewelry. So, after a concert in Dzhambul, the singer almost secretly went to the Kazakh village of Merke and there she purchased jewelry with precious stones in the jewelry department of a local store. It turned out inexpensive. Then, in Poland, Zbigniew, through friends and acquaintances, sold these stones for good money.
“What should we have used to buy a house? Without this, the purchase would not have been possible for us...” he says now. By the way, Soviet and Polish customs officers were so fascinated by Anna that they never checked her suitcases. Therefore, she easily transported such “things” across the border.
“GARLIC PARTY” by ANNA GERMAN
The musicians recall how Anna repeatedly organized “garlic parties” on tour. On a special occasion, she invited the whole team to her room. On the table there was a huge plate of sandwiches: white bread with butter, generously sprinkled with finely chopped garlic. It was very appetizing (garlic stimulates the appetite), no one paid attention to the smell from the mouth, but then for a couple of days the musicians suffered from stomach pain from the amount of garlic they ate. And only Anna didn’t care at all. She loved garlic so much that she added it to everything. The recipe for her signature pilaf is rice, a lot of carrots and 7-8 heads of garlic! She added 6 heads of garlic to the cabbage rolls in the pan. Since it was a problem to get good garlic in Poland, Herman brought it, like jewelry, from Russia in whole bags. She had a friend here in Moscow, Boris Metalnikov, who especially for Anna ran to the central market and bought selected large garlic. Anna also took home several kilograms of herring, oatmeal and even mustard powder from the USSR. It turns out she washed her hair with this powder, causing her hair to turn golden. Anna brought sweets to her son - oatmeal cookies, which he adored, sweets, chocolate-covered prunes, chocolate-covered nuts...
IN POLAND ANNA GERMAN IS STILL IGNORED
In Russia, programs about Anna German are aired annually on television; now Channel One is filming a feature film about the fate of the singer; concerts in her memory are regularly held and CDs with her recordings are published. In Poland the situation is different. The public remembers Anna very well and loves her songs. But the media stubbornly hush up all dates and all anniversaries associated with her name.
When the central Polish publication Gazeta Wyborcza published the results of a survey of Russians about which famous Poles they knew best, Anna Herman was in first place. On the second – Barbara Brylska and Chopin. For the Poles this was nonsense, because... their national heroes are completely different people.
Fun fact: in August, one of the Polish radio stations miraculously put Anna German’s song “Greek Wine” on the top voting list. Listeners had to choose which songs they liked best. So, during the week of voting on this radio, Anna German confidently took the first position, ahead of such celebrities as Lady Gaga, Enrique Igleias and Rihanna!
The legendary Polish VIA “Chervony Guitar” ended up in the bottom line of the hit parade. At the same time, not a single Polish newspaper or magazine to this day mentions the existence of such a singer. They just can’t forgive her for her Soviet past. Although the fact remains that for music lovers all over the world, the name of Anna German is in the first lines of the Polish stage. But not for Polish journalists.
SCAMMERS ARE TOOK AWARDS FROM ANNA GERMAN
In 2008, fans of Anna German were delighted by the message: the Presidium of the Council for Public Awards of the Russian Federation awarded Anna German posthumously with the Order of Honor, 1st degree. This order was to be presented to Anna's heirs - her husband and son - in Moscow in February 2008 at a concert in her memory at the Moscow Variety Theater.
This idea with the order was started by a certain Fred Iskenderov (real name Farmail Iskenderov), allegedly the editor-in-chief of the federal magazine “Senator”. This “enthusiast”, through the public awards committee, “knocked out” about 1,000,000 rubles for this order. At the same time, having gained the trust of Anna German’s heirs and her Moscow friends, Iskenderov received from the latter a considerable amount of material for the supposed publication of a glossy album about Anna German. Unfortunately, we are talking about a swindler. Anna Herman’s family never received the order, all the photographic materials remained with him, and in response to requests from Herman’s husband Zbigniew Tucholsky to return everything that he gave him to copy, he stopped communicating altogether. It turned out that this swindler “guessed” to sell these materials on his website, and having received significant sums of money from the singer’s numerous fans, he simply did not respond to messages. He has created a huge number of parasitic pages on the Internet advertising his activities in relation to Anna German. At the same time, the person is not at all embarrassed by the fact that a message about the atrocities of this scumbag is posted on Anna German’s official website. Information about the posthumous award went around the entire Internet and many publications, but in reality there was no award. Where is the public awards committee looking? Do they really still have this medal - not presented to the heirs of the great singer? Hardly. Rather, the money allocated for this medal was stolen by this fraudster. In the near future, the heirs of Anna German are planning, with the involvement of law enforcement agencies, to block the website of the non-existent magazine so that this infection does not spread across the Internet. But the question: whether this award was really awarded or these are just fraudulent machinations remains open.
See photo gallery:
Rare photos of Anna German
Anna German. Echo of love.
