Farewell to Rio Reiser
He sang "Junimond" and lived openly as a gay man while Paragraph 175 was still in force. Rio Reiser, who died in 1996.
On 20 August 1996, Rio Reiser died on a farm in Fresenhagen in North Frisia. He was only 46 years old. He was born Ralph Christian Möbius in West Berlin in 1950 and borrowed his stage name from the novel hero Anton Reiser.
He became known as the singer of Ton Steine Scherben. Songs such as "Macht kaputt, was euch kaputt macht" ("Destroy what destroys you") and "Keine Macht für Niemand" ("No power for nobody") became anthems of the squatters' and protest movement. In 1975 the band moved to the countryside in Fresenhagen together with friends.
Far less well known is that Reiser was practically the first openly gay musician in Germany. He came out among family and friends in 1970. On the farm he could live openly as a gay man, at a time when Paragraph 175 was still in the criminal code. From the mid-eighties he also spoke about his relationships with men in interviews. He was never an activist in the narrower sense. His impact came from his presence: made up, dazzling, androgynous, vulnerable, where others put male toughness on show.
After the end of the Scherben, his solo career began in 1985. "König von Deutschland", "Junimond" and "Für immer und dich" stormed the charts. His move to a major international label earned him accusations of betrayal from parts of the autonomist scene. That he used the income to pay off the band's mountain of debt went largely unnoticed. He sang straight from the heart of millions of other people. At their core, his ballads are queer love songs that were understood universally.
Reiser died of circulatory failure. His papers are now held at the German Literature Archive in Marbach, and fans still make pilgrimages to his grave in Berlin-Schöneberg. In 2022, Heinrichplatz in Kreuzberg was renamed Rio-Reiser-Platz.