Cornel Chiriac

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Cornel Chiriac (born May 9, 1942 , Uspenca ( Ukraine ); † on the night of March 4 to 5, 1975 in Munich ) was a Romanian radio discjockey . His fans have also called him the most influential, best-known and at the same time loneliest radio disc jockey in the world .

Life

After Cornel Chiriac became enthusiastic about jazz from the age of 12 on the radio station Voice of America (VOA), which was banned in Romania at the time but can be received on shortwave , he moderated the first jazz programs in 1963 after the jazz ban in the country fell Romanian post-war radio. He was also working on a book about Louis Armstrong and, among other things, gave lectures to overcrowded student clubs using a record player . In 1967 he was one of the founders of the European Jazz Federation in Warsaw .

After the beginning of the Stalinist Romanian dictatorship Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1965, Chiriac had his own, initially weekly pop , rock and blues broadcast called Metronom on communist state radio from July 10, 1967 . In his mid-twenties he was already a well-known and popular radio presenter . In addition to the beginnings of local rock music (e.g. from the band Phoenix ), he mainly played English-language music - Bob Dylan , Rolling Stones , etc. He often had to get the records illegally from the American embassy in Bucharest . In the summer of 1968, Metronom came live every day from a holiday hotel in Mamaia on the Black Sea due to its great success . However, the current broadcast was immediately interrupted in the spring of 1969, while Chiriac provocatively commented on the entry of Soviet troops into Prague on August 21, 1968 with an uncensored tape that was swapped on the transmitter - the beatless song Back in the USSR could be heard on this . After that, the broadcast no longer existed on Radio Romania . Each song had to be submitted to censorship before it was broadcast. Chiriac has violated this. Although he was off his show Metronom, he was still a jazz editor. He used this to get an exit permit.

As a result , Chiriac emigrated to Austria via Kittsee by means of a manipulated exit permit through participation in a jazz congress in Bratislava in the then CSSR . The editor-in-chief Max Banush , who was responsible for the Romanian- speaking department of the American broadcaster Radio Free Europe in Munich at the time, helped the asylum seeker illegally into the Federal Republic of Germany, so that, from June 2, 1969, Chiriac was able to continue broadcasting six times a week from the broadcaster's Bavarian location. That was a small revolution for this radio station at the time, too, because the majority of the editors were old-school diplomats who had no relation to modern music popular with young people and young adults. In addition to metronome , he was also responsible for two jazz programs , Jazz Magazin and Jazz à la carte . He broadcast contemporary music, jazz music and informed about world events. His attitude was critical of communism, but also critical of capitalism. In the course of his broadcasts, Chiriac had to announce the death of his idol Jimi Hendrix as well as that of Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison from the Doors .

Hearing Cornel Chiriac was forbidden in Romania and accordingly meant imprisonment and torture by the Romanian domestic secret service and state security police Securitate . At the same time, his program in Romania again met with a great response, as demonstrated, for example, by around 800 letters from his listeners who took on enormous dangers by sending letters from Romania. He read many of them in his broadcast and was thus able to inform his listeners about incidents in the various parts of Romania that did not appear in the state-ordered official reporting. The letter writers were also repeatedly arrested and tortured. A conviction, for example, meant six years imprisonment "for anti-communist propaganda ".

Despite his relationship with the Romanian German who had also emigrated, Linda Schuster, who had become his assistant in the studio of Radio Free Europe , the radio disc jockey, who was one of the most famous personalities in Romania at his time, lived quite lonely: in Romania he was one of the most famous people at all, only he didn't live there, and in Germany he was one of the “shit foreigners” for many. For a “long-haired man”, he was not decidedly left-wing enough, especially since they viewed Radio Free Europe as just an anti-communist provocation paid for by the CIA. The fact that he was barely able to speak German in the first few years contributed to his isolation.

Only a short time after his marriage and moving with his wife to a house in Moosinning on the outskirts of Munich, Cornel Chiriac was murdered on March 4, 1975 at the age of 33 by the seventeen-year-old German Mario Gropp with a dozen stab wounds after the latter stabbed him out of one Schwabinger Kneipe had taken. The last title played by Chiriac on the day of his assassination was Joker's Grave (German: Witzboldes Grab ) by the Groundhogs .

Chiriac had repeatedly supported other needy Romanian exiles in Munich . The official statement by the confessed perpetrator was robbery and murder . However, according to rumors Elena Ceausescu , the wife of Conductators , one million US dollars have been exposed to the elimination Chiriacs. Chiriac's ashes were buried in the Reinvieria Cemetery in Bucharest. His grave is adorned with a white stone with chiseled headphones and the inscription: "Generation Make Love not War" and a photo of him with a beard and striped sweater in front of the microphone. The Securitate had to remove grave goods from its fans every day.

Chiriac's commitment and merits are still not recognized by the public in Germany or Romania - there is no memorial, for example hardly a street or square has been named after him, apart from a street in Piteşti .

literature

  • Patrick Banush: Lost in Music - The Cornel Chiriac Story , radio feature: SWR with WDR and BR, 2008.
  • Mirko Hecktor, Moritz von Uslar, Patti Smith, Andreas Neumeister: Mjunik Disco - from 1949 until today. Blumenbar Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-936738-47-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ exilarchiv.de: Cornel Chiriac - author, journalist, musician, radio presenter and DJ , accessed on August 11, 2010  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.exilarchiv.de  
  2. ↑ Mircea Morariu: Adevarul (Romanian) . March 18, 2015. Retrieved November 5, 2018. 
  3. ↑ Lost in Music - The Cornel Chiriac Story , Patrick Banush, Deutschlandfunk, broadcast Freistil , January 10, 2010, [1]
  4. ↑ Manuscript of the feature Lost in Music - The Cornel Chiriac Story , Patrick Banush, WDR (German) [2]
  5. ↑ RADIO PROGRAMS - 2009 PRIX ITALIA ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 511 kB), (English), page 131 Prize winners documentation of the Prix Italia
  6. ↑ O stradă din Pitesti se numeşte Cornel Chiriac , Alex Revenco, Antena 3, June 21, 2012, [3]
personal data
SURNAME Chiriac, Cornel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian radio DJ
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Uspenca , Ukraine
DATE OF DEATH March 4, 1975 or March 5, 1975
Place of death Munich