Frank-Walter Steinmeier: "Music creates a home"

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Arne ListThe politician Frank-Walter SteinmeierMusik loves from being listened to, time and again. I love to listen to modern and classical jazz, but also to German singer/songwriters like Klaus Hoffmann. Sometimes I also like one of the songs from my daughter's iPod.

At the moment, Leonard Cohen's "First we take Manhattan" is my favourite song. During the eighties, I listened to his music a lot, and then not at all for quite some time. One year ago I was at his concert in the O2 Arena in Berlin. The strength, depth and warmth that radiated from this more than 75-year-old man have touched me deeply. The lyrics are dark at some places, but the song embraces Berlin and Manhattan, two cities with whose culture and history I feel very connected.

Music creates a home, far beyond the borders of one's own country: "They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom / for trying to change the system from within / I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them. / First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin. // I'm guided by a signal in the heavens. / I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin. / I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons / First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin." Text and music: Leonard Cohen (1987).

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, born in Detmold in 1956, was Chancellery Minister under Gerhard Schröder, Foreign Minister of the grand coaltion from 2005 until 2009, and is chairman of the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) in the German Bundestag.