Barbara Thalheim

Barbara Thalheim
Born	5 September 1947 Leipzig, Saxony, Germany
Occupation	Popular singer
Political party	SED
Children	2
Website	Barbara Thalheim's official website [1]

Barbara Thalheim (born Leipzig 5 September 1947) is a Berlin-based German popular singer and songwriter. She celebrated the fortieth anniversary of her first stage appearance in 2013.

Barbara Thalheim was born in Leipzig. Her father was a cultural administrator. He had also been a Communist who in 1933 had emigrated first to Africa and later to France. However, he was handed over to the Gestapo, and by May 1945 when Germany's Nazi years ended in military defeat, he had survived three years as a detainee in the Dachau concentration camp. When her parents married her father was 40 years old and her mother was 22. Her early schooling was in Leipzig, but after she was about 12 she attended school in Berlin where her grandmother still lived: she was struck by the stark contrast between the dialects of her native Saxony and of Berlin. Dialect differences left her feeling out of place in both regions, as a result of which, she later stated that she had at that time "hated all her schools". When she was around 13 the entire family relocated to Berlin where she would later undertake her professional training and begin her career. Barbara Thalheim was trained as a singer at the . This was followed by further training, initially by correspondence course and later, between 1973 and 1976 in composition, under Wolfram Heicking at Berlin's "Hanns Eisler" Music Academy.

Between 1970 and 1972 Thalheim sang in the "Berlin chanson group" ("Chansongruppe Berlin") During this time she released, through "Amiga", her first "single" (recording). Her next professional partner was a classical String quartet, with which she continued to work till 1980. Before that, however, from 1977 she was touring abroad, making regular guest appearances in West Germany, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and France.

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