Michael Kleff Biography

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, Michael Kleff worked in politics in Germany. From 1976 to 1982 he was a personal assistant to Gerhart Baum, Member of the German Bundestag and Minister of the Interior. In 1984 he began his journalistic career both in radio and as a political correspondent for the Associated Press news agency. In the early 1990s, he hosted the award-winning political world music program “Al Globe” on Radio Brandenburg. As a member of the World Music Charts Europe Panel, Kleff presented the European world music hit parade for 15 years in the program “Midnight Blue” on Deutschlandfunk. He also hosted “Liederladen” (renamed “Radionacht Lied und Chanson” in 2014), in which he presented German-language singer-songwriters on a monthly basis for over 15 years. During his radio career, Kleff produced extensive music features for a variety of radio stations, including Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk and Deutschlandfunk.

For several years until the end of 2015, he produced and hosted the award-winning internet radio station ByteFM's program "This Land - Your Land" Songs for Political Action and More”.

During his career, Kleff has sought to reveal the role music plays in society, be it political, social, cultural, or other, with a focus on German and American songwriters.

Some other topics of note of Michael Kleff’s radio features beyond music were Route 66, multicultural society in Canada, and USA politics including the history of the US civil rights movement, the media in the USA, 9/11, the Iraq War, and USA elections.

In the 1990s, Kleff was president of PROFOLK, a national organization for the promotion of song, folk, and world music in Germany. In 1991, he was a member of the founding team of TFF Rudolstadt, which is now one of the largest folk and world music festivals in Europe. For 25 years, he held various positions at the annual event, including press spokesman and stage presenter. From 1998 to 2014, Kleff was editor-in-chief of Folker, the German magazine for folk, song and world music.

Michael Kleff was the editor of an extensive accompanying book (240 pages) for the CD box set “Die Burg Waldeck Festivals 1964-1969: Chansons Folklore International”, published in 2008 by Bear Family Records in collaboration with the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Burg Waldeck and “die tageszeitung” (taz). In addition to numerous photos, it contains texts on the history of the festivals, memories and comments by some of the organizers of the time and many musicians. The ten CDs with live recordings of the Waldeck Festivals at Burg Waldeck between 1964 and 1969 contain over ten hours of music, most of it previously unreleased, by more than 80 national and international performers – from Franz Josef Degenhardt to Reinhard Mey, from Odetta to Phil Ochs, from Walter Moßmann to Hannes Wader, from Lin Jaldati to Perry Friedman, from Peter Rohland to Hein & Oss Kröher, from Hedy West to Guy Carawan, from Xhol Caravan to Floh de Cologne, from Christof Stählin to Schobert & Black, from Colin Wilkie & Shirley Hart to Fausto Amodei, from Dieter Süverkrüp to Rolf Schwendter. In addition, there are interview excerpts and an excerpt from the legendary discussion at the 1968 festival when the slogan “Put your guitars in the corner and discuss” divided the festival audience and artists and expressed the influence of the student movement on the festival. The collection received the German Record Critics' Award (Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik) in 2008.

Since his retirement in 2015, Kleff has continued to author and produce a variety of music related publications, including the 2017 Bear Family Records box set “Woody Guthrie - The Tribute Concerts,” the 2019 book “Kein Land in Sicht” with Hans-Eckardt Wenzel, and contributed to a variety of workshops and conferences at the Rudolstadt Festival through 2023.

Related collections

In addition to the Michael Kleff Research Collection, there are two other collections of material from the period of Kleff's political involvement.

The Historical Archive of the City of Cologne contains material on the Liberal Center. From 1978 to 1984, the LZ was a political and cultural forum founded by left-wing liberals. Its aim: “In particular, the LZ Köln wants to impart socio-political knowledge to younger citizens and guide them towards active political engagement, a sense of social responsibility and a commitment to freedom and justice, human rights and self-determination, solidarity and tolerance. ... The LZ Köln wants to contribute to the promotion of democratization, to guarantee basic rights and freedom, to create critical awareness and readiness for responsibility, to strive for economic and social justice and to achieve equality and self-realization.” The program included political discussions, lectures, exhibitions, poetry readings and concerts, which were covered by the local and national press as well as television and radio stations. Michael Kleff's collection contains all the monthly programs and individual invitations, posters, photos and press reports as well as Liberal Center publications such as brochures and records.

More information about the LZ
Collection in the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne
Documents from the years of Kleff's political work as a member of the left-liberal youth organization Jungdemokraten, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Liberal Democrats (LD) from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s can be found in the Archive of Liberalism of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Gummersbach. The documents include delegate and party conference minutes, resolution brochures, posters and magazines.

Information on the collection in the Archive of Liberalism of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation
Freiheit.org
Contact: archiv@freiheit.org