Nina Hagen mourns the death of lifelong friend Sibylle Havemann

Singer Nina Hagen has announced the passing of her longtime friend, Sibylle Havemann. Hagen shared a nostalgic photograph from 1970 on Facebook to honor the connection between the two women, who were born on the same day, March 11, 1955.

Hagen described the pair as being “inseparable” for many years, noting that since the age of eleven, they regularly attended performances at the Berliner Ensemble to watch the plays of Bertolt Brecht. Havemann was the daughter of the prominent East German regime critic Robert Havemann.

The two women shared a history of political activism, having both protested the 1976 expatriation of singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann from the GDR before eventually moving to West Germany. Havemann had previously spoken about her health struggles, noting that she had declined further chemotherapy following a recurrence of cervical cancer.