Wilhelmine

In the organizer's words:

"Living diversity" - if anyone knows the meaning of this term, it's Wilhelmine. Growing up in a squat in Berlin-Kreuzberg and in Wendland, she experienced a wide variety of lifestyles from an early age. "I got to know so many different punks or people who worked in the circus and who sat at our table as a matter of course," recalls Wilhelmine. "I think that made me open and brave enough to come into contact with people. And I got the idea into my head relatively early on: no matter who and what I want to be one day, I can be it."

Wilhelmine's first active contact with music was in Wendland, where she attended school. "I was eleven and was allowed to test my music teacher's headset. That was the first time the class heard me singing out loud on my own. And I got compliments on my voice for the first time." Wilhelmine soon became something of an unofficial school singer: "I sang at various school events and it was relatively well-known and taken for granted that I was the one singing."

And soon she was singing outside of school too: as a teenager, Wilhelmine became part of a girls' band, Direkt. The four girls sang a lot a cappella, acoustically and in several voices - and had their first live performances: "There is a festival in Wendland, the Kulturelle Landpartie. Villages open their doors there, and we received requests from various farms who wanted us to be part of their regular program." The "Kulturelle Landpartie" is known far beyond Wendland - and the anti-nuclear movement even more so. It proclaimed the "Republic of Free Wendland" here in 1980 and continues to shape the region in eastern Lower Saxony to this day.

It was at an anti-nuclear demonstration that Direkt made their first major appearance - in front of Madsen. An experience that would have a lasting impact on Wilhelmine's future: "The Madsens have managed to become the big, well-known band from this district. And knowing that they were so close on that day made me dream for the first time: Wow, they live in Wendland, but are known throughout Germany. What if I could get there too...?"

After graduating from high school, Wilhelmine first goes somewhere completely different, to Spain, where she works as an au pair for a year. In her free time, however, she makes sure that her dream can continue to take shape. She takes guitar lessons and starts her own YouTube project, which Wilhelmine now affectionately refers to as "educational homo podcast ramblings": "I made videos every Thursday with my girlfriend at the time. And when I came back from Spain, it was very clear to me: I wanted to go back to Berlin, and not just for the summer vacation, but permanently."

Berlin proved to be the ideal place to gain further experience as a musician - now alone, because the school days and direct were numbered. "I played the same choruses over and over again in subway stations with a lot of fluctuation, because that's all I knew. I put on a hat and got a feel for it in countless self-experiments: how do you get people to listen? At what point in the song do I have to be to get them interested?" In the process, she made an experience that has proven to be valuable to this day, as she has long since performed on large stages: "I realized that when I am quiet, I manage to gather the energy in the room much more intensively than when I am loud. In this way, I've even managed to keep venues with almost 2,000 people completely quiet as an opening act."

And once she has their undivided attention, people listen spellbound to what Wilhelmine has to say. She has shown a lot of courage in her songs so far: in her first single "meine Liebe" (my love), she talked about her coming out, in "Du" (you) about alcohol addiction in the immediate family circle and in "solange du dich bewegst" (as long as you move) about taking the step towards self-love, in short: she has "shone a spotlight in all directions and looked at what is really behind things", as she commented on the occasion of her debut EP "komm wie du bist" (come as you are) (2020). Her courage was rewarded: when the Berlin artist announced her debut EP, the CD and vinyl promptly shot to number 1 and 2 on Amazon's "Rising Star of the Day" list, she was invited to perform in front of an audience of millions on ARD's "Morgenmagazin" and her first headlining tour was almost completely sold out.

Fans love Wilhelmine for her honest lyrics that they can identify with, while she also manages the feat of leaving listeners with a good, uplifting feeling from her songs - "her mission is to place loving messages in her songs and bring them together with very acoustic beats and organic pop sounds", according to Diffusmag, which named Wilhelmine one of the "10 best new artists" of 2020. Wilhelmine is empowerment in music form - and that's exactly where she wants to go with her upcoming music. By continuing to be bold, "both in my lyrics and with my music".