Obituary: Torsun Burkhardt: The unbending one

Stemwede in 2011: On a sultry summer night, the conservative farming community near Osnabrück is transformed into what at least appears to be a radical left-wing mecca for 90 minutes. In the middle of it all is Torsun Burkhardt, who is on the festival stage with his electro-punk duo Egotronic and encourages the predominantly very young audience, including me, to dance and shout along. “Raven against Germany” we shout without knowing exactly why. Until then, very few people here had come into contact with left-wing radicalism – even anti-German radicalism. What counts at this moment is the energy that hits you from the booming loudspeakers and captivates you regardless of political preferences.

Torsun himself felt the same way in the early 1990s, when he discovered his love for punk and hardcore during the so-called baseball bat years and became politicized about it in the years that followed. At the same time, he was repeatedly drawn to techno parties, which would have an impact on his later career. He had his first musical experiences in punk bands such as Kalte Zeiten or Face Reality, before attending an Andreas Dorau concert in 1996 threw his musical ideas out of the window in one fell swoop.

From now on he prefers to turn the controls on analog synthesizers instead of strumming power chords on his electric guitar. During those years, Torsun wanted to go further and higher: play live, rehearse, record, play even more live. At some point the tempo became too high for his sometimes sluggish bandmates, so Torsun finally launched his own project in 2001: Egotronic was born.

Now he alone sets the pace, and in the next 20 years he will rarely take his foot off the accelerator. The debut “The Right Attitude” was released in 2006. A year later, “Lustprinciple” follows, which contains two hits with the title track and the opener “Raven gegen Deutschland” that will become evergreens of the anti-fascist movement in Germany in the following years. Torsun himself does not shy away from provocation and becomes a real hate figure for many: right-wingers despise him for his anti-fascist commitment. But many on the left were also at odds with Torsun, who considered himself part of the anti-German movement in those years: They were particularly bothered by his unwavering solidarity with Israel. For years he has repeatedly been confronted with threats of violence and death.

But Torsun will not be intimidated: eight more Egotronic albums and several hundred concerts will follow by 2021. The last album “Stresz” ends with the song “Anniversaries”, a duet with Andreas Dorau. It says: “May all the anniversaries / Please pass quickly.” This brings Torsun full circle. Also in 2021, he was involved in founding the “Artists Against Antisemitism” initiative, in which bands such as Frittenbude and Die Sternen also took part.

In May 2023, “Songs to Discuss in Therapy” will be the debut of his new project Torsun & The Stereotronics, which he founded with his wife Sina Synapse and his Egotronic companion Christian Schilgen. At the same time, in a “Taz” interview with his journalist friend and “nd” editor Kirsten Achtelik, he made public his incurable cancer, which temporarily made it impossible for him to play concerts.

In the summer of the same year, in Jan Müller’s Reflexionr podcast, he expressed confidence that he would soon be able to be on stage again. But hope only lasts for a short time: his health worsens over the course of the year. He still managed to put together the Egotronic compilation “Unease in Culture (Selected Works 2001-2021)” on the long-standing parent label Audiolith – a legacy. On December 30th Torsun succumbs to his illness. He was 49 years old.