Honor for Alumna
Singer Ute Freudenberg to Receive the 2026 Weimar Prize
A distinguished alumna of the FRANZ LISZT University of Music in Weimar is being honored: Singer Ute Freudenberg will receive the 2026 Weimar Prize on October 3. The public award ceremony will take place on German Unity Day at 11:00 a.m. in the Weimarhalle. Admission is free.
The Staatskapelle Weimar will provide the musical accompaniment for the ceremony; among other pieces, its wind section will perform an instrumental version of Ute Freudenberg’s hit “Jugendliebe.” The presenter and singer Kim Fisher will deliver the laudatory speech in honor of the award recipient.
The Weimar Prize is the city of Weimar’s most prestigious award and is presented every two years to individuals who, through their work, have rendered outstanding service to the city’s cultural reputation. Ute Freudenberg, a native of Weimar and known to a wide audience for songs such as “Jugendliebe,” is one of the defining voices of the German-language music scene.
Ute Freudenberg is an alumna of the “Dance and Light Music” program, which was offered at the Weimar Music university before German reunification. Born in Weimar in 1956, she began her musical career at a young age. At age 15, she was discovered at a summer camp and won a competition for young talent in 1972, which paved the way for her debut on the first television show “Sechs Mädchen und Musik.” After studying at the Weimar Music University, she became a founding member of the rock band “Elefant” in 1976, with whom she released two LPs and twelve singles.
In the 1980s, Ute Freudenberg enjoyed great success: she was voted “Most Popular Singer of the Year” four times in a row (by the GDR youth magazine “Neues Leben”). In 1984, she moved to Düsseldorf, where she worked as a studio singer and performed as a soloist in the Netherlands and on cruise ships. In 1988, under the stage name Heather Jones, she sang the theme song for the “Tatort – Pleitegeier” episode.
After returning to Weimar in 1996, she founded the Ute-F-Live-Band and enjoyed further success with albums such as “Land in Sicht” (1997) and “Jubilee” (1999). In 1998, she received the “Golden Hen,” the most coveted media award in East Germany. With her hit “Jugendliebe,” she had a lasting impact on the music scene of the GDR and reunified Germany—the song was voted the “most popular East German hit of all time” in 2005.
In the decades that followed, she hosted TV shows, received the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon in 2008 for her social activism, and toured Germany with big names like Christian Lais. In 2023, she celebrated her 50th anniversary on stage.
[September 30, 2026]