was one of the first active German filk fans. She joined her first filk circles at German conventions in 1990 and 1991. Her love for filk brought her to learn to play the guitar, when the guitarist of the small Berlin filk community moved away. Kirstin is known in German filk fandom for composing good music to other people’s lyrics, and has become a good performer.
In 1992, she founded the German filk fanzine “Let’s Filk About”, which is still published once or twice a year. After having been involved in organizing small filk gatherings in Berlin and Gütersloh, she worked with Katy Dröge and Cetin Bobber on planning the first bigger filk convention in Germany, FilkContinental, in 1997. She served on its committee in four of its first five years.
In 1997, she initiated the German Filk Fund to bring over some guests to German filk cons. She is still chairperson of this fund and does it very reliably and well! She has seen to it that the Germans can buy their filk fix in regular doses. Her small fan label “Edition Pegasus” has published two big songbooks of German filk, and songbooks to accompany the first two FilkContinental recordings. Together with her husband, Volker, she has published the live CDs of FilkContinental 1998, 1999, and 2000. They have also established an online shop where filk from all over the world can be ordered by German fans.
Kirstin has always supported filk in many ways without promoting herself or her music; filk was important enough to her to overcome challenges, just for the cause! She is empathetic and supportive (if you look behind her shy shell).
For these contributions to filk music and the filk community, Kirstin Tanger is inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame this sixth day of April, two thousand and two.