Hanns Eisler - born in Leipzig in 1898 and living in Vienna, (East) Berlin, Spain and the USA - was a composer and music theorist who was as brilliant as he was uncomfortable. He set poems by Bertolt Brecht and others to music, wrote workers' songs and symphonies and composed the national anthem of the GDR. For Eisler, music, like art in general, always had a social purpose. Under no circumstances should it distract from the main goal, the class struggle, with unnecessary bombast. Eisler's songs and the works of his colleagues Weyrauch, Weismann and Wagner-Régeny, which were rarely performed after the end of the GDR, are made accessible in the Arp Museum by the new dream team of lieder singing: the outstanding young tenor, former Thomaner and Bach Prize winner Patrick Grahl was born in Leipzig in 1988, Klara Hornig from Berlin is regarded as a distinguished lied pianist.