History of Astrid Kirchherr in Timeline
May 1938
Astrid Kirchherr ([ˈastʁɪt ˈkɪʁçhɛʁ]; 20 May 1938 – 12 May 2020) was a German photographer and artist known for her association with the Beatles (along with her friends Klaus Voormann and Jürgen Vollmer) and her photographs of the band's original members – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best – during their early days in Hamburg.
May 1938
Kirchherr was born on 20 May 1938 in Hamburg, Germany, and was the daughter of a former executive of the German branch of the Ford Motor Company. During World War II, she was evacuated to the safety of the Baltic Sea where she remembered seeing dead bodies on the shore (after the ships Cap Arcona and the SS Deutschland had been bombed and sunk) and the destruction in Hamburg when she returned.
August 1945
In 1967, Kirchherr married English drummer Gibson Kemp (born Gibson Stewart Kemp, August 1945, Liverpool, Lancashire), who had replaced Ringo Starr in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. The marriage ended in divorce after seven years. She then worked as a barmaid, as an interior designer, and then for a music publishing firm, getting married for a second time to a German businessman. Kirchherr worked as an advisor in 1994 on the film Backbeat, which portrayed Kirchherr, Sutcliffe and the Beatles during their early days in Hamburg. She was impressed with Stephen Dorff (who played Sutcliffe in the film), commenting that he was the right age (19 years old at the time), and his gestures, the way he smoked, and talked were so like Sutcliffe's that she had goose pimples. Kirchherr was portrayed in the film by Sheryl Lee.
1960
Kirchherr met artist Stuart Sutcliffe in the Kaiserkeller bar in Hamburg in 1960, where Sutcliffe was playing bass with the Beatles, and was later engaged to him, before his death in 1962. Although Kirchherr shot very few photographs after 1967, her early work has been exhibited in Hamburg, Bremen, London, Liverpool, New York City, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, Vienna, and at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. She published three limited-edition books of photographs.
1960
Kirchherr, Voormann and Vollmer were friends who had all attended the Meisterschule, and shared the same ideas about fashion, culture and music. Voormann became Astrid's boyfriend, and moved into the Kirchherr home, where he had his own room. In 1960, after Kirchherr and Vollmer had had an argument with Voormann, he wandered down the Reeperbahn (in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg) and heard music coming from the Kaiserkeller club. Voormann walked in and watched a performance by a group called the Beatles: Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Sutcliffe and Best, their drummer at the time. Voormann asked Kirchherr and Vollmer to listen to this new music, and after being persuaded to visit the Kaiserkeller (which was in the rough area of the Reeperbahn), Kirchherr decided that all she wanted to do was to be as close to the Beatles as she could. The trio of friends had never heard rock n' roll before, having previously listened to only trad jazz, with some Nat King Cole and The Platters mixed in. The trio then visited the Kaiserkeller almost every night, arriving at 9 o'clock and sitting by the front of the stage. Kirchherr later said: "It was like a merry-go-round in my head, they looked absolutely astonishing... My whole life changed in a couple of minutes. All I wanted was to be with them and to know them."
November 1960
Sutcliffe wrote to friends that he was infatuated with Kirchherr, and asked her friends which colours, films, books and painters she liked, and whom she fancied. Best later commented that the beginning of their relationship was, "like one of those fairy stories". Kirchherr says that she immediately fell in love with Sutcliffe, and referred to him as "the love of my life". Kirchherr and Sutcliffe got engaged in November 1960, and exchanged rings, as is the German custom. Sutcliffe later wrote to his parents that he was engaged to Kirchherr, which they were shocked to learn, as they thought he would give up his career as an artist, although he told Kirchherr that he would like to be an art teacher in London or Germany in the future.
1961
The Beatles met Kirchherr again in Hamburg in 1966 when they were touring Germany, and Kirchherr gave Lennon the letters he had written to Sutcliffe in 1961 and 1962. Lennon said it was "the best present I've had in years". All of the Beatles wrote many letters to Kirchherr: "I only have a couple from George [Harrison], which I'll never show anyone, but he wrote so many. So did the others. I probably threw them away. You do that when you're young – you don't think of the future." Harrison later asked Kirchherr to arrange the cover of his Wonderwall Music album in 1968.
April 1961
Kirchherr later supplied Sutcliffe and the other Beatles with Preludin, which, when taken with beer, made them feel euphoric and helped to keep them awake until the early hours of the morning. The Beatles had taken Preludin before, but it was only possible at the time to obtain Preludin with a doctor's prescription note. Kirchherr's mother received them from a local chemist, who supplied them without asking questions. After meeting Kirchherr, Lennon filled his letters to Cynthia Powell (his girlfriend at the time) with "Astrid said this, Astrid did that", which made Powell jealous, until she read that Sutcliffe was in a relationship with Kirchherr. When Powell visited Hamburg with Dot Rhone (McCartney's girlfriend at the time) in April 1961, they stayed at Kirchherr's house. In August 1963, Kirchherr met Lennon and Cynthia in Paris while they were both there for a belated honeymoon, as Kirchherr was there with a girlfriend for a few days' holiday. The four of them went from wine bar to wine bar and finally ended up back at Kirchherr's lodgings, where all four fell asleep on Kirchherr's single bed.
February 1962
In February 1962, Sutcliffe collapsed in the middle of an art class in Hamburg. He was suffering from intense headaches, and Kirchherr's mother had German doctors perform checks on him, although they were unable to determine the cause of his headaches. While living at the Kirchherrs' house in Hamburg, his condition deteriorated. On 10 April 1962, Kirchherr received a phone call from her mother, who informed her that Sutcliffe had collapsed again, was brought back to the house and an ambulance had been called for. Kirchherr rushed home and rode with Sutcliffe in the ambulance, but he died in her arms before it reached the hospital.
1964
In 1964, Kirchherr became a freelance photographer, and with her colleague Max Scheler she took "behind the scenes" photographs of the Beatles during the filming of A Hard Day's Night, as an assignment for the German Stern magazine. Epstein had forbidden any publicity photographs to be taken without his permission, but Kirchherr phoned Harrison, who said he would arrange it, but added, "Only if they pay you."
1985
Starting in the mid-1990s, Kirchherr and business partner Krüger operated the K&K photography shop in Hamburg, offering custom vintage prints, books and artwork for sale. K&K periodically helped arrange Beatles' conventions and other Beatles' events in the Hamburg area. She commented in 1995: "My [second] marriage ended in 1985... I regretted I had no children. I just couldn't see me have [sic] any. But now I am pleased when I see the situation the world is in. I live alone and am very happy."
1995
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Kirchherr and her art school friends were involved in the European existentialist movement whose followers were later nicknamed "Exis" by Lennon. In 1995, she told BBC Radio Merseyside: "Our philosophy then, because we were only little kids, was wearing black clothes and going around looking moody. Of course, we had a clue who Jean-Paul Sartre was. We got inspired by all the French artists and writers, because that was the closest we could get. England was so far away, and America was out of the question. So France was the nearest. So we got all the information from France, and we tried to dress like the French existentialists... We wanted to be free, we wanted to be different, and tried to be cool, as we call it now."
1995
Kirchherr is credited with inventing the Beatles' moptop haircut although she disagreed, saying: "All that rubbish people said, that I created their hairstyle, that's rubbish! Lots of German boys had that hairstyle. Stuart [Sutcliffe] had it for a long while and the others copied it. I suppose the most important thing I contributed to them was friendship." In 1995, Kirchherr told BBC Radio Merseyside: "All my friends in art school used to run around with this sort of what you call Beatles haircut. And my boyfriend then, Klaus Voormann, had this hairstyle, and Stuart liked it very very much. He was the first one who really got the nerve to get the Brylcreem out of his hair and asking me to cut his hair for him. Pete [Best] has really curly hair and it wouldn't work." Kirchherr says that after she cut Sutcliffe's hair, Harrison asked her to do the same when she was visiting Liverpool, and Lennon and McCartney had their hair cut in the same style while they were in Paris, by Kirchherr's friend, Vollmer, who was living there at the time as an assistant to photographer William Klein.
1999
Stern phoned Bill Harry at his Mersey Beat newspaper and asked if he could arrange a photograph of all the groups in Liverpool, so Harry suggested Kirchherr be the photographer, although Kirchherr later said she placed an advertisement in the Liverpool Echo newspaper. Kirchherr and Scheler said that any group who wanted their photograph taken in front of St. George's Hall would be paid per musician, but over 200 groups turned up on the day, which meant Kirchherr and Scheler soon ran out of money. Kirchherr didn't publish the photographs until 1995, in a book called Liverpool Days, which is a limited-edition collection of black-and-white photographs. In 1999, a companion book called Hamburg Days was published (a two-volume limited edition), containing a set of photographs by Kirchherr and "memory drawings" by Voormann. The drawings are recollections of places and situations that Voormann clearly remembers, but Kirchherr had never photographed, or had lost the photographs.
July 2001
Kirchherr admitted she was not good at business because of insufficient organisation, and had never really looked after the negatives of her photographs to prove ownership. Her business partner Ulf Krüger—a songwriter and record producer—successfully found many of Astrid's negatives and photographs and had them copyrighted, although he believes that Kirchherr lost over the years because of people using her photographs without permission. In July 2001, Kirchherr visited Liverpool to open an exhibition of her work at the Mathew Street art gallery, which is close to the former site of The Cavern Club. She appeared as a guest at the city's Beatles Week Festival during the August Bank Holiday. Kirchherr's work has been exhibited internationally in places, such as Hamburg, Bremen, London, Liverpool, New York City, Washington D.C., Tokyo, Vienna, and at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.
May 2020
Kirchherr died on 12 May 2020 in Hamburg, following "a short, serious illness", a week prior to her 82nd birthday. News of her death was first announced by Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn via Twitter. He praised her involvement with the band as "immeasurable", and credited her as an "intelligent, inspirational, innovative, daring, artistic, awake, aware, beautiful, smart, loving and uplifting friend to many".