Fereydoun Farrokhzad

Fereydoun Farrokhzad was born in Tehran, to career military officer Colonel Mohammad Bagher Farrokhzad (originally from Tafresh) and his wife Touran Vaziri-Tabar.[3] He was the fourth of seven children (Pooran, Amir (Masoud), Forugh, Fereydoun, Gloria, Mehrdad, and Mehran). After graduating from high school he went to Germany and Austria for his post-secondary education. He received his doctorate in political science from Munich University.

At a young age Fereydoun had a passion for poetry and for singing. He turned that passion to reality in 1962 when he started writing poems in German which were published in two German newspapers. In 1964 he published his collection of poems called "Fasleh Deegar" (Another Season). His book was critically acclaimed and was honored by many German poets. Five months after the release of "Fasleh Deegar", Fereydoun Farrokhzad received the Poetry Award of Berlin. For a couple of years Farrokhzad was a member of the Munich Academy of Poetry. In 1966 he found his way to the Television and Radio of Munich. On Radio he had a comedy and music program which played middle eastern music including music from Iran. On TV he created and produced a show called "Khiyaban-haye Alp" (Alpine Roads). In 1967 he returned to Iran and performed on successful radio and TV shows. His most successful TV show was "Mikhakeh Noghrei" (Silver Carnation), and his radio show which aired every other Friday mornings called "Jom'eh Bazzar" (Friday Bazaar). The TV show was watched by millions of Iranians. On the show Farrokhzad introduced and discovered a number of Iranian artists including Sattar, Shohreh, Shahram Solati, Ebi, Morteza, Rouhi Savoji, Hamid Shabkhiz, Leila Forouhar, Saeed Mohammadi, and various others. After the 1979 revolution, Farrokhzad was imprisoned, then released. He escaped the country and settled in the country of his youth college years, Germany.[4]

Esfandiar Monfaredzadeh claimed that Farrokhzad was homosexual.[7] He said: "His main obstacle was the homosexuality that he was not ashamed of; he knew it and he wanted people to understand it."

Farrokhzad married and divorced twice. His first marriage took place in 1962, to a German-Polish woman named Ania Buchkowski, whom he met in Oxford. Like Farrokhzad, she had a passion for poetry and theater; it was after meeting her that Farrokhzad started writing poems. The result of this marriage was a son named Rostam. Farrokhzad and Ania later separated and got divorced. In 1974 he married an Iranian woman named Taraneh.[8]

Besides his native language of Persian, he also spoke German.[9]

Farrokhzad's grave in Nordfriedhof, Bonn, Germany.

On the evening of August 3 police officers responded to cries for help at the building where Farrokhzad lived but were unable to identify the apartment where the screams originated from.[10][11] On August 8, 1992, Farrokhzad's body was found in the kitchen of his apartment in Bonn, Germany after neighbours reported barking by his two dogs. Farrokhzad had been killed violently, having been stabbed repeatedly in the face and upper torso.[12] Many urban legends surround Farrokhzad's death, including the widely repeated myth that he was beheaded.

Prior to his murder, Farrokzhad had been involved in producing an opposition radio program and reportedly received death threats. In his show the Royal Albert Hall in London he criticized Khomeini and made fun of Khomeini's obsession with sex in his Ressaleh book, which followed death threats and concerns for him.[5]

According to the U.S. state-funded Voice of America (VOA), the murder was "widely believed to be the work of Iran's Islamic government".[1]

Farrokhzad remains a significant Iranian cultural icon whose popular music and television programs continue to be circulated through various media platforms. His murder—a political assassination of a celebrity activist entertainer—is a well known and oft-cited event amongst Iranians.

The play ‘Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World’ by Javaad Alipoor explores the international cultural coverage of his death.

• Forugh Farrokhzad
• List of unsolved murders
• Mina Assadi
• Simin Behbahani

• Media related to Fereydoun Farrokhzad at Wikimedia Commons
• Fereydoun Foundation on Official Farrokhzad Foundation Website Archived September 27, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
• Farrokhzad's biography on BBC
• Fereydoun Farrokhzad at IMDb
• Farrokhzad's documentaries Archived December 20, 2022, at the Wayback Machine
• Radio Farda investigation documentary.

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