Manfred Lemm was born on April 17, 1946 in Potsdam. In the 1960s he moved with a band through Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He studied composition.
In 1976, he opened in Wuppertal the first cabaret theater. In the 80s he founded the Manfred Lemm Ensemble and performed mainly Yiddish song.
Lemm was one of the organizers of the European Yiddish Festival that took place in Zurich, Krakow, and Laberkusen. Lemm collected the poems of the poet Heidi Mordechai Gvirtig and composed them on four CDs.