Gallows songs

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This is what the horseshoe looked like. This reconstruction consists of an original gallows song page and a replaced horseshoe.

Galgenlieder is a book of poems first published in March 1905 by Bruno Cassirer ( Berlin ) by Christian Morgenstern , who had been working on it since 1895.

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Fish night song

Under the motto “There is a child hidden in the real man: it wants to play” - a Nietzsche quote - Morgenstern wrote a series of literary criticism with a series of childlike and childlike poems, which met with great enthusiasm among listeners and readers but have long been ignored or underestimated due to their childlike demeanor.

Morgenstern soon moved away from the original theme of the gallows in the gallows songs and expanded them to include linguistic, often vivid, grotesque poems that were first published in the Der Gingganz collection . These gallows songs are deliberately harmless, but, often overlooked by research, are interpretationally ambiguous and require “a second and third look”. The humoresques , repeatedly misunderstood as literary nonsense in research, are not mere gimmicks, but, in the words of the poet, “game - and seriousness = stuff” [sic]. The great Lalulā, for example, consists of ostensibly meaningless, but lyrically and formally consequently ordered chains of syllables: As in so many gallows songs in general, here "before all experiments of the [literary] avant-garde, language itself becomes the concern of poetry". Morgenstern finally drives the complete dissolution of our language in Fisch Nachtgesang , which consists only of length and abbreviations, as a "literally silent protest against linguistic convention and mental immobility". In the poem Der Pattenzaun , the reader's imagination is challenged to the limit and a house is built from the “space in between” taken from a fence. The linguistic creature described in the poem Das Nasobēm "[a] on his nose" has become a well-known joke in science .

history

The gallows songs were first performed privately in 1895 in a small group of eight friends, the Association of the " Gallows Brothers", on excursions to the Galgenberg in Werder (Havel) near Potsdam . Important utensils were in a horseshoe and manuscripts bound between metal plates in the form of an executioner's ax (the bizarre exhibits are now in the German Literature Archive in Marbach or in the archive of the Urachhaus publishing house). People met in pubs, ironically celebrated gruesome rituals (cutting the 'thread of life', hanging and heads of small dolls) and sang, also to the piano, the texts written by Morgenstern: the gallows songs. At these meetings, the “gallows brothers” addressed each other using pseudonyms such as “Gurgeljochen”, “Verreckerle” and “Raabenaas”; the actual names were Georg and Julius Hirschfeld, Fritz Beblo , Franz Schäfer, Paul Körner, Robert Wernicke, Friedrich Kayßler and Christian Morgenstern himself. At first the poet did not intend to publish the manuscripts. At readings at the Berlin cabaret Überbrettl , however, the texts were so successful that he released them for printing. The gallows songs appeared in book form in 1905 and established Morgenstern's literary fame.

Morgenstern had the imaginary private scholar Jeremias Müller and his wife Gundula (originally: Erica) write an extensive introduction and apparently completely absurd interpretations of the poems, which additionally reinforced the comic effect. Mueller's alias Morgenstern's interpretation of Fisches Nachtgesang , which he succinctly describes as “the deepest German poem” , shows that, as with much of Morgenstern's humorous poetry, the comic effect was often only superficial ; However, if one takes into account the fish shape of the poem and the absence of conventional language, the poem's silence, so to speak, the night song of the fish actually gains such 'depth'. Morgenstern sent his “critical comments” to his publisher in 1908 with an accompanying letter; but he did not include them in any of the following editions. They were published posthumously in 1921 in a separate volume under the title Über die Galgenlieder .

resonance

The funnel

Many of the poems originally intended as song texts have been set to music and illustrated several times.

The Nasobēm founded a scientific joke that is still being developed today, and has several, partly illustrated, fictitious lexicon articles .

The poem Die Trichter was included in the Brockhaus Encyclopedia as an example of a character poem .

The poem Der Werwolf found its way into numerous school books for German lessons.

The raven Ralf was the godfather for artist names and newspaper titles.

In 2016 the online portal Signaturen-Magazin published settings of all gallows songs by well-known contemporary poets such as Konstantin Ames , Mara Genschel , Tobias Roth and Armin Steigenberger .

example

The picket fence

Once upon a time there was a picket fence
with space to look through.
An architect who saw this
suddenly stood there one evening -
and took out the space in between
and built a large house out of it.
The fence, meanwhile, was standing very stupidly,
with pickets without anything around.
A sight horrible and mean.
That's why the Senate also called him in.
The architect, however,
fled to Afri-od-Ameriko.

Book editions

First edition

  • Christian Morgenstern: Gallows songs . Cassirer , Berlin 1905 (cover drawing by Karl Walser ).

Extended editions

  • Christian Morgenstern: Gallows songs . 3rd, expanded edition. Cassirer, Berlin 1908.
  • Christian Morgenstern: Gallows songs . In addition to the “Gingganz”, a new edition reviewed by Christian Morgenstern. Cassirer, Berlin 1913.
  • Christian Morgenstern: All gallows songs . Expanded with 14 poems from the estate. Ed .: Margareta Morgenstern. Cassirer, Berlin 1932 (In addition to the gallows songs , the collections: “Palmström” (1910), “Palma Kunkel” (1916) and “Der Gingganz” (1919) added).
  • In 1940 the volume Alle Galgenlieder was published in the same compilation by Insel-Verlag zu Leipzig. The book contains one from the poet himself under the false name “Dr. Gundula Mueller ”wrote an ironic “ attempt at an introduction to the third or first edition ” with the date “ In the leap month AD MDCCCCCVIII ” .

Text-critical edition

  • Christian Morgenstern: Humorous poetry . Annotated edition. In: Maurice Cureau (ed.): Works and letters . tape 3 . Urachhaus , Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-87838-503-X .

Current issues (selection)

Single issue
Extended editions
  • Gallows songs, Gingganz and Horatius Travestitus. (= All Seals, Volume 6), ed. u. with an afterword v. Heinrich O. Proskauer, Zbinden, Basel 1972, ISBN 3-85989-155-3 .
  • All the gallows songs. Insel (= IT 6), Frankfurt 1972, ISBN 3-458-31706-6 .
  • Gallows songs. Palmstrom. Palma Kunkel. The whole thing. Reclam (= RUB 9879), Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-15-009879-3 .
  • All the gallows songs. (Photo-mechanical reprint from Berlin 1932), Diogenes (= detebe 20400), Zurich 1981, ISBN 3-257-20400-0 .
  • All the gallows songs . With an afterword by Leonard Forster and an editorial note by Jens Jessen, Manesse, Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-7175-1696-5 .
  • All the gallows songs. Afterword by Jürgen Walter, Reclam, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-15-050354-X .
  • Gallows songs. ed. v. Joseph Kiermeier-Debre, Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag (dtv library of first editions), Munich 1998, ISBN 3-423-02639-1 .
  • All the gallows songs. With 63 color illustrations by Hans Ticha , Edition Büchergilde , Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-86406-033-5 .

Transfers in other languages

  • Das Mondschaf - The Moon Sheep. A selection from the gallows songs . Authorized English Version by AEW Eitzen, Insel (Insel-Bücherei, Volume 696), Wiesbaden 1953.
  • Gallows songs . Translated by WD Snodgrass and Lore Segal, Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1967, LCCN 67025337,
  • Gallows songs and other poems. Gallows Songs and other Poems. selected and translated into English by Max Knight, Piper, Munich 1972.
  • Songs from the Gallows: Gallows songs . Translated by Walter Arndt, Yale University Press, New Haven 1993.
  • Christian Morgenstern speaks six languages . Thirty cheerful poems translated into English, French, Hebrew, Italian and Spanish. With 30 graphics by Igael Tumarkin. Ed. Niels Hansen, Urachhaus, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8251-7476-X .

Records, audio books

literature

  • Christian Morgenstern: About the gallows songs . Letter fragments, edited by Jeremias Müller. Cassirer, Berlin 1921, DNB 575552859 .
  • Christian Morgenstern: The enlightened moon sheep. Twenty-eight gallows songs and their commonly understood interpretation by Jeremias Mueller, Dr. phil. Edited from the estate by Margareta Morgenstern . Insel, Leipzig 1941, DNB 575553278 .
  • Anthony T. Wilson : About the gallows songs of Christian Morgenstern. (= Epistemata - Würzburg scientific writings. Series: Literary Studies, Volume 448), Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2490-7 (Dissertation RWTH Aachen 2002, 346 pages).
  • Ernst Kretschmer: The world of Christian Morgenstern's gallows songs and the Victorian nonsense (= sources and research on the language and cultural history of the Germanic peoples , NF, volume 79 = 203), de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1983, ISBN 3-11-009506 -8 (Dissertation University of Bonn 1981, 337 pages).
  • Ioana Craciun: Mysticism and eroticism in Christian Morgenstern's "Galgenliedern", Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York, Paris 1987, ISBN 3-8-204995-12

Web links

Wikisource: Gallows Songs  - Sources and Full Texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus spoke Zarathustra. First part, of old and young women.
  2. ↑ Anthony T. Wilson: About the gallows songs of Christian Morgenstern. Königshausen and Neumann (= Epistemata - Würzburg Scientific Writings. Series Literary Studies, Volume 448), Würzburg 2003, p. 38.
  3. ^ So Christian Morgenstern on the 15th edition of the Galgenlieder . Quotation in: Anthony T. Wilson: About the gallows songs by Christian Morgenstern , Königshausen and Neumann (= Epistemata - Würzburg scientific writings. Series Literary Studies, Volume 448), Würzburg 2003, p. 38.
  4. ↑ Anthony T. Wilson: About the gallows songs of Christian Morgenstern. Königshausen and Neumann (= Epistemata - Würzburg Scientific Writings. Series Literary Studies, Volume 448), Würzburg 2003, p. 204.
  5. ↑ Anthony T. Wilson: About the gallows songs of Christian Morgenstern. Königshausen and Neumann (= Epistemata - Würzburg Scientific Writings. Series Literary Studies, Volume 448), Würzburg 2003, p. 261.
  6. ^ Christian Morgenstern: Galgenlieder. Signatures-Magazin, 2016, accessed February 20, 2017 .
  7. ↑ [1] LCCN Permalink