The Jews are to blame for everything

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The Jews are to blame for everything a political-satirical couplet by the German composer Friedrich Hollaender . It was premiered in September 1931 as part of the revue Spuk in the Villa Stern in Hollaender's Berlin cabaret Tingel-Tangel-Theater .

Couplet

The couplet turns against the anti-Semitic enemy image of the Jew who is “behind all the evil in this world” by taking this enemy image to the point of absurdity by exaggerating his typical argumentation . The common anti-Semitic practice of justifying accusations against “the Jews” without giving a reason or with arguments that cannot be proven or verified, ironically takes the chorus of the song to extremes. In tautological reasoning he “proves” the “guilt” of the Jews on the grounds that it stems from the fact that they “were to blame for it”.

The refrain is:

The Jews are to blame for everything!
The Jews are to blame for everything!
Why, why are you to blame?
Child, you don't understand, it's your fault.
And me too! It's your fault!
The Jews are, they are and are to blame!
And if you don't believe it, it's their fault
, it's all the fault of the Jews!
I see!

Construction and satirical technique

The individual stanzas indulge in the tongue-in-cheek exaggeration of common anti-Semitic accusations against “Judaism”, such as B. the sole responsibility for "world catastrophes" such as the First World War, the Russian Revolution of 1917 or the economic crises of the post-war period, that is, comprehensive political and economic events and processes that are beyond the control of the individual. The Jews in the song are to blame for the fact that it rains, hails, is beautiful or cloudy, the snow is white and cold and the fire is hot, the income has been incorrectly estimated or “whether you cough or sneeze”.

The text criticizes anti-Semitism in general and the promotion of the NSDAP by German industry in particular. The Nazis were in the Reichstag elections in 1930 went up by a splinter party the second largest party in the Reichstag.

While Hollaender wrote the text of the song himself, he used the aria Habanera from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen for the melody with which he underlined his text . The first interpreter Annemarie Hase also performed it quite “Spanish”.

The familiar melody links Hollander's verses with the German opera text. While in the original it is sung that “love comes from gypsies”, the parody grotesquely inversely claims that all imaginable evils come from Jews. The text itself, and also the connection with the music of the "Habanera", leads to a state of contradiction, which is intended to draw attention to the paradox of the anti-Semitic slogans.

The music theorist Dietmar Klenke describes Hollaender's chanson as a prime example of the mechanism of the “ scapegoat projection ” and judges the satirical effectiveness of Hollaender's song: here a young gypsy who expresses herself in an amoral way about the slippery realm of sexuality. [...] By putting this melody into the mouth of a staid National Socialist, the composer made him look ridiculous in the eyes of enlightened contemporaries. The inappropriate melody should help to expose the Nazi worldview as half-baked. ”He adds that the“ provocative sharpness ”of the chanson can only be understood“ if one illustrates [the] mood of confrontation [and] hostility ”with which the Camp clashed in the Great Depression.

Allusions

After eight such lines the refrain follows: “ The Jews are to blame for everything! "

expenditure

As a result of the revue's great success, Electrola made a recording with the original interpreter Annemarie Hase and produced test pressings. However, the record never went on sale, possibly because Electrola cut back production in the wake of the economic crisis. Some copies have been preserved so that the recording could be published on CD decades later.

A sheet music edition of the chanson is printed in the book Das Chanson im deutschen Kabarett 1901–1933 by Walter Rösler, Henschelverlag, Berlin 1980 (p. 295 f.).

The revue. Hitler as a ghost

Hollaender did not get lost in political insignificance in show business in the early thirties. The "spook" in the Stern house is none other than Adolf Hitler :

Huhu! You you! I'm little Hitler and suddenly I take a bite!
You are all put in the bad sack!
Huhu! Hihi! Haha? Woof woof! - No carrion was frightened!

He also gives the Baron Münchhausen , lies the blue of the sky and is shown at the end:

Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie,
everything the man saw
but he tells so beautifully!

reception

The Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith raised a protest shortly after the premiere of Hollaender's chanson: He characterized the piece as a "school example of misjudgment and distortion [...], which anti-Semitic agitation would not portray otherwise" and called the chanson "disgusting and repulsive ".

A review in the Catholic newspaper Germania stated: “The revue was written for a Jewish audience that believes they are ennobling by reacting their affects and complexes to the milieu in which they are forced to live in a way that can easily make a biased Goi anti-Semitic. "

Despite such criticism, Hollaenders Revue proved to be extremely successful. It was performed for the 100th time in November 1931: "Frederick the Great remains Dutch in this kind of cabaret," it said in the film courier .

While the rest of the revue was soon forgotten, it all turned out to be an enduringly popular song , The Jews Are To Blame . After Annemarie Hase, the piece was interpreted by well-known artists such as Marlene Dietrich , Katja Ebstein , Irmhild Wagner and Bernd Stephan . On television it was also used, among other things, as background music for a scene in the biography Hitler - The Rise of Evil .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Volker Kühn : Everything can turn the day after tomorrow! Tingel with Tangel: Hollaenders Tingel-Tangel-Theater. In: Victor Rotthaler: Friedrich Hollaender. If I could wish for something . Book accompanying the CD box. Bear Family Records, Hambergen 1996, p. 39.
  2. ↑ Quoted from: Volker Kühn (Ed.): ... and nothing else! The Friedrich Hollaender-Chanson book . Fackelträger Verlag, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-7716-1596-8 , p. 90 f.
  3. ^ Walter Rösler: The Chanson in German Cabaret 1901–1933 . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1980, p. 297.
  4. ↑ Dietmar Klenke: Music as a subject-oriented medium in music lessons . In: Bardo Herzig and Ulrich Schwerdt (eds.): Subject or factual orientation in didactics? Current articles on a basic didactic problem . LIT Verlag, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-5839-1 , p. 221.
  5. ↑ a b c We are what we are! - Homosexuality on record Part I - Recordings 1900 to 1936 , Bear Family Records, 2002, ISBN 3-89795-887-2 , pp. 37, 71.
  6. ↑ Gold and Silver Der Spiegel 16/1967

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