Arno Pardun

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Arno Pardun (born July 13, 1903 in Bromberg ; † January 30, 1943 in Berlin ) was a German paramilitary activist and composer. He is best known as the composer of the song People to the Gun .

Life and activity

Pardun, who was a businessman by profession, joined the Berlin Sturmabteilung (SA) on March 22, 1926 . He also became a member of the NSDAP in 1926 . In the following years he rose steadily as a paramilitary activist in this: he was successively promoted to Sturmführer (August 1927), Sturmbannführer (December 1, 1931), Obersturmbannführer (August 6, 1933) and Standartenführer (January 30, 1942).

As a hobby musician, Pardun wrote the battle song People on the Rifle in 1931 , which he dedicated to Joseph Goebbels , the Berlin Gauleiter of the NSDAP . The song, which was characterized by a pounding march rhythm, was performed publicly for the first time at a rally in the Sportpalast in Berlin on January 8, 1932 by 150 SA members of SA Standard 7 and the Fuhsel band. In the following years it became one of the most played National Socialist songs.

Pardun's song was one of the most famous mass songs of the Nazi era: in the 1930s it was mainly used as an SA marching song. It was also a compulsory song for the Reich Labor Service . During the war it was used as a military song - not least because it was included in the soldier's songbook Tomorrow we march . The text contains allusions to numerous cornerstones of Nazi ideology such as the demand for the creation of living space in the east ("Do you see the dawn in the east"), sharp anti-Semitism ("Germany awake, Judah the death") and the evocation of military violence ( "People to the gun, people to the gun").

The slogan people to the rifle goes back to a poem from the circle of the Giessen blacks from 1820 ("Freedom, your tree is rotting / everyone on the begging stick / soon bites into the hunger grave / people's rifle"). The melody has a minor character, fifth and fourth structures as well as echoes of church modes of the 19th century song type and was "exposed to the accusation of being un-German, Russian or Bolshevik". Above all, the power of the chorus line gives the battle song its effect.

Pardun died on January 30, 1943 as a special leader of a propaganda company in a reserve hospital. According to other sources, he died on February 1, 1943.

Fonts

  • Heil Führer dir (swastika flag you holy cloth) , 1934.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 .
  • German Broadcasting Archive: Political Music in the Time of National Socialism. A directory of audio documents (1933–1945) , 2000, p. 142.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 406.
  2. ↑ Thomas Friedrich: The abused capital. Hitler and Berlin , 2007, p. 327.
  3. ↑ Der SA-Führer, issue 1–12, 1943, p. 111.
  4. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 406. Klee relies on information from Fred K. Prieberg
personal data
SURNAME Pardun, Arno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German paramilitary activist and composer
DATE OF BIRTH July 13, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Bromberg
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1943
Place of death Berlin