The Battle Hymn of the Republic
The Battle Hymn of the Republic is an American patriotic song.
The text was written by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe during the American Civil War . After visiting a northern military camp , she wrote new verses on the popular abolitionist march, John Brown's Body . In February 1862 they were first printed in the Atlantic Monthly . The Battle Hymn of the Republic is often heard at nationally important events, such as the funerals of Robert F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan ; it was also played at the funeral of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill .
text
- The German text is not a translation, but a rewrite.
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interpretation
Howe's text is the expression of a not only religious, but also a downright millenarian interpretation of the American Civil War, which shaped political rhetoric, but especially the public perception of the conflict in the northern states. Edmund Wilson sees in the Battle Hymn as well as in the speeches of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison an outbreak of the old, fanatical New England Calvinism . He provided the basis for an immensely powerful myth of the war against the southern states as a salvation-historically significant battle against the forces of evil, which is often disregarded in more sober depictions of the political or economic reasons for the war, but which is fundamental to its understanding. The cause of the Union as a matter of God shaped many political speeches of the time, but was particularly omnipresent in the countless patriotic poems and songs that were widely circulated as leaflets during the war years .
In the Battle Hymn there are numerous more or less obvious references to Bible passages. Other lines can hardly be related to specific biblical passages, even if they are written in biblical diction. For example, the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps or the burnished rows of steel are to be interpreted as expressions of the very concrete war events in the midst of which Howe wrote the battle hymn . The central motif, which is introduced in the first line ( “the glory of the coming of the Lord” ) and taken up again in the last line of each stanza ( “His truth is marching on,” “His day is marching on.” Etc.). ) is the day of the Lord of biblical prophecy. The war is thus represented as the beginning of the turmoil of the end times , which should immediately precede the second coming of Jesus Christ and the Last Judgment; the cause of the union is the cause of God, the advance of their armies is a sign of the approaching kingdom of God . In particular, Howe probably refers in the first stanza to the prophecy in Isa 63: 1-6:
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The historian Thomas Babington Macaulay had already taken up these verses in his poem The Battle of Naseby , published in 1824 , which Howe was well known. With multiple allusions to the Holy Scriptures, it describes the battle of Naseby in 1645 and, like Isaiah, compares the victorious, blood-smeared troops of Cromwell with those of the press.
The famous phrase from the grapes of wrath is not found in the Bible, but references to Deut. Mos 32, 31–32 are obvious:
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In connection with the "terrible, swift" sword of God from the third line, the image of the wine press as an instrument of divine anger can be found in the Revelation of John (19, 15):
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In the manuscript version, Howe used the word winepress for the vintage that was finally to be found in the print version , which makes the reference to this passage all the more obvious. That the war opponent, the southern states, is in league with the Antichrist in this eschatological scenario is suggested by the third stanza at the latest, in which it is implored, the "hero" ( Hero , a word that is used throughout the entire King-James -Bible does not find) may the snake "crush under his heel" ( crush ; in the King James version of the Bible it says in the story of the fall of man, on the other hand: shall bruise thy head ; 1. Mos 3:15). Finally, the fourth stanza evokes the Last Judgment, since He will speak his judgment on the salvation and damnation of men (He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat) and therefore urges you to devote yourself to Him (Oh, be swift , my soul, to answer Him!) . The promise of salvation is affirmed in the fifth stanza (with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me) and linked to a call to the courageous contempt for death (let us die to make men free) .
Trivia
- The title of John Steinbeck's best-known novel , “The Grapes of Wrath” (German “ Fruits of Wrath ”), is a quote from the second verse of the battle hymn, which in turn refers to Isa 63.3 LUT or Rev 14.19 LUT represents.
- Even John Updike refers specifically to the Battle Hymn; his novel Gott und die Wilmots is called in the American original after the first words of the 5th stanza In the Beauty of the Lillies .
- The German "Division Blenker", which, under the leadership of 1848 Ludwig Blenker, took part in the Civil War on the Union side, sang the battle hymn with its own German-language text under the title "We are Germans and we fight for the freedom of the Union".
- Mark Twain wrote the parody "The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated" in 1901, commemorating the Spanish-American War , in which he attacked American imperialism .
- At the end of his last speech I've Been to the Mountaintop on April 3, 1968, the day before his assassination, Martin Luther King , Jr. quoted the first verse of the Battle Hymn : “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
- The film Who Sows the Wind ends with this piece of music when Henry Dummond ( Spencer Tracy ) leaves the courtroom.
literature
- Florence Howe Hall: The Story of the Battle Hymn of the Republic . Harper & Brothers, New York NY 1916.
- Christian McWhirter: Battle Hymns: The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War . University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill NC 2012, ISBN 0807882623 .
- Annie J. Randall: A Censorship of Forgetting: Origins and Origin Myths of "Battle Hymn of the Republic". In: Annie J. Randall (Ed.): Music, Power, and Politics. Routledge, New York NY et al. 2005, ISBN 0-415-94364-7 , pp. 5-24.
- Debbie Williams Ream: Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory . In: American History Illustrated 27: 1, 1993, pp. 60-64.
- Edward D. Snyder: The Biblical Background of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic". In: The New England Quarterly. Vol. 24, No. 2, 1951, ISSN 0028-4866 , pp. 231-238, doi : 10.2307 / 361364 .
- Edmund Wilson : Patriotic Gore. Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. Oxford University Press, New York NY 1962.
proof
- ^ Wilson: Patriotic Gore. 1962, pp. 91-92.
- ↑ Alica Fahs: The Imagined Civil War. Popular Literature of the North & South, 1861-1865. Reprinted edition. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill NC et al. 2003, ISBN 0-8078-5463-8 , pp. 77-79.
- ^ Snyder: The Biblical Background of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic". In: The New England Quarterly. Vol. 24, No. 2, 1951, pp. 231-238, here pp. 233-234.
- ^ Wilson: Patriotic Gore. 1962, p. 92.
- ^ Thomas Babington Macaulay : The Battle of Naseby. In: Edmund Clarence Stedman (Ed.): A Victorian anthology. 1837-1895. Selections illustrating the editor's critical review of British poetry in the reign of Victoria. Riverside Press, Cambridge 1895, pp. 27-29.
- ^ Wilson: Patriotic Gore. 1962, pp. 93-94.
- ^ Wilson: Patriotic Gore. 1962, p. 96.
- ↑ We are Germans and we fight.
- ↑ http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/twain/notkill.htm