Boxer song

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Boxerlied ( The Heart of a Boxer ) is the title hit for the early German sound sports film Liebe im Ring , which Reinhold Schünzel made in 1930 with heavyweight champion Max Schmeling . The cinema bandmaster Artur Guttmann wrote it and Fritz Rotter , who was also involved in the script, wrote the text for it. The “Boxerlied” was published in Berlin by “Alrobi” Verlag of the Austrian music publisher Armin Robinson.

The refrain of the song is:

A boxer's heart knows only one love:
the fight for victory all by yourself.
The heart of a boxer knows only one concern:
Always be first in the ring.
And once his heart beats for a woman,
stormy and loud:
A boxer's heart has to forget everything,
otherwise the next one will knock him out !

In the record recording from 1930 on Electrola, the marching song is performed jointly by Max Schmeling , Kurt Gerron and Hugo Fischer-Köppe . Gerron and Fischer-Köppe sing the verses and Schmeling declaims the refrain.

The “Boxerlied” quickly became a hit beyond the film, and cover versions by other artists appeared in the same year, e . B. by the cabaret and refrain singer Robert Koppel , accompanied by Theo Mackeben and his jazz orchestra. It was even available in the USA on the Victor label .

Criticism and afterlife

The cabaret artist and writer Hans Reimann reviewed the record in 1930 in his column in the cultural magazine “ Der Cross- Section ” under the heading “Sport auf Schallplatten”.

Today's critics are less lenient with Schmeling's lecture and the “Boxer Song”. In 2004, Volker Kluge found Guttmann's music “excellent”, but Rotter's text on it was “infantile”.

In 2007 Burkhard Sonnenstuhl attested that the song would survive to the present day, but may only rate Schmeling's performance as a chorus singer - like Kluge - as “spoken chant”.

The author “bat” in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung No. 30 of February 5, 2005 also hits the same line: he confesses to Schmeling in his “awkward and yet sovereign chanting”, which he at least can gain “bizarre charm”, with a “ awkward, therefore all the more impressive dignity ”.

Wolfgang Wicht wrote on March 14, 2012 in the newspaper “Thüringer Allgemeine”: “Max Schmeling, Kurt Gerron and Hugo Fischer-Köppe sang a song in the 1930 film“ Liebe im Ring ”with the refrain“ The heart of a boxer only knows one love, the fight for victory all alone ”. The song went into the cultural heritage of the German hit. "

This song has since been picked up again by several contemporary artists, including a. from the Hanoverian punk band “Falling Brieftauben”, from “KAOH feat. Max ”and by Roger Baptist in his project“ Rummelsnuff ”.

The German playwright Lutz Huebner named his youth play, published by Ernst Klett Verlag in 1996, after the refrain line of the 1930 “Boxer song”, “The heart of a boxer”.

The second sound film hit by Will Meisel , from whom the illustration music for “Liebe im Ring” came from, stepped back a little behind the “Boxer Song” : it was a tango entitled “Today I only dance with you”, whose words Kurt Schwabach wrote and who did not reach the level of awareness of the boxer song.

Sound documents (examples)

  • Electrola EG1765 (mx. BLR 6054-I) Boxer song from the Terra sound film “Liebe im Ring” (Guttmann - Rotter) Max Schmeling, Hugo Fischer-Koeppe and Kurt Gerron, with orchestra, conducted by Clemens Schmalstich , recorded February 13, 1930, Berlin Beethoven Hall
  • Ultraphon A 379 (mx. 10 701) Boxer song from the sound film “Liebe im Ring” (Guttmann - Rotter) Theo Mackeben with his jazz orchestra. Refrain singing: Robert Koppel. Recorded in mid-February 1930, Berlin, Studio Wilhelmsaue

Republication:

  • The heart of a boxer 7 "single EMI Odeon E 21 775 (45 / min) - 1959

literature

  • Schmeling. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. No. 30, February 4, 2005, p. 37. (faz.net)
  • Berliner Debatte Initial: Journal for social science discourse. Volume 17, Verlag Volk & Welt, 2006, p. 94.
  • Sophie Fetthauer: Music publishers in the “Third Reich” and in exile. (= Music in the “Third Reich” and in exile. Volume 10). von Bockel, Hamburg 2004. (2nd edition. von Bockel, Hamburg 2007)
  • Gudrun Gloth: I thought that was my end ...: Conversations with contemporary witnesses about their experiences in World War II. Verlag Langen Mueller Herbig, 2015, ISBN 978-3-7766-8223-6 .
  • Adolf Moritz Hofmeister (ed.); Carl Friedrich Whistling: Hofmeister's handbook of music literature. Volume 18, part 1, 1934, p. 233 on Guttmann, Artur.
  • Horst Jaedicke: The good old Südfunk: his radio and television programs from 1924 to the end of broadcasting in 1998. Hohenheim 2005, ISBN 3-89850-126-4 , p. 34.
  • Volker Kluge: Max Schmeling: a biography in 15 rounds . Aufbau-Verlag, 2004.
  • Martin Kraus: From the pioneer of the sporting hit. On Max Schmeling's “The Heart of a Boxer” (1930). In: German songs, Bamberg anthology. August 13, 2013. (deutschelieder.wordpress.com)
  • NN: Max Schmeling - More than a boxer's heart. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. May 19, 2010. (sueddeutsche.de)
  • David Pfeifer: Max Schmeling: professional boxer, propaganda figure, entrepreneur: the story of a German idol . Verlag Campus, 2005, ISBN 3-593-37546-X , pp. 122 f., 158.
  • Hans Reimann: Sport on records. In: The Cross Section. The magazine of the current eternal values. Ullstein, Berlin 1930.
  • Daniela Schulz: When the music is playing ...: The German hit film from the 1950s to 1970s . transcript Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-8394-1882-6 .
  • Burkhard Sonnenstuhl: Celebrities in Berlin-Westend: and their stories. Berlin Edition, 2007.
  • Monika Sperr: The big hit book: German hits 1800-today. Verlag Rogner & Bernhard, 1978, ISBN 3-8077-0066-8 , pp. 105 and 166

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “Love in the Ring” was started in silence and also delivered in a silent version, but 're-toned' when the market demanded it. The sound was recorded according to the “recording method of the Lignose Audio Film System Breusing on Artiphon Record” (cf. Illustrated Film-Kurier. No. 1371, 12th year 1930, p. 2); but only individual scenes were provided with dialogues: it became a part talkie , a part-sound film .
  2. ↑ cf. IMDb , filmportal.de and Murnau Foundation
  3. ↑ reproduced in German songs
  4. ↑ real Armin Lackenbach Robinson, b. 1900, died September 12, 1985 in Bad Ischl, Austria, librettist, copywriter, music publisher. See lexm.uni-hamburg.de
  5. ↑ EG1765 (Matr. BLR 6054-1), added. in the Beethoven Hall in Berlin Jan./Febr. 1930; listen on YouTube
  6. ↑ cf. Schulz p. 83: "Schmeling 'speaks' the refrain more than singing it ..."
  7. ↑ cf. Recording on Ultraphon A 379, to be heard on YouTube
  8. ↑ cf. Victor V-6071-A ( Memento from September 8, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ) with a note recorded in Berlin (matrix transfer from HMV / Electrola)
  9. ↑ cf. Matthias Henke : Milhaud and others (2013), pp. 15–16.
  10. ↑ Kluge pp. 130, 132: “... the» Boxer Song «with an infantile text by Fritz Rotter and excellent music by Artur Guttmann sounded hollow… March 1930 in the Berlin» Terra-Lichtspiele «the audience gave lively applause. ... But the only thing that posterity still knows about the film is the song , which Schmeling performed in a kind of spoken chant. "
  11. ↑ cf. Sonnenstuhl p. 281: “In 1930 Max Schmeling made his film debut with“ Liebe im Ring ”. His song "The Heart of a Boxer", celebrated here in chant, is still well known today. "
  12. ↑ on page 37 he says: "With the same calm and awkward, and therefore all the more impressive dignity, he completed all the follies of the entertainment business to which he, thoroughly business-minded, subjected himself - irrelevant films, a record -" The heart of a boxer "-, which still has a bizarre charm due to the clumsy and yet sovereign chanting. "
  13. ↑ cf. suhl.thueringer-allgemeine.de
  14. ↑ listen on YouTube
  15. ↑ listen on YouTube
  16. ↑ No. 10 in the album " Sender Karlshorst " 2010, to be heard on YouTube
  17. ↑ cf. Thomas Kraus: A boxer's heart inspires in the Rimstingen workshop. In: Chiemgau newspaper. March 10, 2006. ( werkstatt-rimsting.de ( Memento from October 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ))
  18. ↑ ; it has been preserved in a recording with Paul Godwin and his dance orchestra and the refrain singer Leo Monosson on gramophone, which can be heard on YouTube
  19. ^ Matthias Henke: Milhaud and others - music in cross section. Broadcast in SWR 2, Monday April 1, 2013, 22.03-23.00. Manuscript at SWR2Essay pp. 15–16 (cited refrain)