Brothers to the sun, to freedom
Brothers, to the sun, to freedom is the title of the German adaptation of the Russian workers' song Смело, товарищи, в ногу! ( Smelo, towarishchi, w nogu ; “Brave, comrades, in lockstep ”) , which was composed in 1895/96 by Leonid Petrovich Radin in Moscow's Taganka prison .
history
Radin used the student song " Медленно движется время " ( Medljenno dwishetsja wremja ; "Time moves slowly") , to which Ivan Savvich Nikitin wrote the text in September 1857, published in 1858 under the title Песня ("Song"), as a musical template the Russian magazine Русская беседа ("Russian Conversation"). Radin also changed the rhythm of the previous slow waltz melody into a brisk and combative march .
The song was first sung in 1898 by political prisoners on the march into Siberian exile . The song quickly became known because of its rousing nature, but also because of the origin of its melody: in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the October Revolution of 1917 it became the anthem in Russia. Radin himself never experienced either; he died in 1900 at the age of only 39.
The German conductor Hermann Scherchen , leader of a workers' choir, got to know the song in 1917 during the First World War in Russian captivity and created a German version in 1918. In Germany, Brothers to the Sun, to Freedom was sung in public for the first time on September 21, 1920 in Berlin by the “Schubert Choir”. While Radin composed seven stanzas, Scheren's German version only comprised three. During the Weimar Republic , a 4th and a 5th stanza were written by unknown authors.
In 1921 the song even appeared in a religious hymn book. The Sonnenlieder edited by Eberhard Arnold , which is still the hymn book of the pacifist Anabaptist Bruderhof community , has it under song number 63. The last line of the third stanza, however, was changed by Erich Mohr (1895–1960). With Hermann Scherchen , the German translator of the workers' song, the final stanza is brothers, put your hands in one, / brothers, dying laughs! / Eternal, the end of slavery / holy the last battle! |; in the last verse of the sun songs it says / holy power of love! |
The National Socialists used the popular song on the one hand with a specially adapted fourth verse, on the other hand they changed it into Brothers in Zechen und Gruben , one of the best-known propaganda songs of the NSDAP in the Third Reich , and also in 1927 in Brothers Formed Columns , a battle song of the SA . In the propaganda song People to the Rifle , the first line [...] is a sign of freedom to the sun, also alluding to this song.
Brothers, to the sun, to freedom developed over the decades to become the most sung song in the labor movement after the Second World War . In addition to when we stride, it applies as the party anthem of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and is sung at the end of the SPD party congresses , but also had its place at the party meetings of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).
On June 17, 1953 , the song was sung in numerous places in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) at the demonstrations. It was initiated several times during the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig in 1989 .
There are other translations into numerous European languages (e.g. Danish, Norwegian, Croatian, Estonian).
melody
The musicologist Norbert Linke believes that previous historical research has misunderstood that this first half of the melody with a typical Lydian fourth had already occurred in the history of the song: According to his research, it is hidden in the middle section on the words “The old bad enemy, with Ernst he thinks it now “in the evangelical Trutzlied A solid castle is our God to be found by Martin Luther and is the basis for the head motif.
Trivia
An ironization of the title can be found in the band Fischmob in the title of the track Susanne zur Freiheit .
literature
- Eckhard John: Brothers to the sun, to freedom. The unheard-of story of a revolutionary song. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-96289-016-2 .
Web links
- German lyrics with notes on lieder-archiv.de
- Text of the original Russian song with a recording of the same (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Markus Baum: Eberhard Arnold. A life in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. Schwarzenfeld 2013, p. 155.
- ↑ For Erich Mohr see International Archives of the Service Civil International (SCI): Erich Mohr ; accessed on May 29, 2015.
- ↑ Song archive: Brothers, for suns, for freedom ; accessed on May 29, 2015.
- ↑ See Sun Songs , 63; see there also p. 207 (commentary on song 63).
- ↑ Songs of the Hitler Youth . In: Democratic sheets 5/78 . 1935 ( Break the yoke of the tyrants who tormented us so cruelly! Waving the swastika flag over the workers' state ).
- ↑ Norbert Linke : On the difficulty and necessity of securing melodic proof of origin. In: Deutsche Johann Strauss Gesellschaft (Ed.): Neues Leben , Issue 53 (2016 / No. 3), ISSN 1438-065X , pp. 54–59.