Towards the dawn
Towards the dawn is a battle song from the labor movement . The text was written in 1907 by the Bremen teacher and social democrat Heinrich Eildermann under the title Lied der Jugend . The song was first published in 1910 in the magazine “ Arbeiter-Jugend ”, where Eildermann used the pseudonym Heinrich Arnulf. The melody was taken from the Andreas Hofer song , which has been the official Tyrolean national anthem since 1948 .
The text of the refrain We are the young guard of the proletariat anchored the term Young Guard in the socialist and communist workers' youth movement and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in the GDR . It was Erich Honecker's favorite song .
This song hit the headlines in Tyrol in 2004 because the law for the protection of the national anthem forbade singing the text of the Andreas Hofer song after a different melody and a different text for its melody. After a complaint by the governor of the Tyrolean rifle club against the organizers of a party of the SPÖ , at which the song was sung, this legislative passage was amended in 2004 by the Tyrolean state parliament. In doing so, the constitutional concerns were taken into account, which saw in the previous regulation a violation of the freedom of art and the objectivity requirement derived from the principle of equality. After the change in the law, changes to the national anthem that are disparaging or distorted are prohibited, but not the singing of other lyrics to its melody.