German song library

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Deutscher Liederhort is the title of a large-scale folk song collection that is considered to be the authoritative edition of German folk songs . The collection is often referred to simply as "Erk-Böhme" after its editors.

history

The teacher and royal music director Ludwig Erk was the first scholarly melody collector in Germany who had put together a private collection of around 20,000 folk songs, which he published in song books. His plan to publish a work that "should contain all the folk songs occurring in Germany" remained unfinished. In 1856, he was only able to publish a first volume of his German song library , which he called “selection” .

In 1886 the library of the Royal University of Music in Berlin bought Erk's extensive handwritten estate. The Prussian Ministry of Culture commissioned Franz Magnus Böhme with the continuation and publication of the song collection. This appeared in three volumes from 1893–94.

construction

  1. Sagas (ballads)
    1. Echoes of the legend of the gods (magic and fairy tale songs)
    2. Sagas
    3. Knight and robber tales
    4. Fabulous murder stories and imprisonment
    5. Fabulous love stories with happy endings
    6. Fabulous love stories with a tragic ending
    7. Rascal and rogue songs
    8. Rascals
    9. Animal sagas and plant fairy tales
    10. Pictures from family life
    11. Tales of the dead (spirit love and grave voices)
    12. God's judgments and infernal punishments
  2. Historical-political songs
  3. love songs
    a) Of happy love
    b) Of unhappy love
  4. Farewell and hiking songs
  5. Day songs and kilt chants
  6. Wedding and marriage songs including nuns' complaints
  7. Dance and play songs
  8. Riddle, wish and betting songs
  9. Drinking and caroling songs
  10. Members of the youth at folk festivals (Heischelieder)
  11. Tribal songs
    1. Landsknecht and horsemen songs
    2. Soldiers and war songs
    3. Hunter songs
    4. Shepherd and Alpine songs
    5. Songs for and from farmers
    6. Miner's songs
    7. All kinds of outdoor activities
    8. Craftsman songs
    9. Court songs
    10. Student songs
  12. Joke and ridicule songs
  13. Mixed content
  14. Children's songs (small selection)
  15. Holy songs
    1. Festival songs (catholic and protest.)
    2. Legends songs of the Catholics
    3. Songs of praise and thanksgiving, supplication, penance and consolation (house devotion)

Franz Magnus Böhme had expressly excluded the following areas from being accepted into the song library:

  1. courtly seals
  2. Meistersinger seals
  3. Society songs of the 16th and 17th centuries
  4. folk art songs of the 18th and 19th centuries

Reception and criticism

The three-volume work is still regarded today as an “indispensable standard and reference work for German folk song research”. The advantage over older collections such as Des Knaben Wunderhorn is that the German song library not only contains texts but also melodies. Nevertheless, the work was also criticized for various distortions and errors, some of which were the result of the self-censorship formulated by Böhme:

“Not everything that the collectors picked up from vernacular and gathered from old manuscripts and prints could find a place in a 'song library'. The existing, downright worthless, as well as a lot of ugly and dirty things had to be eliminated and only the more valuable and excellent had to be selected from the vast amount of what remained .

- Franz Magnus Böhme : Foreword to the German song library

Arthur Hübner contrasts the song library in his review Des Knaben Wunderhorn and sums up:

“The three-volume 'Deutsche Liederhort' by Ludwig Erk and Franz Magnus Böhme (1893–94), the work that the researcher must always turn to first when it comes to tracing a folk song, is more likely to satisfy such a wish. It is a work in which there is scientific ambition; It's just a pity that the editor Böhme lacked the proper scientific conscience. The last selfless loyalty to what has been handed down is also missing here [...] "

- Arthur Huebner : The songs of the homeland. 1926

Wolfgang Steinitz , who himself relied on Ludwig Erk's extensive estate for the publication of his standard work on political folk songs, criticizes the “deliberate suppression of anti-militarist folk songs”, as well as the fact that Franz Magnus Böhme's songs of political content were repeatedly only published with trivializing comments.

expenditure

  • Ludwig Erk (Hrsg.): Deutscher Liederhort: Selection of the excellent German folk songs from the past and present with their peculiar melodies. Enslin, Berlin 1856 ( full text in the Google book search).
  • Ludwig Erk, Franz Magnus Böhme (Hrsg.): Deutscher Liederhort. 3 volumes. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1893–94 (reprint: Olms, Hildesheim 1963).

Web links

Commons : Deutscher Liederhort (Erk, edition 1856)  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Deutscher Liederhort (Erk, edition 1856)  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ludwig Erk, Franz Magnus Böhme (Ed.): Deutscher Liederhort. Volume 1. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1893, p. IV.
  2. ^ Brigitte Emmrich: Böhme, Franz Magnus Theodor . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
  3. ↑ Erich Seemann : A prime example of the inaccuracies Boehmes in his German song library. In: Yearbook for Folk Song Research. 1st year (1928), pp. 183-185, JSTOR 847539 .
  4. ↑ Ludwig Erk, Franz Magnus Böhme (Ed.): Deutscher Liederhort. Volume 1. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1893, SV
  5. ↑ Arthur Huebner: The songs of the home. ( Der Heimatforscher , Volume 4) F. Hirt, Breslau 1926, p. 15 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Steinitz: German folk songs of a democratic character from six centuries. Tape. 1, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1954, p. XXXIII.
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Steinitz: German folk songs of a democratic character from six centuries. Tape. 1, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1954, p. XXXIV f.