Germany. A winter fairy tale (Biermann)
Germany. A winter fairy tale is a text written by Wolf Biermann and published in 1972 by the Klaus Wagenbach publishing house in Berlin in the FRG . The title was named after Heinrich Heine's work Germany. A winter fairy tale chosen. In 16 chapters and 6 songs, Wolf Biermann deals with his homeland, the GDR, and his hometown Hamburg.
Emergence
After the attempt by the socialists to implement their policy in West Germany after 1945 had failed and was suppressed by reconstruction and the economic miracle, the sixteen-year-old Biermann decided in 1953 to move to the GDR. In December 1964 Biermann undertook his first guest tour in West Germany. The Socialist German Student Union invited him to various cities in the Federal Republic for ten days. This trip to the west is the basis and motivation for his winter fairy tale that emerged in the years that followed . The first chapter of this was published in 1965 - without Biermann's real consent - by cabaret artist Wolfgang Neuss , the complete work in 1972 by Klaus Wagenbach. Only in 1979, after Biermann's expatriation from the GDR, did Germany become. A winter fairy tale performed for the first time in Hamburg.
Content and structure
The first seven chapters deal with the journey from East Berlin to Hamburg and contain political considerations and fictitious reflections.
Hamburg is constantly present in chapters 8 to 16, especially in the last chapter the solidarity with the Hamburg proletariat is emphasized. A special unit in these chapters is the fictitious discussion with Teddy Thälmann in chapters 14 and 15.
The programmatic conclusion takes place with the singing for my comrades.
Parallelism with Heinrich Heine
Already in the first chapter Heinrich Heine is mentioned - apparently in passing -: "I also thought briefly about my cousin / the cheeky Heinrich Heine". On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that this reference contains more than just a spontaneous idea. For there are numerous parallels between the biographical events and political positions of both poets.
Analogous to Biermann, Heine also emigrated from Germany in order to take part in a political development: after he emigrated to France in 1831, he supported the development that had developed since the July Revolution of 1830. He saw the French Revolution as not yet realized and wanted to implement his own ideas: instead of democracy and “proletarian equality frenzy”, he wanted a responsible, authoritarian hierarchical order with scientists and artists at the top. This should lead to a republic of art, freedom of spirit and the satisfaction of material needs. Just like Biermann, Heine was also taken with communism (even before his friendship with Karl Marx ). He incorporated this poetically at the following point, for example:
“We want to be happy on earth, / And don't want to starve any more; / The lazy belly should not feast, / What hard-working hands acquired. / There is enough bread growing here / For all human beings, / Also roses and myrtles, beauty and lust, / And sugar peas no less. / Yes, sweet peas for everyone / As soon as the pods burst! "
Heine not only emigrated like Biermann, he also visited his homeland again after a few years of absence. Analogous to Biermann's winter fairy tale , Heine's verse was also created during this trip. In 1843 (and thus “a good hundred years” before Biermann) he traveled back from liberal France to reactionary and restorative Germany. At that time, Germany was a widely divided country that was only loosely held together by the Zollverein of 1834, but otherwise showed no unified activities. Heine hoped for an unification of Germany, but realized that the necessary spiritual unity was missing:
“He [Zollverein] gives us the external unity, / the so-called material; / The spiritual unity gives us the censorship, / The truly ideal - "
In this section, Heine ironically lists the suppression of the freedom of the press after the Karlsbad resolutions of 1819 as a common feature. The censorship also represents another parallel between Heine and Biermann: Both lived in a Germany in which the state could restrict freedom of the press and also used this to ban the works of both artists.
The two works thus represent a complex and ambivalent examination of the respective fatherland.
The fact that Biermann was based on Heine's winter fairy tale is particularly evident in the formal design. Biermann took over the form of the travelogue - broken through by new structural elements such as songs . Biermann's entire work also consists of the typical “Heinestrophen” ( quatrains reminiscent of folk song stanzas). The meter varies, as Heine, irregularly between iambic and Dactyl , but the verses begin almost all with an iambic opener . The 1st and 3rd verse contain 4 lifts each, the 2nd and 4th 3 lifts each . The rhyme scheme was also adopted by Biermann: it always rhymes from the 2nd to the 4th verse (e.g. to & sense; comrades & shot; minefield & bells;).
But the most obvious correspondence between the two works is the title, which was taken over exactly. In both cases, the same motif should be illustrated: hibernation as a potential source of energy for the new, as an awakening to revolution is possible at any time. On the one hand, it contains the dreamy Germany that has fallen into hibernation, which Biermann shows directly in verse 1 (of the 1st chapter) with the "German December", i.e. a calm, sleeping state of Germany. On the other hand, it also includes Germany that is ready to wake up.
For the original origin of the title and motif, one has to go back even further: Heine reduced the Shakespeare comedy The Winter's Tale to its rational core. In the comedy, Hermione collapses due to the unfounded jealousy of her husband, but freezes into a statue in which she continues to live until she awakes from her apparent death / sleep again through Leontes' (her husband) renewed love.
The stagnation of the revolution, which both Heine and Biermann criticize in the course of their travelogues, represents the figure of the frozen Hermione. Heine's love-hate relationship with Germany can be found in Leontes' love-hate relationship with Hermione.
Text output
- Wolf Biermann: Germany. A winterstory. Klaus Wagenbach Publishing House, Berlin 1972.
Secondary literature
- DP Meier-Lenz: Heinrich Heine - Wolf Biermann. Germany. TWO winter fairy tales - a comparison of works. Bouvier, Bonn 1985.
- M. Watson: Wolf Biermann: Germany. A winterstory. 2000
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Meier-Lenz, DP: Heinrich Heine, Wolf Biermann: Germany, two winter fairy tales: a comparison of works . Bouvier, 1985, OCLC 902915415 .
- ^ A b c Wolf Biermann: Germany. A winterstory. Klaus Wagenbach Publishing House, Berlin 1972.
- ^ Heinrich Heine (poet) | CV, biography, works. Accessed March 31, 2019 .