The bog soldiers

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Song sheet by Hanns Kralik, prisoner in the Börgermoor concentration camp 1933–1934

The Moorsoldaten , also known as Moorsoldatenlied , Börgermoorlied or Moorlied for short, is a song that was created in 1933 by prisoners of the Börgermoor concentration camp near Papenburg in Emsland . Mainly political opponents of the Nazi regime were held prisonerin this camp. They had tocultivatethe moor therewith simple tools like the spade .

history

Emergence

The songwriters were the miner Johann Esser and the actor and director Wolfgang Langhoff , the music was provided by the commercial clerk Rudi Goguel . The song was performed on August 27, 1933 at an event called the Konzentrazani Circus by 16 prisoners, mostly former members of the Solingen Workers' Choir.

Rudi Goguel later recalled:

“The sixteen singers, mostly members of the Solingen Workers' Choral Society, marched into the arena in their green police uniforms (our prisoner clothing at the time) with spades on my shoulders, myself at the head in a blue training suit with a broken spade handle as a baton. We sang, and as early as the second stanza the almost 1,000 prisoners began to hum the chorus. […]
The chorus rose from verse to verse, and in the last verse the SS men who had appeared with their commanders sang along with us, apparently because they felt they were being addressed as 'moor soldiers'. […]
At the words '… Then the moor soldiers won't go into the moor with their spades any more', the sixteen singers pushed the spades into the sand and marched out of the arena, leaving the spades, which now, stuck in the moor soil, acted as grave crosses . "

Two days after the first performance, the camp administration banned the song. Even so, it was the camp guards who repeatedly requested that the prisoners sing the song on their marches to work.

distribution

The song became known beyond Börgermoor through released prisoners or those who were transferred to other camps. The composer Hanns Eisler got to know it in London in 1935 . He revised the melody for the singer Ernst Busch . During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), he joined the Brigadas Internacionales , the International Brigades , which defended the Spanish Republic against the putschist Franco. This made the song more internationally known. But the original beginning of Rudi Goguel's melody with three identical notes doesn't sound as confident as Eisler's version. With three identical notes, Goguel had captured the hopeless mood out of which the song arose better than the melody that Eisler had modified.

Today there are at least 500 versions of the song in several languages ​​worldwide; in English it is known as The Peat Bog Soldiers , French as Chant des Marais , Spanish as Los soldados del pantano . The best-known interpreters include Ernst Busch , Peter Rohland , Hein and Oss Kröher , Paul Robeson , Pete Seeger , Perry Friedman , The Dubliners and Hannes Wader . More recent arrangements come from the Cologne Saxophone Mafia , Welle: Erdball , Liederjan , Die Toten Hosen , Die Schnitter , Michael von der Heide and Helium Vola .

The Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager in Papenburg published a double CD Das Lied der Moorsoldaten in 2002 , on which more than 30 different versions of the song and verbal contributions, etc. a. by Rudi Goguel, are included. On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the song, a second edition was published on August 27, 2008.

In the DIZ in Papenburg and since its move to Esterwegen in autumn 2011 in the Esterwegen memorial , the story of the Moorsoldaten , as the political prisoners of the early Börgermoor, Esterwegen and Neusustrum concentration camps called themselves, and that of the other prisoners of the Emsland camps from 1933 to 1945 u. a. documented in exhibitions.

See also

literature

  • Fietje Ausländer: 75 years of the “Song of the Moor Soldiers”: A journey through its history. In: DIZ news. Action committee for a documentation and information center Emslandlager e. V., Papenburg 2008, No. 28, pp. 6-9.
  • Who sang the song first? Search for traces of the "moor soldiers" from Solingen. Questions from Fietje Ausländer to Hans Joachim Schneider. In: DIZ news. Action committee for a documentation and information center Emslandlager e. V., Papenburg 2008, No. 28, pp. 10-13. (Note: composer: Rudi Goguel, imprisoned in Börgermoor concentration camp in 1933)
  • Hanns Eisler : Report on the creation of a workers' song . In: Hanns Eisler: Writings and documents. Text-critical edition by Günter Mayer . Volume 1: Music and Politics. Writings 1924–1948 . Rogner & Bernhard, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-8077-0014-5 , pp. 274-280 ( Passagen series ).
  • Wilhelm Henze: "Treason out!" Stories, poems and drawings by a moor soldier. Published by Habbo Knoch. Ed. Temmen, Bremen 1992 (= DIZ-Schriften, Volume 5).
  • Wolfgang Langhoff : The moor soldiers. 13 months concentration camp. Non-political factual report. Schweizer Spiegel Verlag, Zurich 1935 (7th edition, licensed edition: Verlag Neuer Weg, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-88021-226-0 ).
  • Eugen Kogon : The SS state . Heyne, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-453-00671-2 .
  • Tassilo Rinecker: "But home is what makes sense!" . In: Dreaming of Freedom. Songs of the persecuted . Edited by Jonas Höltig and Tassilo Rinecker, Norderstedt / Münster 2018, ISBN 978-3-7528-5913-3 , p. 18 ff.

Recordings / sound carriers

  • The song of the moor soldiers: "1933 to 2000"; Edits, uses, aftermath. [ed. from the Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager (Papenburg), in cooperation with the Stiftung Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Frankfurt am Main - Potsdam-Babelsberg. Texts: Fietje Ausländer, Susanne Brandt, Guido Fackler ]. - Papenburg: Documentation and Information Center Emslandlager, 2nd edition 2008. - 2 CDs, ISBN 978-3-926277-17-6 .
  • “Do I know what a person is?” Songs against oblivion. DIZ Emslandlager, Papenburg 1997. 2 CDs, ISBN 3-926277-04-1 .
  • The bog soldiers . EP -CD with four songs. HOFA GmbH, Karlsdorf-Neuthard 2015.

Web links

Commons : Die Moorsoldaten  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Langhoff : The Moorsoldaten. 13 months concentration camp. Non-political factual report. 5th edition. Verlag Neuer Weg, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-88021-093-4 , p. 194 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  2. ↑ Historical songs from eight centuries . Published jointly by the State Centers for Civic Education Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. Editing: Wolfgang Hubrich, Helga Kutz-Brauer, Rüdiger Wenzel. Hamburg 1989, p. 108.
  3. ↑ Regina Kusch: 85 years ago: Concentration camp prisoners set an example with the song “Die Moorsoldaten”. In: Deutschlandfunk . August 27, 2018. Retrieved August 27, 2018 .
  4. ^ Concentration Camp Songs: The Soldiers of the Moor (Die Moorsoldaten). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , accessed August 27, 2018 .
  5. ↑ New CD from home regions: Die Moorsoldaten . CelleHeute.de, December 6, 2015.