Encouragement (Biermann)

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Encouragement is a poem and song by the German songwriter and lyricist Wolf Biermann . It first appeared in 1968 in a collection of poems with Marx and tongues of angels in the publisher Klaus Wagenbach , who also set to music version on the same year Single 4 new songs published. Biermann took over the song on his long-playing record aah-ja! , which was released by CBS in 1974 .

Encouragement warns a counterpart not to allow himself to be hardened and embittered despite the prevailing conditions. The last stanza ends with the optimistic picture of a coming spring. Biermann dedicated the poem to his friend Peter Huchel , who was monitored and isolated by the Ministry for State Security at the time of writing. It also reflects his own impending resignation than in the GDR with stage ban occupied artists. The song setting became popular both in the GDR and in the Federal Republic and is one of Wolf Biermann's best-known songs.

content

The first stanza begins with the verses :

"You, don't let yourself harden
in these hard times"

Anyone who is “all too hard” or “all too sharp” threatens to break.

In the following three stanzas, you are asked in the same way not to let yourself be bitter, frightened and consumed. Otherwise the intention of the “rulers” would be fulfilled, namely to give up before the big argument that they secretly trembled before.

The fourth stanza ends with the lines:

"You can't go underground.
You need us, and we need
degrees of your cheerfulness"

While the first four stanzas are regularly introduced with the anaphoric "you", the fifth and last stanza changes over to "we", which has already spoken in the end of the third and fourth stanzas and now expressly calls for it, despite " this period of silence “to be silent together no longer.

The poem ends with the verses:

"The green is breaking out of the branches.
We want to show everyone that.
Then they will know"

background

Wolf Biermann at a concert in Leipzig in 1989

Wolf Biermann dedicated the poem Encouragement to his friend Peter Huchel . Since it was founded in 1949, he was editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Sinn und Form , which enjoyed a reputation beyond the borders of the GDR as a platform for GDR literature . After his undogmatic conception repeatedly came into conflict with official GDR authorities, he was forced to resign in 1962. For the next nine years he lived under surveillance by the Ministry for State Security and, apart from visits by a few friends, he lived in isolation from the outside world in his house in Wilhelmshorst . Travel was forbidden, his mail was confiscated; Huchel was not allowed to leave the GDR until 1971. For Andreas M. Reinhard the poem was a " declaration of solidarity from the younger and probably also emotionally stronger, more able-bodied [...] for the elderly without illusions."

Even Biermann himself had in the GDR after the publication of his poetry book Die Drahtharfe in West German Wagenbach-Verlag in 1965 and the subsequent ban on appearances and publications by the 11th plenum of the Central Committee of the SED, in his words, achieved the "status of a state-recognized enemy of the state " . He emphasized to Franz Hohler that he had written the song “not only for my friend and esteemed colleague Peter Huchel”, but “also for me.” And in a later interview Biermann described: “ I wrote this red hymn as myself was in danger of hardening. In the GDR at the beginning I had not yet learned to conquer the vital serenity of suffering for myself under the hammer of being absolutely forbidden, despite everything. "

Form and setting

The poem consists of five stanzas, except for the first verse in the rhyme scheme [abaab]stand. The rhythmic structure reminds Birgit Lermen and Matthias Loewen of the early Bertolt Brecht as well as the form of a folk song , whereby the catchiness of the form forms a contrast to the topic of intellectual resignation . The simple style is partly in colloquial language , partly shortened like epigrams. A play on words leads from the first lines of the first four stanzas with the verbs “harden”, “bitter”, “scare”, “consume” to the descriptions of time in the following lines, which are formed from the same root word. The last stanza breaks the uniform structure of the first four stanzas, and the diction of the text becomes more encouraging.

Biermann's setting of encouragement alternates between four-four time and two- four time . The equivalence of the quarter notes remind Georg Friedrich Kühn of a chorale . In the performance of the first four stanzas, Lermen and Loewen hardly perceive any accents due to stretching or ironic reinforcements; the rhythm only becomes livelier in the last stanza. According to Thomas Rothschild , the key is consistently Aeolian , a church key similar to the minor , but the final chord changes to the subdominant of the parallel major key . The rhythm is urgent and seems impatient due to the inserted two-quarter time. The descending tone sequence of the melody evokes a feeling of sadness. Biermann sings the last stanza a fourth higher, which leads to a pressed voice, the metaphor of the green branches is literally shouted out. The lecture shows the discrepancy between the clichéd image and the desperate desire for its fulfillment.

interpretation

Peter Rühmkorf sums up the content in “reviewers' prose”: “Those who do not allow themselves to be bitter, hardened or consumed will eventually penetrate the circle of horrors of pressure and blackmail and become part of a new cooperative or community spirit”. He emphasizes the allusion to Pentecost , which is typical of Biermann's often religious allegories , and thus calls the poem " good news ".

Jürgen Haupt examines in particular the natural poetry in Biermann's poem, the winter metaphor of the “hard time” and the spring metaphor of the green branches with which Biermann wants to encourage wintering in the resistance. He warns against overly strong individuality, which is in danger of freezing and breaking, against subjectivism without perspective as well as against isolated resignation. The poem conjures up the “you” of friendship and the “redeeming we” of solidarity in the community. The defiantly hopeful spring metaphor should also be understood as an alternative to the natural poetry of the aforementioned Peter Huchel, which predominantly spreads a gloomy, elegiac mood.

Beate Pinkerneil sees the poem as a celebration of the “art of life and survival”. It is reminiscent of Friedrich Hölderlin and his resolution to bring "serenity to suffering". The appeal not to settle down in one's own misfortune, but to resist the creeping bitterness and hardening with a “happy confidence and serenity in the midst of the decreed peace in the cemetery”, is presented in the quiet voice of subversive art and is a “testimony to determined solidarity”.

For Birgit Lermen and Matthias Loewen, the contrast between the solidification of resignation and the beginning of change forms the subject of the poem. The ideals like freedom, truth, openness, lust and love do not come from nature, but they have to be achieved in the historical situation, when it says in the penultimate stanza: "Use your time". The poem shows on the one hand the disappointment of the socialist Biermann about the realization of his ideals in his own country, on the other hand the hope that his singing will lead people to a humane and free form of socialism.

Relation to other poems

Bertolt Brecht (1954)

Wolf Biermann himself stated that his encouragement goes back to Brecht's poem Against Seduction from Bertolt Brecht's house postil : “I would certainly not have been able to write that if it hadn't been for Master Brecht.” Biermann follows the predecessor in both the rhyme scheme and the meter . Brecht's poem begins with the verses:

“Don't let yourself be seduced!
There is no return. "

Similar to Biermann's poem, the request is repeated several times in different ways: “Don't let yourself be seduced! [...] Don't let yourself be deceived! [...] Don't let yourselves be put off! ”From Brecht's warnings to an unspecified group (“ you ”), Biermann turns directly to the other person, the“ you ”. And while Brecht's poem ends desolate and hopeless for Beate Pinkerneil, Biermann added a hopeful and confident final stanza to his variation.

In Biermann's work - both in the volume of poems and later on the long-playing record - the encouragement stands between two other poems that vary on the same theme of courage and encouragement, named Small Encouragement and Great Encouragement . The Little Encouragement is a short, rhyming song in three stanzas, beginning with the address “Oh, don't despair, friends” and ending with the image of a bush that would wither in happiness if it weren't for the downpour of suffering. In the first person , the Great Encouragement reports great tiredness, caused by hardship, cold, politics and battles. The refrain answers the questions when the suffering will finally end :

"When the new sufferings come
, they will come to an end"

According to Andreas M. Reinhard, the conclusion of the Great Encouragement , initially borne by apparent self-pity , is that this must be overcome and suffering must be endured in order to develop into a better society.

reception

According to Stefan Wolle , the song encouragement in the GDR “almost became a folk song ”, and according to some voices even the “secret national anthem of the GDR”. Wolf Biermann himself spoke of the fact that encouragement was the "most popular song in the prisons of the GDR" and was sung by the prisoners as a kind of "bread for the soul", often without knowing the author. According to Ulrich Morgenstern, encouragement is “by far the most popular song by Wolf Biermann” even in the West. It was sung by young people attending the church convention and by pacifists , also in contrast to more radical protest currents. Heinz Rölleke included Biermann's song in his collection Das Volksliederbuch in 1993 , and Marcel Reich-Ranicki in 2005 in his Canon of German Literature .

For Peter Rühmkorf , the “famous” poem “gave a term and with it a strong taste of what is so gripping, so effective, so contagiously enthralling about Biermann's consolation and defiance songs .” “One of the most beautiful consolation poems” for a friend, who really needed this encouragement, called Peter Wapnewski Biermann's poem. Peter Schneider described: “They are beautiful verses. Biermann hardly achieved such a tone later ”. Encouragement remained for Beate Pinkerneil in 1993 "a song that is current today" because it makes clear to the situation of "the oppositionists condemned to silence " how much moral and artistic strength (besides political instinct) were necessary [...] not to walk upright to unlearn. "

The song also found its way into the songs of church circles. In 1980, singing the song in confirmation classes led to a controversy in which the Schleswig-Holstein Prime Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg intervened, who protested in writing to the regional church. Although the song “does not contain any aggressive political statements”, according to Stoltenberg, Biermann “only becomes more dangerous”. In Sweden the song has meanwhile been canonized through its inclusion in the evangelical church hymn book: It found its way into a translation by Per Olov Enquist as song No. 824 in Psalmer i 2000-talet (German: "Songs of the 2000s"), a 2006 supplement to the hymn book of the Church of Sweden . Unlike other of his songs, Biermann expressly wanted encouragement to be sung in the group.

The line “You don't let yourself harden” was processed in 1976/1978 in the lyrics to the song Unter dem Pflaster by Angi Domdey and the band Schneewittchen , which in the version “You don't let yourself be softened, stay hard in your core” with regard to the Question was discussed whether it was a call to violence. This actually resulting in a feminist context Song coverte later the East German punk band Feeling B .

On November 7, 2014, Biermann performed the song in a memorial session of the Bundestag on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall , during which his statements about the party Die Linke caused a scandal.

expenditure

  • Wolf Biermann: With the tongues of Marx and Engels . Wagenbach, Berlin 1968, p. 61.
  • Wolf Biermann: 4 new songs . Wagenbach's Quartplatte 3, Berlin 1968.
  • Wolf Biermann: aah-yes! CBS 1974, No. 80118.

literature

  • Birgit Lermen, Matthias Loewen: Poetry from the GDR. Exemplary analyzes . Schöningh, Paderborn 1987, ISBN 3-506-99387-9 , pp. 354-358.
  • Beate Pinkerneil: Joy in suffering . In Marcel Reich-Ranicki (ed.): Hundred poems of the century . Insel, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-458-17012-X , pp. 415-417. Also in: Frankfurter Anthologie 16. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-458-16544-4 , pp. 205–207.
  • Andreas M. Reinhard: Explanations on Wolf Biermann. Songs of praise and hateful songs . Royal explanations and materials. Bange, Hollfeld 1977, ISBN 3-8044-0193-7 , pp. 54-58.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Wolf Biermann: Encouragement . In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (ed.): Hundred poems of the century . Insel, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-458-17012-X , pp. 413-414.
  2. ↑ Annette Kaminsky (Ed.): Places of Remembrance: Memorial signs, memorials and museums on the dictatorship in the Soviet occupation zone and GDR. 2nd edition, 2007, ISBN 978-3-86153-443-3 , p. 135.
  3. ^ Andreas M. Reinhard: Explanations on Wolf Biermann. Songs of praise and hateful songs , p. 55.
  4. ↑ I am a state-recognized enemy of the state . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1971, p. 153-161 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Franz Hohler : Questions to Others. Zytglogge, Bern 1973, ISBN 3-7296-0027-3 , p. 17.
  6. ↑ Triefende seal and banal truth . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 1981, pp. 248-249 ( online ).
  7. ↑ a b Birgit Lermen, Matthias Loewen: Lyrik aus der DDR , pp. 356–357.
  8. ↑ a b Georg Friedrich Kühn: Carriage and coachman. The music of Wolf Biermann . In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Wolf Biermann . Edition Text and Criticism, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-88377-066-3 , p. 129.
  9. ↑ Thomas Rothschild : Notes on Wolf Biermann. Like an introduction . In: Thomas Rothschild (Ed.): Wolf Biermann. Songwriter and socialist . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1976, ISBN 3-499-14017-9 , p. 14.
  10. ↑ Peter Rühmkorf : Don't let yourself be pampered ... Comments on a new Biermann record. In: Fluid Mechanics 1. Poetry. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1978, ISBN 3-499-25107-8 , pp. 101-102.
  11. ↑ Jürgen Haupt: Nature and Poetry. Relations with Nature in the 20th Century . Metzler, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-476-00530-5 , pp. 190-192.
  12. ^ Friedrich Hölderlin : Hyperion to Bellarmine LIX . ( Wikisource )
  13. ↑ Beate Pinkerneil: Joy in suffering , pp. 415-416.
  14. ↑ Birgit Lermen, Matthias Loewen: Lyrik aus der DDR , pp. 357–358.
  15. ↑ Birgit Lermen, Matthias Loewen: Lyrik aus der DDR , p. 356.
  16. ^ Bertolt Brecht: Against seduction . In: Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 11: Poems 1 . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1988, p. 116.
  17. ^ Andreas M. Reinhard: Explanations on Wolf Biermann. Songs of praise and hateful songs , pp. 55–56.
  18. ↑ Beate Pinkerneil: Joy in suffering , p. 416.
  19. ↑ Wolf Biermann: With Marx and Engels tongues . Wagenbach, Berlin 1968, pp. 62-63.
  20. ^ Andreas M. Reinhard: Explanations on Wolf Biermann. Songs of praise and hateful songs , pp. 53–54, 58–59.
  21. ↑ Stefan wool : Lancelot and the dragon. Scandal and public in the closed society of the GDR using the example of the expatriation of the songwriter Wolf Biermann. In: Martin Sabrow (ed.): Scandal and dictatorship. Forms of public outrage in the Nazi state and in the GDR . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89244-791-8 , p. 212.
  22. ↑ a b Wolf Biermann: “An unbeliever like me cannot go any higher!” . on the blog of the German Choir Association .
  23. ↑ Ulrich Morgenstern: Ritual - Epic - Dance. The German anti-nuclear movement from an ethnomusicological point of view . In: Song and popular culture. Yearbook of the German Folk Song Archive . 54th year 2009. Waxmann, Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-8309-2095-3 .
  24. ↑ Peter Rühmkorf : Don't let yourself be pampered ... Comments on a new Biermann record. In: Fluid Mechanics 1. Poetry , p. 100.
  25. ^ Peter Wapnewski : Wolf Biermann a German songwriter . In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Wolf Biermann , p. 87.
  26. ↑ When walking upright . In: Berliner Morgenpost from June 3, 2008.
  27. ↑ Beate Pinkerneil: Joy in suffering , p. 417.
  28. ^ Joachim Wittkowski: Poetry in the press . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1991, ISBN 3-88479-553-8 , p. 91.
  29. ↑ Eckhard Fuhr : When Gothenburgers hum with Biermann . In: Die Welt from April 16, 2007.
  30. ↑ Per Harling: Hoppets sånger - om psalmer i 2000-talet (German: Chants of Hope - About 'Songs of the 200s'), in: 24tretton , 5/2006; Karin V. Karlsson: Psalmer i 2000-talet. Nya psalmer i Svenska kyrkan . Göteborgs universitet 2011, p. 73. Online .
  31. ↑ Snow White and the Stones . In: Spiegel Online from December 25, 1978.
  32. ↑ Commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall: Scandal in the Bundestag - Biermann calls the left “brood of dragons” . In: Spiegel Online from November 7, 2014.