Freedom i mean

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“Freedom, which I mean!” Greeting postcard for graduation in 1910
First print with the melody by Karl August Groos (1825). Since the melody has eight lines, the 15 original stanzas are combined in pairs and the first is repeated at the beginning of the last song stanza.

Freedom I mean is a political poem by Max von Schenkendorf (1783–1817). With the popular melody by Karl August Groos , it was until recently one of the most famous German folk songs .

history

Schenkendorf wrote the poem in 1813 (first printed in 1815) in the light of the Wars of Liberation , which seemed to have already been won in 1813 after the Battle of Leipzig . The simple and at the same time catchy melody ? / I wrote to Karl August Groos well in 1818 (first edition 1825). Audio file / audio sample

While in the restoration era of the Biedermeier period the song was understood primarily in an idealistic way - “held and intimate” was the statement given when the melody was first printed in 1825 - it was nationalized in the later 19th and 20th centuries and became the “fatherland -, hero, war and victory songs ”assigned.

Freedom, which I mean , has long been part of the German educational canon . In the Zentralblatt of the Prussian government of 1912, for example, the song was recommended for school lessons in Prussia for the seventh and eighth grade.

A Christian counterfacture to the original text of the poem comes from the pedagogue Christian Heinrich Zeller (1779–1860). From 1892 onwards it was distributed millions of times in the "Reichs-Lieder" song collection of the Protestant community movement .

In 1891 Max Kegel published a modified version of the song in his “ Social Democratic Song Book”, without the fourth and sixth stanzas. He replaced religious formulations in the remaining stanzas.

Shortly before and during the time of National Socialism , "Freedom that I mean" was included as so-called "German songs" in publications of the NSDAP , for example in the "National Socialist Folk Song Book" in 1932 and in the " SA Song Book" in 1933 .

The beginning of the poem has recently been picked up in advertising, journalism and music hits, around 1977 as the song title by pop singer Juliane Werding and again in 1996 by Peter Maffay . The music group Münchener Freiheit released an album of the same name in 2000. The car manufacturer Renault advertised with the title line in 1986 . The amended slogan "free for ince I mean" campaigned in 1995 for outerwear. The title of the book "Freedom I mean" was used by the Austrian right-wing populist Jörg Haider in 1993 and in 2007 - in commemoration of the liberation from National Socialism  - for a book by the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament . In 2017, at the request of Federal President Joachim Gauck , the melody was played in a big tattoo to mark his farewell.

text

Freedom.

1. Freedom that I mean, that
fills my heart,
come with your
shine , sweet angel picture.

2. Don't you like to show yourself to the
distressed world?
Do your dance
only in the starry canopy ?

3. Even with green trees
In the luscious forest,
among blooming dreams,
is your stay.

4. Oh! this is a life
When it blows and sounds,
When your quiet weaving
blissfully permeates us.

5. When the leaves rustle
Sweet greetings from friends,
When we exchange looks,
words of love and kisses.



6. But
the heart continues to take its course,
On the ladder to heaven,
longing rises.

7.
My shepherd child comes out of the quiet circles ,
Will show the world
what it thinks and thinks.

8. If a garden blooms for him,
a field ripens for him,
Even in that hard
stone-built world.

9. Where God's flame is sunk
In a heart
That
hangs faithfully and lovingly on the old trunk ;

10. Where there are men who boldly join together
for honor and justice
, there
dwells a free generation.



11. Behind dark walls
behind a gate
can the heart still swell
to the light.

12. For the church halls,
For the fathers' tomb,
For the loved ones fall,
When freedom calls.

13. That is real glow.
Fresh and rose-red:
Hero's cheeks blossom more
beautifully in death.

14. You want to draw
God's love and lust on us .
Would you like to lower yourself
into the German breast.

15. Freedom, gracious being,
believing, bold and tender, you have
long chosen
the German way.

literature

  • Max von Schenkendorf: Poems . Stuttgart and Tübingen: JG Cotta 1815, pp. 72-75. DVA: L 2/10110

Web links

Commons : Freedom I mean  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Freedom, which I mean in the song dictionary
  2. ↑ Central sheet for the entire teaching administration in Prussia - 1912 ( online at the library for research on the history of education )
  3. ^ Max Kegel : Social Democratic Songbook . JHW Dietz, 1891. (8th edition 1897. online in Bielefeld University Library)
  4. ↑ Franz Steiner Verlag on the book "Freedom I Mine" , 2007