Göttingen (song)
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Göttingen is a chanson by the French singer Barbara (1930–1997), which she composed in 1964 during her concert visit in Göttingen and recorded in a French and German version. It is considered to be one of her best-known and most important works and an essential contribution to international understanding and reconciliation between France and Germany after the end of the Second World War .
history
Hans-Gunther Klein , the director of the Göttingen Young Theater at the time , had seen the famous French chansonnière Barbara at a concert in early 1964 and then invited her to a guest performance in Göttingen. Due to her life story and her own escape from the Nazis , she initially declined the invitation, but reluctantly agreed the following day. She requested that a grand piano be made available to her for the performance. When she arrived at the theater on July 4, 1964, there was a pianino on the stage . Barbara was extremely upset and categorically refused to give the concert. It seemed impossible to meet their demand, although Hans-Gunther Klein tried everything. Finally they managed to get a grand piano, which an old lady had provided and which ten students carried through the city. Despite the initial resentment of the artist and the almost two hours delay until the beginning of the concert, Barbara was enthusiastically celebrated by the audience, which impressed her very much.
Due to the great success of her first appearance and the unexpectedly warm atmosphere in the city, she extended her engagement by a week. On the afternoon before her last concert, she summarized the impressions she had gathered over the past few days and which were unexpectedly positive for her in the rough version of the Göttingen chanson , which she wrote in the garden of the Junge Theater, and carried it (initially not fully formulated and with a different melody) the same evening. The success of the chanson was sudden and overwhelming. She then returned to Paris, where she completed work on text and composition.
In her unfinished autobiography Il était un piano noir: Mémoires interrompus , Barbara wrote about the genesis of Göttingen :
- In Göttingen ever découvre la maison des frères Grimm où furent écrits les contes bien connus de notre enfance. C'est dans le petit jardin contigu au théâtre que j'ai gribouillé 'Göttingen', le dernier midi de mon séjour. Le dernier soir, tout en m'excusant, j'en ai lu et chanté les paroles sur une musique inachevée. J'ai terminé cette chanson à Paris. Je dois donc cette chanson à l'insistance têtue de Gunther Klein, à dix étudiants, à une vieille dame compatissante, à la blondeur des petits enfants de Göttingen, à un profond désir de réconciliation, mais non d'oubli.
“In Göttingen I discover the house of the Brothers Grimm , in which the fairy tales we know from childhood were created. On the last lunchtime of my stay, I scribbled down 'Göttingen' in the small garden that bordered the theater. On the last evening I read and sang the text to an unfinished melody, for which I apologized. I finished this chanson in Paris. I owe this chanson to the persistence of Gunther Klein, ten students, a compassionate old lady, the little blond children of Göttingen, a deep desire for reconciliation, but not for forgetting. "
Due to the great success Barbara recorded an LP of her most famous chansons in German soon after her performance in Göttingen ("Barbara singt Barbara",) including Göttingen . In 1967 she returned to Göttingen to perform. This time she performed in the sold-out town hall . The concert was broadcast live by France Inter . For the first time she sang Göttingen in the previously unknown German translation by Walter Brandin . The audience applauded her for several minutes. After that, Göttingen was part of the repertoire of each of their concerts.
Reception and meaning
The chanson is very well known in France and made an important contribution to Franco-German understanding in the mid-1960s . It also helped make the city and university of Göttingen known in France.
In 2002, Xavier Darcos , then State Secretary in the French Ministry of Education , had Göttingen included in the official school program of pre-primary and primary schools. In 2003, on the 40th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty , the then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder quoted from the chanson in his address during the joint session of the German Bundestag and the French Assemblée Nationale in Palace of Versailles . Schröder himself studied in Göttingen from 1966 to 1971.
The German songwriter Franz Josef Degenhardt tried his hand at a kind of answer to Barbara's chanson on his 1983 album “Lullaby Between the Wars”. In the piece, also entitled Göttingen , it says “And here Barbara sang of blond boys and also of roses and of the melancholy that the loser children have about them…”. Degenhardt contrasted the description of Göttingen , which he found to be too idyllic, with his own considerations, which - unlike Barbara - also took up the political conditions in the city. Beyond that, Barbara's chanson has hardly been appreciated in the German-speaking world.
Also in the Chanson D'Allemagne by the French singer Patricia Kaas there is an allusion to Barbara's chanson with the words Reparlez-moi des roses de Göttingen (“Tell / tell me again about the roses in Göttingen.”).
On April 24, 1988, Barbara was awarded the Medal of Honor of the City of Göttingen for her services to international understanding between French and Germans . On the former building of the Junge Theater at Geismarlandstraße 19 there has been a Göttingen memorial plaque since November 22, 2002 , and on the same day a street in the Göttingen district of Geismar was named after her.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ It's absolutely wonderful in Göttingen on fr.de.
- ↑ Base de données musicale: Barbara on radioswissclassic.ch (French)
- ^ Elisabeth von Thadden : À Göttingen, à Göttingen . In: Die Zeit , November 16, 2017, p. 61.
- ↑ Description of the stay in Göttingen (in French)
- ↑ At the end of 2017, Barbara's unfinished autobiography There was once a black piano ... Unfinished Memoirs. in German translation, edited by Andrea Knigge Translated from French by Annette Casasus, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-3076-4 .
- ↑ Information on "Barbara singt Barbara" (in French)
- ↑ Speech by Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on January 22, 2003 in Versailles ( Memento of the original of December 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Text excerpt from D'Allemagne (in French)
- ↑ Recipient of the Medal of Honor of the City of Göttingen
- ↑ Göttingen City Archives: Memorial plaques for people
