High night of the clear stars

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High Night of the Clear Stars is one of the most famous German Christmas carols from the time of National Socialism .

Hans Baumann (1914–1988) wrote it at the age of 22, and the song, first published in 1936, quickly spread; it was included in the guidelines for Christmas celebrations of the Hitler Youth , the NS teacher association , the SA and the SS . In 1938 it gave the title to a Christmas carol book by the Reich Youth Leadership , in which Baumann was included as a speaker in 1933 at the age of 19 because of his Nazi battle song The rotten bones tremble . The song, which was easy to sing, offered, in contrast to songs with clearly National Socialist and Christian connotations, broad opportunities for identification and was repeatedly reproduced in songbook collections and settings after 1945.

Content and structure

In the song concepts is on all Christian and Christmas waived, are instead turning away from this, the in Nazism forced myths of the night (first stanza), the winter solstice fire (2nd verse), and (according to the National Socialist mothers cult ) mothers (third verse ) is the focus.

The adjectives used such as "high, clear, wide, deep, large" have positive connotations and emphasize unlimited breadth and size. The nouns reflect nature (night, stars, fire, mountains, earth) and the origin of life (hearts, mothers, child, fire, earth). The picking up of favored elements and the imagery of National Socialism such as nature mysticism and the cult of the mother is clear. The expectant mood generated can be understood as a parallel to the renewal of the German Empire.

In contrast to the primitive rewriting or parodies of Christian songs in the sense of a neo-pagan mythology, which was initially propagated, the song offered Christians and secular, but not anti-Christian oriented broad layers opportunities for connection and identification. It contains many echoes and images from pre- Romantic Christmas carols and offers the "appearance of the familiar". Also because of its well-known tonal pattern and a simple rhythmic structure that only uses half and quarter notes without pauses or dots , Hohe Nacht was the most popular of the sanctioned songs for “People's Christmas”.

History and impact

The song was first published in 1936 in Baumann's collection of songs We ignite the fire as part of the choral work The Mothers . Just two years after it was first printed, a collection of Christmas carols published by the Reich Youth Leadership appeared, which was even titled High Night of the Clear Stars. A Christmas and lullaby book carried. It contained the song in a sentence by Georg Blumensaat. Baumann's collection of songs Horch auf Kamerad , published by Voggenreiter-Verlag, is cited as the source . A piano setting by Paul Winter was published by Voggenreiter-Verlag in 1941.

Sung on the home evenings of the Hitler Youth and the BDM , it quickly gained great popularity. The magazine Reichsrundfunk (No. 19, 1942/43) called it the "most beautiful Christmas carol of our time" . All relevant song books and important Christmas publications after 1936, such as the guidelines for Christmas celebrations of the Hitler Youth, the NS teacher association , the SA and the SS contained the song. Due to its spread and popularity, it was considered a “true folk song” after just four years.

Even after the end of National Socialism in 1945, the reception of the song continued: It was printed in various song books in the Federal Republic of Germany, for example in a song book of the German Trade Union Federation (1948), in the collection Our happy companions (1956), the song book of the DRK from 1958 or (with critical commentary) in Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann's book of Christmas carols (1982). The youth choir Vera Schink (1963), the Berlin Mozart Choir (1977) and the Minden Children's Choir (1995) released the song on sound carriers. A version by Franzl Lang presented the picture on Sunday 1982 on the LP German Christmas . Also Heino published recordings of the song (1969, 2013), as is the Schlagerduo Renate and Werner Leismann (2007).

According to Michael Fischer , the song is currently distributed and received either out of ignorance (since it does not contain any passages in the text that are recognizable as National Socialist at first glance) or deliberately primarily in right-wing conservative circles. Various right-wing rock bands also released the song on recordings, for example Projekt Aaskereia ( V7-Versand / Wotan Records, 2007) and the Ukrainian band Kriegshetzer ( Darker Than Black Records , 2011). The widespread assessment that it was also used and popular in the German Democratic Republic , such as a kindergarten song, cannot be verified from song books. However, following Fred K. Prieberg, Thomas Schinköth referred to the formative power for substitute Christmas carols in the GDR such as Thousand Stars Are a Cathedral , which operate with very similar textual and musical clichés : “Set pieces, textual and musical pre-fabricated parts were sent 'which were modeled on the tone of the well-known Christian Christmas carols. They awakened the appearance of the familiar. "

literature

  • Esther Gajek : "High Night of the Clear Stars" and other "Silent Night" of the National Socialists. In: Richard Faber (Ed.): Secularization and Resacralization. On the history of the hymn and its reception. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2001, ISBN 3-8260-2033-2 , pp. 145–164 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Hans Baumann: We light the fire. Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Jena 1936.
  • High night of the clear stars. A Christmas and lullaby book. Compiled by Katrin Engelmann. Edited by the Reich Youth Leadership, Wolfenbüttel / Berlin 1938.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Michael Fischer: High Night of the Clear Stars (2007). In: Popular and Traditional Songs. Historical-critical song lexicon of the German Folk Song Archive
  2. ^ A b Esther Gajek : "High Night of the Clear Stars" and other "Silent Night" of the National Socialists . In: Richard Faber (Ed.): Secularization and Resacralization. On the history of the hymn and its reception . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2001, ISBN 3-8260-2033-2 , pp. 145–164, here pp. 148–149.
  3. ^ Günter Hartung: National Socialist Fighting Songs. In: ders .: German fascist literature and aesthetics: collected studies . Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-934565-92-1 , p. 214 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  4. ↑ High Night of the Clear Stars. A Christmas and lullaby book. Published by the Reich Youth Leadership, Georg Kallmeyer Verlag, Wolfenbüttel and Berlin 1938.
  5. ↑ Hohe Nacht - Four Christmas carols by Hans Baumann in movements for voice and piano by Franz Biebl and Paul Winter. Voggenreiter Verlag, Potsdam 1941.
  6. ^ Esther Gajek : "High Night of the Clear Stars" and other "Silent Night" of the National Socialists . In: Richard Faber (Ed.): Secularization and Resacralization. On the history of the hymn and its reception . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2001, ISBN 3-8260-2033-2 , pp. 145–164, here pp. 150 a. Note p. 160 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Mantl: Specific Participation. The spiritual song in popular church modernity . In: Dieter A. Binder, Klaus Lüdicke, Hans Paarhammer (ed.): Church in a secularized society . Studien Verlag, Innsbruck / Vienna / Bozen 2006, ISBN 3-7065-4300-1 , p. 491–500, here p. 497 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  8. ^ Thomas Schinköth: Leipzig, the city of music in the Nazi state. Verlag Klaus-Jürgen Kamprad, Leipzig 1997, ISBN 3-930550-04-0 , p. 146; Fred K. Prieberg: Music in a different Germany. Verlag für Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1968, p. 205: "But a text sample reveals another more fatal relationship ..."