Death in Flanders

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The death in Flanders (including Flanders in need , Flandrischer Totentanz , or death reit't on a coal-black sable ) is an early 20th century Resulting Song of Ascents .

History of origin

Elsa Laura von Wolzüge with her lute, around 1923

The song first appeared in 1916 as Vlaamse dodendans with a Dutch text by L. van de Lende. The melody goes back to a " Rhenish death" or "nun's dance song" from the 15th century.

The origin of the German-language variant cannot be easily identified. It is attributed to Elsa Laura von Wolhaben , who collected older and younger songs from Germany and other European countries before and during the First World War and who first published the song in 1917 in the seventh volume of her Lieder zur Lute . This series was published by Friedrich Hofmeister in Leipzig , the publisher of the Zupfgeigenhansl , which meant that the song quickly spread to the youth movement , the Wandervogel .

shape

The form is simple: quatrains with rhymes and refrains . The text refers to the Horsemen of the Apocalypse , as described in the Book of Revelation. In his pictures - the Landsknecht , the girl , death as a dancer and rider - he recalls the medieval dances of death . Individual phrases have features like folk songs . For Paul Celan , who held the song in great esteem, in 1945 the recurring verse “must have died” had that tragic fatalism from which the Shoah could be understood.

Reception after the First World War

After the First World War , the song, like many others from the Wandervogel movement, was adopted by various youth movements such as the Bundische Jugend . It became almost as popular in Germany as In Flanders Fields in England.

During National Socialism it was used as a battle song; it found its way into the song books of the Hitler Youth and the SS .

literature

  • Walter Moßmann, Peter Schleuning: We are fed up now. Old and new political songs. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1978, ISBN 3-499-17159-7 .
  • Karl Adamek : Political song today: on the sociology of singing workers' songs: empirical contribution with images and notes. (= Volume 4 of the writings of the Fritz Hüser Institute for German and Foreign Workers' Literature of the City of Dortmund), Klartext, Cologne 1987.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vlaamse dodendans on liederenbank.nl
  2. ↑ Vlaamse dodendans : song text ( memento from July 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) and sound sample ( memento from May 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on carpegeel.be
  3. ↑ a b Death rides a coal-black black horse on volksliederarchiv.de
  4. ↑ Elsa Laura von Wolhaben: My songs for the lute. Vol. VII, Hofmeister, Leipzig 1917, p. 37 ff.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Helmut Niemeyer: The death on black horse or gray horse at time online.
  6. ↑ Our songbook. Songs of the Hitler Youth. 2nd edition, Eher, Munich 1939, p. 198 (as Der Tod von Flandern ).
  7. ^ SS songbook. Rather, Munich, p. 65.