Comrades sing!
Comrades sing! is the title of the Bundeswehr songbook . It contains a selection of the soldier songs common in the Bundeswehr . Its further spread was stopped in 2017 by the Federal Ministry of Defense .
history
The Bundeswehr songbook was first published in 1958 with 160 songs as a joint edition by the publishers Möseler, Tonger and Voggenreiter . The next issues appeared in 1962 and 1976 under the title Hell sound our songs. The last edition with 119 songs was in 1991 under the title Comrades Sings! Published by the Federal Ministry of Defense , Command Staff of the Armed Forces, Voggenreiter Verlag Bonn ( ISBN 3-8024-0204-9 , not in bookshops) with a print run of 100,000 copies. Compared to the earlier editions, the proportion of traditional folk, hiking and marching songs has been slightly reduced; instead, some folk songs from the USA and other countries as well as several popular hits were inserted. The songs are provided with instructions for accompaniment with guitar and keyboard .
In principle, the songbook should be given out to all soldiers in the Bundeswehr free of charge.
Criticism and dissemination stop
Criticism was made that the book contains some songs that were written during the National Socialist era, such as Kurt Wiehle's Panzerlied , or whose lyricists or composers also wrote National Socialist songs, such as We're going to the north (author's statement: August Kremser and - presumably incorrectly - Gottfried Wolters ) or We march across the streets (melody by Robert Götz , mistakenly with incorrect author's name).
On May 12, 2017, the Federal Ministry of Defense stopped the edition of the song book Comrades Sings! According to a ministry spokesman, “it was recognized that some text passages no longer correspond to our understanding of values”. The songs Schwarzbraun ist die Hazelnuss , the Panzerlied and the Westerwaldlied , which, according to the ministry, were misused as an expression of National Socialist exaggeration during the Nazi era , were particularly criticized . The Armed Forces Office was given the task of developing a new form of the songbook; "All the songs currently recorded in the songbook [...] should be viewed critically and sensitively again". According to the Ministry of Defense, the change to the book was commissioned back in January 2017. "All songs currently recorded in the songbook will be viewed critically and sensitively again with the involvement of the Center for Inner Guidance and the Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr," said the ministry.
The German Federal Youth Council demanded at its plenary meeting on 26/27. October 2018 with a resolution adopted by a majority of the Federal Ministry of Defense, the songbook comrades sings! to abolish. The resolution was adopted with 38 votes in favor, 19 against and 20 abstentions; the Deutsche Beamtenbund-Jugend did not agree.
Others
Comrades sing! was also the title of a book of traveling songs by the Nerother Wandering Bird , published by Robert Oelbermann in 1935 by Günther Wolff , Plauen i. V., was published.
See also
swell
- ↑ a b Ministry stops Bundeswehr songbook. Spiegel Online, May 12, 2017
- ↑ According to information in comrades sing! are text and music by Gottfried Wolters and August Kremser; According to the song book Our happy companion (Möseler und Voggenreiter Verlag, new edition 1964) as well as according to earlier editions of the Bundeswehr song book, the text is by Willi Strauss and the melody by August Kremser.
- ↑ Susann Witt-Stahl : "Yes, we are the masters of the world" - Nazi traces in the songbook of the Bundeswehr, part I, new music newspaper 2001/10, p. 30; Part II, neue musikzeitung 2001/11, p. 34 ( Part I of the article online ).
- ↑ Von der Leyen has the output of the songbook stop . Rheinische Post, May 12, 2017
- ^ Deutscher Bundesjugendring, General Assembly October 27, 2018: Songbook of the Bundeswehr (accessed on August 15, 2019)