Battle song

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As a battle song is called Songs challenging confident or hymn-like character, in conflictual situations of organized collectives and masses find to intimidate the enemy and to strengthen its own identity using.

function

Battle songs were and are sung in disputes between different nations or states , classes , ethnic groups, political parties , civil rights movements , religions, mostly in unison in the choir at mass events . They were often specially composed in historical contexts , but often, as can also be observed in folk songs, redesigned for certain events using common hymns and songs. They not only serve to demonstrate one's own strength against the enemy, but above all to identify with one's own group and to reinforce one's own confidence. For the composer Hanns Eisler , for example, in many of his battle songs it was about "finding methods, including not just viewing the singer himself as an interpreter, but revolutionizing him" and "that it would be wrong to just listen to a battle song."

The example of the Andreas Hofer song shows that a once known battle song can be used equally in very different historical contexts, even by opposing political directions . The song written in the first half of the 19th century about the tragic end of the leader of the Tyrolean struggle for freedom, Andreas Hofer in Mantua in 1810 , has been rewritten many times. The melody was first used for two songs about the execution of Robert Blum, a member of the German National Assembly following the October Uprising in Vienna in 1848 , and later for soldiers' songs in the German-Danish War of 1864 and the Franco-German War of 1870. Another well-known text version is which was published as the song of the youth in 1910 in the magazine Arbeiter-Jugend and later used as a battle song for the workers' youth against the dawn . The historical song with a text about the execution of Albert Leo Schlageter in 1923 was claimed by the National Socialists .

history

Celtic and Germanic battle song has been handed down from ancient times. This also largely includes the soldier's song as a traditional part of military music .

Luther's chorale A strong castle is our god was described by Friedrich Engels as the "Marseillaise of the Peasant Wars". The French Revolution with its mass armies ( Marseillaise , Ça ira, etc.) is to be seen as the starting point of the modern battle song .

The composition of the battle song Il Canto degli Italiani (“Fratelli d'Italia”), today's national anthem of Italy , falls within the context of the romantic nationalist movements in Italy in the mid-19th century . In Germany during this period of blossoming nationalism, the choir, especially the men's choirs and singing festivals , cultivated the mostly nationally oriented political battle song; the workers' song spread throughout the labor movement .

In the political conflicts of the 1920s and 1930s, the same melodies (with different lyrics) were sometimes used as political battle songs by the right and left, for example the song Auf, auf zum Kampf! . The song of the youth, mainly cultivated in the Communist Party (“ Dem Morgenrot gegen die Morgenrot , you comrades-in-arms all ...”) used the melody of the Andreas Hofer song . The sentimental ballad about the death of the little trumpeter also exists in a “Red Guard” and a “Swastika” variant. As early as 1927 the National Socialists turned from Brüder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit "Brothers in collieries and mines" and in the SA Brothers the columns formed .

Today, political battle songs are seldom sung in Europe, in the mass (male) singing dominate the "football battle songs", often variants of well-known pop songs. British fans also sing the nationalistic refrain of Rule, Britannia, at international matches ! .

List of known battle songs

Anfield Stadium, Liverpool

Football battle chants

Civic songs

Civil rights movement

Soldiers songs

German:

British:

Russian / Soviet:

Freedom songs

German Empire (in a quasi-official role)

Battle songs of the labor movement

Battle songs of the "right wing"

Political-religious battle songs

List of known battle song books

  • National Socialist German Workers' Party, Gau Koblenz-Trier (ed.): Storm and battle songs for the front and home , publisher: Propaganda-Verlag Paul Hochmuth, from 1940/1941, 126 pages
  • Little Red Songbook

literature

  • Hilmi Abbas: Old Kurdish fight and love songs . Bechtle, Munich / Esslingen 1964.
  • Walter Blankenburg : The Christian battle song. In: Wilhelm Stählin (Ed.): From the holy fight. Contributions to understanding the Bible and the Christian Church. Stauda, ​​Kassel 1938.
  • Günter Hartung: German Fascist Literature and Aesthetics: Collected Studies , Leipzig 2001
  • Diemar Klenke: The Singing German Man - Choral Societies and German National Consciousness from Napoleon to Hitler . Waxmann, Münster etc. 1998, ISBN 3-89325-663-6 ( limited preview in the Google book search).

Recordings / sound carriers

  • When do we walk side by side . Hymns and battle songs of the labor movement. Audio CD, Phonica (Das Ohr), 2004

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Thomalla, Das Kampflied als musical material , p. 32f ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 535 kB). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hans-thomalla.com
  2. ↑ Quoted from: Hanns Eisler: Music and Politics. Notes. Text-critical edition, edited by Günter Mayer. Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1973, p. 114 and Monica Steegmann: Music and Industry. ISBN 3-7649-2156-0 , p. 104.
  3. ↑ Gerlinde Haid : Folksong. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 5, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-7001-3067-8 .
  4. ↑ Cf. “This tactic, the mixed fight, the battle song, the wagon castle, the allegiance is common to the Celts with the Germanic peoples.” Julius Cramer: The constitutional history of the Germanic peoples and Celts (1906) ( completely online ), see especially chapter IV p. 31-36
  5. ^ Letter to Schlueter, 1885. In: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on art and literature. Berlin 1948, p. 241 f. Quoted from: Wolfgang Steinitz: German folk songs of a democratic character from six centuries. Volume 1. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin-GDR 1955, p. XXXV.
  6. ↑ composed as Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin , i.e. as a war song for the Rhine Army
  7. ↑ "It should not be concealed that at this time patriotic and patriotic songs were often a focus of singing," says a history of choral singing available on the web ( memento of the original from November 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: Der Archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ghs-flein.hn.bw.schule.de
  8. ↑ On, on to the fight! - text
  9. ↑ See comparison of variants
  10. ↑ On the repositioning of workers' songs through Nazi propaganda cf. Günter Hartung: German Fascist Literature and Aesthetics: Collected Studies , Leipzig 2001, p. 176 ( online in the Google book search)
  11. ↑ The Confederate Song, Maryland, My Maryland , Battle Song of the Southern Confederation, contained the typical battle song appeal to "break the chains of the tyrants". It was sung to the melody of O Tannenbaum