Children's anthem

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The children's hymn ( Grace does not save effort) is a poem by Bertolt Brecht from 1950, which appeared for the first time in issue 6/1950 of the magazine Sinn und Form . It was set to music by Hanns Eisler in the autumn of the same year . The children's hymn was one of six songs from a cycle of children's songs that brought Brecht and Eisler back together after a long break. It was later set to music by Leo Spies and Fidelio F. Finke .

Quote from the children's hymn on the bronze door of the Greifswald town hall by Jo Jastram (1966)

The occasion for the Brechtian poem, which was initially entitled Hymne / Festlied , was the advance of Konrad Adenauer , who demonstratively had the third stanza of the Deutschlandlied sung at a public meeting in Berlin on April 15, 1950 . Brecht consciously wrote his hymn as a counterpart to the Deutschlandlied, which in his opinion was corrupted by the First World War and National Socialism . In the third stanza he alluded to verses of the Deutschlandlied: “And we don't want to be above / and not below / other peoples” (in the Deutschlandlied: “Germany, Germany about everything / about everything in the world”); "From the sea to the Alps / From the Oder to the Rhine " (in the Deutschlandlied: "From the Meuse to the Memel / From the Etsch to the Belt "). If you combine two of the four stanzas of the children's hymn into one, their meter corresponds exactly to that of the Deutschlandlied and almost that of the GDR national anthem . All three texts can therefore (with a small difference at the end of the stanza of the GDR hymn) also be sung to the melodies of the other.

However, the children's anthem is also a counterpart to Johannes R. Becher's text of the GDR's national anthem ( Resurrected from Ruins ), which was written on behalf of the SED in October 1949. Despite some references to content, Brecht's text contrasts Becher's pathetic formulations with a simple, albeit precisely chosen, diction .

The political scientist Iring Fetscher characterized the children's anthem as follows: "... there is probably no hymn that justifies the love of one's own country so beautifully, so rationally, so critically, and none that ends with such conciliatory lines."

During the time of reunification in 1990, some citizens' initiatives and various media campaigned for the children's anthem as the new German national anthem. Stefan Heym quoted them at the opening ceremony of the 13th German Bundestag in November 1994. Shortly after he was nominated for the office of Federal President by the Left Party for the 2009 election, Peter Sodann also spoke out in favor of the children's anthem as the German national anthem.

literature

  • Sabine Schutte: National anthems and their processing. About the function of musical quotations and echoes. In: Hanns Eisler (= argument - special volumes. AS 5). Berlin 1979, pp. 208–217 ( docplayer.org [accessed February 4, 2019]).
  • Gerhard Müller: Songs of the Germans. Brecht's “Children's Hymn” as an alternative to the “Deutschlandlied” and the “Beaker Hymn” . In: Dreigroschenheft . 17th year, issue 1. Wißner-Verlag, 2010, ISSN  0949-8028 , p. 18–29 ( online version [PDF; 5.9 MB ] - the full text of the hymn is quoted on page 19, right column ; the beginning of the second stanza is corrected: “That the peoples should not turn pale”).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bertolt Brecht: Selected works in six volumes. Volume 3. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1997, OCLC 632588583 , p. 507.
  2. ^ Hanns Eisler: songs and cantatas. Volume 1. VEB Breitkopf & Härtel Musikverlag, Leipzig [1955], DNB 1007297786 , pp. 8-9.
  3. ↑ Who doesn't want to stay in life. GDR peace songs. CD cover. B. T. Music, Berlin 2003, DNB 358532655 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-201404138412 .
  4. ^ Iring Fetscher: Bertolt Brecht: Children's anthem. In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Ed.): Frankfurter Anthologie. Vol. 2. Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-458-05023-X , p. 159.