Kristallnaach

Kristallnaach
BAP
publication	August 24, 1982
length	4:59
Genre (s)	Kölschrock
text	Wolfgang Niedecken
music	Klaus Heuser
album	Vun inside noh gland

Copywriter Wolfgang Niedecken, 2013

The band BAP in the early 1980s

Kristallnaach ( Kölsch for Kristallnacht ) is a political song by the Cologne band BAP . It appeared in 1982 on the album Vun drinne noh drusse . The piece was the only single from the album and reached number 25 in the German charts. Kristallnaach has been played continuously on the band's tours since its release and has long been the second most frequently played BAP song after Verdamp .

Origin and background

As early as the summer of 1979, during a trip through Greece , which had only recently liberated itself from the military dictatorship , Niedecken dealt with a political text on the subject of neo-fascism . He chose the theme of the pogrom night . In their early years, BAP were heavily influenced by the political folk song in the tradition of Bob Dylan .

The intention for the play - before the rise of the political right in Europe and the discussion about coming to terms with the past of the Nazi era in the Federal Republic - was to set an example. In the second point in particular, the band saw a certain desire for restoration and a resulting political danger.

Musical structure

The piece, composed by BAP guitarist Klaus “Major” Heuser, is arranged in such a way that it increases musically. It begins with the deep synthesizer tones HE-Gis-A after a pass from on the electric guitar once ailing chords are superimposed on the play, and then finally Niedecken quiet vocals start. In the further course, the entire range of rock instruments is added. The singing also becomes more haunting. At the beginning of the fourth verse, the drums imitate a marching drum based on the text . Finally the song reaches its climax with a guitar solo and then slowly fades away in the marching drum until it ends suddenly.

text

Niedecken wrote a very political, but also poetic text with references to Breughel , Hieronymus Bosch and Franz Kafka . Linguistically, he relied on very emotional images, accompanied by dark music. The basic theme of the text is how to deal with the German coming to terms with the past against the background of the increasing reawakening of right-wing conservative currents. The imagery of the text allows room for interpretation. In 1984 Heinrich Böll was amazed at the expressiveness and the intellectual depth of the lyrics in the film Cologne Memories .

The lyrics of the song, written in Kölsch , are also reproduced in high German on the band's website. The piece lacks a catchy refrain , which is unusual for a single release . Only the word "Kristallnaach" is repeated in each of the six stanzas.

Niedecken did not set the text in the pogrom night of 1938, but in the present. The intention is to draw attention to a repetition of the events based on the same causal chains as in the Nazi era. The social conditions and psychological processes that led to the night of the pogrom can therefore also be found in the present. The motif of the third stanza (the inflammatory slogans, the public looking the other way at attacks and the spreading of racist or sexist prejudices in public) was taken up again in the 1990s by Niedecken when he was working for the Cologne initiative against Rechts Arsch huh, Zäng ussenander contributed the lyrics to the song of the same name.

In retrospect, the ambivalence between critical text and catchy music was perceived by Niedecken as irritating: “Everyone is singing along and nobody thinks about what is actually being talked about. But I can't blame anyone for that, because people come to the concert and not to think about the Jewish pogroms with me. ”In his dissertation , Ole Löding explains that the entire lyrics of the song, in addition to the topic of political activities in the right-wing spectrum, also criticize capitalism pull through, which becomes clear in the last two stanzas: The danger of a renewed fascization of society arises from a submissive-aggressive personality structure of the Germans. The song parallelizes the November pogroms with various problematic aspects of the present and thus elevates them "to a metaphor for any kind of inhuman behavior". In this way, BAP contributed to the historicization of National Socialism and shortened the causes of the pogroms.

Other versions

In 2016, Samy Deluxe interpreted Kristallnacht as a rap version in the TV show Sing my song - the exchange concert . In 2017, Kristallnacht was recorded in a high German version. With this recording Wolfgang Niedecken supports the project demo tapes , want to put on the musicians and filmmakers a sign of democracy.

literature

• Frank Laufenberg , Ingrid Laufenberg: Hit-Lexikon des Rock und Pop , Volume 1. Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-548-36362-2 , p. 138 ff.

Web links

• Text by Kristallnaach with a high German translation on the BAP website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://www.setlist.fm/stats/bap-4bd60f92.html BAP, Kristallnaach (accessed July 17, 2017)
2. ^ Reception of the Reichskristallnacht by BAP. Project Paul Celan , accessed March 10, 2017 . 
3. ↑ Bap. In: laut.de. Retrieved March 10, 2017 . 
4. ↑ The “Kristallnaach” is as current as ever. In: Main Post. November 22, 2016. Retrieved March 10, 2017 . 
5. ↑ Ole Löding: ... daily “Kristallnaach”. The Nazi past and the German present in a song by BAP (1982) . In: Zeithistorische Forschungen , Edition 9, 2012, pp. 175–180.
6. ↑ "... daily Kristallnaach" | Contemporary historical research. Retrieved April 29, 2017 . 
7. ↑ 30 years of BAP. prog-rock-forum. April 7, 2008, accessed March 11, 2017 . 
8. ↑ Kristallnaach. Official Bap website. 2015, accessed March 10, 2017 . 
9. ↑ 30 years of BAP. prog-rock-forum. April 7, 2008, accessed March 11, 2017 . 
10. ↑ The right and the righteous . In: Spiegel Spezial . No. 2/1994 , February 1, 1994 ( spiegel.de ).
11. ↑ Ole Löding: ... daily “Kristallnaach”. The Nazi past and the German present in a song by BAP (1982) . In: Zeithistorische Forschungen , Edition 9, 2012, pp. 175–180.
12. ↑ With music against the right: Eleven great anti-Nazi songs. Südkurier. August 11, 2015, accessed March 11, 2017 . 
13. ^ Kurt Schilde :: Political songs and pop music. In: literaturkritik.de. January 5, 2011, accessed March 12, 2017 . 
14. ↑ Ole Löding: "Germany Disaster State". National Socialism in the political song of the Federal Republic . transript, Bielefeld 2010, ISBN 978-3-8394-1567-2 , pp. 325–338 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
15. ↑ "... daily Kristallnaach" | Contemporary historical research. Retrieved November 27, 2019 . 
16. ↑ Wolfgang Niedecken now sings "Kristallnaach" in German