Lights out, knife out!

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Lights out, knife out! begins the refrain to a song that became popular in Germany shortly before the end of the First World War : first as a fashion dance, but then as a battle song for the November Revolution . Text and music came from the composer C [arl] Urban. It was published in 1918 by the Eduard Bloch theater publisher in Berlin.

background

This song also became known as "The Hiawatha". It has nothing to do with the summer idyll of the American composer Neil Moret, nor with the figure from the mythology of the North American natives who inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write his epic poem " The Song of Hiawatha " (1855).

As the sheet music explains, the composition was originally intended as a “ballroom dance for piano”; We owe the dance explanation to a M. Kaulin. As a dance name on the record labels “ Rheinländer ” stands opposite the more modern “ Two Step ”.

history

The circumstances of the time made it a battle song instead of a fashion dance . It was used by mutinous soldiers of the army as a slogan and battle cry even before the Kiel sailors' uprising . This is how Hans Tröbst, captain of a pioneer battalion, describes the situation on the western front in October 1918:

“The French offensive, which seemed to be a complete surprise, forced us to throw our divisions now here, now there. Meanwhile, the vacationers returning from their homeland populated all the station stations and the trains in search of their troops. (...) So within a very short time 35,000 scattered men gathered in Sedan , 20,000 dispersed men in Chareleville , etc. etc. The food for these masses naturally encountered difficulties and the first riots began. Provision offices and trains were stormed and looted. Officers who the Soldateska wanted to prevent were threatened with knives and beaten. On this occasion a strange battle cry came up: " Lights out! Knife out! Skin him! " Even if there were a large number among the thousands of those who had been dispersed who had the honest will to get back to the front as soon as possible, it was simply not possible for them due to the inadequate organization. "

- Hans Trobst

The German Crown Prince also witnessed the soldiers' displeasure immediately before the November Revolution .

“As early as November 7th, Wilhelm saw the harbingers of a new era with his own eyes. On the way to visit the troops, near Givet , he drove past a train manned by soldiers. Here he saw the symbol of the revolution for the first time with his own eyes: the red flag. From the broken windows of the car the riot rang out: " Lights out! Knife out! " Wilhelm made the driver stop. In a loud voice he ordered the soldiers to get off the train. Several hundred men in ragged uniforms lined up in front of him. A tree-long Bavarian NCO positioned himself directly in front of him, in a casual posture, hands deep in his trouser pockets, a true model of insubordination . Wilhelm stretched out the cross and attacked the man in Kasernenton whom he had practiced since his youth. Attitude , he roared, as befits a German soldier. The old reflexes still worked, the Bavarian straightened his eyes and put his hands on the seams of his trousers. Order returned instantly, and a young fellow with an Iron Cross even apologized for his comrades. You have already been traveling for three days without food. "

- Daniel Schönpflug

In his highly autobiographical novel Tadellöser & Wolff handed Walter Kempowski a variant of the exclamation: "Light off knife 'out three men to the blood stirring!" , also with reference to mutinous soldiers at the end of the First World War.

text

The text, which is attributed to a Max Adam on the label of the record edition from 1931, still sounds like a rather rascal-proletarian dissatisfaction (“Have nothing to wear / Nur noch Holzpantin'n”) from a “bar hit”, the more to a pub brawl ("throw the guy out!") than to call for a political manifestation. Nonetheless, he clearly refers to the troubled times of the collapse of the monarchy and the subsequent internal political disputes in the empire. As you can easily hear, it was by no means non-violent.

Sweeping rhyme:
light off, knife out,
knock him out so that the shreds fly,
light out, knife out,
throw the guy out the window,
light out, knife out,
knock him out so that the shreds fly,
light out, knife out,
throw the guy get out!

Verse:
Children hold your breath, you are facing ruin!
Don't have anything to wear,
just wooden slippers.
It doesn't matter if you proudly go through Berlin
with it and with a happy expression '
is screamed:

It becomes even clearer in the version of the text that the working-class writer Ludwig Turek passed on in his book "Ein Prolet Tell" (A Prolet Narrated)):

Sweeping rhyme:
Lights out, knife out,
skin so that the shreds fly,
road clear, windows closed,
down from the balcony.

Verse:
A fortnight I haven't been wearing a shirt,
and it's all because of you!
And all because of you!
If you think I'll take you home for free,
yes, you look that way , yes, you look
that way.

Note edition

  • Hiawatha; Ballroom dance for piano. Dance explanation by M. Kaulin, music by C. Urban. (= Ballroom dances. No. 47). Format: 4 °. Eduard Bloch theater publisher, Berlin. Berlin 1918.

Audio documents

While there were numerous instrumental recordings of different bands on gramophone records of the dance version from the time it was written, only three of the sung version have become known, one from the time it was composed, performed by the soubrette Lucie Bernardo , and two, almost a decade later, in around 1930. Both are performed by two artists who are extremely popular in Berlin: the Otto Kermbach band and the singer and folk actor Alexander Flessburg .

Instrumental

  • Odeon AA 57651 (mx. XxB?) [30 cm] Hiawatha: Original dance / C. Urban. Odeon dance music.
  • Odeon 311.301 (mx. XBo 1431) Hiawatha: Original dance / S. Urban [sic]. Odeon dance music.
  • Beka 30193 (mx. 30193) Hiawatha: Two-step / Urban. Beka orchestra. Kapellmeister F. Kark. Taken in Berlin on February 20, 1919.
  • Artiphon Record 527 (mx. 527, in wax: H 16 C; J 16 12 19) Hiawatha. Ballroom dancing / urban. Artiphon orchestra.
  • Homokord 15 810 (mx. 15810, in wax: D3G; A 5 9 19) Hiawatha: ballroom dance, popular dance / C. Urban. Orchestra.
  • Favorite 1-012549 (mx. 30193) Hiawatha: new two-step / Urbach [sic] favorite orchestra.
  • Dacapo Lyrophon Record 20630 (mx. 1-012549) Hiawatha. Two-step / urban. Played by the Dacapo Lyrophon Orchestra.
  • Polyphon Record 15573/27475 (mx. 28 am) Hiawatha: Ballroom dance / Urban. Dance orchestra.
  • Stern-Platte 5008 (mx. 5008) Hiawatha: Original dance / C. Urban. Orchestra.

With singing

  • Beka 30316 (mx. 30316) Lights out, knife out, knock him out! Couplet (Walter Clön) Lucie Bernardo with orchestra. Up. Berlin, August 14, 1919.
  • Gloria GO10548 a (mx. Be 9343-2) Lights out, knife out! (Hiawatha), Rhinelander. Music by C. Urban, text by Max Adam. Otto Kermbach with his orchestra, with singing Alexander Flessburg. Up. Berlin, February 1931
  • Electrola EG 2197 / 60-1410 (mx.BD 9353-I) Hiawatha - ballroom dancing / C. Urban. Kermbach Chapel. Refrain: Alexander Flessburg.

literature

  • Rudolf Flotzinger (Ed.): Strangeness in Modernity. (= Studies on Modernism. Volume 3). Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-85165-334-3 , p. 161 u. 170.
  • Georg Kraus: Lights out - knife out. The ring clubs. Prussia blog, 2010. (preussen-blog.de)
  • Detlef Krenz: Demagogy in Friedrichshain. In: Friedrichshainer ZeitZeiger. January 1, 2018. (fhzz.de)
  • Gabriele Krüger: The Ehrhardt Brigade. (= Hamburg contributions to contemporary history. Volume VII). Leibniz-Verlag, Hamburg 1971, ISBN 3-87473-003-4 .
  • Berthold Leimbach: audio documents of cabaret and their interpreters 1898-1945. Self-published, Göttingen 1991, DNB 911350551 .
  • Rainer E. Lotz: Black People: Entertainers of African Descent in Europe and Germany. Publishing house Dr. Rainer Lotz, Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-9803461-8-8 .
  • Bernd Ruland: That was Berlin: the golden years 1918–1933. Verlag Hestia, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-7770-0290-9 .
  • Ludwig Turek: A proletarian tells. Description of the life of a German worker. 2nd Edition. Verlag JHW Dietz Nachf., Berlin 1947, DNB 455129126 .
  • C. Urban: Hiawatha. Ballroom dancing. Eduard Bloch theater publisher, Berlin 1918. In: Sang und Klang. 8, pp. 297-298.
  • Chr. Zwarg: PARLOPHON Matrix Numbers - 30173 to 34999: German. (phonomuseum.at ; PDF)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Bernd Ruland: That was Berlin. 1986, p. 263: "Immediately in the first months after the armistice of 1918 there was a hit called Hiawatha that became famous overnight".
  2. ↑ Illustr. Title shown. at booklooker.de (retrieved October 20, 2018 ); with another illustration by Paul Zenker (dancing couple standing back to back) at imagesmusicales.be
  3. ^ Charles N. Daniels, born: April 12, 1878, Leavenworth, Kansas, United States - died: January 23, 1943, Los Angeles, California, United States, was a composer, occasional lyricist and music publisher. He used many pseudonyms, including Neil Moret, Jules Lemare, L'Albert, Paul Bertrand, Julian Strauss, and Sidney Carter. See en.wiki ; his composition Hiawatha - a summer idyl , played by Philip Sear, can be heard on youtube .
  4. ↑ the poem was followed by numerous musical equivalents, cf. RE Lotz: Black people. 1997, p. 24.
  5. ↑ on some record labels it is also referred to as the "original dance".
  6. ↑ reproduced at grammophon-platten.de ( user Musikmeister, Sun Jul 08 2012, 16:47)
  7. ↑ "War! Mobile! ”- Volume 5: The War in the West. (A Soldier's Life in 10 Volumes 1910-1923), p. 318
  8. ↑ a place associated with a personal victory at the beginning of the war (August 31, 1914)
  9. ↑ Daniel Schönpflug: Comet Years. 1918: Die Welt im Aufbruch , S. Fischer Verlage , Frankfurt 2017, ISBN 978-3-10-002439-8 (translations into English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, Korean), p 182
  10. ^ Walter Kempowski: Tadellöser & Wolff, 3rd edition 1996, p. 279.
  11. ↑ so Detlef Krenz: Demagogy in Friedrichshain. In: Friedrichshainer ZeitZeiger. January 1, 2018. (fhzz.de)
  12. ^ Quoted by Detlef Krenz: Demagogie in Friedrichshain. In: Friedrichshainer ZeitZeiger. January 1, 2018: "Skin him so that the tatters fly, throw the guy out the window, children hold our breath, we are on the verge of ruin, have nothing to wear, just become a clog and a happy face shouted: Lights out, knife out! " (fhzz.de)
  13. ↑ Revolution, freedom, bread! In: Ludwig Turek: A Prolet tells. Malik-Verlag, Berlin 1930, DNB 577527657 . (nemesis.marxists.org - Socialist Archive for Fiction).
  14. ↑ Georg Kraus locates this rhyme in organized crime in Berlin: "The category" knife out "is derived from the battle cry of the ring clubs [...]"
  15. ↑ Georg Kraus assigns this passage to the notorious Freicorps of Corvette Captain Hermann Ehrhardt: “Also the Ehrhardt Marine Brigade , which, commissioned by the SPD government of the Weimar Republic at the time , was responsible for keeping order in the German Reich after the revolution and causing chaos by the Moscow-controlled Spartakists , who were supposed to clean up, had a similar reputation: " Clear the street - close the windows" was the motto in Munich when the task was to sweep the unilaterally proclaimed Soviet republic of the Reds on the trash of history. If you didn't close your window, you might have been a sniper, because you can't aim through a closed window while shooting ”.
  16. ↑ Walter Clön is indicated as the author on the Beka label .
  17. ↑ label shown. at grammophon-platten.de (Grammophonteam, Sun Jul 08 2012, 6:15 pm)
  18. ↑ cf. Zwarg, PARLOPHON Matrix Numbers, p. 20.
  19. ↑ to be heard on youtube , also on Odeon O-11 420 (mx. Be 9343-2)