Song of the party
The party's song , also known as The party is always right , was used by the GDR state party SED as a hymn of praise. The memorable verse “The party, the party, it's always right” became known.
Text and music were written in 1949 by the German Bohemian Louis Fürnberg (1909–1957) (and premiered in 1950), who had joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1928 as a staunch communist . Even if the song was widely used as a hymn of praise, especially in the GDR, the specific reason for the song was of the opposite nature. Fürnberg, who was in Prague at the time, was not invited to the 1949 Communist Party convention for the first time, which offended him deeply. As his widow Lotte Fürnberg explained in 2001, he wrote the song to call himself back to order. "He wrote it to justify the insult to himself." According to their description, on closer inspection, however, the lines not only reveal demonstrative party obedience in the "denunciation climate" of that time, but also desperate defiance. A few years later he is said to have said to her: "This song will do me another great harm."
The party cult expressed in the song is seen as typical of Leninism , which declared the communist party to be the “vanguard of the working class ” or the “vanguard of the proletariat ”. In the verses “So, out of Lenin's spirit, the party, the party, the party” grows, welded by Stalin. The personality cult of Stalinism , which as a result of the XXII. At the CPSU party congress from November 1961 in the GDR no longer belonged to the state ideology . In the context of de-Stalinization this passage was called in 1965: "So, out of Lenin's spirit, the party, the party, the party grows, welded by Lenin."
The song finds new use in the " Party for Labor, Rule of Law, Animal Welfare, Elite Support and Grassroots Initiative " founded by the satirical magazine Titanic - "The PARTY" for short - as the "final PARTY anthem", sung by Claudia Graue . The above The line of text usually reads: "So, from a chlodwigschem spirit, growing, welded by Martin, Die PARTTEI." Reference is made to Chlodwig Poth and Martin Sonneborn . A more recent variant was sung by Slime , Antilopen Gang and Bela B.
The party is always right is the title of a book by Ralph Giordano from 1961 in which he settled accounts with Stalinism, which he adhered to until around 1955.
literature
- Jan Gerber : Song of the party. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 3: He-Lu. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02503-6 , pp. 515-520.
- Michael Sauer : Historical songs. Stuttgart 2001, pp. 153-157.
- “The party, the party is always right…” An ideology-critical analysis of Louis Fürnberg's “Song of the Party”. Contribution by Joachim Kahl in the magazine Aufklerung und Demokratie , special issue 10/2005.
Web links
- Lyrics ( memento from August 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) in the LeMO of the German Historical Museum
Individual evidence
- ↑ Volker Müller: So much blood flowed in vain. The poet widow Lotte Fürnberg remembers her years with Louis Fürnberg. In: Berliner Zeitung . January 26, 2001, accessed May 10, 2016 .
- ↑ Martin Sabrow : The Charisma of Communism. Considerations on the application of Weber's type of rule to the GDR . In: Martin Sabrow (Ed.): Potsdamer Almanach of the Center for Contemporary Historical Research 2006 . Transit, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-88747-228-3
- ↑ Year of the [amended] text "1965" in: Hans Thomas (Ed.): 1946–1971. She gave us everything. Material for festivities and celebrations. Central House for Cultural Work of the GDR , Leipzig 1971, p. 21
- ↑ http://www.die-partei.de/parteilied