Lili Marleen

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Lili Marleen
Lale Andersen
publication August 1939
Genre (s) Soldier song , hit
text Hans Leip
music Norbert Schultze
Memorial to Lili Marleen and Lale Andersen on Langeoog
Shellac record with the original version of Lili Marleen (here: Lili Marlen ) from August 2, 1939

Lili Marleen (sometimes also spelled Lili Marlen or Lilli Marleen ) is the title of a song that in 1939 by Lale Andersen in the version by Norbert Schultze became the first German million seller and a German and international classic soldier song .

History of origin

The writer and poet Hans Leip wrote the first three stanzas of the text - together with a melody that has largely been forgotten afterwards  - during the First World War , before his departure to the Russian front on the night of April 3 (Holy Saturday) to April 4 (Easter Sunday ) 1915, during a guard in front of the Guard Fusilier barracks in Chausseestrasse in Berlin . He later added two more stanzas for publication under the title Song of a Young Guard in the collection of poems Die kleine Hafenorgel (1937).

In autumn 1937 the singer Jan Behrens asked the composer Norbert Schultze , who was already successful at the time and with whom he was friends, to write him a couple of shanties for a radio show. Norbert Schultze then wrote a melody for the poem Lili Marleen from the small volume Die kleine Hafenorgel by Hans Leip published by Christian Wegner in Hamburg in 1937 . At that time, however, there was already a chanson with a melody by Hindemith's student Rudolf Zink from 1937. Lale Andersen was also familiar with this version, as she appeared in the Munich cabaret “ Simpl ”, where she met Zink. At the end of 1938 Lale Andersen became aware of the version with the melody by Schultze.

How the idea for the title "Lili Marleen" came about is controversial in literature, as are many details of its later dissemination. Local photographer Johann Holzem says it consisted of two different first names that did not belong to one person. When Lilli it should be around the pet names have acted the friend of a friend of poet Leip while Marleen the first name of an assistant nurse in a military hospital was. At first Leip had only published the first three stanzas. Only for the poetry collection Die kleine Hafenorgel, which Wegner published in Hamburg in 1937, did Leip add the last two stanzas.

Lale Andersen had been singing the song in the more melancholy version by Rudolf Zink for some time in her stage programs when Norbert Schultze offered her his version for recording. Although Andersen herself could not warm up to the then new version all her life, Schultze was taken with the new recording. Andersen couldn't really take a liking to the melody she was unfamiliar with and, in her opinion, unsuitable, while Schultze was never really satisfied with its intonations, the march-like rhythm and the male choir in the background, which in his opinion sounded "like a castrato choir ". Despite these discrepancies, for which no consensus could be found throughout his life, this version, which was recorded in the Berlin Electrola studios in 1938, was finally released on record .

The first recording of Lili Marleen with an orchestra under the direction of Bruno Seidler-Winkler lasted the whole night from July 31 to August 1, 1939. The recording was mixed on August 2, 1939 in the Electrola studio. The record should begin with a Prussian tattoo , in the background a soldiers' choir and “subtle march rhythm ”. It became a “symbol for homesickness, separation and longing [...], especially for hope to see you again. The time - the war, which is getting more and more terrible, the circumstances have caused it ”.

Another Leip setting with a melody by Schultze (both titles under the pseudonym "Frank Norbert"), Drei Rote Rosen (commemoration), served as the B-side . Of the plate published in August 1939 under Electrola EG 6993 / ORA 4198-2 , just 700 copies were sold. It was initially forgotten. The melancholy soldier's song about farewell, separation and uncertain homecoming can be classified between a soldier's song and a hit .

content

The song is about the fact that a soldier remembers when he and his girlfriend Lili Marleen stood at the lantern in front of the barracks and asked them to meet again there.

Historical environment

Lale Andersen - Lili Marleen (here: Lili Marlen ). The picture is a section of the plate shown above.

The song was recorded exactly one day after Glenn Miller's In the Mood , at a time of war mood, because on September 1, 1939, the Second World War began with the German invasion of Poland . On April 6, 1941, the war against Yugoslavia and Greece began , and on April 12, 1941, Belgrade was captured by the German 12th Army. Yugoslavia's surrender followed on April 17th . Even before that, the medium-wave station Radio Belgrade ( Serbian : Радио Београд / Radio Beograd) was occupied by German troops and from then on broadcasted as the “occupation station Belgrade”. The transmission power was so high that it reached all front sections in Europe and North Africa between Narvik and Cairo , which corresponded to a transmission area of ​​six million listeners.

There are different versions of the story of the broadcast of Lili Marleen by the Belgrade soldier broadcaster , some of which contradict each other. Johann Holzem adds the person of Lieutenant Maximilian Fabich, chief of the 3rd Company of the Infantry Division Greater Germany , which was stationed on the outskirts of Belgrade, to the episode of Lili Marleen's “discovery” . Fabich had received the order to fetch records for the Belgrade broadcaster and on April 22, 1941 he traveled to the Radio-Verkehrs-AG in Vienna (since 1957 ORF ). He was given a number of boxes with records that were considered to be “unacceptable” and had gathered dust in the Viennese archives and arrived in Belgrade on April 26th. When looking through this range, Max Fabich also saw the record by Lili Marleen from Electrola . He immediately remembered his time in Koblenz when he heard this melancholy song for the first time, and spontaneously said: “It has to be on the show!” Fabich got to know this version in the bar of a small Moselle village in 1940, where he was preparing the France campaign was stationed with his company. As he was a passionate pianist himself, he had included the melody in his repertoire and performed it with his soldiers. Fabich had included the song in a 45-minute program that he had put together for the opening, and finally presented it on April 26, 1941 with a soldiers' choir formed from his company. Other sources, however, assume that the 60 records discarded by the Reich broadcaster Vienna were played, including Lili Marleen .

According to other sources, the station started operating in April 1941 and only had 54 records, which had to be repeated many times over a transmission time of 21 hours a day. Therefore a man by the name of Richard Kistenmacher was sent to Vienna by the broadcast manager Lieutenant Karl-Heinz Reintgen to get supplies. Kistenmacher brought material from the Reich broadcaster Vienna that is said to have consisted of politically suspicious records and declared flops , including the song of a young guard, which Reintgen said was first broadcast on August 18, 1941 at his instigation. Reintgen, the broadcast manager deployed by the German military, had known the record since 1940.

It was also Reintgen who temporarily withdrew the record from the program at the end of July 1941. This was followed by such an overwhelming protest that the song was broadcast every evening from August 18, 1941 at 9:57 p.m. before the last news of the day at 10 p.m. and before the end of broadcasting. Different titles have been handed down for this new program: We greet our listeners , We open the watch book or bridge between the front and home . Since, according to other sources, Lili Marleen was broadcast for the first time on August 18, either the waiver of the broadcast, the subsequent protest of the listeners and the inclusion in the permanent program may have taken place later or the song was erroneously recorded at the fixed broadcasting slot as Date of first broadcast accepted.

The sentimental text about parting, imperative to command and homesickness, introduced by the military signal “ Zapfenstreich ” and presented in march rhythm, hit the inner mood of millions of soldiers from all armies fighting at the time on both sides of the fronts and became a worldwide cultural “leitmotif” of the Second World War. In 1941 Anita Spada , accompanied by the Heinz Munsonius orchestra , recorded a cover version entitled Song of a Young Guard . From January 1942, the Reichsrundfunk also broadcast an English-language version, for the text of which the British Norman Baillie-Stewart ( Lord Haw-Haw ), who worked for the German international broadcasting service, was responsible. The British Anne Shelton presented the song with English lyrics from autumn 1942 on her own radio show. In May 1943 the text version was published by the Chappell music publisher in the USA under the title My Lilli of the Lamplight . From 1944 onwards there were already various recordings in English, among others of Great Britain's "sweetheart of the forces" Vera Lynn and the star of the American troops Marlene Dietrich . An RCA recording by Perry Como brought "Lilli Marlene (My Lilli of the Lamplight)" to 13th place on the American hit parade in June 1944.

censorship

When Lale Andersen's contacts with Swiss Jews became known, Goebbels had the song banned in April 1942. The printing of Andersen photos has been censored since the end of May 1942 , her name gradually disappeared from the press, and a trip to Belgrade on the occasion of the one-year existence of the soldier channel in April 1942 was refused. From October 1942, the Reich Ministry of Propaganda imposed a ban on the singer. With the exception of the original of the “Lantern Song” on the radio, your records should “be put on hold for the time being”, and direct broadcasts “should be avoided at the moment”. The British BBC noticed the disappearance of Lale Andersen and Lili Marleen and suspected that Andersen was in a concentration camp . From May 1943 - to refute the enemy propaganda - Lale Andersen was allowed to perform again to a limited extent, but Lili Marleen was no longer allowed to sing.

Success story

Lili Marleen group by Claus Homfeld in Munster

The Wehrmacht broadcaster Belgrade received more than 12,000 letters from soldiers every day during the peak period, mostly relating to the song Lili Marleen . Soon the song spread over all other Wehrmacht broadcasters. Even though the Nazi regime temporarily banned the song because of its “ morbid and depressive ” lyrics , Lili Marleen became a “ song of fate” of the Second World War .

Lili Marleen was also sung among the Allied soldiers . As early as 1941, British troops in North Africa sang along so often that the generals had to intervene. It is reported that the English soldiers often shouted "Louder please, comrades" over to the German trenches as soon as they heard the song there on the radio, which regularly led to the fighting during this period subsiding. "Everywhere in the desert", as a British war correspondent noted, "English soldiers whistled the song". When Marlene Dietrich sang the song in front of American soldiers from 1943 and made it really popular with the Allied troops, nobody minded that the same composer had written the music for propaganda marches such as Bombs on Engelland or the U-Boot song .

In August 1944, a film called The True Story of Lilli Marlene was released in Great Britain - the song went around the world in at least 50 translations. There are also a number of parodies and propaganda versions by mostly unknown authors. The most famous pastiche was sung by Lucie Mannheim for the BBC . Four years after the war, Winston Churchill requested the song from a dance band on the Riviera . And General Eisenhower said that Leip was the only German who made the whole world happy during the war. In the years after its release, the German version by Lili Marleen alone was sold two million times, making it the first million seller in German record history. The star confirmed that Lili Marleen was the first purely German record that came over the million mark. Will Glahé's mood song Rosamunde was published earlier, but did not become a million seller until 1943.

It was not until 1946 that Norbert Schultze learned how popular his song was with the enemy. When he played the composition in the American military club in Berlin , he was celebrated like a hero. Schultze did not receive around 150,000 marks a year until 1962 , since his royalties remained confiscated as "enemy assets" until 1962. The continuing popularity can be seen in the GEMA fees incurred : The widow of the writer Hans Leip received around 60,000 Swiss francs in royalties per year from this source in the 1980s .

Although the song is written from the perspective of a soldier, it is mostly performed by female singers, including Greta Garbo , Mimi Thoma , Connie Francis and Suzy Solidor , who sang it in a French version.

On January 16, 1981, the world premiere of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film of the same name , in which he tells the fictional story of the cabaret singer Willie and her Jewish lover, who popularized the song Lili Marleen during the Second World War . In 1981 the magazine Der Spiegel stated: “Whenever war broke out in the world after 1945, in Indochina , Korea , Israel , Vietnam , the song's royalties curve rose steeply; Lili marches with ". Today the song, broadcast by the soldiers' radio station Radio Andernach , can be heard daily at around 10:56 p.m. The song is still played every year at the end of the Bergkirchweih in Erlangen . Traditionally, the last keg of beer is buried in front of thousands of people to the sounds of Lili Marleen .

There are modern versions of the song by Atrocity from 2000, by the Italian group Camerata Mediolanese and by the Thuringian metal band Eisregen , who covered it in 2005 on the EP Hexenhaus . The American musician Daniel Kahn , who lives in Berlin, translated the song into Yiddish and sings it with his band The Painted Bird on the 2010 album Lost Causes, which was awarded the German Record Critics' Prize as Lili Marleyn, Fartaytsht . The border crossers recorded Lili Marleen in 2014 as part of their World War I song program Maikäfer flieg - Verschollene Lieder 1914–1918 with the almost forgotten original melody by Hans Leip from April 1915. It was released on the album Maikäfer Flieg , which was awarded the German Record Critics' Prize .

In the seaside resort of Wremen ( Lower Saxony ), a street is named after the song.

Trivia

The melody of the song with new lyrics became the national anthem of the Karen National Union of the Karen , an ethnic minority and separation movement in Myanmar (Burma).

Discography

  • Lili Marleen on all fronts . Hambergen: Bear Family Records, 2006. 7 CDs with 180-page booklet, ISBN 3-89916-154-8 (contains almost 200 versions by Lili Marleen).

Movie

literature

  • Hans Leip: The small port organ. Poems and drawings . With numerous Text illustrations. Christian Wegner , Hamburg, 1937.
  • Lale Andersen: Living with a Song. dtv, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-423-01003-7 .
  • Katja Protte, Myth “Lili Marleen” - A Song in the Age of World Wars, in: Military History Journal, Vol. 63 (2004), Issue 2, pp. 355–400.
  • Christian Peters, Lili Marleen. A hit makes history, Aust.-Kat. House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn 2001.
  • Liel Leibovitz, Matthew I. Miller: Lili Marlene. The Soldiers' Song of World War II . Norton, New York, NY, etc. a. 2008, ISBN 978-0-393-06584-8 , (German: Lili Marleen. A song moves the world . From the American English by Nathalie Lemmens. Edition Elke Heidenreich at C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-570 -58006-6 ).
  • Excursus: The myth "Lili Marleen" . In: Axel Jockwer: Popular music in the Third Reich . Konstanz, Univ., Diss., 2005, urn : nbn: de: bsz: 352-opus-14740 . Pp. 234-245.
  • Rosa Sale Rose: Lili Marleen. Canción de amor y muerte . Global Rhythm Press, Barcelona 2008, ISBN 978-84-96879-28-7 .
    German edition: Lili Marleen. The story of a song about love and death, translated from Spanish by Andreas Löhrer, dtv, 2010, ISBN 978-3-423-24801-3 .
  • Kai Sichtermann : cult songs & evergreens. Parthas Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86964-029-7 , p. 137.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chausseestrasse 95–98 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1915, III., P. 139. “95–98: Kaserne des Garde Füs. Rgts., E (owner): Military Treasury “.
  2. ↑ a b Peter Wicke : Lili Marleen (Lale Andersen). In: Song Lexicon. Encyclopedia of Songs. Michael Fischer, Fernand Hörner, Christofer Jost, October 2013, accessed on June 29, 2015 (detailed background information, German Folk Song Archive / Center for Popular Culture and Music , Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg ).
  3. ↑ a b Die Grenzgänger : Lili Marleen - original version April 1915. September 1, 2014, accessed on June 29, 2015 (music videos with background information and the original manuscript by Hans Leip (1915) with notes).
  4. ↑ Norbert Schultze , With you, Lili Marleen. The memoirs of the composer Norbert Schultze, 1995, p. 77.
  5. ^ Johann Holzem: Lili Marleen and Belgrad 1941. The long way to fame , 3rd edition, 1997, p. 9 ff.
  6. ↑ Ernst Probst, Superfrauen 10 - Musik und Tanz, 2008, p. 28.
  7. ↑ Norbert Schultze, With you, Lili Marleen. The memoirs of the composer Norbert Schultze, 1995, p. 64.
  8. ↑ Norbert Schultze, With you, Lili Marleen. The memoirs of the composer Norbert Schultze, 1995, p. 78.
  9. ↑ a b c d cf. excursus: The myth "Lili Marleen" . In: Axel Jockwer: Popular music in the Third Reich . Konstanz, Univ., Diss., 2005, urn : nbn: de: bsz: 352-opus-14740 . Pp. 234-245.
  10. ^ Johann Holzem, Propaganda Department Southeast (ed.): City and Veste Belgrad, Issue 3: One year soldier transmitter Belgrade , Belgrade 1942, p. 42 ff.
  11. ^ Johann Holzem: The long way to fame, Lili Marleen and Belgrad 1941, 3rd edition, Meckenheim, 1997 and stories by Ruth Fabich.
  12. ↑ Interview with the soldier R. Kistenmacher on the CD Heimat, Deine Sterne, Vol. 4: Lili Marleen and the soldier broadcaster Belgrade, quoted. after Liel Leibovitz, Matthew I. Miller: Lili Marleen. A song moves the world . From the American English by Nathalie Lemmens. Edition Elke Heidenreich at C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-570-58006-6 , p. 273.
  13. ↑ a b c d e Liel Leibovitz, Matthew I. Miller: Lili Marleen. A song moves the world . From the American English by Nathalie Lemmens. Edition Elke Heidenreich at C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-570-58006-6 . Pp. 125-137.
  14. ↑ This version comes very close to Paul Carell's book Die Wüstenfüchse: Mit Rommel in Afrika, 2003: In Krefeld, the NCOs of the 2nd Panzer Reconnaissance Company of Reconnaissance Division 3 heard the song they liked every evening before the French campaign. The company also included the sergeant at the time. Res. Karl-Heinz Reintgen, who came from the transmitter in Berlin. He particularly liked Lili Marleen . The company was transferred to Africa in the spring of 1941; Reintgen, meanwhile a lieutenant, became the broadcast manager at the Wehrmacht broadcaster in Belgrade. He had taken the record there and played it every evening at 9:57 p.m. out of attachment to his old company.
  15. ↑ "Lili Marleen in the morning, Lili Marleen at noon, Lili Marleen in the evening, Lili Marleen at night! What is too much is simply too much. I forbid this Lili from now on. Have fun with other girls! ”, Recalled the station manager in an interview in 1952; quoted from Axel Jockwer: Popular music in the Third Reich . Konstanz, Univ., Diss., 2005, urn : nbn: de: bsz: 352-opus-14740 . P. 236.
  16. ↑ The Song of Lili and the Others in Die Zeit (1978)
  17. ↑ Christian Peters / Foundation House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany: Lili Marleen, A hit makes history, Bonn 2001.
  18. ↑ Minutes of the meeting of April 29, 1942: BA R55 / 695, 139 f.
  19. ↑ Der Spiegel , No. 4/1981, p. 173.
  20. Jump up ↑ Joseph Murrells: The Book of Golden Discs: The Records That Sold a Million . 2nd Edition. Limp Edition, London 1978, ISBN 0-214-20512-6 , pp. 22 .
  21. ↑ Der Stern, issue 51/1966 of December 18, 1966
  22. ^ Rheinische Post of April 3, 1975, own news service .
  23. ↑ Werner Mezger: Schlager: Attempting an overall presentation taking into account the music market of the Federal Republic of Germany, Vol. 39, 1975, p. 138.
  24. ↑ Der Spiegel, No. 4/1981, p. 171.
  25. ↑ kds: Lili Marleen ends the Bergkirchweih. In: nordbayern.de. June 6, 2012, accessed June 29, 2015 .
  26. ^ Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird: Discography. Oriente Musik, Berlin, accessed on June 29, 2015 (English, see also booklet on “Lost Causes” (PDF), song no. 9, p. 12 ).
  27. ↑ Helmut Feucht (interviewer): From day to day - Fritz Sitte, Austria's last adventurer. Conversation with the extreme journalist Fritz Sitte. In: ORF Radio Austria December 1 , 1979, accessed on June 29, 2015 (with MP3 streaming, almost 30 minutes).
  28. ^ Fritz Sitte : Rebel State in the Burma Jungle , Verlag Styria, Graz, 1979, ISBN 3-222-11220-7
  29. ↑ Burma's Civil War: Government and Karen rebels conclude historic armistice at zeit.de, January 12, 2012 (accessed January 12, 2012).