My father is wanted

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My father is wanted is the title of a workers' song that was written by Hans Drach in 1935 and composed by Gerda Kohlmey.

Emergence

The lyrics were written by Hans Drach, born in 1914, who emigrated to the Soviet Union after the Nazis came to power . He sent the text to Gisela Kohlmey, living in exile in Prague, who set it to music. The song was first printed in the AIZ on August 22, 1935 .

Form and content

The song consists of five five-line stanzas without a refrain. The persecution and murder of the father by the SA is described in simple terms from the narrative perspective of a child . While the uncertainty about his fate and the effects of his disappearance on the family (“The mother is crying”) are in the foreground in the first stanzas, the continuation of his fight against the Nazis is announced in the last stanza (“We'll finish, what he could not finish ”).

Versions

The group Zupfgeigenhansel recorded the song in 1977 for their album Volkslieder 2 . Herman van Veen recorded a live version for his 1984 album And he goes and he sings . The song can also be found on several compilations of workers' songs, including the double album 100 Jahre Deutsches Arbeiterlied , published in 1973 , on which it is performed by the Rundfunk-Kinderchor Berlin.

The right-wing extremist singer-songwriter Frank Rennicke took possession of the song in his album Anderes, Other Songs, Part II . He changed the text that he had his children sing in two places to portray himself as the persecuted. Instead of “Often came to us SA” he says “They often came to us” and from “The comrades said, SA had shot him”, Rennicke made “Comrades said they had been killed”. Walter Mossmann described this reinterpretation as "vain self-presentation" and "pretty disgusting".

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Various - 100 Years of German Workers' Song - A Documentation , Discogs, accessed on March 6, 2020
  2. ↑ Mossmann: Left songs, right songs - everything from a single source? Notes on the folk revival after 1989 in Germany. In: Sozial.Geschichte Online , No. 15, 2015, p. 108