Our life belongs only to freedom (song)

Our life belongs only to freedom is a propaganda song composed by Hans Baumann for the Hitler Youth .

history

Baumann composed the song in 1935 on behalf of the Reich Youth Leadership . It quickly became widespread and was published in numerous National Socialist songbooks, including Lied über Deutschland (1936), Wir Mädel singen - song book of the BDM (1937), Der bright day (1938), Morgen wir marschieren - song book of the German soldiers ( 1939), our song book - songs of the Hitler Youth (1939) and comradeship in the song - choir book for front and home (1944). It was one of the compulsory songs in the Hitler Youth and the Bund Deutscher Mädel .

After the Second World War, the song was sung in right-wing conservative and right-wing extremist organizations. The Comradeship Ring of National Youth Associations selected it as a common flag song. In this way it found its way into the Wiking-Jugend and the Bund Heimattreuer Jugend . Up to the present day it is the federal song of the federal youth loyal to home, which was renamed the Freibund in 1990 . The song was part of the right-wing extremist German community that was dissolved in 1965 . To this day it is sung at events of the Freedom Party of Austria . In their youth organization Ring Freedom Youth Austria it is the “federal song”.

The 1969 film adaptation Our Life Belongs to Freedom of Horváth's Youth Without God takes on the title of the song.

content

The song takes up the image propagated by Hitler in Mein Kampf of the military struggle for freedom to preserve nationality and links it with positive mood images of seed and harvest, home, dawn and descriptions of nature. The longing for peace described in the third stanza is connected with the "search [.] [...] for the enemy", which must be overcome, "[d] ate the homeland should find peace". It embodies "almost archetypically the stylization of the struggle for freedom in the songs of the National Socialist era", but differs from the martial rhetoric otherwise usual in freedom songs because of its lyrical form.

literature

Heinz Schreckenberg: The Hitler bard Hans Baumann and his work before 1945. A Catholic Janus face. Publishing house Dr. Köster, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-89574-715-1 .

Web links

Full text at volksliederarchiv.de

Individual evidence

↑ Gideon Botsch : "Only for Freedom ...?" Youth Movement and National Opposition . In: Gideon Botsch, Josef Haverkamp (Ed.): Youth Movement, Anti-Semitism and Right-Wing Politics . de Gruyter, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-030622-4 , p. 260 .
↑ ^a ^b ^c Christian G. Allesch: The freedom wild song: freedom songs as historical constructions . In: Christian Giordano , Jean-Luc Patry, François Rüegg (eds.): Fallacies and reinterpretations . Lit, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-643-80039-8 , pp. 13 f .

[1] Gideon Botsch : "Only for Freedom ...?" Youth Movement and National Opposition . In: Gideon Botsch, Josef Haverkamp (Ed.): Youth Movement, Anti-Semitism and Right-Wing Politics . de Gruyter, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-030622-4 , p. 260 .

[Allesch-2] Christian G. Allesch: The freedom wild song: freedom songs as historical constructions . In: Christian Giordano , Jean-Luc Patry, François Rüegg (eds.): Fallacies and reinterpretations . Lit, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-643-80039-8 , pp. 13 f .