Tank song

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Panzerlied in a broader sense denotes idealizing soldiers' songs or poems by the armored troops and in a narrower sense a song of the same name by Kurt Wiehle .

Most of the verses, usually rather simple in style and choice of words, originated during World War II . The authors are mostly anonymous; Written publications were at most self-published or in letter form. This type of soldier song has only recently been rediscovered and researched by historians as an independent form of literature .

Panzerlied by Kurt Wiehle

The most famous German tank song, which was sung by the German Bundeswehr until May 2017 , also bears this title. It comes from First Lieutenant Kurt Wiehle. He wrote it on June 28, 1935 on the way to Königsbrück / Saxony . The origin of the melody is u. a. called the Luiska song (Far over the cliffs) in the Bundeswehr songbook . In fact, however, the melody matches the melody of the anti-Semitic SS song Die iron Schar . This Panzerlied received u. a. therefore general fame because it can be heard in the 1965 war film The Last Battle (Originally: Battle of the Bulge ). It also enjoys a certain degree of popularity with US troops ; the melody was used for the song Képi Blanc of the French Foreign Legion .

The song is also in the last edition of the songbook Comrades Sings! the Bundeswehr from 1991 included. In May 2017, Federal Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen stopped the further edition of the songbook because "some text passages no longer correspond to our understanding of values". The tank song was written u. a. especially in criticism. In April 2009 a CDU Baden-Württemberg songbook was withdrawn because it contained this song. Günther Oettinger judged: "A song like this has no place in any songbook, especially not in one of the CDU" and instructed the state office to crush the book "Lied.Gut." He himself had published this collection of songs together with General Secretary Thomas Strobl .

The melody of the second half of each stanza was borrowed from the refrain of the Südwesterlied (1937, song of the Germans in Namibia ).

More tank songs

Bruno von Brackel wrote the text of the tank song “Sit up, comrades, start the engine” .

literature

  • Eberhard Frommann: The songs of the Nazi era: Investigations into the National Socialist song propaganda from the beginnings to the Second World War. Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-89438-177-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Panzerlied der Bundeswehr ( Memento from April 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ cf. Eberhard Frommann: The songs of the Nazi era: Investigations into the National Socialist song propaganda from the beginnings to the Second World War. Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-89438-177-9 , pp. 17, 126 f.
  3. ^ Gabriele Renz, Volker Schmidt: My dear Herr Gesangverein. Frankfurter Rundschau from April 3, 2009, on www.fr.de.
  4. ↑ a b David Gall: "Lied.Gut.": Protected from stupidity? Posted April 3, 2009 on www.hagalil.com
  5. ↑ Article on tagesschau.de
  6. ↑ Article on swr.de in the cache of the Google search engine  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.sueddeutsche.de  
  7. ↑ a b Oettinger, the song book and the Nazis  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Süddeutsche Zeitung from April 3, 2009@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.sueddeutsche.de  
  8. ↑ Bibliographical evidence in the SWB online catalog of the South West German Library Network