Prince Eugene, the noble knight

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Prince Eugene of Savoy-Carignan , 1718
Auerbach : The Prince Eugene in the Battle of Belgrade, 1718

The folk song Prinz Eugen, the noble knight (also known as Song of Prince Eugene , short and Prinz Eugen ) describes the siege and capture of the city Belgrade by Eugene of Savoy , a general of the Imperial Army , in 1717 during the sixth Austrian Turkish war . The oldest known record of the song comes from a handwritten songbook begun in 1719. The lyricist is unknown. Die Weise uses the melody of the song “ When Chursachsen heard that the Turk was coming before Vienna ” from 1683.

content

In ballad form taken, the song describes the events during the battle, especially the pontoon bridge over the Danube , with some factual errors, such as in the third stanza with the date August 21 instead of June 16 or the mysterious death of a "Prince Ludwig" in stanzas 8 and 9. Prince Eugen's older brother Ludwig Julius of Savoy (1660-1683) was twenty-three years old in the fight against the Turks (or Crimean Tatars), but not before Belgrade in 1717, but in 1683 at Petronell . Eugen's eldest brother Louis Thomas von Savoyen-Carignan, on the other hand, died of his injuries as an imperial field military officer in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1702. Possibly the author was thinking of Eugen's cousin and comrade-in-arms Prince Ludwig von Baden , the "Türkenlouis" who died in 1707. Except for Lieutenant Field Marshal Prince Joseph Anton Lobkowitz and Lieutenant Colonel Prince Lamoral Taxis , there was no member of a princely house near Belgrade.

In the middle of the 19th century, the Austrian Anton Langer , an author of dime novels, added three more stanzas to the ballad, in which the “ghost of the prince” is pathetically invoked. The ballad begins with the following two verses:

1.
Prinz Eugen, the noble knight who
want the Emperor wied'rum get
city and fortress Belgerad !
He had a bridge made so
that
the army could cross over to the city.

2.
When the bridge had now been built so
that one could
freely pass the Danube river with stucco and wagon ,
at Semlin they struck the camp to drive away
all the Turks ,
to ridicule and annoy him.

shape

The ballad has nine stanzas, each stanza has 6 lines of verse in four bars , the lines of verse usually rhyme very roughly according to the rhyme scheme a a b a a b or a a b c c b .

music

Musically, the song is unusual for a German folk song with its "seemingly fluctuating rhythm", a rhythm that is now represented as five-quarter time after the introduction of bar lines or, as by Friedrich Silcher, as a change from even 2/4 and odd 3 / 4-time can be interpreted. Such a peculiar change can also be found in folk music in the so-called " twofold ".

The model for the Prinz-Eugen-Lied may have been a variant of the Moriska from Spain, namely the old Bavarian-Upper Palatinate "Mars dance", which was also widespread in Austria from the 15th to the 17th century and with blackened faces (ital . " Moresca " = Moor dance) was danced. In Vienna it was particularly popular at the time of the second Turkish siege with its strong, march-like rhythm. The song singer, however, may have been a "man of Bavarian tribe" and the song may not have been of Slavic origin, as has long been claimed, but of Bavarian origin.

reception

Due to its wide distribution in the population, the song Prinz Eugenius, the noble knight has influenced various other songs and musical works. The best known is probably the so-called in, pre-March resulting 1,845 citizens song "Whether we red, yellow collar" . As early as 1824, Wilhelm Hauff wrote the weapon student song "Brothers, raise your blades!", Which is sung to this melody today. The Prinz Eugen marches by Josef Strauss (op. 186) and the Bohemian German Andreas Leonhardt (1800–1866) also adopted the melody, the latter also being arranged by W. Rusch.

Also to be mentioned are the poem Morgen, Herr Bischer von Hoffmann von Fallersleben , for which the melody is given as “Prinz Eugen”, and the art song Prinz Eugen, the noble knight (op. 92) by Carl Loewe based on the poem of the same name by Ferdinand Freiligrath , which quotes the folk song melody. More recent arrangements are by Paul Hindemith : Six variations on the song "Prinz Eugen der Edle Ritter" (op. 41; 1926), by the composer and Nazi cultural politician Paul Graener : Variations on Prinz Eugen (1939) and Theodor Berger : Legend of Prince Eugene (op. 11, for large orchestra, 1941).

Due to the great popularity of both Eugen von Savoyen and the song, numerous literary works also bear the title Prinz Eugen, the noble knight . In 1915 the Viennese publishing house Seidel brought a children's book written by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and illustrated by Franz Wacik , entitled Prince Eugene the Noble Knight. His life in pictures . In his book, which is more aimed at bibliophiles than children, Hofmannsthal uses Prinz Eugen as a timeless representative of Austria-Hungary's military greatness. The book's final lyrics under the heading “Prince Eugen's spirit is always there where our soldiers fight and win” is accompanied by a lithograph by Wacik, which “shows the Austro-Hungarian field grays advancing with the silhouette of Prince Eugen looming over them”.

Elsabeth Großegger writes in her book “Mythos Prinz Eugen”: “The popular song of the noble knight also supported the tendency to associate his person almost exclusively with memories of the Turks. Through the story of the “Austrian hero age”, which was also referred to as the age of Prince Eugene in 1933, Prince Eugene seems to be linked to his victories against the Ottomans in the cultural memory to this day ”.

literature

  • Elisabeth Großegger: The Myth of Prinz Eugen. Staging and memory. Böhlau, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-205-79501-8 , therein: Das Lied vom Prinz Eugen, pp. 91–96.
  • Michael Fischer: Prinz Eugen, the noble knight (2008). In: Popular and Traditional Songs. Historical-critical song lexicon of the German Folk Song Archive
  • Bertrand Michael Buchmann : Turkish songs about the Turkish wars and especially about the second Turkish siege of Vienna. Böhlau, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-205-07218-9 .
  • Şenol Özyurt: The Turkish songs and the image of the Turkish in German folk tradition from the 16th to the 20th century. Fink, Munich 1972. (Univ. Diss. Freiburg 1972)
  • Oswald Redlich , Victor Junk: The Song of Prince Eugen. In: Anzeiger der Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Class. Volume 71, Vienna 1934, pp. 18–32.
  • Victor Junk: The Song of Prince Eugen - a Bavarian creation. A contribution to the history of southern German folk dance. Academy for scientific research and for the care of Germanness. Munich 1934, pp. 297-350.
  • Victor Junk: The rhythm of the Prinz-Eugen-Lied is a Bavarian folk dance. In: Anzeiger der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Vienna, phil.-hist. Class 71, Vienna 1934.
  • Prince Eugenius . In: General German Kommersbuch. 55th-58th Edition. 1896/1906, pp. 86/87 ( Wikisource ).

Web links

Sound recordings

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Bose: German Folk Ballads . In: Midwest Folklore. Volume 7, No. 4, 1957, pp. 207-213.
  2. ↑ a b c Josef Lechthaler u. a .: Songs for life . Arge Music Educators Austria (Ed.): Austrian School Music. 4th edition. Volume 4, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky u. a., Vienna 1950, p. 167.
  3. ^ Alfred von Arneth: Prince Eugene of Savoy. According to the handwritten sources in the imperial archives . Volume 2, Braumüller, Vienna 1864, p. 530, note 79. ( Google eBook )
  4. ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Collected works in 10 volumes. Stories, made up conversations and letters, trips. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt 1979, pp. 339–341.
  5. ↑ quoted from Andreas Kretzschmer : German folk songs with their original ways. First part . Association bookstore, Berlin 1840. p. 120
  6. ↑ Oswald Redlich, Victor Junk: The song of Prince Eugene. In: Anzeiger der Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Class. Volume 71, Vienna 1934, pp. 18–32.
  7. ↑ Victor Junk: The rhythm of the Prinz-Eugen-Lied a Bavarian folk dance. In: Anzeiger der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Vienna, phil.-hist. Class 71, Vienna 1934, p. 16.
  8. ↑ Victor Junk, cited in Research and Advances. Volume 10, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1934, p. 126.
  9. ^ Journal of Music. Volume 104, 1937, p. 26.
  10. ^ Text of the ballad
  11. ^ Heinz Hiebler: Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the media culture of the modern age. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2340-4 , pp. 145 f.
  12. ^ Elisabeth Großegger: Myth of Prince Eugene. Staging and memory. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2014, ISBN 978-3-205-79501-8 , p. 12.