Robes modes
Robes-Modes is the German title of the US Foxtrot hit " Collegiate ", which Moe Jaffe and Nat Bonx wrote in 1923 and which came to Germany two years later.
text
The librettist Fritz Löhner wrote a German text on the melody under his stage name Beda, which contains satirical allusions to institutions and people of the Weimar Republic . The song was published in 1925 under the title “Robes Modes” by the Viennese Bohème-Verlag Vienna-Berlin (WBV 689).
In contrast to the original by the two American songwriters, the text of the three stanzas is not satisfied with nonsense words and allusions typical of the time. Rather, it depicts Berlin after the First World War as a huge department store in which a wide variety of ideas and ideologies are offered for sale: The Nazi swastika and the Jewish religious historian Gershom Scholem or perhaps his brother Werner Scholem , a communist member of parliament, are just as irreconcilable side by side like the Russian writer Isaak Babel , the Bible, the socialist August Bebel and the " Reichswehr with the saber".
The League of Nations in Geneva, the peace negotiations in Locarno, the efforts of the German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann and the French politician Joseph Caillaux are cited as well as contemporary artists ( Igor Stravinsky , Max Reinhardt , Fritzi Massary ) and athletes (the popular boxer Hans Breitensträter ), film people (such as the actor Paul Wegener , who became famous for his portrayal of the "Golem", and the director Reinhold Schünzel ), companies and institutions (such as the "White Weeks" at Karstadt and Tietz, the IFA international radio exhibition , the state-affiliated film company Universum-Film AG " UFA ”and the Deutsche Lichtbild-Gesellschaft “ Deulig ”, the catering company Kempinski, the schnapps distillery Mampe or the optics company Ruhnke). Not only politically contradicting figures such as the journalist Karl Radek and the World War General Erich Ludendorff , the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini or the betting fraudster Max Klante are presented in a colorful sequence more according to the sound of the language than the contextual context. As in the neighborhood of dogs ("Rattler, Pinscher, Möpse"), underwear ("Leibchen, Knüpfer, Schlüpfer"), food ("Königsberger Klöpse, Eal, Bananen"), from "Nippes" and "Kokolores" happens, it results in a relativization, even disenchantment and ultimately devaluation of the named. Everything is just a commodity, everything can be bought. Not just Berlin, the whole world is just one department store.
For the poet, the deeply disillusioning quintessence of this list is that “everything is bluffing”, that politics and world history are “just business” and, in the end, everything revolves around money. The militarily repeated three times “Hurray! Hooray! Hurray! ”Must sound like mockery.
Audio documents
The operetta and cabaret tenor Max Hansen sang the chorus uncredited to be accompanied by the Dobbri saxophone orchestra on December 30, 1925 with Beka on gramophone record; the die no. 33 210 was not sold on Beka, but only on the cheap Derby label .
In a second take (mat. No. 33 210-2), which was published on Beka B.5407-I, Hermann Feiner sang the refrain on January 25, 1926 .
This recording was also published on Odeon A 41 371 / O-1488 (Mat. Be 4927-II) as the “Odeon Dance Orchestra with Refraingesang”.
Republication
- CD Trikont US-0265 (540 B) "Berlin —Großstadtklänge —Rare shellacs 1908–1953"
literature
- Barbara Denscher, Helmut Peschina : No land of smiles. Fritz Löhner-Beda 1883–1942 . Residenz-Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-7017-1302-2 , p. 85.
- Peter Honnen: All chocolates? - Words and word stories from the Rhineland. Greven, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7743-0418-5 .
- Doris Huhn: Kultburg: Raven revue with wit and esprit; Concert: Choir entertains 100 guests in the great hall. In: main-echo. May 11, 2010.
- Berthold Leimbach: Sound documents of cabaret and their interpreters, 1898–1945 . Self-published, Göttingen 1991.
- Moritz Oriole: Halalí 2 (= Halalí, Moritz Oriole, a theme with twenty variations . Volume 2). Books on Demand, 2010, ISBN 978-3-938647-18-9 , p. 238.
- Günther Schwarberg: Yours is my whole heart. The story of Fritz Löhner-Beda, who wrote the most beautiful songs in the world, and why Hitler had him murdered . Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-88243-715-4 . Reviews at Perlentaucher. The culture magazine .
- Harald Seewann : Circle and Zion Star. Pictures and documents from the lost world of the Jewish national corporation: a contribution to the history of Zionism on academic ground. Volume 3, Verlag H. Seewann, 1992, pp. 25, 33.
- Christian Zwarg: online discography PARLOPHON Matrix Numbers - 30173 to 34999: German
Individual evidence
- ↑ printed in the program booklet for the concert “You live so short and are dead for so long” at [www.kultBurG.de], cf. Chicken in Main-Echo, May 11, 2010.
- ↑ Derby (brown) 540 b, label ill. at i.ytimg.com , to be heard on youtube
- ↑ cf. Zwarg, on line Diskographie PARLOPHON Matrix Numbers - 30173 to 34999: German, p. 386.
- ↑ label shown. at grammophon-platten.de , to be heard on youtube