Immortal victims
The song Immortal Sacrifice is a funeral march that commemorates the Russian Revolution of 1905 and its dead. The Russian text is from W. G. Archangelsky. The German version comes from Hermann Scherchen , who became familiar with the song while a Russian prisoner of war. The composer was probably N. N. Ikonnikow.
The song is one of the most famous political songs of the labor movement . Dmitri Shostakovich processed the melody in the third movement of his 11th symphony . The theme is also taken up in the fourth movement in Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Concerto funebre .
The song could be heard on GDR television at the funeral ceremonies for Leonid Brezhnev (1982), Yuri Andropov (1984) and Konstantin Tschernenko (1985). It was also intoned at the annual demonstration on the occasion of the death of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht at the memorial of the socialists at the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery in Berlin . The march was also part of the great tattoo of the National People's Army of the GDR.
In Eisenhüttenstadt, on the occasion of the Liberation Day, it was performed every year on May 8th at the place of the German-Soviet friendship to lay a wreath at the memorial for the fallen Soviet soldiers by a wind orchestra of the Soviet Army.
literature
- Karl Adamek : Political song today: on the sociology of singing workers 'songs: empirical contribution with pictures and notes (= writings of the Fritz Hüser Institute for German and Foreign Workers' Literature of the City of Dortmund, 4). Klartext Verlag, Cologne 1987, ISBN 978-3-88474-600-4 .
- Frank Trommler: Socialist Literature in Germany. A historical overview (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 434). Kröner, Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-520-43401-6 , p. 461.