Christmas carol, dry cleaned

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Christmas carol, dry-cleaned is a poem by the German writer Erich Kästner . It first appeared in the 1927 Christmas edition of the magazine Das Tage-Buch . A year later, Kästner included it in his first collection of poems, Heart on Waist . Since then it has been printed in various anthologies and performed by numerous artists.

The poem parodies the well-known Christmas carol Tomorrow, children, there will be something and turns its content into the statement that there will be nothing for poor children . This is followed by satirical reasons why presents and a splendid Christmas for poor children are neither necessary nor desirable. With the poem, Kästner reacted to the social tensions in the Weimar Republic . To do this, he subjected the sentimentality of Christmas to a “ chemical cleaning ” in the disillusioning and linguistically sober style of New Objectivity .

shape

The poem Christmas carol, chemically cleaned consists of five stanzas of six verses each . According to its subtitle, it is based on the Christmas carol Tomorrow, children, there will be something . It mimics its accenting metric , which is composed entirely of trochaic verses . The rhyme scheme of each stanza is formed from a cross rhyme followed by a pair rhyme ([ababcc]). All of the four-part verses end in cross rhyme alternately with an unstressed and a stressed syllable, thus alternating between acatalexes and catalexes , while the verses of the paired rhymes are catalectical throughout.

content

Black and white photography of two children with gifts in their arms
Children with gifts at the Christmas market, photo by Renate and Roger Rössing , 1952

The poem begins with the statement: "Tomorrow, children, there will be nothing!" Gifts are only given to those who already have them. For others the gift of life is enough. Your time will come sometime, too, but not tomorrow. One should not be sad about poverty, it is loved by the rich and it gives relief from both unfashionable gifts and indigestion. A Christmas tree is not necessary, Christmas can also be enjoyed in the street, the Christianity proclaimed by the church tower increases intelligence. Poverty can also teach pride. If you don't have any other wood for the stove, you should burn the board in front of your head. By waiting you learn patience, learn for life. In any case, God in his comprehensive goodness was not to be called to account. The poem ends with the exclamation: "Oh, you love Christmas time!"

Style and language

Christmas carol, dry-cleaned is a parody of the well-known Christmas carol Morgen, Kinder, There will be something , the text of which was written by Karl Friedrich Splittegarb . It contradicts its title and turns it into the opposite statement: "Tomorrow, children, there will be nothing!" Hans-Georg Kemper spoke of the reverse procedure of a counterfacture , the spiritual rewrite of a secular song, which is done here with ridiculous and satirical intent. In addition to tomorrow, children, there will be something in the poem, Kästner also quotes other traditional songs from the Christmas season: Tomorrow comes Santa Claus , Silent Night, Holy Night and the psalm verse “Lord, your goodness extends as far as heaven is”.

But according to Hermann Kurzke , Kästner “tears up” “the songs and sentences of the Christmas season” in order to break with their sentimentality. His language is "brisk and cheeky, mocking to scornful , not sweet but salty". She uses a modern and sloppy vocabulary, colloquial expressions such as “whistle on it” or sober brand names such as Osram pears . Instead of “Christianity, blown from the tower”, the poem spreads unromanticism and lack of illusion. In its “chemical cleaning” of the Christmas festival, it makes use of the stylistic means of the New Objectivity with realistic, time-critical content and sober, distant language.

interpretation

Time reference and personal background

Black and white photograph of two young children looking at candy in a shop window
Children in front of a shop window decorated for Christmas, 1959

For Kurt Beutler, Kästner's poem Christmas carol, chemically cleaned, describes Christmas “not as a celebration of joy, but as days in which the children of the poor experience the injustice and harshness of their social fate in a special way”. It uses irony to formulate both accusation and resignation . Due to the suffering of the children, Kästner focuses on the educational aspect in particular. Here debunk Kaestner, according to Ruth Smarter "the hypocrisy of a consumer-owned , be charitable -talking capitalism ". Stefan Neuhaus saw the poem Christmas, chemically cleaned, in the series of a number of other poems with which Kästner repeatedly addressed the social upheaval in the Weimar Republic . This is how he described the effects of social cold on children in the ballad about the instinct for imitation . In addressing millionaires , he directly criticized the economic order of the Weimar Republic. The title goes back to the newly introduced chemical cleaning , which had become the general slogan at the time the poem was written, which - applied to the most diverse areas - stood for a particularly thorough cleaning and unveiling of facts.

According to Hermann Kurzke, in his youth in the Outer Neustadt of Dresden, Kästner himself commuted between the extremes of poverty and wealth, between his parents 'poor attic apartment and the villa of wealthy uncle Franz Augustin, which the children were only allowed to enter through the servants' entrance to the kitchen . The experience of the contrasts between rich and poor has shaped Kästner for a lifetime and is sometimes idyllic like in Pünktchen and Anton or Three Men in the Snow , sometimes satirically processed like in the poem Christmas carol, chemically cleaned . Kästner's partner and first biographer Luiselotte Enderle judged: "Kästner's work and life can be completely traced back to these first milieu experiences."

"Left Melancholy"

In 1931 Walter Benjamin criticized Kästner's early poetry, including Christmas carol, chemically cleaned , as “ left-wing melancholy ” and “ nihilism ”. The poems are "to the left of the possible"; “To enjoy oneself in negativistic calm” is sufficient for them. "The transformation of political struggle into an object of pleasure, from a means of production into a consumer article - that is the last hit in this literature." From Benjamin's point of view, Kästner gagged in his poems "Criticism and knowledge [which] are within reach, but they would be spoilsport and should not have a say under any conditions ”.

Less than 75 years later, Hermann Kurzke agreed with Benjamin's finding of “left-wing melancholy”. Although Kästner sees himself as an enlightener who unmasks a mendacious festival and the prevailing injustice, the tone of the poem seems strangely restrained. It is not heading towards an act of liberation or a rebellion, but remains apolitical. Kurzke attributed this to the biographical background of Kästner, who wanted to be a revolutionary and at the same time was a model student. For Kurzke, the message of the poem became the moral attitude expressed by the appeals to become smart and proud, to learn and laugh for life. Ultimately, there is a longing inherent in the poem, the poor children may one day partake in the Christmas tree, roast goose and dolls, the poor would one day be given gifts by the rich, however unreasonable and improbable this hope may be.

Prescribed passivity and contradiction

Wulf Segebrecht , on the other hand, asked in 2006 whether Benjamin Kästner had not read Kästner's poem carefully enough because he had not recognized the cynical intent behind it. In each verse of the poem, the children have a suggestion on how to come to terms with their poverty at Christmas:

  1. Waiting for a future mess in the distant future,
  2. Refusing gifts that are even harmful,
  3. Content with the public Christmas hype,
  4. superior contempt for celebrations,
  5. Trust in a God who is responsible for larger dimensions.

Every teaching ultimately leads to a persistence in passivity, encouraging the children to come to terms with their status instead of rebelling.

This repressive instruction is reinforced by Kästner's fictional comment on the poem: "This poem was bought by the Reich School Council for the German standard reading book." The school council, committed to maintaining public peace and order, is interested in the poor children accepting their fate add instead of rebelling. But it is precisely this that exposes the cynicism of the proposals, which the reader should see through. The reader is encouraged to think about the intentions behind the presented teachings and provoked to contradict, without the poem itself formulating such a thing. This contradiction frees Christmas from false sentimentality and political instrumentalization; the Christmas carol is "chemically cleaned" with the means of the New Objectivity. With reference to the children's report of the German Children's Fund , Segebrecht emphasized almost 80 years after the poem was written that the topic of child poverty is still topical .

Publications and Adaptations

Kästner's Christmas carol, dry-cleaned , was first published in the 1927 Christmas edition of the magazine Das Tage-Buch . In 1928 Kästner included it in his first collection of poems, Heart on Waist . After that, the poem appeared unchanged in selected volumes of his works, for example in 1946 in By looking through my books and in 1966 in Kästner for adults , as well as in various anthologies on the topic of Christmas.

Numerous artists have recited or sung the poem. Readings by Hans-Jürgen Schatz , Otto Mellies , Gerd Wameling and Ralf Bauer were published . From an early reading by the actor Alfred Beierle for his short-lived record company Die neue Truppe from autumn 1930, there is only one broken shellac record in the German Historical Museum , which has been restored for a recording by the German Broadcasting Archive. Musical interpretations often used the original melody of tomorrow, children, will there be something back from Carl Gottlieb Hering , such as that of Gina Pietsch . The composer Marcel Rubin provided his own setting for the poem .

In 2015 the poem by Saltatio Mortis was set to music on their album Fest der Liebe .

Expenses (selection)

  • Erich Kästner: Heart on the waist . With drawings by Erich Ohser . Curt Weller, Leipzig 1928 (first edition). True to text reprint: Atrium, Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-85535-905-9 , pp. 102-103.
  • Erich Kästner: When looking through my books . Atrium, Zurich 1946, ISBN 3-85535-912-1 , pp. 103-104.
  • Erich Kästner: Kästner for adults . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1966, ISBN 3-85535-912-1 , p. 35.
  • Erich Kästner: Lots of contemporaries . Volume 1 of the work edition in 9 volumes. Edited by Harald Hartung and Nicola Brinkmann. Hanser, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-446-19563-7 , p. 221.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tomorrow, children, there will be something on Wikisource .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Erich Kästner: Christmas carol, chemically cleaned . In: heart on waist . Atrium, Zurich 1985, pp. 102-103.
  3. ↑ a b Wulf Segebrecht: Nice presents! , P. 171.
  4. ↑ Hans-Georg Kemper: Komische Lyrik - Lyrische Komik. About deformations of a strict form . Niemeyer, Tübingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-484-51000-5 , p. 121.
  5. ↑ “Lord, your goodness extends as far as the sky is, and your truth as far as the clouds go” ( Ps 36 : 6  Lut ).
  6. ↑ a b c Hermann Kurzke: Hymn and Culture , p. 229.
  7. ↑ Kurt Beutler: Erich Kästner. A literary pedagogical investigation . Beltz, Weinheim 1967, p. 114.
  8. ↑ Ruth Klüger : Corrupt Morality. Erich Kästner's children's books . In: Women read differently . dtv, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-12276-5 , p. 69.
  9. ^ Stefan Neuhaus: Realistic writing with Toller, Kästner and Tucholsky . In: Sabine Kyora, Stefan Neuhaus (eds.): Realistic writing in the Weimar Republic. Volume 5 of the writings of the Ernst Toller Society . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-8260-3390-2 , p. 156.
  10. ↑ Albert Klein et al. a .: Readings 7 . Bagel, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02951-9 , p. 174.
  11. ↑ Hermann Kurzke: Hymn and Culture , pp. 228-229.
  12. ↑ Luiselotte Enderle : Erich Kästner in personal testimonials and photo documents . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1966, ISBN 3-499-50120-1 , p. 13.
  13. ^ Walter Benjamin : Left Melancholy. To Erich Kästner's new book of poems . In: Society 8 (1931). Volume 1, p. 183.
  14. ↑ Wulf Segebrecht: Nice presents! , Pp. 169-171.
  15. ↑ Life in this and that time ( Memento of the original from April 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dra.de archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Original sound recordings by and with Erich Kästner at the German Broadcasting Archive .
  16. ↑ Christmas carol, dry- cleaned on the myspace page by Gina Pietsch .
  17. ↑ Hartmut Krones : Marcel Rubin. A study . Lafite, Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1975, ISBN 3-215-02116-1 , p. 26.
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on February 14, 2011 in this version .