We are only guests on earth

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We are only guests on earth is a arisings in 1935 hymn . The text comes from Georg Thurmair . It was set to music by Adolf Lohmann .

description

The song was published in 1935, originally referred to as "Reiselied", in the youth magazine Die Wacht , of which Thurmair was a member of the editorial team, and was widely used by Georg Thurmair and Adolf Lohmann in 1938 in the song book Kirchenlied (No. 129) .

“This song was created at a time when the decision of which leadership to entrust myself to was very existential.” It meant a declaration of war on the Nazi regime “in a covert spelling”, similar to other Thurmair songs: In the Advent song Satan puts out the lights (hymn no. 23), we look for a way home (1st stanza), while “people are guilty and devise many lies” (2nd stanza) and “life is not lovable in these bad times ”(3rd stanza). The motif recurs twice in the song We are only guests on earth , pointedly as “the way to the father's house” (4th stanza) “with all sorts of complaints” (1st stanza) in “these gray streets” where “nobody is with us to be “(2nd stanza). The lyrics contain some echoes of Paul Gerhardt's song "I am a guest on earth" about Psalm 119.

It was not included in the list of standard songs published by the German bishops in 1947 , but it was included in several diocesan prayer books published after the war ( Cologne 1949, Freiburg 1950, Osnabrück 1951, Mainz 1952).

The Thurmair song is often sung at funeral services and funerals . In 1975 it was included under the number GL 656 in the praise of God , the common prayer and hymn book of the German-speaking Catholic dioceses except Switzerland and Liechtenstein ; in the new edition published in Advent 2013 it bears the number 505. In Celebrations and Praises , the joint hymn book of the Federation of Evangelical Free Churches and the Federation of Free Evangelical Congregations, the Thurmair song is under the number 450.1996 it was under 681 in the Württemberg regional part of Evangelical church hymn book included.

literature

  • Praise to god. Catholic prayer and hymn book, Diocese Rottenburg edition, 1975
  • Rebecca Schmidt, Michael Fischer: "My will should be in the end". Death and funeral songs between 1500 and 2000 (= Folk Song Studies, Volume 6). Waxmann, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8309-1501-2 , pp. 247-264 ( limited preview in the Google book search).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Maria Margarete Linner, song and singing in the denominational youth movement of the early 20th century . Peter Verlag, 2009. (= Articles on the History of Music Education, Volume 18) p. 43
  2. ^ Archdiocese of Freiburg Archbishop's Pastoral Office: We are only guests on earth. Meditation on the 15th Sunday of the annual cycle - July 15th  ( 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. accessed on February 17, 2013@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.kirche-in-virtuellen-welten.de  
  3. ↑ Heidrun Ehrke-Rotermund, Erwin Rotermund: Intermediate Realms and Counterworlds. Texts and preliminary studies on the 'hidden spelling' in the “Third Reich”. Munich 1999, quoted in: Thomas Labonté: Die Sammlung "Kirchenlied" (1938). Origin, corpus analysis, reception. Francke Verlag, Tübingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-7720-8251-1 , p. 156.
  4. ^ Thomas Labonté: The collection "Kirchenlied" (1938). Origin, corpus analysis, reception. Francke Verlag, Tübingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-7720-8251-1 , pp. 183-188.