| "Einheitsfrontlied" | |
|---|---|
 Recording: Ernst Busch with choir and orchestra, Otto Dobrindt conducting | |
| Song | |
| Written | Bertolt Brecht |
| Published | 1934 |
| Composer(s) | Hanns Eisler |
The "Einheitsfrontlied" (German for "United Front Song") is one of the most famous songs of the German labour movement. It was written by Bertolt Brecht and composed by Hanns Eisler. The best-known rendition was sung by Ernst Busch.
After Adolf Hitler's coming to power in January 1933, the situation for left-wing movements in Germany drastically deteriorated. The antagonism between the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party had long divided the German left. After the Nazis banned both parties and labour unions in the summer of 1933, many people, including Bertolt Brecht, believed that only a united front of social democrats and communists could fight back against fascism. In 1934, at the request of fellow theatre director Erwin Piscator, Brecht wrote the "Einheitsfrontlied", calling for all workers to join the Arbeiter-Einheitsfront, the Workers' United Front. The song was performed the next year in the First International Workers Music Olympiad held in Strasbourg by a choir of 3,000 workers. Its first record was printed in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, performed by communist actor and singer Ernst Busch. [1] It was later published in Brecht's 1939 collection Svendborger Gedichte . [2]
Hanns Eisler, who would later go on to compose the East German national anthem "Auferstanden aus Ruinen", intentionally kept the composition of "Einheitsfrontlied" simple and easy to follow, so it could be sung by workers without much musical training. [3] In doing so, the song is quite march-like. In 1948, Eisler wrote a symphonic version, which was also sung by Ernst Busch and recorded for his Aurora-Projekt.
German [4]
Und weil der Mensch ein Mensch ist,
drum braucht er was zum Essen, bitte sehr!
Es macht ihn ein Geschwätz nicht satt,
das schafft kein Essen her.
Refrain:
Drum links, zwei, drei!
Drum links, zwei, drei!
Wo dein Platz, Genosse, ist!
Reih dich ein in die Arbeitereinheitsfront,
weil du auch ein Arbeiter bist.
Und weil der Mensch ein Mensch ist,
drum braucht er auch noch Kleider und Schuh!
Es macht ihn ein Geschwätz nicht warm
und auch kein Trommeln dazu.
Refrain
Und weil der Mensch ein Mensch ist,
drum hat er Stiefel im Gesicht nicht gern!
Er will unter sich keinen Sklaven seh'n
und über sich keinen Herr'n.
Refrain
Und weil der Prolet ein Prolet ist,
drum wird ihn kein anderer befrei'n.
Es kann die Befreiung der Arbeiter nur
das Werk der Arbeiter sein.
Refrain
English translation
And because a person is a person,
he'll need something to eat, please!
He gets tired of prattle
for it does not give him food.
Refrain:
So left, two, three!
So left, two, three!
To where your place is, comrade!
Join up with the workers' United Front,
for you are a worker too!
And because a person is a person,
he will need clothes and shoes!
Prattle will not keep him warm,
and neither will the drums [of war].
Refrain
And because a person is a person,
he doesn't need a boot to the face!
He wants no slaves under him,
and no masters above!
Refrain
And because a prole is a prole,
no one else will free him.
The liberation of the working class can only be
the job of workers.
Refrain
Singable [5]
And just because he's a human,
a man would like a little bite to eat;
he wants no bull and a lot of talk
that gives no bread or meat.
Refrain:
So left, two, three!
So left, two, three!
To the work that we must do.
March on in the workers' United Front,
for you are a worker too!
And just because he's a human,
he doesn't like a pistol to his head.
He wants no servants under him,
and no boss over his head.
Refrain
And just because he's a worker,
no class can free him but his own.
The emancipation of the working class
is the task of the worker alone.
Refrain
Ton Steine Scherben covered the song on their 1971 album Warum geht es mir so dreckig? . Hannes Wader recorded the song on his 1977 album Hannes Wader singt Arbeiterlieder .
Hanns Eisler was a German-Austrian composer. He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artistic association with Bertolt Brecht, and for the scores he wrote for films. The Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin is named after him.
Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Busch was a German singer and actor.
Ernst Ortlepp was a German poet.
This following is a list of the work released by German rock band Ton Steine Scherben. It is currently missing the (few) singles issued by the band.
Tank Battles: The Songs of Hanns Eisler is a solo album by German singer Dagmar Krause released by Island Records in 1988. It is a collection of 26 songs by German composer Hanns Eisler sung by Krause in English. She also sang the songs in the original German which were released by Island at the same time on a companion album, Panzerschlacht: Die Lieder von Hanns Eisler.
The Symphony No. 8 "Lieder der Vergänglichkeit" by Krzysztof Penderecki is a choral symphony in twelve relatively short movements set to 19th and early 20th-century German poems. The work was completed and premiered in 2005. The symphony has an approximate duration of 35 minutes. Penderecki revised the symphony in 2007 by adding a few more poem settings and the piece has expanded to around 50 minutes. Although given the designation Symphony No. 8, it was not actually the final symphony Penderecki completed before his death in March 2020; the Sixth Symphony, begun in 2008, was not completed until 2017.
"Kinderhymne" is a poem by Bertolt Brecht, written in 1950 and set to music by Hanns Eisler in the same year.
Warum geht es mir so dreckig? is the first album released by the German rock band Ton Steine Scherben. It includes—among other pieces—the song Macht kaputt, was euch kaputt macht, which expressed the built-up anger and radicalization of the youth of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, Brecht wrote didactic Lehrstücke and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre and the Verfremdungseffekt.
In Nazi Germany, the Aryan certificate or Aryan passport was a document which certified that a person was a member of the presumed Aryan race. Beginning in April 1933, it was required from all employees and officials in the public sector, including education, according to the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. It was also a primary requirement to become a Reich citizen for those who were of German or related blood (Aryan) and wanted to become Reich citizens after the Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935. A "Swede or an Englishman, a Frenchman or Czech, a Pole or Italian" was considered to be related, that is, "Aryan".And also after 1936 Iranians were known as related blood (Aryan) like the Germans
Frauke Finsterwalder is a German film director and screenwriter. Finsterwalder has directed several shorts and documentaries. Her feature film directorial debut, Finsterworld, was released in 2013. For her second feature film, Sisi & I, released in 2023, she was awarded the Bavarian Film Award for Best Director.
"Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g'mein", or “Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice” in English, is a Lutheran hymn, written in 1523 by Martin Luther. It is one of Luther's early hymns and considered by some as one of his finest. It was published as one of eight songs in 1524 in the first Lutheran hymnal, the Achtliederbuch. The Achtliederbuch contained four songs by Luther, three by Speratus, and one by Justus Jonas. It appeared also in 1524 in the Erfurt Enchiridion.
Sonja Kehler was a German actress and chanson singer, known internationally for her interpretation of works by Bertolt Brecht, first playing his characters on the theatre stage, then focused on singing his songs and those of others in solo programs. She also taught acting in Danish at the theatre academy in Odense, appeared in films, worked as stage director and presented literary programs.
"Freiheit", also known as "Spaniens Himmel" or "Die Thälmann-Kolonne", is a song written in 1936 by Gudrun Kabisch and Paul Dessau, German anti-fascists. The song was written for the International Brigades but later became a popular standard in Germany and in American communist and folk music communities. The title translates as "Freedom" in English.
The "Solidaritätslied" is a revolutionary working song written between 1929 and 1931 by Bertolt Brecht, and set to music by Hanns Eisler. It was written against the background of the Great Depression, the Great War (1914–18), and the social issues caused by the Industrial Revolution that were explored in Brecht's 1932 film Kuhle Wampe in which the song also appeared.
Svendborger Gedichte is a poetry collection by the German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, and the last collection of new poems to be published while he lived. The collection is named after the town of Svendborg on the Danish island of Funen, where Brecht lived during his exile from Nazi Germany. During this period, Hanns Eisler stayed several times to set a large group of the poems to music in collaboration with Brecht.
Peter Palitzsch was a German theatre director. He worked with Bertolt Brecht in his Berliner Ensemble from the beginning in 1949, and was in demand internationally as a representative of Brecht's ideas. He was a theatre manager at the Staatstheater Stuttgart and the Schauspiel Frankfurt. Many of his productions were invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen festival. He worked internationally from 1980.
Erik Wirl was a German operatic tenor and actor.
Inge Lammel, née Rackwitz was a German women musicologist, which dealt mainly with industrial folk music. She fled to Great Britain as a Jew in 1939 and became known for her work on the persecution of the Jews during the period of National Socialism in Berlin-Pankow.
Lutherstrophe is a seven-line strophe used in Occitan and German song and literature. Rooted in Old Occitan lyric poetry and Minnesang, the strophe became popular in 16th-century Lutheran hymn. It is named after Martin Luther.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
