Horst-Wessel-Lied
Horst Wessel Lied (Spanish: 'Horst Wessel Song'), aka Die Fahne Hoch! ('The Flag Raised High'), was the anthem of the National Socialist German Workers' Party between 1930 and 1945. After Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the Nazis ended it elevating it to the status of Germany's de facto anthem, along with the first stanza of Deutschlandlied.
The lyrics were originally written in 1929 by Sturmführer Horst Wessel, a Sturmabteilung (SA) commander in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain. A year later, Wessel was assassinated by a member of the German Communist Party, after which Joseph Goebbels made Wessel a martyr for the National Socialist cause. The song was first performed at Wessel's funeral, and it was from then on that it began to be widely used at party events, as well as being sung by the SA during street parades.
When Hitler became chancellor three years later, Horst Wessel Lied was recognized as a national symbol by law of May 19, 1933. The following year, a regulation made it mandatory to perform the fascist salute while the song was performed.
History
The lyrics of "Horst-Wessel-Lied" was written in 1929 by Sturmführer Horst Wessel, the commander of the "brownshirts" party paramilitaries; (Sturmabteilung or "SA") in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin. Wessel wrote songs for the SA in conscious imitation of the communist paramilitary, Red Fighting Front, to provoke them to attack his troops, and to keep the spirits of his men up.
Horst Wessel
Wessel was the son of a college-educated pastor, but was employed as a construction worker. He became known to the communists when he led a series of SA raids on Fischerkiez, an extremely poor district of Berlin where the communists mingled with underworld figures (he did so on the orders of the militant Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels). i> [regional party leader] Berlin). Several of these riots were only minor riots, but one took place outside the tavern that the local German Communist Party (KPD) used as its headquarters. As a result of that hand-to-hand combat, five communists were wounded, four of them seriously. The communist newspaper accused the police of letting the National Socialists get away while they arrested the wounded communists, while the paper claimed that Wessel had been trying to make a speech when the communists emerged and started the fight. Wessel was marked for death. assassination, with his face and address on communist street signs and the slogan of the KPD and the Red Fighting Front became "hit the fascists wherever you find them".
Wessel met his partner Erna Jänicke in a room on Große Frankfurter Straße in the home of the widow Frau Salm, whose husband had been a communist. After a few months, there was a dispute between Salm and Wessel over the unpaid rent; Salm wanted Jänicke to leave, but she refused, and Salm asked her late husband's communist friends for help. Shortly thereafter, on January 14, 1930, Wessel was shot and seriously wounded by two members of the Communist Party, one of whom was Albrecht "Ali" Höhler. Wessel died in hospital on February 23 from blood poisoning, which he contracted during his hospitalization. Höhler was tried in court and sentenced to six years in prison for the shooting. imprisonment under false pretenses by the SA and executed three years later, after the rise to power of the National Socialists in 1933.
Anthem of the National Socialist German Workers' Party
Joseph Goebbels, Gauleiter and owner and editor of the newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack), had made several attempts to create National Socialist martyrs for propaganda purposes, the first being an SA man named Hans Georg Kütemeter (de), whose body was pulled from a canal the morning after he attended a speech by Hitler at the Sportpalast. Goebbels tried to turn this into a murder by the communists, but the overwhelming evidence showed that it had been a suicide, and he had to drop the matter. Goebbels therefore went to considerable effort to mythologize Wessel's story, even when the man lay dying. He met with Wessel's mother, who told him the story of his son's life, her hope for a better world, and her attempt to rescue a prostitute he had met on the street. Goebbels saw Wessel as an "idealistic dreamer".
Wessel himself had undergone an operation at St. Joseph's Hospital that stopped his internal bleeding, but surgeons were unable to remove the bullet in his cerebellum. Wessel was taken to his mother's house to die. In his diary, Goebbels described Wessel's entire face as shot up and his features distorted, and claimed that Wessel told him "One has to go on!" I'm happy!" After a period in which his condition stabilized, Wessel died on February 23.
Goebbels consulted with Hermann Göring and other members of the group about how to respond to Wessel's death. They declared a period of mourning until 12 March, during which party and SA members would avoid amusement and Wessel's name would be invoked at all party meetings. Wessel's unit was renamed Horst Wessel Storm Unit 5.
From a combination of fact and fiction, Goebbels' propaganda created what became one of the central martyr figures of his movement (NSDAP). Officially declared the Wessel march, renamed "Horst-Wessel-Lied" (Horst Wessel Song), being the NSDAP anthem. Wessel was buried on 1 March Contrary to what the National Socialists claimed, there were no attacks on the funeral procession. His funeral was filmed and turned into a major propaganda event by the NSDAP. The "Horst Wessel Song" it was sung by the SA at the funeral, and was later used extensively at party functions, as well as by the SA during street parades.
When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, the "Horst Wessel Song" it became a national symbol by law on May 19, 1933. The following year, a regulation required the right arm to be extended and raised in the salute to Hitler when the first and fourth (identical) verses were sung. National Socialist leaders can be seen singing the song at the end of Leni Riefenstahl's 1935 film Triumph of the Will, Hitler also ordered the tempo at which the song was to be played.
Some National Socialists were extremely sensitive about the uses to which "Horst-Wessel-Lied" was put. For example, a bandleader who wrote a jazz version of the song was forced to leave Germany, and when Martha Dodd, the daughter of William E. Dodd, at the time the US ambassador to Germany, played a recording In a customary arrangement of the song at her birthday party at the ambassador's residence in 1933, a young National Socialist who was a liaison between the German Foreign Office and Hitler's Chancellery, turned off the record player and announced: " This is not the kind of music to be played at mixed gatherings and in a frivolous manner". The song was played in some Protestant places of worship, as some elements of the Evangelical Church in Germany had accepted Horst's worship Wessel, built as it was by Goebbels on the model of martyred Christianity in the past.
After World War II
After the fall of the Third Reich in May 1945, the Horst Wessel Lied was banned. The lyrics and the melody are now illegal in Germany and Austria.
Letter
The lyrics to Horst Wessel's anthem were published in September 1929 in the Berlin party newspaper, Der Angriff (The Attack) which was owned and directed by Joseph Goebbels.
The following is the most common German lyrics of the anthem and its Spanish translation.
Original version | Spanish translation |
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Melody
Origin
After Wessel's death, he was officially credited with composing the music as well as writing the lyrics for the song "Horst-Wessel-Lied". However, between 1930 and 1933, German critics disputed this, pointing out that the tune had a long prior history. "How great is He" is a well-known hymn with a similar tune, for example.[citation needed] Criticism of Horst Wessel as an author became unthinkable after 1933, when the NSDAP took over control of Germany and criticism would probably be severely punished.
The most likely immediate source for the melody was a popular song in the German Imperial Navy during World War I, which Wessel would no doubt have heard being sung by Navy veterans in 1920s Berlin. it was known either by its opening line as Vorbei, vorbei, sind all die schönen Stunden or as "Königsberg-Lied", after the German cruiser Königsberg, which is mentioned in a version of the lyrics of the song. The opening verse of the song is:
Original version | Spanish translation |
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Vorbei, vorbei sind all die schönen Stunden die wir verlebt am schönen Ostseestrand Wir hatten uns, ja uns so schön zusamm'n gefunden is war für uns der allerschönste Ort. | They're gone, they're gone all the happy hours. that we spend on the beautiful coast of the Baltic Sea. Things were so beautiful among all and it was for us the best place of all. |
In 1936, a German music critic, Alfred Weidemann, published an article identifying the melody of a song composed in 1865 by Peter Cornelius as "Urmelodie" (source-melody). According to Weidemann, Cornelius described the tune as a "Viennese Folk Tune". This seemed to him to be the ultimate origin of the "Horst-Wessel-Lied" melody.
Features
The melody of the Horst-Wessel-Lied is characterized by being in a serious tone, military and fitable with the lyrics. The original instruments he uses are cymbals, trumpets, guitar, trombone, and bass drums.
Use outside of Germany
During the 1930s and 1940s, the "Horst Wessel Song" it was adapted by fascist groups in other European countries.
One of the marching songs of the British Union of Fascists, known as "The Marching Song" (The Marching Song) or "Comrades, the Voices" (Comrades, the Voices) was set to the same tune, and its lyrics were somewhat modeled on the song, albeit appealing to British fascism. Instead of referring to the party's martyrs, he identifies Britain's war dead as those who march in spirit against the "red front and the mass ranks of reaction." His opening verse was:[citation needed]
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In Spain, the Falange sang to the same tune:
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(Note that this was a Traditionalist Spanish Falange (National Movement) March, and not an original Falange march. It was sung by some of the volunteers from the 250th Division, or Blue Division after the death by José Antonio Primo de Rivera.)
In Vichy France, members of the Légion des volontaires français contre le bolchevisme sang:[citation needed]
Original version in French | Spanish translation |
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In modern Greece, the Golden Dawn party uses the "Horst-Wessel-Lied" with Greek lyrics at their meetings or events, such as the occasional public distribution of food "only to the Greeks", while their leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, often uses the song's key verses (e.g., "The flags on high!") in their speeches.
Your version letter is:[citation needed]
Original version in Greek | In Spanish |
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μχέρι της Κεπρουτη σκλαβωμένη γη.
με θάρρος, σ️ντροροφοι, τα τεείχη των εχθρ.
εκατομμερια στρατρατός αγωνιστίν! (2x) |
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The Russian Fascist Organization, founded in 1933, consisted largely of emigrants from the White Movement. It was led by Anastasy Vonsiatsky and was based in Connecticut, USA. The organization was disbanded after the United States entered World War II, and Vonsyatsky was arrested for violating the Espionage Act of 1917.
Your version letter is:[citation needed]
Original version in Russian | In Spanish |
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A special marine commando unit within the Chilean Navy, uses the same melody and intonation of the Horst-Wessel-Lied with different lyrics, in a hymn called "Himno de la Agrupación de Comandos IM N.° 51"
The letter of his version is:
Command Anchor Hymn IM No. 51 |
Command I am Marine
That my value on fire will record That's why I go for snow, waves, sunshine and salt With my staggering fight to defeat.
That when they shoot, they're right. And from the sea by air or land I will infiltrate And without fear I will give life.
I won't hesitate to sing like this, Command I am Marine Strong and faithful that my value On fire I already recorded. |
In popular culture
- The Youth Symphony Orchestra of New York, after discovering that a piece he had commissioned included a 45-second musical quote from the "Cong of Horst Wessel", abruptly cancelled a performance by Carnegie Hall de Marsh or Nebuttya (in Ukrainian: "Mark to oblivion"), a 9-minute Piece composed of Jonas Tarm, born in Estonia, a 21-year-old Conservatory. The composer did not explain his purpose by using the song in his piece, saying "I cannot speak for myself," but the orchestra said that the use was not appropriate.
- Melody appears in the title of the Wolfenstein 3D Video Games and later Return to Castle Wolfenstein As a radio recording.
- The electronic and concrete work of the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen entitled, Hymnen includes a sample recording of the Horst Wessel Song. It was premiered in Cologne, Germany, on November 30, 1967. It was also held at the Philharmonic Hall in New York (now David Geffen Hall) and the London Bach Festival in English, among other international performances.
- Melody uses Lukas Foss in Anne Frank's school. as a twisted march that develops around three quarters of the work. This leads to abrupt silence after which the previous music returns.
- The band of neofolk Death in June released a recording of "Horst Wessel Song" under the name "Brown Book" in its 1987 album of the same name.