Brecht's “Children's Hymn” | Like another good country

Who drank from Johannes’ hymn cup? Bertolt Brecht (l.), not a state poet, and Johannes R. Becher, Minister of Culture of the GDR Photo: dpa; IMAGO/TT »make small batches of children's songs for eisler. silversmithing,” Brecht wrote laconically in his journal on June 10, 1950. In addition to the "Mail song" and the "Poplar from Karlsplatz", these children's songs also included the "Children's Hymn", which begins with the verses: "Grace does not spare effort / Passion does not save understanding / So that a good Germany blooms / Like another good country."

In the Brecht archive at the Academy of Arts in Berlin there is a typescript that still bears the title “Hymne” and shows a remarkable correction. The first line was: "Work doesn't save effort." But Brecht crossed out the word “work” and replaced it with “grace” in red ink. This is how a propaganda verse became poetry.

How did Brecht come to include a hymn in his “Children’s Songs”? Even before the founding of the GDR, the SED Politburo commissioned its candidate Anton Ackermann in September 1949 to talk to Johannes R. Becher and Hanns Eisler about a future national anthem. After the founding of the GDR on October 7th, Wilhelm Pieck, as President, wrote a letter to Becher and made suggestions for the content of the text.

At the end of October, Becher traveled with Eisler to a Goethe celebration in Warsaw and showed the composer his first draft there. During a visit to Chopin's birthplace in Żelazowa Wola, Eisler sat down at the piano and played the composition he had just written to Becher. To Becher's astonishment, Eisler replied succinctly: "Such things can only be done very quickly or not at all."

As early as November 5, 1949, after a prelude to Wilhelm Pieck and the assembled Politburo, the Council of Ministers decided to adopt this work as the “German National Anthem”. In the Federal Republic they wanted to hold on to the “Song of the Germans,” which Reich President Friedrich Ebert had declared to be the anthem of the Weimar Republic in August 1922. Its text came from Hoffmann von Fallersleben, who wrote it in Heligoland in 1841 to the melody of Joseph Haydn's imperial anthem "God Save Franz the Emperor."

During the Nazi regime, only the first verse, "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles," was sung and Fallersleben's praise of "German women, German wine and German singing" was ignored.

After the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, its first president Theodor Heuss also wanted a new anthem, but this was rejected by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. In 1952 he decided that only the third verse should be sung in the future: “Unity and justice and freedom”. Brecht found this hymn, which was always followed by the “Horst Wessel Song” in the “Third Reich,” intolerable. But he also had little to gain from the GDR's new anthem with its pathos and the sun that was supposed to shine "more beautifully than ever over Germany."

So his “Hymn” can be seen as a counter-proposal, which he cunningly also wrote to Haydn’s melody. But instead of the "German unity" that was still propagated by the SED leadership at the time, which Becher had underlined with "Germany, one fatherland," Brecht was primarily concerned with reconciliation and understanding with neighboring states: "So that the peoples do not turn pale / As before a robber / But hold out their hands / To us like other peoples."

While Adenauer did not care that the old NSDAP members in the state, judiciary, military and economy could continue to sing "Germany, Germany above everything" in their minds, Brecht countered this fateful continuity with a different perspective: "And not above and not below / Other peoples we want to be / From the sea to the Alps / From the Oder to the Rhine." The Cold Warriors on both sides of the state border were unanimous in their rejection of these verses until they were opened. And when, during the negotiations on the unification treaty in 1990, several citizens' initiatives proposed replacing the "Song of the Germans" with Brecht's "Children's Anthem," this idea was ignored, as was the suggestion to draw up a new all-German constitution.

With the arrogance that is still common today, West German politicians pointed out that the anthem and constitution of the Federal Republic had proven themselves brilliantly over the past forty years and did not require any innovations. In contrast, the political scientist Iring Fetscher had already written in 1977 about Brecht's "Children's Hymn": "There is probably no anthem that explains the love for one's own country so beautifully, so rationally, so critically, and none that ends with such conciliatory lines." Even then, the new victors of history were not interested in rational criticism, not to mention grace.

The Germany for which Brecht wrote this hymn and for which he and many of his friends and colleagues came from exile to the Soviet occupation zone, a democratic and socialist Germany in which there should be neither exploitation nor state arbitrariness, this Germany did not exist after 1945. For a short time, many people in the GDR hoped for this in 1989, but the chance had been missed in the forty years before.

But the fact that there was once a German anthem full of poetry and hope should be remembered in view of the new singing wars and the hate campaigns against all the socialist ideas that still exist today.

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