Wenn wir brüderlich uns einen…

22 comments on “Wenn wir brüderlich uns einen…”

1. I assume that you put up this re-print of Kuznicki’s nonsense primarily to hasten the departure of the of the picture of the glasses guy, rather than because you really thought Kuznicki’s thing was all that funny.

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   • I thought it was remarkably… what it is. Yes, getting the glasses guy off the top of the blog was also a goal. What an ugly sucker he was. But the Nietzsche cartoon had already done that.

     So I was looking for a title and ran across the DDR national anthem – which I think, incidentally, is one of the best-sounding I know of. Made me think of Parsifal – and the lyrics are like an epilogue to Goetterdaemmerung – appropriately! Here’s the literal translation:

     1. Risen from the ruins
     and turned toward the future,
     Let us serve you for the common good,
     Germany, united Fatherland.
     Our task is to overcome old distress,
     and we shall overcome it together,
     and we shall surely succeed,
     so that the sun, more beautifully than ever before,
     shines over Germany,
     shines over Germany.

     2. May happiness and peace be granted
     to Germany, our Fatherland.
     The whole world longs for peace,
     extend your hand to all peoples.
     If we unite fraternally,
     we will defeat the enemy of the People.
     Let the light of peace shine,
     so that a mother never again
     mourns her son,
     mourns her son.

     3. Let us plough, let us build,
     learn and achieve as never before,
     That, trusting in our own strength,
     a free generation shall arise.
     German youth, the best striving
     of our people united in you,
     Will revivitalize Germany
     And the sun, more beautifully than ever before
     shall shine over Germany,
     shall shine over Germany.

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2. might be that you have a thing for “risen”

   I tried leaving a comment on that crud, but hours later it’s still unappeared.

   is that SOP ?

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   • nope, not SOP at all… sure they didn’t ban you or something once upon a time?

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     • first ever time on the site…..no links, not even a scornful tone and the comment box already had my handle and e-address loaded

       ——went back to site …and the frog has landed!

       sometime between 11:30 EDT and now ….comment hopped onto the page ….some three hours after marked submission.

       what was Kuznicki DOING with it during that time???

       (and BTW your comment of 12:42 was rather a nice answer to that silly nickwit)

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       • actually you said the same thing as me in about 1/10th the words…

         …I put a comment in at the bottom about looking at their moderation queue. I’m thinking it had something to do with the changeover in comment settings…

         …anyway, Froggy the Gremlin dominates as usual, unsurpassed among avatars. I suppose that Mr. K could have spent the time shivering in fear, but I suspect he or whoever just isn’t used to having to fish frogs or other beasts out of “pending.”

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         • I could afford the brevity as my comment was for one person and i know that person to not need more, whereas you were preaching to the larger audience …who certainly can use all the nicely worded explanation that you so nicely (and wordily) supplied.

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   • they recently switched to a new commenting system visible on the back end… wouldn’t surprise me if it’s some kind of glitch… also if your comment had links in it… might have gotten stuck on moderation… you also might have received some kind of ID verification e-mail

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   • And as for “risen,” no – I just liked the self-consciousness of E Germans, after WW2, composing a national anthem that rises up “out of the ruins” (“aus Ruinen”), and retains the focus on destruction and re-birth, except when it ventures into revolutionary communism in the line after the one I quoted, which is even more actively combative than in the translation – more “when we unite as brothers we strike the enemy of the people” not “defeat.” At the same time, it’s a German national anthem, not an East German national anthem. As you probably know, the West German national anthem (except for a few years when they tried to foist a different song on the Germans) was and is the old Deutschlandlied, but with the first two verses suppressed, since peoples kinda had and still have a problem with “Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles” as you may kinda recall.

     The inescapability of history is always a fascinating theme to me.

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     • THere’s a metric ton of irony, in your statement, the Nazis prevailed because the Communist attacked the most direct anti fascists in the Social Democrats, part of the Second International, then Stalin used
       the Nazi threat, after a certain interlude, to legitimize his stance as the only legitimate opposition to them , The Abwehr then used the contacts in the Weimar era, among Russian forces, to plant a coup
       suggestion to Stalin,

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       • The DDR was an in many ways catastrophic misbirth of an already unimaginably catastrophic history. Irony in that context would have been something of a relief, if a minor one, and external to a work like the anthem. Neither changes the fact that Communism had a long and in some ways quite respectable indigenous history in East Germany especially, arguably more so than in any other place in the world, including Russia.

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3. CK MacLeod: And as for “risen,” no – I just liked the self-consciousness of E Germans, after WW2, composing a national anthem that rises up “out of the ruins” (“aus Ruinen”), and retains the focus on destruction and re-birth,

   maybe soon, after the destruction of the white supremacist government running Arizona, they’ll be songs extolling their capitol city rising from the ashes.

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4. I pointed out this many moons ago, it seems, yes Marx thanks to Engels great generosity, was able to hang out in the British
   Libraries, butcher Hegel to his purpose, that’s what qualifies as ‘respectability in your eyes, Lenin of course sought to move the process along,, and the German General Staff obliged him.yet again, generations later,

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   • Actually, I wasn’t thinking much about the earnest labors of Karl and Fred, but a long history of organizing, striking, fighting, getting assassinated, and so on. Wouldn’t say they were on balance respectable, but they did many things that were quite respectable, and represented a real interest in the German political landscape. Before then, the Allied forces found them and their masters respectable enough to fight with. It shouldn’t be any harder to admit that the Kommis had a real constituency than to admit that the Nazis were also quite popular for an extended period.

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5. Oh, the idealism of Rosa Luxembourg, seriously spare me, of course the Allies were fooled, that doesn’t speak highly of them,
   quite the contrary, the error is in thinking there are’no enemies on the left’
   http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch05.htm

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   • “The Allies were fooled”? They were supposed to, what?, join the Nazis in the heroic defense of Western Civilization against the Jewish Asiatic Bolshevik menace? Not sure what the document at the link is supposed to indicate, or the relevance of the very old slogan “no enemies on the left.” I don’t believe that it was used much by the OSS or by those delivering supplies to the Russians under Lend-Lease.

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6. N o, as with the Lenin link, it was not out of altruism that they fought they aided the Allies, was because they had bet the wrong way, by the late early 30s, all the parties in Europe were totally subordinated to Stalin, and their main enemy was the Social
   Democrats, the irony doesn’t occur to you.

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   • I think you’re confusing diverse facts, and, sorry to say, but “late early 30s” is kind of an imprecise term. How wrong the Party may have been at various times, or all along, doesn’t have anything to do with the simple fact that it represented a real constituency.

     I don’t see much “irony” in the fact that the CP was ruthless towards its main rivals on the broad left, and I don’t usually go looking for altruism in history. I’m content to be taken by surprise. Events in the interwar period seemed to support the notion that a political struggle to the death, quite literally, was already under way, and heading to an overwhelmingly violent climax. The facts were thought to justify ruthless measures against those weakening the Red Front, as well as difficult but supposedly pragmatic decisions like the Non-Aggression Pact. One thing for sure is that the world doesn’t care much how we feel about it all. We might as well take advantage of the distance to learn whatever is to be learned without letting utterly pointless and obsolete partisan commitments get in the way.

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7. No, they stuck a bloody knife into the Weimar Republic, because they thought they would be the victors, the leadership did, the rank and file didn’t know, ‘They chose poorly’ in the short run, enabling the Nazis, then later pretended to be guarantors of Democracy, the same was true of most other parties in Europe, in the interim, they declared themselves antiwar from ’39-41.

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   • Nice Dolchstoss theory. Kind of Son of Dolchstoss. In my own view, based on my own study, the Bolshevik menace was more a confection of rightwing AND leftwing propaganda than a major factor in events – a significant but ultimately quite secondary cause of the fall of Weimar.

     History’s a gangbang, and there are no paternity tests applicable to its great outcomes.

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8. Well a little background here, from the follower of a leader foolish enough to get ice picked by Mercader,

   http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/wright/1941/06/valtin.htm

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9. I’m beginning to see why Trotskyites, had a hard time of it.

   http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/wright/1935/03/stalin.htm

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