Das Blutgericht’ and ‘Das badische Wiegenlied

In the Vormärz period leading up to the revolution of March 1848 in Germany, a whole host of political themes emerge in songs in which a new oppositional political consciousness is reflected. One of the most well-known is ‘Das Blutgericht’ (The Blood Court), an anonymous protest song, expressing the misery of the Silesian weavers immediately before their uprising in Peterswaldau and Langenbielau from 3-6 June 1844. It is a personal attack on the local factory owners who due to international competition kept reducing the weavers’ wages to the point where they could no longer feed themselves. The factory owners, ‘die Zwanziger’ are cursed as hangmen and thugs. The writer hopes that they will be called to account in the next life, though adding bitterly that such cynical people have neither religion nor beliefs. The poem shows the recognition that profit is gained at the cost of the workers. Several police reports reveal how the song was sung by the weavers during the riots of June 1844 in which, after the intervention of the Prussian military, 11 were killed, 26 injured and 112 arrested. Much of the police investigation centred round the unsuccessful attempt to establish the identity of the author. ‘Das Blutgericht’ was sung to the well-known tune of the seventeenth century ballad ‘Das Schloß in Östterreich’ (The Castle in Austria). It was a widespread practice to use such well known melodies as a vehicle for transporting political messages. The music becomes an intertextual devise whereby its thematic associations in relation to its original text can have either an affirmative or a satirical function. Significantly ‘Das Schloß in Österreich’ is about the unjust imprisonment of a young lad in a castle dungeon at the hands of despotic nobles who account to nobody for their actions.
Another famous song of the 1848/49 Revolution is the ‘Das Badische Wiegenlied’ (Baden Lullaby) written by Ludwig Pfau (1821–1894) and first published in his own magazine Eulenspiegel in December 1849. In the form of a nursery rhyme, the text takes a critical stance towards the Prussian troops who had suppressed the Baden revolution in July 1849 after a three-week-long siege of the Rastatt fortress. The effect of Pfau’s text is basically achieved by the sharp contrast between the innocent style of the lullaby and the bitter political content. At the beginning and end of each verse, the mother beseeches her child to sleep quietly and justifies this with reference to the Prussian troops outside, who are taking reprisals against revolutionaries. In the last verse, however, there is a twist whereby the mother changes her appeal: when the day of freedom comes, the child should no longer sleep, but rather scream out that revenge has been taken against the Prussians: ‘Schrei mein Kindlein, schrei’s: / Dort draussen liegt der Preuss’ (Scream out my child, scream out: / The Prussian is lying out there). Even before his poem was issued in Stuttgart, Pfau had to flee to Switzerland because of his participation in the Baden uprising. A little later, his text was set to music by an unknown composer and published as a song with piano accompaniment which circulated among the German refugees in Strasbourg.


For "Das Blutgericht", sung by Juergen Wolff, playing with the Leipziger Folksession Band (CD: Loewenzahn, 1998), see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRBs9m9rVnA


For "Badisches Wiegenlied". in a recording from 1983 by Wacholder, a GDR folk group, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asgg6G6e8to