1943, Lübeck prison

This song is the only one in Yvonne Oddon’s entire collection that is based not on a French song, but on a German folk melody: Im Märzen der Bauer [In March, the Farmer]. Its circulation has been documented in German-speaking countries since the late nineteenth century, and a version still popular there today (especially among children) was published in 1923 in a collection compiled by Walther Hensel titled “Das Aufrecht Fähnlein”: Liederbuch für Studenten und Volk [“The Battalion Stands Tall”: Songs for Students and the People]. This same version of the song was also included in numerous songbooks produced during the Third Reich, associated in particular with the German Air Force or with associations like the Bund Deutscher Mädel (“League of German Girls,” the women’s equivalent of the Hitler Youth) or Kraft durch Freude (“Strength Through Joy,” the organization that replaced unions after they were abolished by the Nazi party). The score we have chosen to include in this virtual exhibition comes from a Kraft durch Freude collection entitled Werkleute singen [Workers’ Songs]. The theme of primacy of the earth, central to Nazi ideology, is highlighted here in a three-part polyphonic arrangement, in keeping with the growing importance placed on choral singing within many Nazi associations.

This choral aspect is also reflected in the only period recording of Im Märzen der Bauer that could be found. It is a performance by one of the Hitler Youth choirs that was broadcast on Radio Breslau in July 1940, the recording of which has been preserved by the Deutscher Rundfunkarchiv (German Radio Archives). The recording is password protected here, as it cannot be made freely available online.

Created in Lübeck Prison, the transformed version of this song is explicitly aimed at a woman prison guard, which would suggest that Yvonne Oddon and her companions became familiar with the original song through prison staff (or a German co-detainee). The new text is especially grim, referencing a sadistic guard “the weasel” who “spied through the keyhole on the prisoners who were not working for the Greater Reich, and helped herself to ‘thi-ings’ so painstakingly made,” as Oddon wrote in the introduction to the song. In especially striking contrast to the child-like character of the original song, the song’s conclusion foretells a rather undesirable fate for “the weasel” when the war is finally over: “Leave the beast / Hanging from the balcony / On the third floor / Of our prison.” This contrast creates an ironic effect that is all the more aggressive given that the original text innocently describes the springtime activities of a family of farmers, and is just as innocuous as the melody to which it is set; the fact that the original song comes from the German cultural sphere cannot be unrelated to the prisoners’ choice of such violent imagery for their newly invented lyrics.

[Sources: references 25, 82, 101, 102 in the bibliography]

Comparative transcription