"" (German for "The Lavender Song") is a German

cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining o ...

song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetit ...

written in 1920 with lyrics by and music by

Mischa Spoliansky Mischa Spoliansky (28 December 1898 – 28 June 1985) was a Russian-born composer who made his name writing cabaret and revue songs in the Weimar Republic of the 1920s and early 1930s, before he was forced to emigrate to London in 1933 when Hi ...

and is considered one of the first

gay anthem A gay anthem is a popular song that has become widely popular among, or has become identified with, the gay community, although some of these songs have also become anthems for the wider LGBT community. Not all songs labelled as "gay anthems" ...

History

The song is a product of Germany's

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is ...

, during which time lesbians and gay men enjoyed a short period of improvement in quality of life when the government established basic democratic rights that covered the

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term ...

community and abolished censorship. The song was written after the

Institut für Sexualwissenschaft The was an early private sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The name is variously translated as ''Institute of Sex Research'', ''Institute of Sexology'', ''Institute for Sexology'' or ''Institute for the Science of Sexua ...

(Institute for Sexual Science) under

Magnus Hirschfeld Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a German physician and sexologist. Hirschfeld was educated in philosophy, philology and medicine. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Com ...

made worldwide news with its "First International Conference for Sexual Reform" which called for regulations on sexual behavior to be based on science instead of religion or other unscientific tradition. The first line of the chorus, "Anders als die Anderen" ( en, different from the others) is the same as the title of a 1919 gay rights film issued by

. This has been seen as the affirmation of a differentiated queer identity outside the hetereosexual mainstream.

Lyrics

References

External links

"The Lavender Song" (Das lila Lied)
''The Weimar Republic – The Fragility of Democracy'' (facinghistory.org) *, , both sung by

Ute Lemper Ute Gertrud Lemper (; born 4 July 1963) is a German singer and actress. Her roles in musicals include playing Sally Bowles in the original Paris production of ''Cabaret'', for which she won the 1987 Molière Award for Best Newcomer, and Velm ...

1920 songs German songs Schlager songs Political songs LGBT rights in Germany LGBT-related songs First homosexual movement {{1920s-song-stub