"Der Tod fürs Vaterland" is an

ode An ode (from ) is a type of lyric poetry, with its origins in Ancient Greece. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structu ...

Friedrich Hölderlin Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (, ; ; 20 March 1770 – 7 June 1843) was a Germans, German poet and philosopher. Described by Norbert von Hellingrath as "the most German of Germans", Hölderlin was a key figure of German Romanticis ...

which has been set to music by

Walter Braunfels Walter Braunfels (; 19 December 1882 – 19 March 1954) was a German composer, pianist, and music educator. Life Walter Braunfels was born in Frankfurt. His first music teacher was his mother, the great-niece of the composer Louis Spohr. He co ...

, Fritz Brandt, and Carl Gerhardt. It was published in 1800.

Lyrics

Background

The verses are nurtured by revolutionary aspirations that emerged in Hölderlin's mind after the invasion of French troops in Southern Germany in 1796. The first draft of the ode was called "Die Schlacht" (''Battle'') and illustrates Hölderlin's intentions: Here, Hölderlin means the German ''Landesväter'' (Landesvater: father of the land), i.e. the princes, and criticizes the word and the concept as such positive terms were used in order to disguise their

despotism In political science, despotism () is a government, form of government in which a single entity rules with absolute Power (social and political), power. Normally, that entity is an individual, the despot (as in an autocracy), but societies whi ...

and to keep their subjects '' unmündig''. For Hölderlin, the ''Vaterland'' was thus mainly a community that had to be defended by both foreign invasion and domestic tyrants, an idea based on the principles of the French Revolution, which he admired as he had written in 1792 to his sister when he told her that he "pray for the French, the advocates of human rights". The ode thus incites the German youth to start a revolutionary war of liberation: in the first two stanzas Hölderlin encourages the ''Jünglinge'' to fight the tyrannical mercenary armies of the princes that are better equipped but less motivated as they did not fight for their country but only for money. The "''Vaterlandsgesängen''" (patriotic paeans) he invokes are a reference to the

Marseillaise "La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. It was written in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in Strasbourg after the declaration of war by the First French Republic against Austria, and was originally titled "". The French Nati ...

which was very popular at that time, even outside France.Jochen Schmidt, in: Friedrich Hölderlin, Sämtliche Gedichte, Deutscher Klassiker Verlag im Taschenbuch, Band 4, Frankfurt 2005, Page 626.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tod furs Vaterland, Der 1800 poems German patriotic songs German poems Works by Friedrich Hölderlin Compositions by Walter Braunfels