United Front Song (Einheitsfrontlied)

One of the best-known songs of the German labour movement is Einheitsfrontlied or United Front Song, with text by Bertolt Brecht and music by Hanns Eisler. The song was written in 1934 after the rise to power of Nazism, and reflects Brecht’s conviction that only a united front of the working class could lead to social progress. Eisler’s simple arrangement, together with the march-like beat, means it can easily be sung by people without musical training.

It is perhaps worth pointing out that the sexism of the English translation below (“a man is flesh and blood”) does not exist in the German. The word Mensch means not a ‘man’ but a ‘person’.

And while a man is flesh and blood
He will ask, if you please, for bread and meat
And windy words won’t be enough
For words aren't good to eat.

    Then left, two, three! Then left, two, three!
    Comrade, here’s the place for you.
    So fall in with the workers’ united front
    For you are a worker too.

And while a man is flesh and blood
He won’t be driven till he drops.
He will want no slaves beneath his feet
And no masters up on top.

    Then left, two, three! Then left, two, three!
    Comrade, here’s the place for you.
    So fall in with the workers’ united front
    For you are a worker too.

As long as there are two classes
Proletarians must agree
It’s the task of none but the working class
To set the worker free.

    Then left, two, three! Then left, two, three!
    Comrade, here’s the place for you.
    So fall in with the workers’ united front
    For you are a worker too.

English translation by H.R. Hays


The original German version:

Und weil der Mensch ein Mensch ist,
drum braucht er was zum Essen bitte sehr!
Es macht ihn kein Geschwätz nicht satt,
das schafft kein Essen her.

    Drum links, zwei, drei! Drum links, zwei, drei!
    Wo dein Platz Genosse ist.
    Reih dich ein in die Arbeitereinheitsfront,
    Weil du auch ein Arbeiter bist.

Und weil der Mensch ein Mensch ist,
drum braucht er auch noch Kleider und Schuh.
Es macht ihn kein Geschwätz nicht warm
und auch kein Trommeln dazu.

    Drum links, zwei, drei! Drum links, zwei, drei!
    Wo dein Platz Genosse ist.
    Reih dich ein in die Arbeitereinheitsfront,
    Weil du auch ein Arbeiter bist.

Und weil der Mensch ein Mensch ist,
drum hat er Stiefel im Gesicht nicht gern.
Er will unter sich keinen Sklaven sehn
und über sich keinen Herrn.

    Drum links, zwei, drei! Drum links, zwei, drei!
    Wo dein Platz Genosse ist.
    Reih dich ein in die Arbeitereinheitsfront,
    Weil du auch ein Arbeiter bist.

Und weil der Prolet ein Prolet ist,
drum kann ihn auch kein anderer befrein.
Es kann die Befreiung der Arbeiter nur
das Werk der Arbeiter sein.

    Drum links, zwei, drei! Drum links, zwei, drei!
    Wo dein Platz Genosse ist.
    Reih dich ein in die Arbeitereinheitsfront,
    Weil du auch ein Arbeiter bist.

You may notice there are in fact four verses — for some reason H.R. Hays does not translate the second verse.


You can listen to the 1934 recording (in German) by Ernst Busch from SovMusic.ru:



One of the classic performances of Einheitsfrontlied is by the German singer-songwriter Hannes Wader. I have had the good fortune to hear him sing live in Germany.



Here is another noteworthy performance, by the classic German rock band Ton Steine Scherben (vocalist Rio Reiser):

The Internationale

The most famous song of all for socialists is, of course, the Internationale. I mentioned Tony Babino’s tongue-in-cheek version in an earlier post, but the best-known recording extant in English is by British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg.



Rather than keep to the ‘archaic and unsingable’ traditional English translation, Bragg uses his own modernised text.

First stanza

Stand up, all victims of oppression,
For the tyrants fear your might!
Don’t cling so hard to your possessions,
For you have nothing if you have no rights!
Let racist ignorance be ended,
For respect makes the empires fall!
Freedom is merely privilege extended,
Unless enjoyed by one and all.
    So come brothers and sisters,
    For the struggle carries on.
    The Internationale,
    Unites the world in song.
    So comrades, come rally,
    For this is the time and place!
    The international ideal,
    Unites the human race.

Second stanza

Let no one build walls to divide us,
Walls of hatred nor walls of stone.
Come greet the dawn and stand beside us,
We’ll live together or we’ll die alone.
In our world poisoned by exploitation,
Those who have taken, now they must give!
And end the vanity of nations,
We’ve but one Earth on which to live.
    So come brothers and sisters,
    For the struggle carries on.
    The Internationale,
    Unites the world in song.
    So comrades, come rally,
    For this is the time and place!
    The international ideal,
    Unites the human race.

The oldest recorded song... ever

The oldest known recording of a piece of music is a haunting performance of the French folk song Au Clair de la Lune, and is a remarkable 150 years old.

The recording was made on 9 April 1860 by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, inventor of the phonautograph, the first ever sound recording device. The phonautograph transcribed sound waves onto paper as a visual representation, described by Science News as “a bunch of wavy lines scratched by a stylus onto fragile paper that had been blackened by the soot from an oil lamp”. But it could not play it back again, as audio playback was not even conceived at the time. To hear this song, we had to wait until 2008, when American historians from the First Sounds group found the recording in Paris and extracted it using modern computer technology.



At first, the voice was believed to belong to a woman or girl, but further contextual evidence suggested that the recording was being played too fast, and was more likely to be of Scott himself:



Despite the difficulty of knowing precisely how this recording should be reproduced, it is extraordinary to hear a voice from another era coming down to us.

• You can hear more of Scott’s phonautographs at FirstSounds.org.
• Read the original New York Times report (March 2008).