page_title: Horst-Wessel-Lied
section_title: Melody
hierarchical_section_title: Horst-Wessel-Lied / Melody
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Horst-Wessel-Lied. Die von Horst Wessel zur Untermalung seines Textes verwendete Melodie. Sie stammt aus dem 19. Jahrhundert und unterliegt als solche keinen urheberrechtlichen Beschränkungen, ihre öffentliche Aufführung (auch ohne oder mit verändertem Text) ist laut §86a StGB (Kennzeichen verfassungswidriger Organisationen) in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland jedoch verboten. Suomi: Horst-Wessel-Lied Nederlands: Horst-Wessel-Lied
context_page_description: The Horst-Wessel-Lied, also known as Die Fahne hoch, was the anthem of the Nazi Party from 1930 to 1945. From 1933 to 1945 it was also part of Germany's national anthem.
  The lyrics of the song were composed in 1929 by Horst Wessel, a Nazi activist and local commander of the Nazi militia, the SA, in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain. Wessel was assassinated by a Communist activist in January 1930, and the propaganda apparatus of Berlin Gauleiter Dr Joseph Goebbels made him the leading martyr of the Nazi Movement. The song became the official Song of Consecration for the Nazi Party, and was much used at party functions and sung by the SA during street parades.
  When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Horst-Wessel-Lied was recognised as a national symbol by a law issued on May 19, 1933. Nazi Germany thus had a double anthem, consisting of the first verse of the Deutschlandlied followed by the Horst Wessel-Lied. A regulation attached to a printed version of the Horst Wessel-Lied in 1934 required the right arm to be raised in a "Hitler salute" when the first and fourth verses were sung.
context_section_description: After Wessel's death, he was officially credited with having composed the melody as well as having written the lyrics for the Horst-Wessel-Lied. Between 1930 and 1933, however, German critics disputed this claim, pointing out that the melody had a long prior history. Such criticism became impossible after 1933.
  The most likely immediate source for the melody was a song popular in the German Imperial Navy during World War I, which Wessel would no doubt have heard being sung by Navy veterans in the Berlin of the 1920s. The song was known either by its opening line as Vorbei, vorbei, sind all die schönen Stunden, or as the Königsberg-Lied, after the German light cruiser Königsberg, which is mentioned in one version of the song's lyrics. The opening stanza of the song is:
  Vorbei, vorbei sind all die schönen Stunden
  die wir verlebt am schönen Ostseestrand
  Wir hatten uns, ja uns so schön zusamm'n gefunden
  es war für uns der allerschönste Ort.
  Gone, gone are all the happy hours
  that we spent on the beautiful Baltic shore.
  Things were so beautiful between us all
  and it was for us the finest place of all.
  Another German song, Der Abenteurer (The Adventurer), begins:
  Ich lebte einst im deutschen Vaterlande
  Bei goldner Freiheit achtzehn Jahr dahin.
  Da zog die Neubegierde mich zum Strande,
  Und ich bestieg ein Schiff mit frohem Sinn.
  Once I lived in the German fatherland
  In golden freedom for eighteen years.
  Then curiosity lured me to the beach
  And I boarded a ship in cheerfulness.
  In 1936 a German music critic, Alfred Weidemann, published an article in which he identified the melody of a song composed in 1865 by the Weimar composer Peter Cornelius as the "Urmelodie" (source-melody). According to Weidemann, Cornelius described the tune as a "Viennese folk tune." This appeared to him to be the ultimate origin of the melody of the Horst-Wessel-Lied.  
  The musical score is much more complex than the text of the song; given its characteristics, it could easily be sung even by people without much singing practice, and be played by amateur bands. Often, fanfares were used to give a more military touch to the tune. 
  See also the Wikipedia article on Carl Boberg (1859-1940), particularly the note on similarities and dissimilarities between "Horst Wessel Lied" and the Swedish tune O STORE GUD (widely sung as "How Great Thou Art").
caption: Horst Wessel used this melody for his songs; the harmonisation is one of the common ones; it was added later. In Germany, the tune is illegal, even without words.
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