'Der gute Kamerad | The Good Comrade' - German Military Funeral Song [Treaty of Versailles Special]

On This Day:
The Treaty of Versailles was signed in June 28th 1919 in Palace of Versailles, France exactly five years after the Assassinationof Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The Treaty was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. Although the armistice of 11 November 1918 ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919.

[□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□]

"Der gute Kamerad" ("The Good Comrade"), also known by its incipit as "Ich hatt' einen Kameraden" ("I had a comrade") is a traditional lament of the German armed forces. The text was written by German poet Ludwig Uhland in 1809. Its immediate inspiration was the deployment of Badener troops against the Tyrolean Rebellion. In 1825, the composer Friedrich Silcher set it to music, based on the tune of a Swiss folk song.

The song is about the immediate experience of a soldier losing a comrade in battle, detached from all political or national ideology; as a result, its use was never limited to one particular faction and was sung or cited by representatives of all political backgrounds throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

[JadlynChan_Ch]

Mögen diese Kameraden, meine Brüder, die während des 1. und 2. Weltkrieges nie nach Hause kamen, für immer leben und jeden tag trage ich meine deutsche wehrmachtsinfanterieuniform mit meinem kar98k und meiner walther p-38 an meiner seite und muss dieses lied nicht spielen, weil halb berlin mit mir zu einem alten deutschen soldatenfriedhof marschiert, der während der feier entstanden ist 2. Weltkrieg.