Bundeslied, D 258

Song of the union

(Poet's title: Bundeslied)

Part of  Goethe: The second collection intended for Goethe 

All translations into English that appear on this website, unless otherwise stated, are by Malcolm Wren. You are free to use them on condition that you acknowledge Malcolm Wren as the translator and schubertsong.uk as the source. Unless otherwise stated, the comments and essays that appear after the texts and translations are by Malcolm Wren and are © Copyright.

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In 1830, in the final part of his autobiography, Poetry and Truth (Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit), Goethe recalled the circumstances surrounding the production of this text in 1775. Overwhelmed by the success of The Sufferings of Young Werther he had returned to his parents’ home in Frankfurt and was considering his options. At this point he fell in with a new social circle in the town of Offenbach just across the River Main, where he soon became engaged to a banker’s daughter, Lili (Anna Elisabeth) Schönemann (at that time she was 17 years old). She was a Calvinist (from a Huguenot background), and social events in her household usually included the Calvinist pastor Johann Ludwig Ewald (1747-1822). The 1830 memoir explains how the spring of 1775 represented a blissful time for Goethe and his new friends. His love blossomed and he produced important love songs inspired by Lili, such as ‘Neue Liebe, neues Leben’ (Herz, mein Herz, was soll das geben?), famously set to music by Beethoven. He then went on . . .

In Hoffnung meine ernsten Leser durch das Vorgetragene einigermaßen befriedigt zu haben, darf ich mich wohl wieder zu denen glänzenden Tagespunkten  hinwenden, wo Freundschaft und Liebe sich in ihrem schönsten Lichte zeigten. Daß Geburtstage sorgfältig, froh und mit mancher Abwechslung gefeiert wurden, liegt in der Natur solcher Verbindungen; dem Geburstage des Pfarrers Ewald zugunsten ward das Lied gedichtet:   

In allen guten Stunden usw.  
 
Da dies Lied sich bis auf den heutigen Tag erhalten hat und nicht leicht eine muntere Gesellschaft beim Gastmahl sich versammelt, ohne daß es freudig wieder aufgefrischt werde, so empfehlen wir es auch unsern Nachkommen und wünschen allen, die es aussprechen und singen, gleich Lust und Behagen von innen heraus, wie wir damals, ohne irgend einer weitern Welt zu gedenken, uns in beschränkten Kreise zu einer Welt ausgedehnt empfanden.   

Goethe Berliner Ausgabe Vol. 13 1971 pp. 747 - 748     

In the hope of having pleased my devoted readers to some extent with these matters [a description of the happy social circle in Offenbach], may I now return again to the glowing high points of those days, where friendship and love showed themselves at their most beautiful? It was natural that such connections engendered a concern to celebrate Pastor Ewald's birthday with suitable jollity and diversion, and so in honour of his birthday, the words of the following song were written:   

In all good hours etc.   

Since this song has persisted until the present day, and whenever pleasant social gatherings have come together over food it has brought renewed joy to the company, we therefore recommend it to those who come after us and hope that all who read it aloud and sing it will experience the same inner and outer delight and contentment that we felt at that time, never imagining that it would stretch to the world beyond that of our limited circle. 

[English translation by Malcolm Wren]  

Unfortunately, there is probably more ‘Poetry’ than ‘Truth’ in this short extract from ‘Poetry and Truth’. Ewald’s birthday was not in spring at all, but on 16th September. The Bundeslied was almost certainly written for his wedding rather than his birthday; the first edition of the text (see below) appeared in Der Teutsche Merkur in1776 (pp. 123 -124), under the heading ‘Bundeslied einem jungen Paare gesungen von Vieren’ (Union song sung to a young couple by a group of four), and it is made clear that the young couple were Pastor Ewald and his bride, Rahel Gertrud du Fay (1749-1822), who were married on 10th September 1775. Other sources indicate that the four singers were the composer Johann André (who set Goethe’s text to music for the occasion), his wife Annemine, Goethe himself and his fiancée, ‘Lili’. The version of Bundeslied printed in 1776 is almost certainly the original and it is much more focused on marriage than the ‘standard’ version. Within days of Ewald’s wedding Goethe had broken off his engagement with Lili and he soon fled the Frankfurt region. The strong union and the close circle that are so central to the text of Bundeslied had broken apart. By suggesting that the text was produced for Ewald’s birthday rather than his wedding and that it was produced at a time of personal and social happiness and harmony (in the spring of 1775 rather than in the autumn), the later Goethe was probably trying to distance the text from his own personal crisis and his fear of committing himself to marriage.

However much he tried in terms of re-writing the text (or his version of the origins of the poem) we cannot fail to notice that this paeon to ‘union’ can be easily deconstructed. The original version of the text explicitly speculated about the possibility of one of the four singers (Goethe himself) soon leaving the group, and it is not difficult to read the text as evidence of Goethe’s celebration of Ewald’s nuptials as precipitating cold feet faced with the imminent prospect of his own wedding. Both versions of the poem insist that no ‘pettiness’ will destroy the newly established union, yet when the poet explained his decision to break his engagement to Lili to her parents, his ostensible reason was the difference in religious background of their two families (though it was well-known that he was hardly bound to the Lutheran tradition in which he had been raised and in any case the differences between Lutheranism and Calvinism at this stage were minor, i.e. this was a classic case of ‘pettiness’).

In any case, despite all the affirmations of unity, alliances and treaties tend to conjoin different entities, parties and interests. They often mark a transition from a situation of conflict or tension and they paper over divisions in the hope of resolving them. In royal and artistocratic circles, diplomatic treaties have always been connected with marriage contracts, in the hope that dynastic and family links might bring about peace and social unity. We only have to remember the First World War, when Queen Victoria’s grandchildren (King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsarina Alexandra) found themselves (or their spouse) at the head of warring armies, to realise that the hopes of unity praised at the time of weddings and alliances are easily dashed.

The text of the Bundeslied therefore almost inevitably carries overtones of Goethe’s own gloomy expectations of his impending ‘alliance’. He calls on ‘the god’ who has brought people together for Ewald’s wedding to continue to hold people together and to renew the unifying fires that had recently been lit, but there is therefore a suspicion that the flames are spluttering; if there has been a coup de foudre the unifying fire is not yet fully ablaze.

Within a month of writing this appeal to remain ‘associates for ever’ Goethe had broken off his engagement to Lili and left the Frankfurt area, soon afterwards settling in Weimar to take up a totally new life. He no longer ‘lived within the same circle’ that he had celebrated in Bundeslied. They were not ‘joined for ever’.

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Original Spelling

Bundeslied

In allen guten Stunden,
Erhöht von Lieb' und Wein,
Soll dieses Lied verbunden
Von uns gesungen seyn!
Uns hält der Gott zusammen,
Der uns hierher gebracht.
Erneuert unsre Flammen,
Er hat sie angefacht.

So glühet fröhlich heute,
Seid recht von Herzen eins!
Auf, trinkt erneuter Freude
Dieß Glas des echten Weins!
Auf, in der holden Stunde
Stoßt an, und küsset treu,
Bei jedem neuen Bunde,
Die alten wieder neu!

Wer lebt in unserm Kreise,
Und lebt nicht selig drin?
Genießt die freie Weise
Und treuen Brudersinn!
So bleibt durch alle Zeiten
Herz Herzen zugekehrt;
Von keinen Kleinigkeiten
Wird unser Bund gestört. 

Uns hat ein Gott gesegnet
Mit freiem Lebensblick,
Und alles, was begegnet,
Erneuert unser Glück. 
Durch Grillen nicht gedränget,
Verknickt sich keine Lust;
Durch Zieren nicht geenget,
Schlägt freier unsre Brust.

Mit jedem Schritt wird weiter
Die rasche Lebensbahn,
Und heiter, immer heiter
Steigt unser Blick hinan.
Uns wird es nimmer bange,
Wenn alles steigt und fällt,
Und bleiben lange, lange!
Auf ewig so gesellt.

Goethe’s original version of Bundeslied:

Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Schubert’s source, Goethe’s sämmtliche Schriften. Siebenter Band. / Gedichte von Goethe. Erster Theil. Lyrische Gedichte. Wien, 1810. Verlegt bey Anton Strauß. In Commission bey Geistinger, pages 54-55; and with Goethe’s Werke, Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand, Erster Band, Stuttgart und Tübingen, in der J.G.Cottaschen Buchhandlung, 1827, pages 130-131.

To see an early edition of the text, go to page 54  [68 von 418] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ163965701