Trinklied vor der Schlacht, D 169

Drinking song before the battle

(Poet's title: Trinklied vor der Schlacht)

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This is the penultimate text in the posthumous collection of Körner’s poems, Leyer und Schwerdt (Lyre and Sword), published in 1814, a year after his death in battle (or rather a skirmish) in the War of Liberation. The collection ends with a ‘Sword Song’ (Schwerdtlied) that is said to have been written only a few hours before the poet’s death on 26th August 1813 (also set by Schubert, D 170). It is not unreasonable to read the poem before the Sword Song at the end of Leyer und Schwerdt as a ‘Lyre Song’, and indeed the editor of the collection, Körner’s father, stipulates that this drinking song should be sung to the tune ‘Feinde ringsum’ (Enemies around), emphasising its connection with music (lyre) rather than battle (sword).

One of the interesting features of Körner’s drinking song is that there is hardly any reference to the enemy. The poet took the metre of the song from ‘Feinde ringsum’ (a 1791 text by Karl Gottlob Cramer with music by Karl Ludwig Traugott Gläser), which was an explicit taunt to the enemy. Over twenty years later, as the Napoleonic Wars are coming to a close, Körner rewrites the text with a focus not on defying the French but on uniting the Germanic ‘brothers’ who are about to fight. In the 1791 text the fatherland’s tears turn war into a hyena that will curse the enemy; by 1813 the focus is on rescuing the fatherland’s hoard (all that is most valuable in Germanic culture) from the burning shackles of occupation and war. The fate of the enemy is unstated.

The word ‘Germanic’ itself must be significant. The poet did not choose the adjective ‘deutsch’ (with its connotations of homeliness or unsophisticated down to earthness), but ‘Germanisch’, with its overtones of Arminius’s defeat of the Roman legions in the northern forests, as recorded in Tacitus. An ancient culture is being restored. Those who fight for the fatherland reaffirm their brotherhood and their willingness to die in the coming battle in the conviction that whether or not they survive individually their victory will ensure the independence and flourishing of Germania.

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Original Spelling

Trinklied vor der Schlacht

     Schlacht, du brichst an!
Grüßt sie in freudigem Kreise,
Laut nach germanischer Weise.
     Brüder heran!

     Noch perlt der Wein;
Eh' die Posaunen erdröhnen,
Laßt uns das Leben versöhnen,
     Brüder schenkt ein!

     Gott Vater hört,
Was an des Grabes Thoren
Vaterlands Söhne geschworen.
      Brüder, ihr schwört!

     Vaterlands Hort,
Woll'n wir's aus glühenden Ketten
Todt oder siegend erretten. -
     Handschlag und Wort!

     Hört ihr sie nahn!
Liebe und Freuden und Leiden,
Tod! du kannst uns nicht scheiden!
     Brüder stoßt an!

     Schlacht ruft! hinaus!
Horch, die Trompeten werben.
Vorwärts auf Leben und Sterben!
     Brüder trinkt aus!

Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Leyer und Schwerdt von Theodor Körner Lieutenant im Lützow’schen Freikorps. Einzig rechtmäßige, von dem Vater des Dichters veranstaltete Ausgabe. Berlin, 1814. In der Nicolaischen Buchhandlung, pages 82-83; and with Theodor Körner’s Gedichte. [Erster Theil.] Neueste Auflage. Wien 1815. Bey B. Ph. Bauer, pages 161-162.

To see an early edition of the text, go to page 82 [92 von 102] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ182081207