"Der gute Kamerad" ("The Good Comrade"), also known by its opening line as "Ich hatt' einen Kameraden" ("I had a comrade"), is a traditional German anti-war song and soldiers' lament. The lyrics were written by German romantic poet Ludwig Uhland in 1809. Its immediate inspiration was the deployment of Badener troops against the Tyrolean Rebellion. In 1825, the Lieder composer Friedrich Silcher set it to music, based on the tune of a Swiss folk song, in honor of those who fell during the more recent Wars of Liberation against the French Imperial Army of Napoleon Bonaparte.[1]
The lyrics are about the universal wartime experience of losing a friend in combat, while completely detached from any political or nationalist ideology, and twice shift from past tense to present tense in order to explore the subject of traumatic flashbacks, survivor's guilt, and what is now called PTSD.[2] As a result, the song's appeal was overwhelming and has never been limited to any one country or political ideology. It was widely sung and used across the political and nationalist spectrum throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, and its lyrics were translated into multiple languages for use in numerous military forces, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese amongst others.[3]
- ^ Silcher (1825): "aus der Schweiz, in 4/4 Takt von mir verändert" ([melody] from Switzerland, changed to 4
4 time by me", cited after Suevica 4 (1983), p. 76). - ^ A Necessary Madness: Ich hatt' einen Kameraden
- ^ Oesterle, Kurt (1998). "Die heimliche deutsche Hymne". Bundesverband Digitalpublisher und Zeitungsverleger (in German). Archived from the original on 18 October 2014.