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Afonso, Jose The song has been sung so many times. In the long-forgotten revolutionary choirs. On nostalgic fires when the alcohol level rose. And on the beach at Peniche opposite the fortress where Salazar had vanished political prisoners. Was in Portugal during the dictatorship Grandola, Vila Morena the best-known – and of course forbidden – anti-fascist resistance song (➝ Ernst Busch). When it was played on a radio station on the night of April 25, 1974, it gave the insurgent forces the signal for the Carnation Revolution, named after the flowers with which the soldiers decorated themselves and their rifles. José Afonso had written the song ten years earlier for a workers’ music association in Grândola and in it he sings about the tanned city as the home of brotherhood and recalls the farm workers in the Alentejo. It experienced a renaissance during the protests against the Troika’s austerity policies. Ulrike Baureithel
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The simple peace “This is simple peace / Don’t despise it / It’s about simple peace / For thousands of years / A troublesome thing”. So goes the chorus of the song that was written in the 1970s and was sung in East and West. Gisela Steineckert (born 1931) wrote the text, Klaus Schneider (1936 – 2021) created the melody. It’s about the “little happiness”, the life of people between work, togetherness, love, children, and death, in which life is fulfilled. The author explained a few years ago that it took her a long time to find the words. EIt was “difficult” for her to bridge the gap between everyday life and people’s desire for peace (➝ folk songs) without beating too much pathos. The idea came to her while vacuuming. Typical Steineckert. Magda Geisler
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Ernest Busch One of the major leftist errors is the assumption that being pro-peace and anti-war are the same thing. Because if you want peace, you sometimes have to stop the murderers – if necessary by force of arms. What the Allies achieved in 1945 was not granted to the International Brigades, which less than ten years earlier had tried to help the Spanish Republic against Franco’s fascists. Numerous songs are dedicated to her memory, the German-language ones have become left-wing folklore with the voice of Ernst Busch. And when it’s in Spain’s sky means “Home is far away / But we are ready / We will fight and win for you: / Freedom!”, then you inevitably have to think of the thousands of volunteers who are now traveling to Ukraine to do just that. The old Ernst Busch would certainly not have thought that the successor state of the Soviet Union, which supplied weapons to the Spanish Republic in the 1930s, would one day become an aggressor (➝ Yevtuschenko). Eventually he also sang pacifist-nationalist hit songs like Ami, Go Home. Leander F. Badura
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Free Nelson Mandela It only took the Coventry specials two albums to make pop music history: The Specials from 1979 and More Specials from 1980. Their protest song Free Nelson Mandela from 1984 became a hit in England and in many African countries. In 1990 Mandela was released. The song became an anthem that the band performed in Hyde Park in 2008 for Mandela’s 90th birthday – with Amy Winehouse on vocals. The Specials recently released an album entitled Protest Songs – 1924 – 2021. Bassist Horace Panter said: “People have used music as a vehicle of protest since time immemorial. Injustice is timeless.” Marc Peschke
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Yevtushenko Against the background of anti-Soviet agitation, Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote the poem in 1961 that would make him famous around the world: Do you think the Russians want war? Set to music by Eduard Kolmanowski that same year, it was translated into German by Siegfried Siemund. At the World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki 1962 (➝ tell me where the flowers are) it made a splash. It was sung by the Alexandrow Ensemble as well as the Oktoberklub in Berlin. The title was given to several books. It was a promise: the “Russians” would never start a war. Now the pain hits us. Irmtraud Gutschke
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Small white dove of peace We learned the song in the GDR at school. “Little white dove of peace, fly over the land; you are well known to all people, great and small. You shall fly, dove of peace, tell everyone here that we never want war again, we want peace.” Erika Schirmer wrote it. She was a young kindergarten teacher in the Harz Mountains and saw Picasso’s dove of peace on a wooden wall in the destroyed town of Nordhausen. That was in 1948. Picasso designed the dove as a poster for the Paris World Peace Conference that same year. And Erika Schirmer thought that this dove had to fly, around the world. With its simple melody and pacifist message, the song became popular in other countries as well. After reunification, it quickly disappeared from textbooks. It’s in for that ➝ Pop arrived: Former Karussell singer Dirk Michaelis released his own version in 2019. Maxi linen purchase
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Do nothing admittedly At her with a roar doesn’t sound like a title for an anti-war anthem. However, in this song by the Antilopen Gang and Zuzuge Masculine, it doesn’t go loudly to the others, but to the couch. The rappers advocate this, because “rebellion and subversion are government positions”. In view of the current situation, i.e. Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine, that may sound inappropriate, but as an alternative to nuclear panic and bourgeois activism (“Now we really have to take to the streets!”), it makes sense. Therefore, as in many things that will seem far away to most of us at the next news cycle: Thank you, Antifa (who will also be demonstrating in two weeks) and back on the couch. There you can then do what really helps at the moment: support reports and Ukrainian journalists. Or simply: donate money. Clara von Rauch
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Pop protest, provocation? Nicoles A bit of peace was received differently. The 1982 pop hit had a conciliatory message. But the peace movement could not be satisfied with “a little”. She sensed commercial pop with a pacifist touch (➝ At them with roar). A year later, the message was clearer – and yet easily marketable 99 balloons. Nena addressed the nuclear arms race and the Pershing II missiles in Germany. Die Ärzte made a musical objection to protest songs with dem Grotesque song before: “As saviors of the world you are very trendy / you abuse your instrument and you cry.” In the 1990s you could still be ironic. Tobias Pruwer
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Reinhard Mey He was never a political songwriter (➝ Ernst Busch), but Reinhard Mey dissects the madness of the world in his quiet, inner songs. No, I will not give my sons from 1986 is such a song. It’s about conscientious objection from a father’s point of view: “They won’t march in ranks, won’t hold out, won’t fight to the end, freeze to death on a godforsaken field while you sit on soft pillows.” Mey re-recorded the song two years ago with other musicians to support the Friedensdorf International organization. His sons should “stand up to no one but themselves”, he sings. When you hear that now, the question arises: What is the point of pacifism? There are always two that belong to it. Maxi linen purchase
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Tell me where the flowers are You get goosebumps when Marlene Dietrich sings this song. In 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, they made it internationally popular. Later it was sung by Joan Baez, Chris de Burgh, Annie Lennox and who else (➝ Pop). Some even forgot that Where Have All the Flowers Gone originally by Pete Seeger and dates from 1955. Known for his political songs, he was in the sights of the “Committee on Un-American Activities” and was not allowed to leave his residential area in New York. “When will you ever understand” – each stanza of the song ends with this question. How much longer will the earth be caught in a spiral of violence? Irmtraud Gutschke
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folk songs Anti-war songs are not a 20th-century invention. Even before the material battles of the world wars, people knew about the horror of military conflicts. And have recorded the memory of it in folk songs. A deserter (➝ Reinhard Mey) is sung about in the Napoleonic Wars(Honey, I’ll say it in one word), I’m a soldier, but I don’t like being oneis the name of a song from the Franco-Prussian War. Matthias Claudius wrote this in the 18th century war song: “Unfortunately it’s war – and I wish / Not to be responsible for it”. A very early example is A Dark Cloud Comes In, which can be traced back to before the Thirty Years’ War. Actually a farewell song, it was repeatedly interpreted as an anti-war song. Because it also contains a longing for an early, happy return: “And if you, dear sun, aren’t coming soon, / everything will be in the green forest, / and all the tired flowers, / they have a tired death.” Tobias Pruwer
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Zombie “Her pain was real,” wrote BBC music reporter Mark Savage Zombie, the hit by the Irish alternative rock band The Cranberries (➝ Pop). And if you don’t immediately hear the vulnerable, cracking voice of Dolores O’Riordan, who died in 2018, you have no doubts that this is true, at least when it comes to the lyrics: A child is ‘taken slow’ in the track, which was written by the singer under the impact of a bombing attack during the ‘Troubles’ conflict between Ireland and Northern Ireland. As a result of O’Riordan’s death, many remembered this masterpiece, which topped the charts in eight countries in 1994 – including for 28 (!) weeks straight in Germany. But what she was singing about tanks, bombs and guns came from a bygone era. Until recently. Konstantin Nowotny