While our tank company was garrisoned with the English in their
occupation zone of Germany early in 1955, a group of us went to
town one Saturday evening.
While our tank company was garrisoned with the English in their occupation zone of Germany early in 1955, a group of us went to town one Saturday evening.
The senior soldier with us was a sergeant who had fought the Germans in World War II 10 years earlier. His memories of that time were bitter, and he maintained at best a cool civility toward any German with whom he had to deal.
He drank more than he normally did that evening and sat glowering at the civilian band playing popular numbers of the day. The clientele was made up mostly of English soldiers and their German girl friends, with a sprinkling of German men and a few tables of American soldiers with German girls.
About two hours into the evening, Sergeant Hopworth suddenly stood, glared around the room and made his way to the bandstand. We watched him say something to the bandleader, who turned away, until Hoppy repeated his request. The bandleader shrugged, said something to the players and raised his baton.
By the end of the first three bars, many of the English soldiers and several of the German men were on their feet singing in full-throated unity, and before it ended everyone was standing, loudly singing – at least humming – “Lili Marlene” in English or German.
Several of the British and a couple of Germans sent drinks to our table and toasted us from theirs. I said to Hoppy, “I thought you didn’t like anything German.” He leered happily and replied, “Hell, boy, ‘Lili Marlene’ ain’t a Kraut song. We liberated it during the war.”
I later learned the words in German. They tell of a young sentry far from home whose mind invariably turns to the girl of the title. She used to meet him in front of the barracks when his tour of guard duty ended, and they found a few hours of happiness together in planning a future when the world was at peace again.
I learned later that it was a poem written by Hans Leip, a German soldier/poet who composed it before he was shipped to the Russian front in 1915, during the first global war. “Lili” was from a girl at home and “Marlene” was for a girl who had smiled and waved at him one night as she passed by.
Composer Norbert Schultze came upon it in 1938 and provided music for it. He had thought to please the Nazi government, but Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels disliked it, as did Adolf Hitler, their tastes running to more Wagnerian music.
However, the German military radio network got a recording of it and it was among the songs transmitted later to German troops in Africa. Erwin von Rommel liked it immediately as did most rank-and-file soldiers of the Afrika Korps. The British Eighth Army adopted it as an unofficial marching song.
An English officer reprimanded soldiers singing it in German but one protested, “Why don’t you put the bleeding lyrics into English, then?” That was done, and it spread throughout the Allied forces with translations also made into French, Russian and Polish. Edith Piaf, the French chanteuse, recorded it, as did Marlene Dietrich, and many enemies of the Axis powers sang it before the war ended.
When Norbert Schultze died at 91 last October, his obituary listed numerous musical accomplishments over 70 years, but the heading of the story wherever it appeared was some variation of “Lili Marlene’s composer dies.”
In a week that began with a tribute to our military dead, it is a good song to remember. Certainly, a constant dream shared by young soldiers of any country in any time is to return home some day in a world at peace and link one’s life with a certain girl forever.
