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| Lili Marlene waits again in Balkans |
| FROM ROGER BOYES IN BERLIN |
| LILI MARLENE, the fictional temptress whose sultry
presence stirred British and German wartime troops, may be revived by
German commanders looking for ways to lift the morale of soldiers heading
to Macedonia.
The barrack-room song was originally broadcast exactly 60 years ago from a German military radio station in Belgrade and it would be a curious historical irony if it was again used to prop up the spirits of foreign troops in the Balkans. “We are open to all suggestions to make off-duty life more bearable for our soldiers abroad,” a senior officer said. If the German parliament approves the Macedonian operation, its soldiers will be taking part in a peace mission rather than a war of occupation. But the song is uniquely adaptable to military moods, perhaps because the lyrics are so ambiguous or because it was invariably sung by smoky-voiced women from Lale Andersen to Marlene Dietrich and Edith Piaf. It was originally a poem written by Hans Leip, a homesick German soldier in the First World War, who tried to evoke the memory of two girlfriends, Lili and Marleen. The poem was set to music, but was not recorded until 1939 by Lale Andersen. The song was a flop, selling barely 700 discs. Only when it was played in the Balkans did it become the first and last song to appeal to wartime friends and enemies. The English lyrics — “Underneath the lantern by the barrack gate, darling I remember the way you used to wait” — are a faithful translation from the German and explain the military success of the song: it was wrongly assumed to be about a prostitute, the transitory nature of love and the loneliness of war. Leip had intended merely a hymn to lost love but, no matter, it became the best-known poem in the German language. Lale Andersen was on a singing tour of the Western Front when the song first made its impact. It probably saved her life. She was critical of the Nazis and had written to a friend in Switzerland indicating her intention to defect. The Gestapo intercepted the letter and threatened to put her in a labour camp. Joseph Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister, hated the song. He had it set to martial music, believing that the original version would sap fighting morale. Lale Andersen took an overdose of sleeping pills and news leaked out to the BBC that she had been killed in a concentration camp. By this time the British had adopted the song as their own. It had been rewritten by Tommie Connor and British radio stations played it to the troops several times a day. To demonstrate the perfidy of the BBC, Goebbels allowed Andersen to live. |
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2001 Times Newspapers
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