Narrative Role-Play in Twentieth-Century German Cabaret and Political ‘Song Theatre’

Abstract

One of the most creative communicative strategies of German twentieth-century political song has been narrative role-play. From the songs of Kurt Tucholsky and Walter Mehring in Weimar cabaret during the 1920s to the dramatic monologues of Franz Josef Degenhardt in the 1960s and beyond, singers have assumed identifiable roles to parody the language, mannerisms, and characteristics of known establishment social types. Role play has also been evident in the narrative identities constructed by singers and performers, either by means of literary association or by association with certain political ideas or stances, as in the case of Ernst Busch embodying the proletarian worker. This article examines different types of role-play, including that of Hans-Eckard Wenzel and Steffen Mensching who, in their 1980s performances, assumed the ironic masks of clowns, with which they projected an alternative ‘carnival’ vision of society in the German Democratic Republic. David Robb is Senior Lecturer in German at Queen's University of Belfast. He is an experienced songwriter and performing musician, the author of Zwei Clowns im Lande des verlorenen Lachens: das Liedertheater Wenzel & Mensching (1998) and the editor of Protest Song in East and West Germany since the 1960s (2007).

The <i>Krabat</i> Motif in the Songs and Musicals of <i>Liedermacher</i> Gerhard Gundermann

“…Wolf Biermann, for example, had conjured up the spirit of subversive poets of the past such as Franҫois Villon, Heinrich Heine and Brecht in his songs. 52 Wenzel and Mensching from Karls Enkel passed critical comment on the GDR by creating montages of texts by icons of the GDR's claimed philosophical and literary heritage such as Karl Marx, Erich Mühsam, Johannes R. Becher, and Goethe. 53 Gundermann, too, had his points of literary reference, but these were contemporary ones from the GDR, the main one being Brězan's Krabat oder die Verwandlung der Welt.…”