1938 SONG OF GERMAN Concentration Camp ERNST BUSCH78rpm

$

77

A series of great German recordings around WWI and post war, on exciting labels:

Reserve is 39.99$

This is an EXTREMELY IMPORTANT Set of 4x 10" Records of the "OTHER" GERMANY under the 1930s Nazi Rule:

 

Made 1938 under siege by Falange Franco in Barcelona,  the holdout of the Spanish Republic. DISCOS DE LAS BRIGADA INTERNACIONALES ESPANA,

Ernst Busch with the Chorus of the 11th Brigade

Issued in the US under the Communist-Friendly Keynote Label:

Thaelmann Kolonne (TWO International Brigades were named after the German Communist leader, put into KZ and eventually killed by Hitler)/ w GuitarLied der INter-Brigaden (Song of the Communist Internationale Brigades)

Busch w Piano:Lied der Einheitsfront (Song of the UNITY FRONT, aka Front Populaire)/Los Cuartos Generales w Guitar

EINHEITSFRONT has a STICKER: La impresion Defectuosa de este disco es debida a las interruptiones de energia electriaca durante un bombardo - the imperfect reocrding on this disk is due to a power failure during an AIR RAID.

Busch w Chor 11 Brig: Lied der Moor Soldaten (Song Of the Peat Bog Soldiers - From a German Concentration Camp)/Hans Beimler - a German Communist Hero and Worker Leader of the Weimar Republic.

Condition:

Great picture album with marching Internationalists on front, red plush cover on back. Great, but spine has split.  Recors: VERY GOOD PLUS - no damage, but some light greying of some grooves. PLAYS EXCELLENT!

Ernst Busch, not to be confused with a Nazi General of the same name, was the Bard of the Communist Party in the Weimar Republic. A hugely popular singer of great integrity, he used his songs as a way to rally the working class. By a lucky circumstance, he escaped arrest by the SA in 1933. He stayed in the USSR in 1935, and joined in 1937 the INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE to defend the Spanish Republic against General Franco. Here is where these recordings were made. He was arrested by the GESTAPO in 1940, and accused of high treason. Barely escaping with his life at an air raid, the Red Army liberated him from Jail.

Post 1945, the East German government saw in him a poster boy (like Brecht) for the new communist state, but Busch was forced into "retirement", as he had dared to criticise the General Secretary of the East German Government, Walter Ulbricht. Busch died in 1980.

Die Moorsoldaten
(von: Rudi Goguel, Johan Esser und Wolfgang Langhoff) Wohin auch das Auge blicket Moor und Heide nur ringsum Vogelsang uns nicht erquicket Eichen stehen kahl und krum Refrain: Wir sind die Moorsoldaten und ziehen mit dem Spaten ins Moor Wir sind die Moorsoldaten und ziehen mit dem Spaten ins Moor Hier in dieser öden Heide ist das Lager aufgebaut wo wir fern von jeder Freude hinter Stacheldraht verstaut Refrain Morgens ziehen die Kolonnen durch das Moor zur Arbeit hin graben bei dem Brand der Sonne doch zur Heimat steht der Sinn Refrain Heimwärts, heimwärts jeder sehnet zu den Eltern, Weib und Kind manche Brust ein Seufzer dehnet weil wir hier gefangen sind Refrain Auf und nieder geh´n die Posten keiner, keiner kann hindurch Flucht wird nur das Leben kosten vierfach ist umzäunt die Burg Refrain Doch für uns gibt es kein Klagen ewig kann nicht Winter sein einmal werden froh wir sagen Heimat du bist wieder mein Refrain B: Dann zieh´n die Moorsoldaten nicht mehr mit dem Spaten ins Moor Dann zieh´n die Moorsoldaten nicht mehr mit dem Spaten ins Moor

 

Usually done in English as "The Peat Bog Soldiers" Both The Dubliners and Paul Robeson have done versions of it. The Peat Bog Soldiers Far and wide as the eye can wander Heath and bog are everywhere Not a bird sings out to cheer us Oaks are standing gaunt and bare We are the Peat Bog Soldiers We´re marching with our spades to the bog  
Up and down the guards are pacing

No one, no one can go through Flight would mean a sure death facing Guns and barbed-wire greet our view We are the Peat Bog Soldiers We´re marching with our spades to the bog But for is there is no complaining Winter will in time be past One day we shall cry rejoicing "Homeland, dear, you´re mine at last" We are the Peat Bog Soldiers We´re marching with our spades to the bog Then will the Peat Bog Soldiers March no more with the spades to the bog

Die Thaelmann Kolonne - The Thaelmann Brigade (Thaelmann was the charismatic leader of the German Communist Party. Still in 1932, he dared to be the Canditate for Reichs President AGAINST Adolf Hitler, but he was immediately arrested after Machtergreifung in March 1933. He was murdered in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in 1944

 

Ernst Thälmann (April 16, 1886—August 18, 1944) was the leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during much of the Weimar Republic. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 and held in solitary confinement for eleven years, before being shot on Adolf Hitler's orders in 1944.

 

 Political career

Born in Hamburg, Thälmann was a Social Democrat Party member from 1903. Between 1904 and 1913 he worked as a stoker on a freighter. He was discharged early from his military service as he was already seen as a political agitator.

One day before his call up for military service in World War I in January 1915, he married Rosa Koch. Towards the end of 1917 he became member of the USPD (Independent Socialist Party of Germany). On the day of the German Revolution, 9 November 1918, he wrote in his diary on the Western Front, "...did a bunk from the Front with 4 comrades at 2 o'clock."

KPD vs SPD

Ernst Thälmann on the front page of a KPD newspaper, the Saxon Workers News, during the 1925 presidential election. The caption beneath the image of Thälmann reads "Ernst Thälmann: the Red President!"

At the 12th party congress of the KPD in June 1929 in Berlin-Wedding, Thälmann, in conformity with the position adopted by the Soviet leadership under Stalin, adoped a policy confrontation with the SPD. This followed the events of "Bloody May", in which 32 people were killed by the police in an attempt to suppress demonstrations which had been banned by the Interior Minister, Carl Severing, a Social Democrat.

During that time Thälmann and the KPD fought the SPD as their main political enemy, acting according to the Comintern policy which declared Social Democrats and Socialists "social fascist". This policy remained in force until 1935, when the Comintern officially switched to endorsing a "popular front" of socialists, liberals and even conservatives against the Nazi threat. By that time, of course, Hitler had come to power and the KPD had largely been destroyed.

In March 1932 Thälmann was once again candidate for the German Presidency, against an incumbent Paul von Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler. The KPD's slogan was "A vote for Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler; a vote for Hitler is a vote for war." After the Nazis came to power in January 1933, Thälmann proposed that SPD and KPD should organise a general strike to topple Hitler, but this was not achieved. In February a Central Committee meeting of the already banned KPD took place in Königs Wusterhausen, near Berlin, where Thälmann called for the violent overthrow of Hitler's government. On 3 March he was arrested in Berlin by the Gestapo.

Imprisonment

Thälmann's trial - which he said he looked forward to - never took place. Thälmann's interpretation was that his two defence lawyers, both Nazi Party members (whom he nonetheless trusted to a certain extent) at some point gathered that he planned to use the trial as a platform to appeal to world public opinion and denounce Hitler, and had told the court. Furthermore, Thälmann assumed that after the failure of the trial of Georgi Dimitrov for complicity in the Reichstag fire, the Nazi regime did not want to allow the possibility of further embarrassment in the court room.

For his 50th birthday in April 1936 Thälmann received greetings from around the world, including from Maxim Gorky and Heinrich Mann. That same year the Spanish Civil War broke out, and two battalions of the International Brigades named themselves after Ernst Thälmann.

Thälmann spent over eleven years in solitary confinement. In August 1944 he was transferred from Bautzen prison to Buchenwald concentration camp, where on 18 August, on Hitler's orders, he was shot and his body immediately burned. Shortly after, the Nazis announced that together with Rudolf Breitscheid, Thälmann had died in an Allied bombing attack on 23 August.

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A note on grading Victrola/ Pathe/ Shellac 78 rpm discs:

Pls note that I try to be extremely conservative and consistent in my grading. All records are graded with the same criteria, regardless of genre.

I noticed that my grading seems to be more conservative than what I have seen from other sellers, so here some notes.

Surface VISUAL GRADING:

EXCELLENT - clean and shiny, as new. E minus is the same, with light scuffing.

Very Good Plus - Clean, with a little more scuffing. Some grooves spots may have some light greying. Little if any distortion.

Very Good - a clean copy, some scuffing, some greying on a single groove or a few small groove bands. Enjoyable record, maybe light distortion on some top notes.

=> Everything up to here is a great and enjoyable record

Very Good Minus - May have areas of visible wear, may have some scuffing or lightly dulled surface. Still a great record, but ticks, pops and some distortion.

Good Plus - a worn and scuffed copy. May have other defects separately stated. Plays well, but with noise, may require filtering.

All other defects (if any: Chips, cracks, scratches, lamination cracks, label damage, needle digs) will be stated SEPARATELY.

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