i was thinking of this song by franz josef degenhardt and of you, @vfrmedia - because you like german umpftata music and this is about germans and why they dont like their traditional songs. at least the left wing germans.. here is a blog post with a link to the song and the lyrics. and a great cover by daniel kahn in yiddush! https://www.tangoyim.de/blog/2013/01/die-alten-lieder/
@vfrmedia yiddish not yiddush
@distelfliege also another paradox is immediately opposite the North Sea in NE England, the older leftwing folk associated with trade unions for miners and metal foundries play the British version of oompah music!
I sent a link for "Die Berge die sind mein Zuhaus" to a friend over there who doesn't know much German; but immediately recognised the melody as the regional TV company had used it for theme tune of one of their shows in the 1980s..
@vfrmedia do you know "Klaus und Klaus"? two guys who make Schlager whose super hits are all (quite horrific) german versions of Irish folk music.
I didn't want to suggest "Volksmusik" was all bad, I was talking about the way it makes some leftwing germans feel.
many forms of it today are totally commercialized and the genre is mostly non-nazi, but I for one can't relate to those "old songs".
it's also interesting to know that lots of german seemingly old culture was "invented" during the 1800s for nationalist reasons, for example, the brothers grimm, and friedrich ludwig jahn..
@vfrmedia they were gathering stuff together to create something they believed was "german national culture", or Jahn created gymnastics he called "Turnen" and made it a german nationalist thing. then germany had not been one country, but lots of smaller and bigger states, in the past and during that time. like here, for example: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westf%C3%A4lischer_Friede#/media/File:HRR_1648.png
I remember going to the museum of the "Märzgefallenen", which is a museum on the site of the historic "Märzgefallenen" cemetery in my neighbourhood. That means the dead of the "Märzrevolution" in germany. they had a map of "germany" 1848 and I couldn't even understand it :D
@vfrmedia and that was, i gather, from after napoleon had reduced the german micro-states-collection from over 300 to about 60 different states. lol
@vfrmedia so a lot of the stuff we know as "german culture" was created and promoted as something "genuinely german" then. the "revolution" failed, and it didn't change the system, actually.
but at least where I went to school, I realised how much of the german national identity tries to build on that time.
I really have to read and learn much more about this era. I don't think what I learned in school about it was super helpful, when I went to uni for a while I was in a seminar where they looked at this era's "making of german nationalist culture". but it's been a long time..