Ostpreußisches Reiterlied (Deine Söhne, Land im Osten...)

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Ostpreußisches Reiterlied (Deine Söhne, Land im Osten...)

#1

Post by Account deleted » 03 Feb 2022, 14:39

This post is to inform you about the song that is well known as "Ostpreußisches Reiterlied":

The text of the song was [allegedly] written in the SS, as it is stated in the SS Songbook ('SS-Liederbuch, herausgegeben vom Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt SS', p. 82). The melody however is the one of "Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter".

On YouTube the song is widely known as the "Ostpreußisches Reiterlied".
But I was wondering about the title because the songbook never mentioned an "Ostpreußisches Reiterlied". Other songbooks of that time do not have this title either. This leads me to the conclusion that the title "Ostpreussisches Reiterlied" never seems to have been historical. Instead, the title appears to be fictional and was made up by somebody. The song is apparently now spreading under a false name on the Internet.

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Ivan Ž.
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Re: Ostpreußisches Reiterlied (Deine Söhne, Land im Osten...)

#2

Post by Ivan Ž. » 03 Feb 2022, 17:06

Hello,

First of all, the SS was a dark, political-pagan organisation that was packed with symbols and slogans, which were also present in its music. So, if you come across a piece that is credited as an SS song while having none of the SS characteristics (and the "Ostpreußisches Reiterlied" has none) be very skeptical about such info - even if it appears in an SS source. For example, there's also a recording of the SS anthem (a song originating from the early XIX century) with lyrics falsely credited to the SS - only because of one word that was added to them (Dritten). But errors were quite common back then, both on record labels and in songbooks, as the people working on them weren't necessarily music historians.

Now, the "Ostpreußisches Reiterlied" is the correct title, as is the opening line, "Deine Söhne, Land im Osten". The song was written by a female, the East Prussian teacher and writer Gertrud Papendick, probably in the 1920s (it was apparently first performed in September 1925), and it was dedicated to the Provinzialverband der Ostpreußischen Reitervereine. It appears that it was indeed popular among (some) SS horsemen, but that doesn't make it their song by any means. Papendick also published a book entitled "Deine Söhne, Land im Osten..." in 1937 (the aforementioned SS songbook originates from around that time, 1937/1938).

Papendick's 1937 book cover:
Deine Söhne Land im Osten.jpg
Source: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Gertrud-Pape ... 08BY2RXFK/

Lyrics and info, signed by the author and dated 1962 (the same lyrics were printed in the SS songbook):
Ostpreussisches Reiterlied.jpg
Source: https://ostpreussen.de/uploads/media/Trakehnen.pdf

An excerpt from what appears to be a 1930s article on SS horsemen, including the lyrics to Papendick's song and the title "Ostpreußisches Reiterlied". Unfortunately, there's no info on where the article was scanned from on the source website, and the scan is incomplete (the bottom part was cut off, along with part of the lyrics), so we can't see whether the press credited anyone as the lyricist or not.
WamS-HH-Reiterei-historisch.jpg
Source: https://www.welt.de/regionales/hamburg/ ... ports.html

A 1932 entry in a German radio recording book crediting Papendick as the song's author:
Schallaufnahmen der RRG 1929-1936 S-255.jpg
Source: Schallaufnahmen der Reichs-Rundfunk-GmbH, 1929-1936, p. 255

A 1952 recording of the song, displaying the original title and lyricist on the label:
Philips P 44275 H.jpg
Philips P 44275 H.jpg (80.38 KiB) Viewed 4029 times
Source: https://www.discogs.com/release/5051863 ... Reiterlied

Cheers,
Ivan


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Re: Ostpreußisches Reiterlied (Deine Söhne, Land im Osten...)

#3

Post by GregSingh » 04 Feb 2022, 06:07

She was mentioned in the article "Origin and mission of East Prussian poetry" (Völkischer Beobachter, Wien, April 2nd,1939, p. 6), although her surname seems to be misspelled:
That the influence of the National Socialists Revolution on this historical ground became fertile seems almost self-evident, as in the lyrics of Annemarie Köppens or in regionally emphasized, wonderfully fresh “Ostpreussisches Reiterlied" by Gertrud Papendiek.

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