Ernst Busch - Live in Berlin 1960

Originally posted on January 22, 2014:

Today is the 114th birthday of Ernst Busch, the wonderful interpreter of political songs. Celebrating his birthday, the Ernst Busch Gesellschaft yesterday screened two interesting documentary films featuring Ernst Busch - happily I had the chance to visit this event.

The birthday concert of January 22, 1960 documented here marked the
singer’s return from sulking in a corner. His return to the recording studio
shortly afterwards made the comeback complete. In the last fifteen years of his
life (up to his committal to the Bernburg psychiatric clinic), he fulfilled his long
cherished desire to record a »sounding cultural history«. The Aurora record
series, a collaboration between Busch, the Academy of the Arts and the VEB
Deutsche Schallplatten (the »People’s Own« successor to his old firm Lied der
Zeit), became his musical legacy.

East Berlin, January 22, 1960: the assembly hall of the Academy of the Arts
of the GDR is hopelessly overcrowded with up to 300 people. A hundred
invited guests from cultural and political institutions have been joined by
Academy staff, colleagues and their friends, as well as fans from the West who
have good connections »over there« in the East. The illustrious audience has
just taken its seats and then stood up again to welcome the star of the evening
with a standing ovation. In the street there are still young people who
absolutely must get in. They want to see for themselves how national prizewinner
Ernst Busch is celebrating his sixtieth birthday, wish to hear what
justifies the legendary reputation of a singer who has been silent for almost a
decade.

They have even written a threatening letter to lend emphasis to their
concern, as Herbert Ihering afterwards amusedly relates at dinner: »I have here
a document bearing the title ›Last Warning!‹, in which the young people write:
‚If we are not allowed into the Busch hall today, there will be burnings at the
stake, gunpowder, poison, E605, gallows, pistols, drownings and instruments
of torture!‹ As you see, that’s all illustrated here ... (general laughter) It is all
written here, not so? New master pupils are in the making ...« The »master
pupils« have finally gained admission and found standing room, Academy
president Otto Nagel has read out the congratulations sent to Busch, Ihering
has declared in a brief introduction that the birthday boy will now treat us to
songs from the last forty years, accompanied at the piano by his friends Grigori
Schneerson and Hanns Eisler – and Busch begins to sing.

A memorable evening. And a remarkable recording – especially since there
are no other live recordings of Busch’s concerts. It’s as if an old cabaret hack is
standing on the stage, wanting to see if he can still do it. Busch is in good voice and a good mood. And he trots through what is for him a decidedly
cheerful programme with an ease that is often lacking in his sterile late studio
recordings. He dispenses with many of his early hits (like »Baumwollpflücker«,
»Säckeschmeisser« and »Nigger Jim«), concentrating instead on
his two favourite poets: of the 24 songs, five are by Brecht and ten
are by Tucholsky (whose »Revolutionsrückblick« has been omitted
from the CD for technical reasons). Eisler, his favourite composer, is
constantly present – he wrote the music for almost all the songs
Busch performs this evening. Only three of the settings are not by his
»old accompanist Hanns«, as Eisler dubs himself on a sheet of
music dedicated to his friend. Busch has recently presented his
composer with a great challenge, swamping him with more than
two dozen »Tucho« texts selected in consultation with the poet’s widow Mary Tucholsky.
Eisler was composing like a pieceworker in 1959: »For Ernst from the municipal
kitchen of music (delivered to your doorstep on request) is one of the quips he sent to his
purchaser. The new cycle of Tucholsky songs, sections of which are presented
here, is not the only present Eisler has sent his revered friend. Many of the
people in the assembly hall have read his hymn-like article in the Berliner
Zeitung that morning: »The singing heart of the working class – to Ernst Busch
for his 60th birthday«. 

Of course, nothing is the way it was in undivided Berlin before 1933, when
he sang before 10,000 people in the Sportpalast. Today he sings in the solid
and tasteful atmosphere of the »Akdekü«, as Busch mockingly calls the
Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts). Today he presents himself as the
ripened political chansonnier and no longer as the »Young Siegfried in the
German Communist Party (Alfred Polgar). The evening is a nostalgic event, a
kind of family gathering of the East Berlin cultural scene. The average age in
the hall is high, particularly in the front rows, where the prominent figures are
seated. The camera of the DEFA-Wochenschau (East German news programme)
catches the authoress Anna Seghers looking radiant, Alexander Abusch, the
minister of education and cultural affairs, applauds enthusiastically, and
Brecht’s widow actress Helene Weigel is heard making lively interjections
during the concert.

The intimate atmosphere seems to inspire him. Ernst Busch is on top form.
He invites the audience to sing along with several songs – hits of his like the
Agitprop cracker »Arbeiter, Bauern, nehmt die Gewehre« (with the call to arms
of workers and peasants updated by the singer himself), the »Einheitsfrontlied«
and the anthem of the German members of the International Brigades,
»Spaniens Himmel«. He interposes two anecdotes, but otherwise refrains from
making remarks and concentrates on singing. »As you have noticed, no
speeches are being made ...«, he says archly. His audience meanwhile practises
the art of listening between the lines, a skill that is much used and indeed
sometimes overworked in the GDR. Much is read into many a verse, given that
Busch seems to stand for rebellion in all circumstances.

Those who witness the performance will still recall its subversive moments
decades later. The »Seifenlied« (soap song), a satirical song from the Weimar
Republic about the Social Democratic Party of Germany, is understood by some
in the auditorium – among them the young actors Ulrich Thein and Annekathrin
Bürger – as a political statement relating to the present: »Little Hanns Eisler is
at the piano, Ernst Busch sings, the party and state leaders sit in the first row
and clap, and then Busch gives an encore – they have asked for it after all: ›We
work up a lather, we soap ourselves, we wash our hands clean again ...‹
Annekathrin and Thein freeze in sympathy. They still know the text, and the
tune, yet neither of them has ever heard it again. What kind of a text is that?
They hardly venture to look towards the first row. Yes, frozen solid! They look
like a row of icicles. Eisler and Busch thaw more and more. Busch stretches out
his arms: ›Sing along!› – ›We work up a lather, we soap ourselves, we wash
our hands clean again ...‹ What can they do? The icicles sing. They sing and try
to look harmless. Busch, the fighter for Spain, their old comrade, he has them
all in the palm of his hand, a whole song long. Is this his comment on the
relationship between politics and art, on the Formalism controversy in the GDR
– his comment on the very direction taken by the still young state?
Shortly before the end of the concert, Busch sings Brecht’s »Kinderhymne«,
a (hopeless) contender in the public discussion thirty years later about whether
a new national anthem was needed for the reunited Germany. Busch comments
on this song: »This is what a teacher tells his children.« The announcement
amuses some members of the audience; partly, perhaps, because it unintentionally
describes the role Busch himself will progressively assume in the 1960s.
Busch, the North German, who likes to address his audiences as »Kinners«
(dialect for Kinder), does indeed have something of a teacher about him with
advancing years – a rather odd history teacher with a marked sense of political
mission. It has not escaped him that the teaching at his school follows a
syllabus consisting mainly of hot air. So what does he do about it? In the late
1970s the songwriter Reinhold Andert will put it like this in his song »Ernst
Busch«: »His silence was clean, honest and rough, without false feeling,
without violins. He struck the tone of our hearts precisely; learn from him how
to sing and be silent!  - Jochen Voit

Ernst Busch - Live in Berlin 1960
(256 kbps, cover art included)