14 - “Ich bin ein guter Untertan” (“Der gute, stammelnde Untertan”)

Summary

THE SATIRICAL SONG “Ich bin ein guter Untertan” (I Am a Loyal Subject) was written during the 1848 Revolution by the Berlin author Adolf Glaßbrenner. This political “Vexierlied” (song with a teasing rhyme), which comically sends up people's servility in the face of authority, was extremely popular in the Liedermacher and folk scene of the 1960s and 1970s.

Adolf Glaßbrenner (1810–76) was a politically active poet and journalist in the Vormärz, who published mostly under the pseudonym of Adolf Brennglas. He was, above all, known as a humorist and satirist who often came into conflict with the censors. He published “Ich bin ein guter Untertan” in his Komischer Volkskalender für 1849. A text parodying unconditional submissiveness towards authority, it was written in the style of a “Vexierlied,” in which the actual political statement is camouflaged: the rhyme scheme leads one to anticipate a certain word which is then substituted—through an apparent slip of the tongue—by a politically less sensitive word. The humorous act of subterfuge is so transparent, however, that the critical statement becomes all the more obvious.

The song lyrics deal on one hand with the problematic relationship between subject and prince (verses 1, 2 and 4) and on the other hand between subject and the state apparatus: officials (verse 3), police (verse 5), the educational establishment (verse 6), the clergy (verse 7), and finally the upper class in general (verse 8). For example, the lyrical subject would like to beat up the policemen himself; considers priests to be nothing but rascals; and wishes his prince would go to hell, feeling deceived by him because he has not fulfilled the oath he took to serve his people.

Glaßbrenner set the text to the tune of a popular song of the time. However, while the words “nach bekannter Melodie” (to the well-known tune) appear under the title, we still do not know exactly today which tune he had in mind. It could possibly have been the erotic joke song “Ich bin ein hochbeglückter Mann” (I Am the Happiest of Men), which was popular in the second half of the nineteenth century, and was also a “Vexierlied,” containing the same line and rhyme structure as “Ich bin ein guter Untertan.”