From 1954 to 1985, Inge Lammel was the director of the Arbeiterliedarchiev (Labour and Working-Class Songs) at the Academy of the Arts in Berlin. Throughout its life, the Archive remained a small institution with few resources, but in the course of the thirty-five years leading up to 1990, it had collected considerable volumes of printed and unprinted material, scores, songbooks, memoirs, (long before “oral history” had been recognised as a special type of material), gramophone records, tapes, etc.—an effort led by Inge Lammel from the time when the Archive was first established. In 1990, the Archive was more or less closed down, despite the fact that at the time it was the centre of vigorous research activities, not just in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), but also in the Federal Republic of Germany. This component of research into labor and working-class evolution has now largely been discontinued; one of the aims behind this publication is to provide any emerging renewed interest with a point of departure.

From the outset, Lammel had realised the importance of making the material come alive, to contribute towards the recreation of a musical culture which had been brutally uprooted by the Nazi regime in 1933–1945. In principle, this notion was given a warm welcome in the GDR, historian Günter Benser (elected as director in 1990 of the former Institute of Marxism-Leninism) emphasizes in his thought-provoking and self-critical introduction; but attempts to translate official good-will into the creation of a living tradition came up against a wall of indifference among the leading social groups. They displayed their reverence for a gloriously heroic past, but had no political use for it, and, therefore, many of the cultural forms of expression congealed—labour songs became pure bel canto. Benser finds that this duality is characteristic of many phenomena in the GDR.

In the present volume, it is only hinted at here and there that the Archive took an interest in collecting songs of protest from Western Europe and the USA, and that Lammel knew something of developments there (she had been in exile in the United Kingdom during the Nazi years). There is no effort to analyze the question of whether there was any connection at all between, on the one hand, western songs of protest, which can surely be seen as a continuation of the working-class song, and, on the other, the evolution of the culture of songs in the Free German Youth (FDJ) the GDR youth organisation, which for a long time did have the function of being an organ of protest songs. This is not tantamount to saying that Lammel has not studied these matters, but only that they have not been included in this selection, which in principle does not go further than the first 100 years of labor music, that is until 1945. For instance, the lyrics booklet accompanying Unser Leben im Lied. 30 Jahre DDR, from 1979 includes an overview of the working-class music movement from its start up to, and including the FDJ choral groups. In other articles, too, Lammel has analysed the adaptation carried out by the FDJ choral groups of the Socialist traditions, and for this reason it is regrettable that the bibliography does not include all her articles.

The fifteen articles, all of which, with the exception of an article on the revolutionary songs of 1848 (Number 11), date back to the time of the GDR, are characterized by strong inner coherence (a fact that is underlined by the cross-references between the individual articles). There are few repetitions, and as a whole the articles provide a good overview of the evolution of this tradition until 1945. The introductory article is a sort of inventory of the development of the Archive during its first decade, an inventory that is carried forward to other articles on the proletarian song as an expression of working-class perceptions of life, and of the importance and meaning of songs in the concentration camps (Numbers 8 and 9). In the article, Zum Verhältnis von Arbeiterlied und Volkslied (Number 2), an attempt is made to categorize these two types of songs, a categorization which has an impact on several subsequent contributions. The difference between the two types will seemingly tend to disappear again under certain circumstances, for example, in the concentration camps and in the resistance movement (Numbers 9 and 10). In this article, as well as the one discussing the proletarian song, the working class is perceived fundamentally monolithically (44, 152). The worker is always described in the singular, an approach that does not recur in other articles in which the internal divergences in the working class—especially those of a political nature—are stressed.

Dialectical unity between working-class songs, labor movement, and political struggle emerges very clearly in the articles dealing with working-class songs and the role of the working-class choirs in the early decades of the labor movement (it is, for example, in these texts that parallels to developments in other countries can be established, and which lends relevance to the volume beyond a specific relevance for the German labor movement). In these articles (Numbers 3–6), Lammel examines those choirs that cooperated in the Deutscher-Arbeiter-Sängerbund (German Working-Class Choral Association), and the conflicts that arose already before World War I in this great association, between the politically active members and those who were, in the main, interested in cultural matters. Conflicts peaked in the interwar years during the ultra-left period of the Communist Party of Germany (the time of the “Class-Against-Class” slogan), but apparently the discussion is pursued to the same high degree in the parts of the working-class choral movement dominated by the Social-Democratic party. However, an essential part of the innovative contributions to the repertoire was generated in the Communist movement, and Hanns Eisler in particular played a prominent role. Apart from a separate article analyzing his role (Number 7), he is referred to in many places in the collection of articles.

Three songs are given their own separate analysis: Brüder seht die rote Fahne (the German version of Hold the Fort), Dem Morgenrot entgegen and The International (Number. 12–14). Article 11 analyses the revolutionary songs of 1848 and includes an update from 1975, and article 15 deals with the German labor movement's reception of French revolutionary songs. The article does not go beyond 1920, and thus fails to take on board new trends especially as regards their impact on events in the German Federal Republic in the 1960s.

Finally, the volume publishes an extensive documentation on the international, revolutionary music movement in the years 1932–36. Internationales Musikbüro (IMB) (International Music Bureau) with Hanns Eisler as one of the leading personalities did not survive for long, Stalinism is cited as the reasons for this, and its activities were limited. The influence enjoyed by the IMB outside of the Soviet Union was not considerable. Despite the fact that in the USA there was a comprehensive popular working-class choral tradition, the IMB affiliate, Workers' Music League only had limited contacts with this movement (242–246). The IMB had a certain amount of influence in the German speaking regions in France and Czechoslovakia where, in 1935, two large-scale anti-Fascist choral festivals were successfully held under the aegis of the Popular Front. In addition to its directly political effect, the Popular Front period had another more long-term effect: the transformation of independent working-class music movements into general music associations (280, 282). It would have been rewarding to have further light shed on this problem, something which is, for example, the case for the relationship of intellectuals, artists, and politicians with the Soviet Union during the inter-war years (307, note 190). In connection with the first festival, reference is made to the newspaper Neue Welt in Strasbourg (262–63), which was then already being financed by the Third Reich, but was, nevertheless, still expressing working-class views; the paper was originally a Communist publication. There were contacts in other countries but plans to develop a revolutionary movement largely remained just that, plans. However, it is important that by means of this article such efforts have been documented for the first time. Eisler's activities in the IMB were important and have an impact on his biography.

Some of the central issues in this collection of articles are questions in relation to the development of working-class songs and workers' choirs. Had they in general been capable of innovating either in form or in content? Was it a tradition that was worthwhile pursuing? Or was it linked to a particular period in history (the nineteenth century), and was it already moribund in the interwar years? Workers' choirs in today's Western countries do not seem to have any role to play in the development of working-class culture—in this context, bel canto seems to be the order of the day. Benser touches upon the question in his introduction by referring to the dissolution of the working-class environments in the 1920s, when new forms of mass and leisure time activities began to make themselves felt (and—you might add—the 1950s and 1960s, when many workers moved away from their old neighborhoods and to new surroundings, a fact that also contributed to the dissolution of working-class environments, a type of experience which might not have been so general in the GDR).

These are questions that Lammel raises in several articles and in her documentation of the IMB. Workers' choirs had an important role to play in the early phase of the movement, they constituted a form of agitation which had an immediate appeal, and which contributed to strengthening a sense of solidarity in the emerging labor movement. The problem consisted in finding suitable lyrics and tunes for the workers' choirs so that they could fulfill a function in the labor movement beyond this early phase despite the changing circumstances. Lammel puts this into the context of workers' education, i.e., politically relevant workers' education. Thus, she touches upon the entire evolution of the labor movement and the split, which arose within the movement between the revolutionaries and the reformists. The problem was considerable, because in developing its own cultural position, the labor movement had to base itself, partly, on the best elements in the culture that were handed down (it was, as Lammel explains in the articles on the Beethoven and Händel reception, not a problem), and partly, had to develop new elements and forms reflecting the movement's own political and cultural stance. At least in the field of music, this proved to be quite difficult. One of the very early working-class composers, Gustav Uthman, insisted that choirs were an integral part of the movement and produced choral works with a political content. However, they did not have much artistic merit, but they were much loved by the choristers, as documented by Lammel, because of the political substance.

During the interwar years, the schism between the political Kampflied or Tendenzlied and artistic merit became more pronounced; only to some extent was this schism coincidental with the split between Social Democrats and Communists. The opposition in the Arbeiter Sängerbund consisted of Social-Democrats as well as Communists. Communist choirs only constituted a minority among the opposition, and were, as Lammel points out, affected by revolutionary impatience. However, she fails to explain the reasons for the revolutionary choristers' impatience, i.e., she does not touch upon the politico-theoretical development of the Communist Party of Germany or the Comintern during the ultra-left years, and subsequently during the Popular Front years when new types of flawed assessments saw the light of day. However, no clear explanation is provided of the way in which the Communist-inspired chorister opposition acted during the ultra-left period. The guidelines of the opposition rejected a split of the Arbeiter Sängerbund, something that is in stark contrast to what happened in the trade-union field (300, note 107).

The main lines in the Arbeiter Sängerbund and the apolitical artistic choral tradition definitely coincided. It is true that the main line was Social-Democratic politically speaking, but it took no interest in acting politically—this state of affairs became very obvious in the years after World War II when German working-class choirs broke all ties with the rest of the labor movement (and, similar to what happened to the working-class sports movement, relinquished its independence). This lack of functionality, which was characteristic of the artistic and apolitical line, has certainly contributed to the decline of working-class choirs: if people wanted to sing, they might as well join a non-political, bourgeois choir. Working-class culture is only emancipatory if it is political. Examples of this can be seen in many countries.

In the GDR, too, such lack of functionality was the destiny of working-class choral singing to the point that it became purely bel canto, as indicated above. The articles do not reveal this, so this is a subject still open for discussion. This is true of a number of other problems—Lammel's articles constitute an important point of departure for allowing this discussion to be pursued while, at the same time, being a central source of inspiration for understanding the meaning and role of working-class choral activities before 1945. The volume can be read in parallel with another of Lammel's publications, Arbeitermusikkultur in Deutschland 1844–1945. Bilder und Dokumente (Leipzig 1984).