David Rovics
Greetings from southwestern Germany. Coming right up for me is gigs in Switzerland, then Frankfurt, then 10 days in England and Wales. Anyway, I just thought I’d share a song I wrote yesterday. I had the pleasure of participating in an inspiring walking tour of Hamburg on May 8th — 70 years to the day that Hitler and his war machine were finally defeated. Among the many powerful stories people touched upon during the evening was that of Franz Jacob. Franz Jacob was the grandfather of a friend from Hamburg who was also on the walking tour. Next I want to write a song about Katharina’s grandmother, Katharina Jacob, an equally inspiring resistance leader. But for now here’s the song for Mr Jacob.
Lyrics:
Frieden und Freiheit
Franz Jacob was a man, grandfather of a friend of yours
He became an adult in between the world wars
Some folks are born with silver spoons, they get an easy pass
Not people like Franz Jacob, who was of the working class
He was determined to change this since the time he was a kid
And he joined the leftwing youth groups like so many others did
He became an organizer as one would expect he might
Für eine neue Welt des Friedens und der Freiheit
He ran for City Council – he ran and then he won
Back in the Weimar years this kind of thing could be done
He pushed a red agenda from his City Council seat
While not far from the rathaus there was fighting in the street
And when Hitler rose to power he ruled with iron fists
The first ones to be arrested were the communists
Those who took the oath with the rising of the Right
Für eine neue Welt des Friedens und der Freiheit
He was sent to Sachsenhausen, tortured and deprived
After 7 years his release arrived
He joined up with the resistance, then went underground
Spending years beneath the air raids, always fearing to be found
Spending years beneath the air raids as he wrote and organized
Agitating opposition beneath the gestapo’s eyes
The distant, red horizon always in his sight
Für eine neue Welt des Friedens und der Freiheit
Franz Jacob’s day of reckoning was when his struggle ceased
As the tanks of liberation were rolling from the east
He was arrested for the last time, July, 1944
Decades later they’d look back and wonder what was that all for
As Franz Jacob faced his killers on his execution date
There in the dying moments of the fascist state
Who knows what he was thinking on his last September night
Für eine neue Welt des Friedens und der Freiheit