Ach, das wär ein Leben, das wär ein Genuß / wenn man vergessen könnte, daß man verwandt sein muß / the song of the little orphan with the big suitcase and the wonderful dream

Everybody knows how much I love Kurt Weill's music, that's no secret.

But this is my favorite of all his songs. When I first heard Teresa Stratas sing it in German, I didn't understand a word, but it grabbed my heart and shook my soul instantly, violently. It still does. 

This is one of the very few Weill songs which contain musical echoes of the composer under whom young Kurt Weill studied: Humperdinck, composer of the opera "Hänsel und Gretel"  (premiered in Weimar in 1893, Richard Strauss conducted; a year later Gustav Mahler conducted it in Hamburg.)

Here again the composer leads a little child into the forest and uses music to guide the child through terror and peril.

But now, a third of a century past Humperdinck's Happily Ever After Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead fairy tale/Kindermärchen, the child wanders through a very different forest, and encounters very different terrors and perils: Europe in the years after World War One.



There's a little ambiguity about the role of Fennimore, is this a little orphan boy or a little orphan girl? It doesn't seem to matter. Maybe Weill and Kaiser wanted to combine Hänsel und Gretel into a single lost, imperiled child.

Georg Kaiser was a poet and playwright (the influential impressionist "Gas" trilogy) and pal of Weill's in Weimar Berlin. He introduced Weill to a young Berlin actress and singer, Lotte Lenya. YouTube had this treasure: Lotte Lenya singing "Fennimores Lied." The recording is from 1956/57, but Lenya, who was Fennimore in the Leipzig premiere, sings it as it was arranged and sung in 1933 in Weill and Kaiser's opera

Der Silbersee: ein Wintermärchen
The Silver Lake: a Winter's Fairy Tale


Wikipedia: 
Der Silbersee was premiered on 18 February 1933 simultaneously at the Altes Theater in Leipzig, the Stadttheater in Erfurt and the Stadttheater in Magdeburg, just 3 weeks after the Nazi Party's Machtergreifung on 30 January 1933. It was directed by Detlev Sierck and conducted by Gustav Brecher (Leipzig). It was the artists' last production in the Weimar Republic before they were forced to emigrate, and it was banned on 4 March 1933 by the Nazis after having been performed 16 times.

I had to listen to "Fennimores Lied" over and over. Eventually I figured out what the singer was singing about.

Fennimore is a little orphan who has to schlep a battered old suitcase back and forth between uncles and aunts who mistreat the child and knock the poor relation in the head.

Fennimore has a dream, a special dream, a favorite dream:

I'm not related to ANYBODY!

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Fennimores Lied

from "Der Silbersee" ("The Silver Lake")
libretto: Georg Kaiser
music: Kurt Weill

Ich bin eine arme Verwandte
und gehöre zu andern dazu.
Ach, wenn sich doch keiner um mich kümmern wollte!
Doch das tuen Onkel und Tante,
und nichts freut sie, was ich auch tu'.
Das ist kein Leben, das ist nur verdruß,
den man, was soll denn werden, ertragen muß.

Ich hab' einen Koffer voll Habe,
den schleppe ich überall hin.
Ach, wenn ich mich doch seiner entledigen könnte!
Weil ich mir die Finger wund schabe
und auch nicht die Kräftigste bin.

Und nirgends will man mich behalten,
weil ich nirgends gern geseh'n bin.
Am liebsten möchte ich einfach weglaufen
und mein bißchen Dasein verwalten
nach meinem eigenen Sinn!
Denn das ist kein Leben, das ist nur Verdruß,
den man, was soll denn werden, ertragen muß.

Manchmal könnt' ich das träumen,
ich wäre gar nicht verwandt.
Und keiner dürfte mich holen und schicken,
ich müßte mich nicht mehr ducken und bücken -
ich drückte dem Nächsten freudig die Hand,
ich bin ja nicht mit ihm verwandt.
Ach, das wär ein Leben, das wär ein Genuß,
wenn man vergessen könnte, daß man verwandt sein muß.

~ ~ ~

Anybody want to take a whack at translating this into any other lingo? English translations exist, but I can't find one on the Web to filch ready-made. Someone certainly translated this into French. The challenge to the poet and the singer is to be a 14-year-old orphan boy with a big old suitcase and a wonderful dream.