Horst-Wessel-Lied - Lyrics

Lyrics

The words to the Horst-Wessel-Lied were published in September 1929 in the Nazi Party's Berlin newspaper, Der Angriff. They were attributed to "Der Unbekannte SA-Mann" ("the Unknown SA-Man"):

The Rotfront, or "Red Front," was the Rotfrontkämpferbund, the paramilitary organization of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA, also known as the "brown shirts") and the Communist Red Front fought each other in violent street confrontations, which grew into almost open warfare after 1930. The "reactionaries" were the conservative political parties and the liberal democratic German government of the Weimar Republic period, which made several unsuccessful attempts to suppress the SA. The "servitude" refers to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, in which the victorious powers imposed huge reparations on Germany, stripped her of her colonies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific Ocean, some of which were mandated to the United States and the Empire of Japan, and gave parts of Germany to Belgium, Denmark, France, Poland, and Lithuania.

The line "Kameraden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen" is technically ambiguous. It could either mean Kameraden, die von Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen wurden ("Our comrades who were shot dead by the Red Front and Reactionaries") or Kameraden, welche die Erschießung von Rotfront und Reaktion durchführten ("Our comrades who have shot the Red Front and Reactionaries dead"). In spite of this obvious syntactic problem, which was mentioned by Victor Klemperer in his LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii, the line was never changed.

Some changes were made to the lyrics after Wessel's death:

The dropping of the reference to "barricades" reflected the Nazi Party's desire in the period 1930-33 to be seen as a constitutional political party aiming at taking power by legal means rather than as a revolutionary party.

After Wessel's death, new stanzas were added, composed in his honour. These were frequently sung by the SA, but did not become part of the official lyrics used on party or state occasions.