Adaptations
Since the days of the Carlsbad Decrees and the Age of Metternich Die Gedanken sind frei was a popular protest song against political repression and censorship, especially among the banned Burschenschaften student fraternities. In the aftermath of the failed 1848 German Revolution the song was proscribed.
The song was important to certain anti-Nazi resistance movements in Germany. In 1942, Sophie Scholl, a member of the White Rose resistance group, played the song on her flute outside the walls of Ulm prison, where her father Robert had been detained for calling the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler a "scourge of God". Earlier, in 1935, the guards at the Lichtenburg concentration camp had ordered prisoners to stage a performance in celebration of Hitler's 46th birthday; the imprisoned Jewish lawyer Hans Litten recited Die Gedanken sind frei in response.
Pete Seeger recorded the song in 1966 on his Dangerous Songs!? album. Norwegian composer Alf Cranner translated and recorded it as Din tanke er fri in 1985. Parts of the poem were also taken as the basis of a song by the Brazilian Girls on their self-titled 2005 album Brazilian Girls (album).
Die Gedanken sind frei was used as the theme and was sung by the Allied prisoners of war in the 1971 TV movie The Birdmen, which was a fictionalized dramatization of an attempt to escape from the German Oflag IV-C camp at Colditz Castle in World War II. It was also featured in the 1998 German movie 23 about the hacker Karl Koch.
In Canadian author Jean Little's 1972 book From Anna the song is used to represent the freedom the titular character's father craves for his children, and as such figures predominantly into the plot at the beginning of the novel.
Die Gedanken Sind Frei is a track by the German band Megaherz on their Wer Bist Du? album.
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