Showing solidarity with people in need has become acutely topical for all of us in recent days. In May 1932 cinemas were showing “Kuhle Wampe”, the title meaning ‘empty stomach’ in the Berlin vernacular (Photo: Filmszene). Bertolt Brecht had co-written the film script and contributed some “songs” set to music by Hanns Eisler, of which the “Solidaritätslied” quickly attracted a following in its own right. The workers’ anthem was first performed in public on 17^th January 1932 in the Charlottenburger Opernhaus as part of a benefit concert in aid of the “1920 Society of Berlin Trombonists”. Over 400 musicians were involved in the concert, performing original contemporary works for trombone choir and chorus – culminating in the refrain from Brecht’s and Eisler’s anthem: “Forwards, without forgetting / What it is that makes us strong. — / When we’re starving, or when we’re eating: / Forwards, and ne’er forgetting / the solidarity behind the song!”

In May 1932 “Kuhle Wampe” – Berlin dialect for ‘empty stomach’ - is released in cinemas across the Weimar Republic. Knut Elstermann has called the work “a classic of proletarian, socialist cinema.” Slatan Dudow’s film includes music scenes and juxtaposes fictional stretches with documentary and propaganda elements. In a string of self-contained chapters he depicts the hand-to-mouth existence of a working-class family during the Great Depression, when hunger, poverty and unemployment dominated the lives of many throughout Berlin, whose population was expanding exponentially.

The film opens with the death of a young man who throws himself off a window ledge after spending another fruitless day looking for work. Shortly afterwards his family is given notice of eviction and they move to the “Kuhle Wampe” campsite on the shore of a lake on the fringe of the capital. Anni (Hertha Thiele), the only family member who has a job, falls pregnant and is set on marrying her boy-friend Fritz (Ernst Busch). Fritz makes no bones of the fact that he is being pressured into wedlock, at which point Anni dumps him and moves in with her friend Gerda (Marta Wolter). A short while later Anni meets up with Fritz again at a workers’ sports festival. He tells her he has lost his job and they forget their differences and travel home together. On the train they and a group of workers get em-broiled in a debate with affluent, middle-class passengers over the question “Who does the world belong to?” (the sub-heading of the film). As a result of edits demanded by the censorship office, the released version of the film is ambiguous, obfuscating the fact that the sports event had been held to collect money to finance an abortion for Anni. The edited film material has not survived.

Listen here the
rbb radioeins film tip by Knut Elstermann

Co-author of the “Kuhle Wampe” script was none other than Bertolt Brecht. The film’s ending in partic-ular, with the S-Bahn scene, was written by the playwright. In line with Brecht’s dramaturgical “V-Effekt” theory, clearly visible in a film that Knut Elstermann described as “the only authentic Brecht film”, he contributed, for their defamiliarisation effect on the audience, a number of “songs” set to music by Hanns Eisler. The “Solidarity Song“ especially, which rounds off the film, went viral across the country in the final months of the Weimar Republic and was performed live by numerous workers’ choruses – often at sports meetings – until it and the film were banned by the National Socialists in March 1933.

Read here the
Programme for the benefit concert, 17 January 1932

The film was not the first public airing of the famous song of resistance, however. That had taken place in the Charlottenburger Opernhaus on 17^th January 1932, when the “1920 Society of Berlin Trombonists” organised a benefit concert headed by Hermann Scherchen in aid of their welfare fund. Over 400 singers and musicians took part in the mass event. The first half of the concert was devoted to baroque pieces, but after the interval a number of contemporary works for trombone choir and chorus – including pieces by Paul Hindemith, Daniel Milhaud and Werner Egk – received their premieres alongside Brecht’s and Eisler’s “Solidarity Song”, which provided the evening’s grand finale. The concert was very probably broadcast live on radio by “Funk-Stunde Berlin”, although the Deutsches Radioarchiv no longer possesses recordings of the event.