Makes available twenty-two protest songs of the period up to and including the 1848 Revolution in Germany along with a reception history of the songs through their revival after 1945. The socially volatile period of the Vormärz (1830-1848) and the 1848 Revolution in Germany produced a wealth of political protest song. Songs for a Revolution makes available twenty-two prominent protest songs from that time, both lyrics (in German and English) and melodies. It also chronicles the songs' reception: suppressed after the revolution, they fell into obscurity, despite intermittent revivals by the workers' movement and later in the Weimar Republic, until they were appropriated as democratic cultural heritage by the folk and political song movements of East and West Germany after 1945. The songs reflect the new, oppositional political consciousness that emerged during the post-1830 period of restoration and led to the revolution. The book makes use of broadsides, songbooks, newspaper reports, and manuscripts to document the songs' transmission and shed light on the milieus in which they circulated. It also demonstrates how the appropriation of these songs by the German Liedermacher and folk scene shaped today's cultural memory of the 1848 period. It illuminates the functioning of political ideology in these reception processes, which in turn have given rise to myths that have influenced the discourse on the 1848 songs.

"An absorbing, even essential study for any scholar interested in historical or political song, irrespective of time and place. . . . The book is a delight. The . . . cumulative effect [of the case studies] is hugely rewarding: each new song enriches a complex, unfolding narrative of the intoxicating interplay of song and revolution. . . . Each case study is . . . a jewel in the hoard. The translations are impeccable . . . . A really rather brilliant contribution to the study of historical song." - POPULAR MUSIC

"Most timely . . . in [the present] moment of great political turmoil . . . . Makes an important contribution to the existing body of German and Europeanist folk-music scholarship . . . . This remarkable volume bears a particular relevance for scholars and music practitioners, while speaking to all those more broadly interested in the polyphonic trajectories of modern European cultural history." - THE WORLD OF MUSIC

"[A] major achievement of [the book is that it] document[s] the legacy of 1848 in models of dissent both in the GDR and the "New Social movements" of the West since the 1960s. . . . [It] could be used as a songbook in its own right, but its scholarly importance lies in demonstrating in exemplary detail the role of cultural memory in the formation of social consciousness and in the continuing struggles for political legitimacy, emancipation and institutional change." - GERMANISTIK IN IRELAND