Dieses alte Volkslied gibt es in verschiedenen Versionen, z.B. als Lied des Verfolgten im Turm in Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentanos populärer und einflußreicher Sammlung Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Auch eine fünfte Strophe kam später hinzu, möglicherweise um die politische Herausforderung des Liedes mit Wein und Weib zu überdecken:

Ich liebe den Wein,
mein Mädchen vor allen,
sie tut mir allein
am besten gefallen.
Ich bin nicht alleine
bei meinem Glas Weine,
mein Mädchen dabei:
Die Gedanken sind frei!

[Dedicated to the Owl on Germany's shore]
[Der Eule an Deutschlands Gestaden zugeeignet]

The poem sounds familiar to you? Great! And I can guess why.

You likely remember Pete Seeger's stirring performance (3rdYouTube from the top) of Die Gedanken sind frei (with the bilingual lyrics by Arthur Kevess) on his album Dangerous Songs!? from the sixties. Good vibes!

As far as the original Volkslied goes, I remember singing it along my classmates in the fifties.

(Well, actually I was more like "thinking along": I wasn't allowed to open my mouth in those grade or highschool obligatory music courses. It was all for the greater common good: Austrian ears are rather sensitive to pitch. Mine demonstrably weren't.)

But why, you ask, does my translation differ so much from the rousing Seeger song you remember? Well, I did take my liberties with the text - time has, too - but by far not as many as Art Kevess. His paraphrase focussed, and rightly so, on the poem's call for freedom. Mine only made eight-liners out of four-liners and produced four different stanza endings (for reasons of screenspace and translator shortcomings, respectively). But the spirit mix is right, I hope. And it easily accommodates the original melody.

But allow me to blog graver matter. The idea that thoughts can not and should not be subject to restriction has a long history in the German-speaking countries. The Minnesänger (troubadours) of the 12th century expressed similar sentiments - at their peril - and there is always Friedrich Schiller's often-quoted, inflammatory outburst (spoken by the Marquis von Posa in Don Carlos), "Sire geben sie Gedankenfreiheit!" (Sire, grant freedom of thought!). Other examples abound.

The text of this Volkslied (literally, a "folk song", though the two terms have different meaning) was first published in Switzerland and perhaps so for a reason. It now exists in several versions, owing to the good folks of the Germanic tongue. The text(s) are interesting in several regards and, despite their verbal simplicity, do contain significant seminal ambiguities. For instance, is this poem about the singer personally, or does he make a general statement? Is it his thoughts or is it thoughts in general for whom he demands liberty? Also, is this a song about freedom of sensual love or freedom of political opinion?

(Yes, yes, I am aware of the overlap. Morality laws and all that: once enforced by the sovereign, now by society. Witness for instance .... but I digress and I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me. Next paragraph, please).

So I assume that these ambiguities were more of a deliberate camouflage than an artifact of multi-channel oral tradition. After all, it was very dangerous to sing this song in certain places and times: purportedly, some folk lost their lives for doing so (the last time around in the Third Reich). What could be safer, then, but to cover up political protest by lusty love?

The later added "fifth" stanza fits well to that idea. It sings - you guessed it - of wine and women. I have included it on the opposite (German) side, in case you want to have a look.

Wine and women, you ask? Well, yes. Most Volkslieder deal with that in all of its forever invariable varieties. And in the highly popular and influential German "Volkslied" collection called Des Knaben Wunderhorn [I wouldn't know how to translate that titulary double entendre] by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano from around 1800, the Thoughts-are-Free song is embellished and called Lied des Verfolgten im Turm [Song of the Persecuted in the Tower, i.e. Song of the Prisoner in Jail]: The loving girl stands outside while the subject of her love sits inside, singing folk song.

That's what you had in memory? Right you are. Erudite and cultured, too - congratulations!. Gustav Mahler set several of these "Volkslieder" to music in his song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn, including this one. Gottes Mühlen mahlern langsam aber sicher.

Why I set "Volklieder" in parenthesis? Just a twinge of doubt here. I am no bloody expert (I happen to be a professional in chemistry but an - often-bloodied - amateur in literature), but my feeling is that some of these texts read a bit too folksy and became too fashionable than to be an altogether accurate and authentic "collection" of what was out there among the common folk. After all, the two "collectors", von Arnim and Brentano, happened to be poets in their own right...