Herbert Grönemeyer turns 70: poet of on a regular basis life and reminiscence | EUROtoday

“You flower in the territory!” Listened to, understood, taken with you, savored, prayed over and sung alongside to tons of of occasions in forty-two years: the final verse of the primary verse of reward earlier than the chorus “I come from you” in Herbert Grönemeyer’s hymn to his hometown Bochum. But by no means realized what Michael Lentz factors out in a protracted listing of examples in his life’s work biography “Grönemeyer”, revealed by S. Fischer in 2024: that the final phrase is a play on phrases. And so I by no means thought of it. Flower within the territory – as a substitute of flower within the lapel.

In the chapter “On the Poetics of Songs,” the discovered poet Lentz explains within the subchapter “Instant Language and Irritation” that Grönemeyer usually makes use of collection of “adaptations of idioms,” that’s, music lyrics assembled from modified passages of proverbs, which kind of instantly turn into catchy by irritating the listener. The suggestion that “Du Blume im Revier”, lengthy since tailored as a model identify for native backyard reveals by Bochum tourism promoting, can also be a case of this process initially encourages us to rummage by way of the attic of latest historic reminiscence.

The mining city celebrated Grönemeyer’s Bochum music from the legendary, profitable file of the identical identify, preceded by the four-digit postal code in white chalk writing on a grey background, at a time when structural change had already taken place as a socially catastrophic primal occasion and, as a challenge to transform it into an industrial monument panorama, was nonetheless an object of cultural-political thumb-crossing. How many buddies with a carnation within the crack of their go well with cuffs will you might have discovered within the bars in 1984 on their penultimate probability?

To be honest, the sampling for the hypothetical rollover must be accomplished on Sundays and at VfL’s promotion celebrations, as a result of we’re speaking a few element of the festive state. The nice gesture of “Bochum” is the verticality of the upswing, which turns the mining business from the underside to the highest, as if big robots have been reaching into the core of the earth. Cultural property are handed on in the wrong way, from prime to backside, and this additionally applies to way of life equipment.

The flower within the buttonhole was initially a badge of aristocratic dignity, and that’s exactly why, in the midst of social change, it’s going to sooner or later have been extra applicable on Bochum’s Königsallee than on the world-famous luxurious purchasing road in Düsseldorf, though, as is well-known, trend reveals by no means passed off below the poor cousin’s road indicators. And but we suspect: the buttonhole flower cuff above the silicosis was seen extra usually within the photograph album than on the counter in 1984. The picture uncovered by Lentz below the image is a motif of reminiscence – Grönemeyer’s strategy of framing citation assemblage turns nostalgia into a technique of vital self-assurance.

However, a question nonetheless must be addressed to the philologist Lentz. You do not say “in the lapel”, however moderately “on the lapel”, as a result of in spite of everything, the lapel is just not the opening. What does it imply for the recognizability of the assumed allusion if Grönemeyer’s corruption begins with the preposition? The counter-test ought to actually work: If the Ruhrmuseum have been to enlarge the floral decoration from the group photograph of a Bochum miners’ group in an exhibition about competition customs and add the legend “You flower on your lapel”, the overwhelming majority of holiday makers would establish the music quote. The relationship between authentic and duplicate has been reversed: Grönemeyer’s put collectively synthetic phrase video games and phrase components end in a list of inventiveness that anybody can faucet into based on the open supply precept of people music, the lilting Büchmann of the accompanying motifs of on a regular basis life.

Beyond live performance halls, the routine chopping of phrases is a behavior that may get on the nerves of the recipients of the methods in a flash. Something subaltern is related to jokes based mostly on this trick, the determined resistance to the mechanics of white-collar humor. There was a Christmas movie on tv that characterised Uwe Ochsenknecht as an unspeakably touching character by at all times saying “to the pencil” as a substitute of “for example.” What distinguishes the artist Herbert Grönemeyer is that in his whole habitus, which he creates from his voice, he ennobles and transfigures the tic, the exhibitionism of essentially the most repressed, by grinding, urgent, chopping, kneading, squeezing, scaling down and turning up all of the variables of dynamics and agogics.

Such a profession – the primary 4 songs of “4630 Bochum” alone are absolute masterpieces that will have been sufficient for any profession, however he continues as a tough employee – bringing it to formulation for a celebratory event inevitably additionally has one thing intentional. But if Grönemeyer is certainly typical of a rustic and a time to whose ears it didn’t sound like a wierd coincidence when democracy was described as a lifestyle, then the reversal or addition of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s personal language argument ought to be appreciated as his contribution to utilized philosophy. Private languages, signal methods that solely a single speaker understands and masters, if in any respect, are indispensable. Only messages which have one thing unresolved in them, a cipher for what the creator of the message has not but come to phrases with, deserve consideration.

In the music “Der Weg” on Grönemeyer’s mourning album “Mensch”, the singer says concerning the lyrical we: “have bent the rain”. Grönemeyer tops Rio Reiser’s “And I’ll bend you the rainbow” from 1986 as if anybody may do it. In distinction, bending the rain itself: the biblical image of hope is fabricated from the precipitation by way of pure arbitrariness – that is the proper poetological image for Grönemeyer’s dealing with of the linguistic materials. The design of the makeshift answer to good happiness for 2 additionally retains one thing of childlike defiance.

With a endurance that’s the best testimony of collegial admiration, Michael Lentz explains the work of Grönemeyer’s poetic work, with specific consideration to the aleatory intermediate levels of nonsense, blind textual content and the hopeless overproduction of variants. But he additionally finds apt expressions for the dimension of what has been made, which not has something to do with the maker, for the objectivity of what’s discovered, which as Grönemeyer’s modern and fellow citizen can’t be ignored. Lentz compares the songs to locations. “I listen to this music even when it’s not playing.” It surrounds us, takes on a spatial character, is extra everlasting than most architectural artwork and a few city halls.

“You flower in the territory!” It’s clear what which means, all of the strangers say to one another and take part: flower, as a result of nothing else grows there. And with the singer they draw out the final sound: Revier like us – who congratulate Herbert Grönemeyer on his seventieth birthday on April 12, 2026.