The songs I chose to translate and record come from the period 1990-98 in which Gundermann responds to themes such as society’s winners and losers, deindustrialisation, immigration, and the environment – all themes that are equally as relevant to our times today as they were back in the 1990s.

‘And if it makes you cry’ (1997) is a song about the working environment Gundermann comes from and its characters. He grew up in a GDR society that glorified the worker. In the official media the worker was depicted as a hero pushing forward a new chapter in world history; in the GDR constitution he was declared to be an equal stakeholder in power. But in reality, of course, this wasn’t the case. And as a miner himself, Gundermann knew what the true hardships and hazards of working life were. This song is about the characters he lived and worked with day by day.

‘Coming and going’ (1998) In interview in the mid-1990s Gundermann spoke about ‘a world in which everything is subject to the rhythm of coming and going, in and out, ebb and flow, morning and evening, summer and winter’ (Schütt 2011, p. 132). In this context he was alluding to the cycle of life and death. However, the motif ‘coming and going’ can also be applied to the migratory flow of people. The imagery of the first verse of this song clearly reflects the plight of refugees fleeing war, persecution and poverty. This reflected the situation Gundermann observed in the 1990s where Germany had seen an influx of refugees from Bosnia and other places as well as an outgoing of many easterners to the West in search of work.

After working for almost twenty years in an open cast mine, Gundermann was finally made redundant in 1996. In ‘Angel above the Colliery’ he imagines that all the years he worked he had a guardian angel flying above the coalfields protecting him, while other colleagues were killed in accidents. But now his angel has left him too. Like many others migrating to the West, he feels he has to search for new horizons too.  

‘War’ relates to Gundermann’s military background in the GDR army. It recounts a scene where he faced the West German adversary across the East West divide. Writing later, from the post- Cold War standpoint of the 1990s, he imagines a conversation with one of his erstwhile capitalist foes. He says he doesn’t understand why he carried so much hatred back in the Cold War years. But although they have now shaken hands, he realises that nothing much has actually changed: he’s still one of the have-nots while the West German holds the levers of power. He implies in his conclusion that, until this imbalanced relationship changes, there will always be class war.

‘No Time Left’ deals with a recurring motif in Gundermann’s work: the lack of time on earth to realise utopian dreams; the lack of time to deal with the threat to the planet; to make up for one’s own mistakes; the time wasted through human error, fallibility, and subservience. This song came out in 1995, the same year as the revelations emerged of Gundermann’s activities in the GDR Stasi. In this context the song is a self-critical reassessment of how he let himself be used by the state: ‘And I haven’t any time left to form a guard of honour / Or sing along a little in the choir / [...] / And I haven’t any time left / to play cops and robbers / Or pledge allegiance to authority’ [..] I’m running just to save my soul / from the course of life.’

‘Wooden Horse’ is a parable of the disappointments of life: the unfulfilled promises of both communism and capitalism. In this respect the East German workers of the early 1990s had been doubly let down. Gundermann’s original version was quite soft and plaintive. But in the present-day context of Brexit, I could hear the anger of those who claim they never got what they asked for.

‘Square up like Men Do’ relates to another political issue of the early 1990s that is just as relevant today. In the GDR the expression of Nazism was expressly prohibited. But it reared its head again after unification in 1990 with attacks on the homes of asylum seekers in East Germany. This song comments about how the establishment turns a blind eye to neo-Nazism and how this lurks not far under the surface of society. It also alludes to the poverty of urban areas in which it thrives. In the song a father talks to his son who has grown distant and taken up the right-wing ideology. He invites him to sort out their problems over a game of chess.

‘The seventh Samurai’: In spring of 1992 the discussion on the winners and losers of German unification was already in full swing in the public realm. Gundermann expressed the ‘winner/loser’ dichotomy with an intertextual reference to the figure of the Japanese Samurai from Kurosawa’s film Seven Samurai. In this film the warriors who have freed a village from the tyranny of bandits, no longer have a function once their military strategy and skill are no longer required. As Gundermann asserts: ‘Only when he […] can change his programme from that of a killer to a farmer, can and should he live on’ (Schütt, pp. 121-22). In this song Gundermann references the Japanese warrior who is torn between desire to prove himself and the knowledge that his fighting skills are no longer relevant, but who finds an alternative in love and tending the land.

‘Grass’ and ‘Shall Be’, both songs originally from the album Einsame Spitze (1992), are examples of Gundermann’s narrative persona of the 1990s in which he blends himself with nature. In doing this there is a utopianism in his imagination of a better world, one with a balance between humans and nature.