Auf de schwäbsche Eisebahne

Auf de schwäbsche Eisebahne
Auf de schwäbsche Eisebahne
	On the swabian railway
	; The scheme of the "Swabian railway" with the stations mentioned in the song
folk song
Tongue
First mention	1853
Famous Performers	Willy Reichert
release date

“Auf de schwäbsche Eisebahne” is a German ( Swabian ) folk song that appeared in Württemberg in the early 1850s . It sings about a hapless peasant who bought himself a ticket for carrying a goat by rail and tied a cattle with a rope to the tail of a train, but at the next station he sees only the head of his animal on the rope.

Caricature from the magazine " Fliegenden Blättern " -
- № 421 for 1853

The history of the song, the time of its appearance

The first publication of the lyrics is not clearly documented. In a number of sources you can find a link to the fact that the first publication of the song took place in 1853 in the Tubingen annual “ Kommersbuch ” (a collection of student songs performed during the annual celebrations of student corporations ^[1] . However, other sources state that the Tubingen “ Kommersbuch ” for 1853 is absent, and this song in this edition can only be found from 1894 , in other collections of student songs only from 1888 ^[2] .

However, indirect evidence of the existence of the song in 1853 is the appearance of this year’s “Cheap Vehicle” caricature in the November issue of the illustrated magazine Fliegende Blätter (“Flying Legs”). Interestingly, two years earlier, in the satirical monthly Düsseldorfer Monathefte , a caricature of a person speaking the Swabian dialect appears (judging by the image of a Jewish cattle trader, however, the Jewish theme is not present in the song) that binds the calf behind the train to save transportation costs ^[3] .

The lower temporal boundary of song creation is also traced. Since the traffic through the Kingdom of Württemberg from Stuttgart to Ulm and further to Meckenboeren (these stations are called in the first verse of the song) took place in 1850, its earlier origin can be considered unlikely. Its melody is taken from a Basel soldier’s song from about 1850.

Story

There are many variations of the text of this song. For example, in the Archive of the German folk song Freiburg contains about one hundred different print versions and oral tradition, the longest of which has 27 verses .

However, all options have a similar plot construction. Lyrics is divided into two parts, introductory and main. The prologue is a genuine panegyric of the Swabian railway , which has many stations all over Württemberg (almost 200 kilometers between the extreme stations mentioned in the song, Stuttgart and Meckenbeuren ). At the stations there are restaurants where you can have a taste of the drink - a snack. Now there is no need for postmen, because the inhabitants are woken not by a post horn, but by a locomotive horn. Citizens and peasants ride on trains, the latter can transport cattle - cows and bulls ...

And it is about the peasant who was supposed to carry a goat , the goat , on the train, which is told in the main part of the song. The peasant peasant, who was traveling by train with his wife, decided to save on a goat ticket, and tied the animal with a rope to the tail carriage - as if to a cart on a bovine charge, and went to the carriage to his wife and lit a pipe ... the station "sly one" sees that only one head with horns is left on the rope! The peasant does not find anything better than pouring his anger on the conductor , on whom he rushes with a bloody goat head at the ready. For, in the opinion of the ignorant village buster, it was the conductor who was to blame for the fact that the train was traveling too fast, which left only horns without legs left of the goat ...

The song ends with a proposal to move the beer mugs and drink to the prosperity of the Swabian railway ^[4] .

In the chorus

Trulya, trulya, trulya
Trulya, trulya, trulya,
Stuttgart , Ulm , Biberach ,
Meckenbeuren and Durlesbach

the enumeration of the stations does not coincide with their sequence on the railway, where in the direction from Ulm Durlesbach will proceed to Meckenbeuren, but this order requires rhythm , metric and rhyme . Durlesbach station, located in the town of Bad Waldsee , is the only one of the songs listed in the song that has not survived to this day: in 1984 it was closed. But it is on its territory, near the former railway station, that the largest monument to the heroes of the song is located..

Melody and Lyrics

Words and melody: Swabian folk song, approx. 1853

Monuments to the heroes of the song

Monuments are installed on the territory of two stations mentioned in the lyrics - Meckenbeuren and Durlesbach .

Durlesbach

At the former Durlesbach station, the scene described in the song is depicted near the section of the track where the real locomotive and two passenger cars of the mid-19th century are installed. The farmer ties the goat to the tail of the train; the conductor and the farmer’s wife observe this. The figures were created by the sculptor Rene Auer from Bad Waldsee and were cast by the Strasacker company in Züsen .

General view of the monument at the former station Durlesbach
"Peasant"
"Goat" (still whole,
before train departure)
"Conductor"
"The wife of a peasant"

Meckenbeuren

Monument in Meckenbeuren

The monument in Meckenbeuren is installed near the station, on the corner of Vokzalnaya (Bahnhof-Strasse) and Ravensburger-Strasse. He portrays a peasant who drags his goat by the horns - apparently, to the station next door. The composition is set on a concrete pedestal, around the circumference of which there is an inscription, which is the name and the first line of the song: “AUF DE SCHWÄB'SCHE EISEBAHNE”. Created by sculptor Ingo Koblischek from Friedrichshafen , a bronze couple was installed and solemnly opened in 1986, during the annual holiday at Meckenbeuren station.