Soundtracks of the 1960s: Franz Josef Degenhardt – "Spiel nicht mit den Schmuddelkindern" (Don't play with the grubby kids)  A poetic moral portrait of class society

As a songwriter (and lawyer), Franz Josef Degenhardt had certainly expressed his explicitly left-wing views on sociopolitical themes by 1968. His most famous song to date, "Spiel nicht mit den Schmuddelkindern" from 1965, takes an agitation-free and more sophisticated approach – and can still command relevance today.

I bought the eponymous LP Spiel nicht mit den Schmuddelkindern at the start of summer 1987, having passed my school-leaving certificate and in a mood hovering between nervousness and anticipation in view of my imminent transfer to a Gymnasium sixth form. Today it surprises me that an electrical retailer with an integral record department still had this album in stock in 1987, when it was released in 1965. On the other hand Spiel nicht mit den Schmuddelkindern was still played on the radio from time to time in the late 80s. I can’t exactly say now whether I bought the record because I assumed that I would cross over into a new social class with my move to the Gymnasium – just like the protagonist in the song lyrics. Yet in this song the theme is not upward mobility, it’s more about voluntary downward social mobility – admittedly with the attitude of condescending appropriation.

The starting point of the song lyrics is the classic rebellion of an adolescent member of middle-class society against the privileges of his class, which he perceives to be narrow-minded and restrictive.
 
The charm of descending to the lowly ranks of the “rabbit hutches” anticipates what the English band Pulp would address thirty years later in Common People disguising oneself through playful experimentation with a different identity. But anyone who voluntarily occupies a marginalized position on a temporary basis might possibly forget that there are people who have no choice in the matter. It’s like taking a holiday in someone else’s life.

The nameless protagonist in Degenhardt’s song is then punished by ending up dead in the “rat pond”. Before this happens however, he has briefly learned to accept the privileges of his class – only to relapse again after a car accident, this time pathologically so:

Eines Tags in aller Helle
hat er dann ein Kind betört
und in einen Stall gezerrt.

Literal translation:
Once in broad daylight
he seduced a child
and dragged him into a barn.

The fact that the protagonist is (presumably) murdered in the end can be interpreted as revenge of the grubby kids, who ultimately appear to triumph.

Undoubtedly the song lyrics conceal how the singer feels about the protagonist. All the same, the latter is in no way portrayed as a popular figure or role model. But instead of aggressively destroying him, Degenhardt opts for a more subtle narrative approach. He describes in a formally artistic style what his protagonist does and what happens to him. The use of homophones (“und Kaninchenställe riss er ab / an ihre Stelle ließ er Gärten für die Kinder bauen”), multiple interlinked lists and other rhetorical tricks make the song a masterpiece of linguistic condensation. The rhythmic staccato sequencing of words generates plenty of dynamic presence. The focus is clearly on emphasizing the sound of language – yet without falling short on content either.

This is reinforced by the understated musical instrumentation, which is reduced to the interaction of two acoustic guitars. In this sense Schmuddelkinder belongs to the folk music tradition, where more of an accompaniment function is attributed to the music, which should not distract from the lyrics as far as possible. Yet the slightly schmaltzy tones of the theme repeated by the lead guitar undeniably evoke a certain mocking feel – which can be taken as a comment on the events described in the lyrics.

What in Schmuddelkinder might still be depicted in the form of a somewhat sardonic ballad with a sociopolitical background takes a turn towards an explicitly left-wing stance in Degenhardt’s work – during the politicization of life around 1968. Degenhardt addressed this altered agenda himself in his song Zwischentöne sind bloß Krampf im Klassenkampf (Nuances are just spasms in the class struggle):
 
Spiel nicht mit den Schmuddelkindern is in any case preserved as a poetic moral portrait that uses an agitation-free, sophisticated approach to paint a picture of class society in West Germany in the mid-1960s. At its core, the song can still command relevance in its own right.

Soundtracks

05/2024