From the SCI Archives: A Songbook from the Postwar period

by Heinz Gabathuler (Dec 22, 2014)

 In a box full of duplicates I found in the SCI Archives in Switzerland, there was a tiny little booklet in red and yellow entitled „Work and Sing – an International Songbook“. And on the front page, one can clearly see the name of its former owner: Ernst-Michael Lehmann, a clearly German name.

Two forewords and the imprint reveal that the booklet was first published in 1947 by the „Cooperative Recreation Service, Inc.“ in the United States, and could be ordered in Europe from UNESCO's Youth Section in Paris. The present copy is already part of the third, apparently enhanced edition which has been published somewhat later.

„Like smiles and children, music is international. It binds people togetehr in a common fellowship of joy. It helps us to understand and appreciate cultures not our own. This songbook is designed as a tool of peace to take its place beside the pick and the shovel...“ is written in the foreword to this third edition. As for the content, there is probaby no need to mention that on 94 pages, one can find folk songs in many different, however mainly European languages from Estonian to Italian. And it is clear that the aim of the songbook was to make international workcamps – consisting mainly in hard physical labour, such as reconstruction after the second world war – more joyful and to give international understanding and reconciliation a sensual taste beyond, but not free of ideology, „in building the fellowship and understanding which must be the basis of all effort toward world unity“, as the foreword to the second edition stresses out.

The songbook is pretty handy – sized around 17cm x 9cm, fitting into any pocket of a shirt or trousers. We do not know who Ernst-Michael Lehmann was. He probably participated in SCI workcamps. What makes him pretty unique was that he has used the songbook beyond its original purpose – letting other people, most likely fellow volunteers he met in SCI, from Germany and abroad, write their addresses and their little dedications, making the book kind of a Facebook pinwall from the middle of the last century. Above a Swiss-German song, a Swiss friend has written his home address, accompanied by a funny comment. Someone else wrote a quote from Lenin in German: „Freedom is a bourgeois prejudice“ - apparently as a protest against the „consciousness examinations“ conscientious objectors against military service in West Germany had to undergo these years. Sigrid from Hamburg quoted Shakespeare's Hamlet in German instead – above a French language song. Others just wrote their names. Some of the notes include dates, mostly from around 1961. This proves that the book had still been popular around fifteen years after its first edition. And Ruth Jeppesen from Taastrup, Denmark, has drawn two little cats above the American Folk Song „Lazy John“...
...and before I forget – „Amitiés“, the „SCI anthem“ which was sung in workcamps at every occasion, takes the prominent place on page 2 of the songbook – with its full text in all three languages: French, English, German.

Heinz Gabathuler, International Archives Coordinator

 

All three editions of „Work and Sing“ are present in SCI International Archives in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, under the number 11102.36. The copy presented in this text is a duplicate, and the Archives Coordinator is still wondering what he should do with it.