Christmas Carol, Chemically Cleaned
The poem parodies the well-known German Christmas carol "Morgen, Kinder, wird's was geben" ("Tomorrow, children, there will be something").
He portrays the sentimentality of Christmas as a "dry cleaning" in the style of the German art movement known as New Objectivity.The poem begins with the statement: "Tomorrow, children, there will be nothing!"
[5] In addition to "Morgen, Kinder, wird's was geben", Kästner quotes other traditional carols from the Christmas season in the poem: "Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsmann", ("Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht"), as well as Psalm 36:6 "Herr, deine Güte reicht, so weit der Himmel ist" {"Lord, your goodness extends as far as the sky is, and your truth as far as the clouds go."
Instead of "Christianity, blown from the tower" (in German: "Christentum, vom Turm geblasen"),[1] the poem spreads unromanticism and a lack of illusion.
[7] In its "chemical purification" of Christmas, it uses the stylistic means of New Objectivity with realistic, time-critical content and sober, detached language.
[10] The title goes back to the newly introduced dry cleaning, which at the time of the poem's composition had become a general slogan that—applied to a wide variety of areas—stood for particularly thorough cleansing and unveiling of factual circumstances.
According to Hermann Kurzke, Kästner himself oscillated between the extremes of poverty and wealth in his youth in Dresden's Äussere Neustadt, between his parents' poor attic flat and the villa of his wealthy uncle Franz Augustin, which the children were only allowed to enter through the servants' entrance up to the kitchen.
The experience of the contrasts between rich and poor had shaped Kästner throughout his life and was sometimes idyllic, as in Pünktchen und Anton or Drei Männer im Schnee {Three Men in the Snow), sometimes satirically processed, as in the poem "Weihnachtslied" ("Christmas Carol"), chemically purified.
"[12] In 1931, Walter Benjamin criticised Kästner's early poetry, including "Weihnachtslied", chemically purified, as "left Melancholia" and "nihilism".
From Benjamin's point of view, Kästner gagged in his poems "criticism and insight [, which] are within reach, but they would be spoilsports and should not be allowed to have their say under any condition.
For Kurzke, the poem's message was its moral stance, expressed through the appeals to become clever and proud, to learn for life and to laugh.
[7] Wulf Segebrecht, on the other hand, questioned in 2006 whether Benjamin had not read Kästner's poem closely enough, as he had not recognized the cynical intention behind it.
(in German: "Dieses Gedicht wurde vom Reichsschulrat für das Deutsche Einheitslesebuch angekauft.“) [1] The school board, committed to maintaining public peace and order, is interested in the poor children resigning themselves to their fate rather than rebelling.
[16] Thereafter, the poem appeared in an unaltered form in a selection volumes of his works, such as Bei Durchsicht meiner Bücher in 1946[17] and Kästner für Erwachsene in 1966,[18] and in various anthologies on the theme of Christmas.
[19] Musical interpretations often fell back on the original melody of "Morgen, Kinder, wird's was geben" by Carl Gottlieb Hering, such as that by Gina Pietsch.
