Ich hatt' einen Kameraden

In 1825, the Lieder composer Friedrich Silcher set it to music, based on the tune of a Swiss folk song, in honor of those who fell during the more recent Wars of Liberation against the French Imperial Army of Napoleon Bonaparte.

It was widely sung and used across the political and nationalist spectrum by both right and left throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, and its lyrics have been translated into multiple languages for use in numerous military forces, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese amongst others.

"The Good Comrade" still plays an important ceremonial role in the Austrian and German armed forces and remains an integral part of each military funeral, continuing a tradition started at least around 1871.

In the German-speaking Italian province of South Tyrol, the piece is played at funerals of volunteer firefighters and during remembrance ceremonies held by the Schützenbund.

Colman J. Barry, during the traditional parish feast day picnics and old country festivals that, very similarly to the Pennsylvania Dutch Fersommling, were very much a central pillar of "Stearns County German culture", it was particularly common at for German-American Union Army veterans of the American Civil War to stand up and sing, Ich hatt' einen Kameraden, with tears and intense emotion, in honor of their fallen friends.

[9] This is because the legacy of the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi Party has permanently changed the ideology of the German armed forces.

Ihn hat es weggerissen, Er liegt zu meinen Füßen Als wär's ein Stück von mir.

Heymann Steinthal in an 1880 article in Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie noted a variant he heard sung by a housemaid, "Die Kugel kam geflogen / Gilt sie mir?

Steinthal argued that this version was an improvement over Uhland's text, making reference to the concept of a "fateful bullet" in military tradition and giving a more immediate expression of the fear felt by the soldier in the line of fire.