I have a wonderful book with historic explanations next to each song. They are grouped by historic time period. I think it's just called Volksliederbuch, but I have to check it. It's a large hard cover book. Got it for my birthday from my aunt a few years ago. It must still be in print. Don't know about the price. You can check it out when you get here. The Liederbuch series includes songs from all over the world and modern pop music as well. There great, if you also like 'Schlager'. There are 12 or 13 out now. I think I have the first 8 of those, and the summary song index for all of them. I also have a whole slew of others, some dating back to elementary school.