This thread's a good enough reason to reinstate my cookie.

Even folksongs decrying injustice are not "left" by default. If I look through the titles of my copy of the "Liederbuch der Hitler Jugend" (songbook of the Hitler youth) I can see a lot of songs that originally (and after the twelve years) belong(ed) to the Left. "Brueder zur Sonne, zur Freiheit" (brethren, towards to sun and the freedom) is a trade union song still sung today by German Social Democrats at the end of each party convention. And, yes, it was sung by the Hitler youth too. Songs from peasant uprisings, songs against feudalism, against injustice of capitalism, are all found in that book.

Even the title of that Liederbuch (Uns geht die Sonne nie unter, the sun never sets for us) is a line from one of my all time favourite German folksongs praising the free life instead of the life of the bourgeoisie. BTW, the Nazi's Horst Wessel Lied used the tune from an older folksong.

Folksongs in Germany today can be sung by the Left (rather not by the extreme Left) and by the (extreme) Right.

Well, but then, the S in NSDAP stood for "Sozialistische".

Wolfgang