I got the above 1941 Time Magazine information about Bart Van Der Schelling from the Blog of Malcolm Redfellow and as a result of making further e mail contact with him he updated his blog to include a summary of my interest in the possibility that Bart Van Der Schelling was the writer of the Spanish Civil War Song Viva La Quince Brigada.
Malcolm Redfellow's Blog
From this I got in touch with John Pietaro who has made an interesting recent recording of the song
The Flames of Discontent Viva La Quince Brigada on My Space
I asked John what he knew about Bart Van Der Schelling and he has allowed me to copy his reply below.

Hello,

Thanks for your interest in the song and our version of it.

I am a pretty serious rather self-appointed historian of Left music, but i was also at a loss to get info on this song and Van der Schelling. I ended up getting a pretty good amount of info on the internet but also ran some questions about Viva to friends or associates who have done some serious work on the subject of protest song. It was still tough to get info!

Bart Van der Schelling is definately the composer of this song and I do pay royalties to his publisher, though I needed only a simple mechanical license for this recording of it. I am very careful about such things, being a composer myself. Ironically, I thought it was a traditional Spanish folksong and did not originally seek out any info for a publisher; luckily, I came across his name in my research. However, Van der Schelling based his song on a trad tune, the name of which eludes me just now (it is a different woman's name than is heard in the the song as we know it--the refrain is Ay, Manuela, but in the original it is a woman's name which sounds similarly; that is also the title of the original folk tune).

Research tells me that van Der Schelling was a very eccentric character who served in the Spanish Civil War within the International Brigade and was wounded during it. He needed to wear a heavy metal brace around his neck, perhaps for the rest of his life. There are accounts of other cultural workers seeing him with it for years after. I believe he wrote this song after the fall of the Republic, around 1938. It was not made clear on the paperwork through the Harry Fox Agency (the co which protects the copyright to many, many folk-oriented and popular songs from that era), which I used to obtain the mechanical license. From what i have gathered, he actually wrote it after leaving Spain, but not sure if it was in the US or another part of Europe.

I first heard this song via the version Pete Seeger recorded with a kind of expanded Almanac Singers, in the early 40s. Songs of the SPanish Civil War is the collection. I could not get any info on whether or not all of the artists who appear on this ever sat in a studio together. I think not--Ernst Busch probably never hung out with Seeger and Guthrie, nbut its a nice picture. That recording is one of the few, though i know that others recorded this song, too. It is the best of the Spanish Civil War songs. Seeger continued to perform it, even with the Weavers, but it never moved well beyond a kind of cult following.

In the US, i am sure that it was the Communist witch-hunt that led to the disappearance of all things Spanish Civil War. THis very prideful, revolutionary song would have been too much for the reactionaries, Red-baiters and frightened conservatives to handle. The last verse, "we'lll fight the fascists where we find them" is beautiful. I am sure that this was seen as a threat by the right-wing!

i am actually writing a book on thehistory of protest song in the US at the present time, so i will definately check out the links you've provided. Please feel free to keep in touch and if you come across more info n the song or the composer, please do let me know.

Peace,

John Pietaro