Marlene Dietrich: Veterans' Day 2011

Born in Berlin, Marlene Dietrich
became a U.S. citizen in 1939

On this Veteran's Day, a day set aside by Americans to honor the sacrifices of the men who have fought honorably and often heroically in our nation's armed forces, what better song to highlight than Marlene Dietrich's famous Lili Marlene?

It was written in 1915 during World War I by Hans Leip (1893–1983), a school teacher from Hamburg who had been conscripted into the Imperial German Army.

As a poem it was published under the title "Das Lied eines jungen Soldaten auf der Wacht" ("The Song of a Young Soldier on Watch") in 1937, and was first recorded by Lale Andersen in 1939 under the title "Das Mädchen unter der Laterne" ("The Girl under the Lantern").

During the Second World War, the song was frequently broadcast by Nazi propaganda radio from Belgrade, Yugoslavia where it became extremely popular among both German soldiers and Allied troops who could pick up the Belgrade broadcasts in North Africa and around the Mediterranean.

In 1944, Marlene Dietrich, the Berlin-born movie star who had become an American citizen in 1939, recorded it in English for the United States OSS (precursor to the CIA), which used it for the entertainment of the American forces abroad.

Lili Marlene is a lovely, hauntingly sentimental song about the sad parting of lovers during wartime, and as such, is an indictment of man's unhappy propensity to armed conflict.

Here is Marlene Dietrich performing her classic Lili Marlene in English from a 1963 London performance:



Here Dietrich sings Lili Marlene it in its original German incarnation: