My favorite Christmas carol is the one which comes into my head every year at this time: “O du Fröhliche.” (Here’s an old Youtube clip of the Vienna Boys Choir singing a rather stately version.) Along with “The Holly and the Ivy”, “O du Fröhliche” would certainly make the upper end of any top ten list I compiled.
But I write this morning thinking of my father, for this was indisputably his favorite carol, and his memory of hearing it sung as a small boy is especially poignant. My father was born in Austria in 1935 to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father who had converted to Rome. After Hitler’s takeover of Austria in 1938, my grandparents took their children and fled successfully to England, living a refugee life in London, then Ellesmere Port, and finally rural Berkshire. (Most of the rest of my grandfather’s family perished.) When World War Two broke out, however, the British government interned my grandfather. A citizen of an enemy nation, it didn’t seem to matter — at least at first — that he was an ethnically Jewish refugee from Hitler. He was released after about a year, but spent the first Christmas of the war — 1939 — in what my father says was a reasonably comfortable camp in Scotland. (He was not interned with actual prisoners of war.) Women and children were not interned; England’s policy was apparently more lenient than that shown by the Americans to the Japanese.
That Christmas, when my father was four and a half or so, my grandmother took him and his older sister on a long train trip up to the north to visit my grandfather in his camp. My father remembers very little of the visit, but he does remember that the assembled internees (all of whom were either German or Austrian men) sang some Christmas songs. The last one they sang was “O du Fröhliche”, and my father remembers that his mother and many other grownups wept. For the rest of his life, he was very fond of the carol.
I’ve sung “O du Fröhliche” all my life. And I’ve heard many recordings. But the version I love best is one I’ve never heard. I often like to imagine the one which was sung in December, 1939 by dozens of German-speaking men, ranging from adolescence to late middle age, internees in spartan barracks in Scotland. I imagine their mostly unprofessional voices, and their faces as they gazed at their families who had come to spend a few Christmas moments with them. I think of my grandfather, a then 37 year-old physician, himself descended from a line of Moravian rabbis, but now a loyal son of Holy Mother Church; I imagine his mixed feelings at being safe from Hitler only to be shut away from his family in this strange northern country. And I imagine my father, not quite five, missing his daddy as I, a man of 44, miss mine this Christmas.
It’s a fine carol.
Merry Christmas.
Hugo, this just won’t do. I, for one, expect a post about Rick Warren from ya, and soon!
Jeff, I’ll see what I can do. But family takes precedence right now, even over trying to explain liberals and evangelicals to each other, all while making the point that it is quite possible to be both.
Tell Jeff to get stuffed. O du Fröliche is worth a dozen Warrens.
Merry Christmas, and take on Warren at your leisure. The highlight of *my* Vienna Choirboys disc is a version of “Les Anges/ Angels we have heard on high” that they made into a stately flow-march.
Awww….Oriscus, I was just teasin’ regarding this part of the post: “I’ll be away from blogging until at least December 29.” I’ve got nothing against the music…and I am/was fairly certain Hugo would weigh in on Warren at some point. But thanks for the stuffing!
Did you know your grandparents?
All of mine died before I was born but I think of my maternal grandfather when I hear Kol Nidre becuase my mom says he sang it.
I knew both my grandmothers very well, Funt, but my Austrian grandfather from this story died in a car accident in 1947. My American grandpa died in 1969, when I was two.
Our maternal grandfathers died within a year of each other and we each were the same age as each other when they each did.
OOOOOOOO—–EEEEEEEEEEE——-OOOOOOOOOOOO!
Wait what am I thinking? I knew your mom’s mom. Duh!
(Sorry folks, back to the topic now)
merry christmas hugo! (psst, it helps to imagine that in heaven they have a giant super birthday cake-and everybody gets a slice and vibrating couches…damn, i want some too)
Hi Hugo, came upon your blog as I was googling “o du frohliche” also at top of my fave Christmas carols. Just to say I learnt it in my mothertongue – Batak – and always wondered why there was no English version. First time I heard it in German at Weihnacht 1991 in a Bad Mergentheim, was so excited our little-known community wasn’t the only one to sing this lovely carol! Happy Christmas to you and yours, have a good year ahead! Nora
Thank you for sharing your beautiful, beautiful story about “O du Fröhliche.” I fished out my Weiner Sangerknaben CD and refreshed my memory of this very German carol. Hope you had a Merry Christmas, Julie
Hugo,
Congratulations on your pregnancy! I hope its birth and early days are wonderful for all. My blog-reading is lagging badly, so I’m sure I missed your announcement along the way.
Hugo:
A relatively-good fictional treatment on the subject of the refugee internment is The Secret Purposes, by David Baddiel.
And O Du Fröhliche? That’s a hard one to sing; even as a fluent German speaker, it’s a tongue-twister… Despite my Atheism, I’ve always had a soft spot for O Tannenbaum
Happy New Year to you and yours.