U3A Writing: Lili Marlene
With deep emotion Sylvia Abele writes about the song which haunts her memories.
I was named after the song ‘Who is Sylvia?’ My father was a semi-professional tenor when he was young, and this was one of his favourite songs. Therefore, when I was about to come into this world, my parents decided that if I was a girl my name would be Sylvia. I have always liked my name.
I have always loved music. The words of some songs bring tears to my eyes. Some melodies do the same, and some songs make me laugh. I must have my music playing in the background all day and every day.
One of the favourite songs from my memory bank is ‘Lili Marlene‘, a World War Two song of undiluted nostalgia, originally recorded and used by the German Forces Network as its broadcasting theme tune. Although I was a schoolgirl during the Second World War, this song seemed to always be on the radio, sung by Anne Shelton, Marlene Deitrich and others.
Later in my life, because I married a lovely man from Latvia, the song ‘Lili Marlene’ cropped up again and again at the various parties we used to attend. (Anyone who hasn’t been to a Latvian party doesn’t know what they have missed.) The friends I made over the years from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Austria, Hungary and Germany, when together at a party, always sat round tables laden with delicious continental food and many bottles of vodka and home-brewed beer and sang songs in various languages. I loved the way we all used to link arms and sway from side to side singing our hearts out, and occasionally getting up to dance the polka or the old fashioned waltz.
I am getting round to saying that the song that EVERYONE knew was ‘Lili Marlene‘, and everyone sang it in their own language. How amazing that people from all these different countries could sing this song (every verse) in their own language. It is my very favourite song from the “good old days” and evokes such very happy memories for me. But why do happy memories usually make me want to cry?
Even now, because my husband and so many of our old friends have passed on, the remaining members of our large group, which can hardly even be called a party now, sit and quietly sing ‘Lili Marlene’ and remember so many happy times in our respective memories.
“Underneath the lantern, by the barrack gate,
Darling I remember the way you used to wait.
‘Twas there that you whispered tenderly
That you loved me, you’d always be
My Lili of the Lamplight,
My own Lili Marlene.
“Orders came for sailing somewhere over there;
All confined to barracks was more than I could bear.
I knew you were waiting in the street,
I heard your feet, but could not meet
My Lili of the lamplight,
My own Lili Marlene.”
(Huddersfield University of the Third Age)
