This is another of my musical journeys, which is directly tied to my love of travel. After graduate school in the States, I traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland and did some post graduate work at the University of Edinburgh. That was half a century ago. While in Scotland, I traveled all over Europe. However, one of the places was Vienna, Austria. There is a part of Vienna that has a large area where there are wine cellars. You can go and have wiener schnitzel along with wine. Additionally, often these restaurants have musicians with accordions and/or violin players that will walk around and ask people what they would like to hear them play as they eat.

When they came to my table, I asked them to play Lili Marleen. I must have been in this wine cellar for a couple of hours, and, each time they stopped at my table, I requested Lili Marleen.

Now, fast forward five decades. I had a colleague that I worked with years ago who sent me a birthday card. Several months ago, we met, and she gave me a gift, A Music Lover’s Diary. It contains places that you can write information about music that you love. Interestingly, it contains dozens of one-liners that famous people wrote about music. This is Friedrich Nietzsche’s one-liner from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “Without music, life would be a mistake…I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance.”

Thus, I began my journey to reconnect with a long list of my favorite music. Therefore, I wrote this essay due to my love for the song and also to better understand the backstory behind the song.

I knew that Lili Marlene was written at the beginning of WWI. It was the work of Hans Leip. What I completely did not know was that it wasn’t about a young lady by the name of Lili Marlene. Leip wrote the song to his two girlfriends, Lili and Marlene. I wonder how they felt about the song.

While the Germans knew the song during the WWI, it was loved by both the Allies and the Germans during WWII. After other singers recorded it, Marlene Dietrich made it hugely popular. While Dietrich was born in Germany, she came to the States and supported our war effort against Hitler and her homeland. In fact, she was the femme fatale who entertained our troops during the war.

Lili Marleen, the movie

It is obvious that Lile Marlene resonated with both Allies and the German soldiers during WWII. Soldiers on both sides remembered their girlfriends that they left behind as they marched off to war.

Interestingly, I can see how Lili Marlene parallels what Randy Pausch spoke about in his Last Lecture. The intimacy with death lurking around a soldier all the time would cause them to enjoy the moment but also remember the separation of lovers due to the war.

This is the German version of Lili Marleen.