"Christmas Carol, Chemically Cleaned" (German: "Weihnachtslied, chemisch gereinigt") is a poem by the German writer Erich Kästner. It first appeared in the 1927 Christmas issue of the magazine, Das Tage-Buch. In 1928, Kästner included it in his first collection of poems, Herz auf Taille. Since then, it has been printed in various anthologies and performed by numerous artists.
The poem parodies the well-known German Christmas carol "Morgen, Kinder, wird's was geben" ("Tomorrow, children, there will be something"). In this poem, Kästner expresses a satirical sentiment that on Christmas day, poor children will not receive anything, as presents and a splendid Christmas for poor children are not necessary or desirable. Kästner wrote the poem as a response to the social tensions in the Weimar Republic. He portrays the sentimentality of Christmas as a "dry cleaning" in the style of the German art movement known as New Objectivity.
The poem begins with the statement: "Tomorrow, children, there will be nothing!" (in German:" Morgen, Kinder, wird's nichts geben").[1] Presents are only for those who already have them.
For the others, the gift of life is enough. Their time will come someday, but not tomorrow. One should not be sad about poverty, it is loved by the rich and relieves one from unfashionable gifts as well as from indigestion.
A Christmas tree was unnecessary, Christmas could be enjoyed on the street, and Christianity proclaimed from the church tower increased intelligence. Poverty could teach pride.
If you have no other wood for the stove, you should just burn the board in front of your head. By waiting, one learns patience, learns for life. In any case, God in his all-embracing goodness cannot be called to account. The poem ends with the exclamation, "Oh, dear Christmastime!" (in German: "Ach, du liebe Weihnachtszeit!").
The poem "Weihnachtslied, chemisch gereinigt" consists of five stanzas of six verses each. According to its subtitle, it is based on the Christmas carol "Morgen, Kinder, wird's was geben" ("Tomorrow, children, there will be something"). It imitates its accentuating metre, which consists entirely of trochaic verses.
The rhyme scheme of each stanza is formed by a cross-rhyme with a final couplet ([ababcc]). The verses, all of which are four-height, end in cross-rhyme alternately with an unstressed and a stressed syllable, thus alternating between acatalexes and catalexes, while the paired-rhyme verses are consistently catalectic.
"Christmas Carol, Chemically Cleaned" is a parody of the well-known Christmas carol "Morgen, Kinder, wird's was geben", the lyrics of which were written by Karl Friedrich Splittegarb. It contradicts its title and inverts it into the opposing statement of "Morgen, Kinder, wird's nichts geben!"—"something" to "nothing".[2] Hans-Georg Kemper spoke of the reverse procedure of a contrafactum, the spiritual rewriting of the lyrics of a secular song. In this case it was done satirically to ridicule.[3] In addition to "Morgen, Kinder, wird's was geben", Kästner quotes other traditional carols from the Christmas season in the poem: "Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsmann", ("Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht"), as well as Psalm 36:6 "Herr, deine Güte reicht, so weit der Himmel ist" .[4]
According to Hermann Kurzke, Kästner "shreds" "the songs and aphorisms of the Christmas season" to break with their sentimentalities. His language is "brisk and cheeky, mocking to scornful, not sweet but salted". It uses a modern and casual vocabulary, colloquial expressions such as "pfeifen drauf" ("whistle on it") or sober brand names such as Osram. Instead of "Christianity, blown from the tower" (in German: "Christentum, vom Turm geblasen"), the poem spreads unromanticism and a lack of illusion.[5] In its "chemical purification" of Christmas, it uses the stylistic means of New Objectivity with realistic, time-critical content and sober, detached language.
For Kurt Beutler, Kästner's poem "Christmas Carol, Chemically Purified" describes Christmas "not as a festival of joy, but as days in which the children of the poor experience in a special way the injustice and harshness of their social fate". It formulates both accusation and resignation with the means of irony. Through the suffering of the children, Kästner focuses, particularly on the pedagogical aspect.[6] According to Ruth Klüger, Kästner exposes "the hypocrisy of a capitalism obsessed with consumption and pretending to be charitable".[7]
"Chemically Cleaned..." is one of a number of other poems with which Kästner repeatedly addressed the social upheavals in the Weimar Republic. In "Ballade vom Nachahmungstrieb" ("Ballad of the instinct to imitate"), for example, he described the effects of social coldness on children. In "Ansprache an Millionäre" ("Address to Millionaires"), he directly criticised the economic order of the Weimar Republic.[8] The title goes back to the newly introduced dry cleaning, which at the time of the poem's composition had become a general slogan that—applied to a wide variety of areas—stood for particularly thorough cleansing and unveiling of factual circumstances.[9] Kästner's poem is also a reference to the "chemical cleaning".
According to Hermann Kurzke, Kästner himself oscillated between the extremes of poverty and wealth in his youth in Dresden's Äussere Neustadt, between his parents' poor attic flat and the villa of his wealthy uncle Franz Augustin, which the children were only allowed to enter through the servants' entrance up to the kitchen. The experience of the contrasts between rich and poor had shaped Kästner throughout his life and was sometimes idyllic, as in Pünktchen und Anton or Drei Männer im Schnee