”At school, we are taught that war is something bad. From the Defenestration of Prague to the assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo – war always means violence. We hear of political tensions, daring military campaigns, and grueling battles of attrition. All of it supported by numbers so massive and abstract, they seem almost unreal: 17 million dead in the First World War alone.
When the gunpowder smoke clears from the battlefield, only the dead remain – who are no longer really considered people. But who was the man lying shot in a shell crater? Who was the barely 17-year-old boy who suffocated in a dugout after a mine hit, screaming for his mother? Who was the sergeant, the cadet, the sapper – the ordinary soldier who, in a matter of seconds, lost both his life and his identity? A single fate, so small in the shadow of the “greater whole” that it barely seems worth remembering.
This is exactly where “Soldatenschicksale” (= “Fates of Soldiers”) begins.
From the American landings on the Western Front to the merciless winter war in the East, to the battles above and below the surface of the North Sea – it’s about people. About voices. About stories that are in danger of being forgotten. “Soldatenschicksale” brings together revised versions of “Yankee Division” (2022), “Der Füsilier” (2023), and “U-Bootsmann” (2023), as well as two brand new tracks that work as “Skagerrak”.
Skagerrak. The largest naval battle of the First World War.
After years of naval armament between the German Empire and Great Britain, the inevitable happened: on May 31, 1916, two great powers collide. In the songs “Z-Vor!” and “Heizer Tenner”, the sinking of the light cruiser SMS WIESBADEN is told – from the perspective of a naval signalman and a stoker deep in the engine room. Artillery. Fire. The roar of machinery. And in the middle of it all: two men, caught in a story no one survives.”
