English Original
Night had fallen over the North African desert, and our battalion's tanks were huddled in a protective circle. A group of my fellow soldiers stood around a radio. As I approached, one of them put his finger to his lips.
From the radio came a bugle call, then a tender, come-kiss-me woman's voice singing in German the most haunting melody I'd ever heard.
Vor der Kaserne
vor dem grossen Tor
stand eine Laterne
und steht sie noch davor…
I didn't understand the words, nor did most of us. For we were not the German Afrikakorps but the British Eighth Army—the Desert Rats. Yet we were captivated by this mysterious voice that somehow reached deep into our thoughts and memories.
Only a short distance away, German soldiers were listening to the same song, sharing our loneliness and longings. This was the spring of 1942; both sides were far from home, but we were all in love with the same girl in the song. So were millions of other soldiers of almost every nationality—and they continue to sing of her to this day. Her name was Lilli Marlene.
Who was Lilli, and how did she transcend borders, languages and generations to become every soldier's sweetheart? Her story begins in 1915, in the early stage of World War I.
One foggy April night in Berlin, Hans Leip, a young officer cadet and budding poet, was standing guard outside a fusiliers barracks. Across the way, fog swirled eerily around a brightly lit lantern. Earlier, Leip had been with a pretty greengrocer's daughter nicknamed Lili. He was dreamily thinking about her when out of the lamp-lit haze came Marleen, a coquettish beauty with sea-green eyes whom Leip had met at an art gallery. For him it was love at first sight.
Marleen was on her way to a nearby hospital to help nurse wounded soldiers. She waved and called a greeting just as the sergeant of the guard came to the gate. Unable to reply, Leip forlornly watched her disappear in the fog.
That night, he lay on his bunk dreaming of Lili and Marleen, and was inspired to write a poem coupling their names. He called it "Song of a Young Sentry." It tells of a soldier standing in lamplight outside a barracks saying good-bye to his sweetheart, Lilli Marleen. A bugle sounds. The soldier yearns to stay with Lili, but the bugle calls again. As he leaves, he wonders aloud: Should anything happen to me, will another man stand under the lamplight with my love? Or will my ghost embrace her once again?
Posted to the Russian front, Leip never saw Lili or Marleen again. Some 20 years later he included "Song of a Young Sentry" in an anthology of his poems. Berlin composer Norbert Schultze spotted the poem, set it to music, entitled it "Lili Marleen" and offered it to tenor Jan Bayern—who turned it down as "too simple."
Schultze gave "Lili Marleen" to a nightclub singer named Lale Andersen, a striking blonde with a haunting, sensual voice that suited the song's melancholy. In 1939 the Electrola Company recorded it. By then war had broken out, and only 700 copies were sold.
The song remained in obscurity for two years. After Germany occupied Yugoslavia, the Wehrmacht opened Radio Belgrade to broadcast to its troops in the Balkans and North Africa. The station director had to scrounge some records. In a cellar at Radio Vienna, a soldier unearthed a dust-covered collection of recordings, among them Andersen's "Lili Marleen." On the evening of August 18, 1941, it went on the air for the first time.
My future brother-in-law, then a tank officer in the Afrikakorps, heard the song. "I was spellbound," he told me years later. So were thousands of other soldiers. Requests for repeats poured into Radio Belgrade.
The song also became a homefront favorite, broadcast regularly on Radio Berlin. "My son has fallen," wrote one German mother to composer Schultze. "In his last letter he wrote of 'Lili Marleen.' I think of him whenever I hear your song."
The Afrikakorps' commander, Gen. Erwin Rommel, shrewdly saw the song as a means to rally his men. He ordered "Lili" played every night. At 9:55 each evening the song became Radio Belgrade's sign-off and cast its magic spell almost until the war's end.
In his book The Great Lili, Carlton Jackson records that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels detested "Lili." He wanted morale-boosters like "Bombs on England." He ordered the original master copy of Lale Andersen's recording destroyed. When Stalingrad fell in January 1943, after 300,000 German soldiers had been killed, Goebbels banned the song entirely, saying that "a dance of death roamed throughout its bard."
But unknown to Goebbels, a second master had been sent to neutral Switzerland. Three days after his ban, "Lili" was back on the air.
Unable to stifle the song, Goebbels vented his anger on the singer. He ordered Lale Andersen put under surveillance and had rumors spread that she was a friend of Jews. Andersen did have close Jewish friends. To one in Switzerland, she wrote letters saying how much she wanted to get out of Germany.
In Italy, after a troop concert tour, Andersen decided to escape across the Swiss border by train. She was seized on a Milan station platform by two Gestapo agents. Back in Berlin, a Nazi official produced copies of her incriminating letters. Falsely accused of being a spy, she was placed under house arrest and told she might be sent to a concentration camp.
British Intelligence heard of her arrest. The BBC broadcast the news that the Nazis had put Germany's beloved singer into a concentration camp. This British intervention may have helped save her. The Gestapo seemed to lose interest in her, and she slipped away quietly to her grandparents' home on a North Sea island, staying there until the war ended.
As novelist John Steinbeck once wrote, "Songs have a way of leaping boundaries." The German song was "captured" by the British fighting Rommel in the desert. But like Goebbels, British army brass disliked the song. It was not the right thing for their soldiers to march to—especially singing in German.
Back in England, Carlton Jackson relates, some Eighth Army veterans were belting out "Lili Marleen" one night in a pub frequented by song publisher J. J. Phillips. He remarked that village police might think they were German spies. "If you're so fired up about it," a soldier yelled, "why don't you write us some English words?"
Phillips took up the challenge with the help of songwriter Tommie Connor. Lili became "My Lilli of the Lamplight"; "Marleen" changed to "Marlene"; and out went the fog and the spirit rising from the grave to kiss her. The new Lilli was the girl left behind, waiting wistfully for her soldier to return safely.
Underneath the lantern by the barrack gate,
Darling, I remember the way you used to wait;
'Twas there that you whispered tenderly,
My Lilli of the lamplight,
My own Lilli Marlene.
It was an immediate hit. Within six months sheet-music sales topped half a million copies. The haunting ballad expressed all the fears of a soldier far from home, yearning to be in his love's arms. Adaptations of Leip's poem have appeared in more than 40 languages.
Over the decades moviegoers have heard the song in dozens of feature films and documentaries. And she is still heard today whenever old soldiers gather to sing of loneliness and loves gone by.
Why did the song steal so many hearts? Lale Andersen's simple reply was: "Can the wind explain why it becomes a storm?" Amid the brutal, ugly cacophony of war, Lilli Marlene always struck a sweet and tender note. She belongs to all nations.
中文翻译
夜幕降临北非沙漠，我们营的坦克围成一个防御圈。一群战友围着一台收音机站着。当我走近时，其中一人把手指放在嘴唇上示意安静。
收音机里传来一声军号，随后是一个温柔、仿佛在呼唤亲吻的女声，用德语唱着我听过的最萦绕心头的旋律。
军营前
在那大门边
曾有一盏灯
至今仍伫立…
我听不懂歌词，我们大多数人也听不懂。因为我们不是德国非洲军团，而是英国第八集团军——“沙漠之鼠”。然而，我们都被这个神秘的声音迷住了，它不知怎地深深触动了我们的思绪和记忆。
就在不远处，德国士兵也在聆听同一首歌，分享着我们的孤独与渴望。那是1942年的春天；双方都远离家乡，但我们却都爱上了歌中的同一个女孩。数百万几乎来自所有国家的士兵也是如此——直到今天，他们仍在歌唱她。她的名字叫莉莉·玛莲。
莉莉是谁？她又是如何跨越国界、语言和世代，成为每个士兵的梦中情人的？她的故事始于1915年，第一次世界大战初期。
柏林一个多雾的四月夜晚，年轻的军官候补生兼崭露头角的诗人汉斯·莱普，正在一个燧发枪手营房外站岗。马路对面，雾气诡异地缭绕在一盏明亮的提灯周围。早些时候，莱普曾与一个昵称叫莉莉的漂亮蔬果店女儿在一起。他正恍惚地想着她，这时从灯雾中走来了玛琳，一位有着海绿色眼睛的妩媚美人，莱普曾在美术馆见过她。对他而言，这是一见钟情。
玛琳正要去附近一家医院帮忙护理伤兵。她挥手打招呼时，正赶上警卫中士来到门口。莱普无法回应，只能凄凉地看着她消失在雾中。
那天晚上，他躺在铺位上，梦着莉莉和玛琳，灵感迸发，写下了一首将她们名字结合的诗。他称之为《年轻哨兵之歌》。诗中讲述了一名士兵在营房外的灯光下与他的爱人莉莉·玛莲告别。军号响起。士兵渴望与莉莉留下，但军号再次吹响。离开时，他大声问道：如果我遭遇不测，会有另一个男人和我的爱人在灯下相会吗？还是我的鬼魂能再次拥抱她？
被派往俄国前线后，莱普再也没见过莉莉或玛琳。大约20年后，他将《年轻哨兵之歌》收录进自己的诗集中。柏林作曲家诺伯特·舒尔策发现了这首诗，为其谱曲，命名为《莉莉·玛莲》，并拿给男高音扬·巴伐伦——后者以“太简单”为由拒绝了。
舒尔策将《莉莉·玛莲》给了一位名叫拉莱·安德森的夜总会歌手，她是一位引人注目的金发女郎，拥有一种萦绕心头的、感性的嗓音，非常适合这首歌的忧郁情调。1939年，Electrola公司录制了这首歌。那时战争已经爆发，只卖出了700张唱片。
这首歌沉寂了两年。德国占领南斯拉夫后，国防军开设了贝尔格莱德电台，向巴尔干和北非的部队广播。电台台长不得不搜寻一些唱片。在维也纳电台的一个地下室里，一名士兵发掘出一批积满灰尘的录音，其中就有安德森的《莉莉·玛莲》。1941年8月18日晚，这首歌首次播出。
我未来的姐夫，当时是非洲军团的一名坦克军官，听到了这首歌。“我完全被迷住了，”他多年后告诉我。成千上万的其他士兵也是如此。要求重播的请求如潮水般涌入贝尔格莱德电台。
这首歌也成为了后方的最爱，定期在柏林电台播出。“我的儿子阵亡了，”一位德国母亲写信给作曲家舒尔策，“在他的最后一封信里，他提到了《莉莉·玛莲》。每当我听到你的歌，我就会想起他。”
非洲军团指挥官埃尔温·隆美尔将军精明地看到了这首歌作为凝聚士气手段的价值。他下令每晚播放《莉莉》。每晚9点55分，这首歌成为贝尔格莱德电台的结束曲，施展着它的魔力，几乎持续到战争结束。
卡尔顿·杰克逊在他的著作《伟大的莉莉》中记载，纳粹宣传部长约瑟夫·戈培尔憎恶《莉莉》。他想要的是像《炸弹投向英格兰》那样的士气鼓舞歌曲。他下令销毁拉莱·安德森录音的原始母带。1943年1月，30万德军士兵阵亡、斯大林格勒陷落后，戈培尔彻底禁播了这首歌，声称“死亡的舞蹈在其吟游诗人周身游荡”。
但戈培尔不知道的是，第二份母带已被送往中立国瑞士。禁令下达三天后，《莉莉》重回电波。
无法扼杀这首歌，戈培尔将怒火发泄在歌手身上。他下令对拉莱·安德森进行监视，并散布谣言说她与犹太人是朋友。安德森确实有亲密的犹太朋友。她给在瑞士的一位朋友写信，诉说自己多么想离开德国。
在意大利完成一次部队巡回演出后，安德森决定乘火车逃往瑞士边境。她在米兰车站月台上被两名盖世太保特工抓获。回到柏林，一名纳粹官员出示了她那些可能招致罪责的信件副本。她被诬陷为间谍，遭到软禁，并被告知可能被送往集中营。
英国情报部门听说了她的被捕。英国广播公司播报了纳粹将德国深受爱戴的歌手关进集中营的消息。这次英国的干预可能帮助拯救了她。盖世太保似乎对她失去了兴趣，她悄悄溜到北海岛上祖父母的家，在那里一直待到战争结束。
正如小说家约翰·斯坦贝克曾写道：“歌曲自有跨越边界的方式。”这首德国歌曲被在沙漠中与隆美尔作战的英军“俘获”了。但和戈培尔一样，英军高层也不喜欢这首歌。让士兵们听着它行军不合适——尤其是用德语唱。
卡尔顿·杰克逊记述道，回到英国后，一天晚上，一些第八集团军的老兵在一家酒馆里高唱《莉莉·玛莲》，歌曲出版商J.J.菲利普斯常去那里。他说村里的警察可能会以为他们是德国间谍。“如果你这么看不惯，”一个士兵喊道，“干嘛不给我们写点英文歌词？”
菲利普斯在歌曲作家汤米·康纳的帮助下接受了挑战。莉莉变成了“灯光下的我的莉莉”；“玛莲”改成了“玛琳”；雾气以及从坟墓中升起亲吻她的鬼魂情节被删去。新的莉莉是那个被留下的女孩，惆怅地等待她的士兵平安归来。
军营大门边的灯光下，
亲爱的，我记得你等待的模样；
就在那里你温柔低语，
我灯光下的莉莉，
我亲爱的莉莉·玛琳。
它立即大获成功。六个月内，活页乐谱的销量超过了五十万份。这首萦绕心头的民谣道尽了一个远离家乡的士兵所有的恐惧，以及渴望投入爱人怀抱的 yearning。莱普诗歌的改编版本已出现在超过40种语言中。
几十年来，电影观众在数十部故事片和纪录片中听过这首歌的原版。直到今天，每当老兵们聚在一起歌唱逝去的孤独与爱情时，仍能听到她的歌声。
为什么这首歌能偷走这么多人的心？拉莱·安德森的回答很简单：“风能解释它为何成为风暴吗？”在战争残酷、丑陋的刺耳噪音中，莉莉·玛莲总是奏响甜蜜而温柔的音符。她属于所有国家。