"Wanderer's Nightsong" is the title of two poems by the German poetJohann Wolfgang von Goethe. Written in 1776 and in 1780, they are among Goethe's most famous works. Both were first edited together in his 1815 Works Vol. I with the headings "Wandrers Nachtlied" and "Ein gleiches". Both works were set to music as lieder by Franz Schubert as D 224 and D 768.
Wanderer's Nightsong I
The manuscript of "Wanderer's Nightsong" was among Goethe's letters to his friend Charlotte von Stein and bears the signature "At the slope of Ettersberg, on 12 Feb. 76"; supposedly it was written under the tree later called the Goethe Oak. One translation is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Franz Schubert set the poem to music in 1815.
Wanderer's Nightsong II
Wanderer's Nightsong II is often considered the perhaps most perfect lyric in the German language. Goethe probably wrote it on the evening of September 6, 1780, onto the wall of a wooden gamekeeper lodge on top of the Kickelhahn mountain near Ilmenau where he, according to a letter to Charlotte von Stein, spent the night. Goethe's friend Karl Ludwig von Knebel mentioned the writing in his diary, it is also documented in transcriptions by Johann Gottfried Herder and Luise von Göchhausen. It was first published—without authorization—by August Adolph von Hennings in 1800 and again by August von Kotzebue in 1803. An English version appeared in the Monthly Magazine'' in February 1801. The second poem was also set by Franz Schubert, in 1823. As Goethe wrote to Carl Friedrich Zelter, he revisited the cabin more than 50 years later on August 27, 1831, about six months before his death. The poet recognised his wall-writing and reportedly broke down in tears. After 1831 the handwritten text vanished, and has not been preserved.
The mountain hut had already become famous as "Goethe's Cabin" by the late 1830s. Burnt down in 1870, it was rebuilt four years later. Parodies of "Nachtlied II" were written by Christian Morgenstern, Joachim Ringelnatz, Karl Kraus, and Bertolt Brecht. A computational linguistics processing of the poem was the topic of the 1968 radio dramaDie Maschine by Georges Perec and. It is also cited in Daniel Kehlmann's 2005 novel Measuring the World, in Milan Kundera's novel Immortality, and in Walter Moers' novel The City of Dreaming Books. John Ottman's musical score for Bryan Singer's 2008 filmValkyrie contains a requiem-like piece for soprano and chorus in the closing credits with "Nachtlied II" as lyrics. In the film's context, the poem serves as a lament on the miscarried assassination on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944, mourns the proximate death of most of the assassins, and with the last two lines forecasts the demise of those whom they failed to kill.
