The song of the “Girl from Poland”

In a small Polish town / there once lived a girl / she was so pretty. 
She was the prettiest child / in the whole of Poland. 
But no, but no, she said / I never kiss. [Translator’s translation]

In einem Polenstädtchen / da lebte einst ein Mädchen / das war so schön. 
Sie war das allerschönste Kind / das man in Polen findt. 
Aber nein, aber nein, sprach sie / ich küsse nie.[1]

In 1974, with his unmistakeable, deep voice, Heino belted out the song of the “Polenmädchen” into the hall during the “ZDF-Hitparade” show in Berlin. The audience loved it. However, most of them were probably unaware of the fact that at that time, the “Polenmädchen” already had a long history that began a century before, and which is still relevant today. But what is the story behind the song?

According to the lyrics, it is certainly about a young woman who is admired and desired by a man, as is clearly suggested by his incessant requests for a kiss. Despite all his efforts, however, she refrains from giving her admirer what he wants. As the song progresses, the story takes a tragic turn. Finally, the “Polenmädchen” is found dead: in some versions of the song, she is lying in a pond, while in others, she is found under an oak tree. In her hand, there is a note which reads: “I kissed once and paid a heavy price.” The words suggest the possibility of a sexual assault and its consequences.

In various versions of the song, the girl is called Anuschka (as sung by Heino) or Maruschka (in the version by the Austrian “Schlager” singer Freddy Quinn). Often, however, the girl remains nameless. The man is sometimes referred to as a “gentleman”, and sometimes as “grenadier”, in other words, as a soldier. By the First World War at the latest, “In einem Polenstädchen” (“In a Small Polish Town”) became a popular song, not only among soldiers, who also used it as a marching song, but also among the general public.

There are different versions of the origin of the song. We do not know where exactly it was written. An original version was probably produced at the end of the 18th century.[2] In 1840, an elderly teacher wrote it down from memory, under the title “In the Village where I Lived” (“Im Dörfchen, wo ich lebte”). This is regarded as being the basis for the further development of the “Polenmädchen” song, which from the First World War onwards was passed on with an increasing lyrical variety.[3]

 

It was not unusual during the war for soldiers to have relations with local women. When the Germans entered Poland at the start of the Second World War, they probably also had positive stereotypes of Polish girls, as the German cultural scientist and historian Maren Röger explains in her book “Kriegsbeziehungen” (“War Relations”)[4]. In it, she reconstructs the circumstances under which German soldiers would have had relations with the “Polenmädchen” of the song.

Aside from forced prostitution and occasional sex work, there were also real romantic relationships. In one village near Zamość, for example, during the German occupation in 1941, a traditional “dance into May” event was held, in which German soldiers wooed Polish women[5] in a similar way to that described in the lyrics of the “Polenmädchen”. Some Polish families tolerated relations with the German occupiers, while others vehemently rejected the idea. In one case, a grandmother is even said to have tried to kill her grandchild who was fathered by a German man. Other women were so desperate that they killed their child themselves after the father had left them stranded. Officially, the German soldiers were prohibited from having relations with Polish women. In reality, though, they were quietly tolerated. The harshest punishment was internment in a concentration camp, although only a small number of such cases is recorded.[6]

Polish women who had relations with Germans as described in the soldier’s song “In einem Polenstädchen” lived under constant fear of reprisals. As Röger explains: “For the city of Warsaw, there were lists of names of women from all strata of society. [...] After they had been spied on, they were issued an urgent warning, and if they failed to heed it, the Polish resistance authorities would shave their heads in punishment as a badge of shame.”[7] Punishments like these were also meted out in rural areas, where such relations in village communities were almost impossible to hide and social control was even tighter. In a small number of documented cases, the women even had to pay for relations with the German occupiers with their lives.[8]

Nowadays, this song is hardly ever associated with these stories from the time of the German occupation in Poland. Even so, the “Polenmädchen” is still occasionally cause for political debate, as a case from 2020 illustrates. At that time, the left-wing faction on the city council in the town of Braunschweig criticised the fact that the song was sung at a local event held by an engineers’ club. The left-wing “Linke” party argued that it could be assumed that it would have been sung by members of the Wehrmacht when they invaded Poland. The war itself therefore did nothing to diminish the song’s popularity. Even afterwards, it was sung by soldiers and used for military marches. Certainly by the time Heino had issued his sing-along version in the 1970s, the song became a popular party hit.

 

Sebastian Garthoff, February 2025

 

Sources:

Mang, Theo/Mang, Sunhilt: Der LiederQuell. Die schönsten Volkslieder aus Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Eggolsheim 2014.
Röger, Maren: Kriegsbeziehungen. Intimität, Gewalt und Prostitution im besetzten Polen von 1939 bis 1945, Frankfurt am Main 2015.
https://www.deutschland-lese.de/streifzuege/lieder/volkslieder/in-einem-polenstaedtchen/
https://www.lieder-archiv.de/in_einem_polenstaedtchen-notenblatt_600904.html
https://www.volksliederarchiv.de/im-doerfchen-wo-ich-lebte-polonaise/
https://regionalheute.de/braunschweig/stadt-wirft-der-linken-versuche-der-skandalisierung-vor-1582121462/