Das lila Lied [English translation]

What do people want?

Is this culture

if everyone is frowned upon?

The bright and good,

but with a particular kind of blood

flowing through them?

That category that

is forbidden by the law?

Related in feeling, in pleasure and play

and in nature?

And yet most are proud

to be cut from a different cloth!1

(Chorus:)

We are just different from the others,2

who have only loved in step with morality.

Who curiously wander at first through a thousand wonders,

and yet only see the banal in the end.

But we don't know what that feeling is like

because we are the children of another world.

We only love the lavender3 night that is sultry 4

because we are different from the others.

Why the agony

of imposing

the others’ morality on us?

We – listen up now! – are the way we are,

even if they want to hang us for it.

But whoever thinks that we should be hanged

should be pitied.

And soon, take note, overnight

our sun will also shine.

Then we will have won the same rights

we will no longer suffer, but we will be tolerated!5

(Chorus)

1. Literally to be carved from a different wood.2. Surely a reference to the film of the same title from 1919, considered to be the first pro-gay film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Different_from_the_Others3. Literally lilac, but lavender is probably better due its LGBT associations.4. Schwül is muggy or sultry, but it sounds like schwul which means gay.5. This is a play on words. Leiden usually means to suffer, but gelitten sein can have the meaning to be tolerated.

• Artist:Ute Lemper
• Album:Berlin Cabaret Songs (1996)