2026-09-11 07:59 UTC
For the #History theme for this week's #JukeBoxFridayNight, here's "Prisoner" by Scottish folk singer Dick Gaughan. My father introdued me to this song and it's stuck with me. At the time I'd known nothing of German Nobel Peace Prize winner Carl von Ossietzky and his fate.
Caution: it's a grim song, with an uneasy message. We cannot let this history repeat.
"In the struggle against injustice
He fought hard and he fought long
Child - remember Ossietsky
Peace won't come by words alone"
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=59YmX0zvWHc
#DickGaughan #WWII
Replies (2)
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@joncounts@mastodon.nz 2026-09-11 08:31
Dick Gaughan’s song “Prisoner” was a poem written by German poet Oswald Andrae. Or, if you instead believe the lyrics feature on Apple Music, it was written by Ben Margulies and Mariah Carey. Which, well, that seems unlikely. 😀 #AppleMusic
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@bencourtice@aus.social 2026-09-11 08:46
@joncounts@mastodon.nz "Ossietzky at Die Weltbühne helped to publish a statistical study in 1923, showing that German judges were inclined to impose extremely harsh sentences on those who broke laws in the name of the left while imposing very lenient sentences on those who committed much violence in the name of the right." Sounds familiar, 100 years later (from the Wikipedia article)