From Made in Germany 1995–2011 · 2011
Mein Land
«My land»
In context
A voice that claims a territory as its own and drives out everyone who doesn't belong. No irony in the narrator: the slogan sung from the inside.
- Territory
- Belonging and expulsion
- Cultural appropriation
- Origin
- The only new track on the compilation “Made in Germany 1995–2011”. The single's cover deliberately copies that of The Beach Boys' “Surfer Girl”, and Jonas Åkerlund's video was shot on 23 May 2011 at Sycamore Cove State Beach, Malibu.
- The German key
- “Mein Land” — my land — is a short, possessive formula with no embellishment. The song repeats it until it becomes a slogan, which is exactly what makes it uncomfortable.
- What the band has said
- The band did not accompany the single with a reading; judgement is left to the listener, as in the rest of their method.
- Live
- Performed intermittently since 2011.
Our reading
It is the same machinery that eight years later would lead to “Deutschland”, except that there the country becomes a body with centuries of history on it, and here it is just a patch of sand someone declares their own. The video completes the idea: a German band appropriates the sunniest icon of American identity — the California beach, the Beach Boys, the endless summer — and occupies it until it becomes theirs, first as visitors and then by force. The song says “my land” while the video borrows it from someone else. The disguise is the thesis.
The archive's interpretation, not an official account.
The song that justified the compilation
Made in Germany 1995–2011 is a greatest hits record: sixteen years of catalogue remastered and put in order. A record like that needs no new songs, but it carried one, and this is it.
“Mein Land” is a voice claiming a territory as its own and expelling everyone who does not belong there. There is no irony in the narrator, which is precisely the band’s method: the slogan is sung from inside, in the first person and without distance, and the judgement is left to the listener. It is the same machinery that would produce “Deutschland” eight years later — except there the country becomes a body carrying centuries of history, while here it is barely a stretch of sand that someone declares theirs.
The joke is on the beach
The single’s cover art deliberately copies The Beach Boys’ Surfer Girl. The video, directed by Jonas Åkerlund, was filmed on 23 May 2011 at Sycamore Cove State Beach in Malibu, California: the six musicians appear in casual 1960s beach clothes, partying, with captions in surf-record lettering.
Near the end the video jumps to 2012 and shows the band performing on that same beach, but dressed in their own industrial manner, flames shooting from the stage and all six wearing corpse paint.
That is the whole idea. A German band appropriates the sunniest icon of American identity — the Californian beach, the Beach Boys, the endless summer — and occupies it until it becomes theirs, first as visitors and then by force. The song says my land while the video borrows it from someone else. The costume is the thesis.
Context
It was released as a single on 11 November 2011 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and on 14 November internationally; the video came out on 11 November as well. The CD single also carried “Vergiss uns nicht”, a version by The BossHoss titled “My Country”, and a Mogwai remix.
Notes by Rammstein Colombia, for the purpose of analysis. The original lyrics belong to their authors and are not reproduced in this entry.