From Sehnsucht · 1997 · Track 1
Sehnsucht
«Longing (no exact translation)»
More from the album · Sehnsucht
In context
The track that opens the second album and gives it its name takes a word with no real equivalent in English and gives it a body. “Sehnsucht” is not simply “longing”: it is a desire with the character of an illness, aimed at something the person feeling it cannot name.
- Longing
- Language
- German Romanticism
- Origin
- Opening track of “Sehnsucht”, released on 22 August 1997. The album reached number 1 in Germany and Austria and is the only album entirely in German to be certified platinum by the RIAA in the United States.
- The German key
- The word is a compound of “sehnen” (to long for) and “Sucht” (addiction, compulsion), and it is that second half that gets lost in translation. What is more, German “Sehnsucht” has no defined object: you do not long for something specific, you long without knowing for what. It is a central concept of German Romanticism that survives in everyday speech. Nostalgia is for what is gone; “Sehnsucht” is for what you never had.
Our reading
It is the same procedure as “Mutter” and “Zeit”: choosing a big word in the language and giving it a body. That hundreds of thousands of people bought an album sung in a language they did not understand is, at bottom, proof that the song works before translation.
The archive's interpretation, not an official account.
Original (German)
Lass mich deine Sehnsucht sein
Translation
Let me be your longing
Verse cited for the purpose of analysis.
The word
Sehnsucht is translated as “longing” or “yearning”, but neither is enough. It is a compound of sehnen (to long for) and Sucht (addiction, obsession, craving), and it is that second half that goes missing: it is not a calm desire, it is desire with the character of an illness.
And there is more: German Sehnsucht has no defined object. You do not long for something specific; you long without knowing for what. It is a central concept of German Romanticism, and it survives in everyday speech as one of those words Germans themselves cite when explaining that their language has things others do not.
“Nostalgia” covers what is gone; Sehnsucht covers what was never had.
The song
It is the track that opens and names the second album. It takes the word and drives it into the physical: longing as something that gets into the body and stays. The band does here what it does with Mutter and Zeit — pick a large word from the language and give it a body.
The album
Sehnsucht came out on 22 August 1997 and is the record that internationalized the band. It hit No. 1 in Germany and Austria, No. 45 on the US Billboard 200 and — the most telling fact — it is the only entirely German-language album certified platinum by the RIAA in the United States.
That fact explains why an archive like this exists. Hundreds of thousands of people bought a record they did not understand, and what this site tries to do is stop the language from being the obstacle.
Translation and notes by Rammstein Colombia, for the purpose of analysis. The full original lyrics belong to their authors.