From Liebe ist für alle da · 2009 · Track 3
Waidmanns Heil
«Good hunting»
More from the album · Liebe ist für alle da
In context
The ritual greeting of German hunters, used to tell two pursuits at once, without marking where one ends and the other begins.
- Hunting
- Double reading
- Folklore
- Origin
- From “Liebe ist für alle da” (2009). The lyrics are a reworked version of “Sautod”, a poem Till Lindemann published in “Messer” (2002), his first book. The registered working title was “Waidmann Waldmann” — huntsman, woodsman.
- The German key
- “Waidmanns Heil” is the hunters' ritual greeting, something like “good hunting”. It is neither an invented nor a marginal expression: it has centuries of use and a lexicon of its own — German reserves an entire vocabulary for hunting, different from the one used for the same acts outside the forest. The song exploits all of that weight.
- What the band has said
- The band has not commented on the song; the link to “Sautod” is documented by the poem's earlier publication.
- Live
- Performed intermittently since 2009.
Our reading
The hunter's technical, respectable language ends up describing something rather less respectable, and not a single word needs to change: the language already carried that ambiguity. It fits the album it belongs to — the one with “Ich tu dir weh” and “Pussy”, the one that ended up restricted in Germany: it is the piece that does the same thing, but disguised as folklore.
The archive's interpretation, not an official account.
A greeting with centuries behind it
Waidmanns Heil is the ritual greeting of German hunters, roughly “good hunting”. It is neither invented nor marginal: it has centuries of use, a vocabulary of its own — German keeps an entire lexicon reserved for hunting, separate from the words used for the same acts outside the forest — and a weight of tradition and belonging that the song exploits in full.
What Rammstein do is superimpose two pursuits. The hunting of an animal and sexual pursuit are told with the same vocabulary, with no marker for where one ends and the other begins, so that the technical, respectable language of the hunter ends up describing something considerably less respectable. The joke, if there is one, is that not a single word had to be changed: the language already carried that ambiguity.
It fits the record it belongs to. Liebe ist für alle da is the album of “Ich tu dir weh” and “Pussy”, the one that ended up restricted in Germany by the federal office for media harmful to minors. “Waidmanns Heil” does the same thing, dressed as folklore.
The poem behind it
The lyrics are a reworked version of “Sautod”, a poem published by Till Lindemann in Messer (2002), his first book. It is the same procedure as “Weit weg” ten years later: a text that already existed on paper enters the band’s catalogue rewritten.
The song’s working title, as registered in the databases, was “Waidmann Waldmann” — hunter, man of the woods.
Where it turned up
Besides the album, the song appeared in two unusual places: the video game Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, and a playalong version — with the original click track included, to play over — on the CD accompanying issue 06/2010 of the German drumming magazine Drumheads.
Live it had a short, concentrated run: 117 performances between its debut on 27 October 2009 and 31 May 2011, all within that album’s cycle.
Context
Third track on Liebe ist für alle da (16 October 2009), recorded in 2008 at Sonoma Mountain Studio in California. In April 2011 it was released as a double A-side single alongside the album’s title track.
Notes by Rammstein Colombia, for the purpose of analysis. The original lyrics belong to their authors and are not reproduced in this entry.