From Liebe ist für alle da · 2009 · Track 7
Wiener Blut
«Viennese blood»
More from the album · Liebe ist für alle da
In context
A Strauss waltz gives its name to a song about a cellar. The voice of the one who locks someone up, describing the captivity as if he were offering a refuge.
- Confinement
- National hypocrisy
- Recent event
- Origin
- From “Liebe ist für alle da” (2009), recorded in 2008 — the same year the Fritzl case broke in Austria. One of the song's working titles was, quite simply, “Fritzl”.
- The German key
- “Wiener Blut” — Viennese blood — is first of all a waltz by Johann Strauss II, and then an operetta built on it. It is one of those expressions a country uses to speak well of itself: the Viennese temperament, elegance, the salon, the empire.
- What the band has said
- The band has not publicly explained the connection to the case; the working title is the most direct evidence there is.
- Live
- A live regular: some 180 performances between 2009 and 2024, including the stadium tour.
Our reading
It is the same method as “Stein um Stein” — confinement told as an act of love by the one who commits it — except that here there is no metaphor: there is a recent event, documented, with living victims. It is legitimate to hear it as the portrait of a country that tells its story with waltzes and palaces while this happens in a provincial house, and the title does that work. It is also legitimate to think that one year is very little time, and that the perpetrator's first person is harder to sustain when the person who suffered it is alive and has a name. This archive doesn't think one has to choose.
The archive's interpretation, not an official account.
The title
Wiener Blut — “Viennese blood” — is first of all a waltz by Johann Strauss II, and then an operetta built around it. It is one of those phrases a country uses to speak well of itself: the Viennese temperament, the elegance, the ballroom, the empire.
Rammstein attach that name to a song about a cellar.
What it is about
The track is built on the Fritzl case, which broke in Austria in April 2008: a man who kept his daughter locked in the cellar of his house for decades, raped her repeatedly and fathered children with her. The album was recorded that same year, and one of the song’s working titles was, plainly, “Fritzl”.
The song neither narrates nor explains the case. It takes the voice of the man doing the imprisoning and describes the cellar as though offering something to the person walking down: a safe place, a shelter, somewhere nobody will disturb them. It is the same procedure as “Stein um Stein” — confinement told as an act of love by the person committing it — except that here there is no metaphor: there is a recent, documented event with living victims.
And that is the discomfort the song does not resolve, and does not try to. It is legitimate to hear it as what it appears to be: the portrait of a country that tells its own story in waltzes and palaces while this happens in an ordinary provincial house, and the title does exactly that work. It is equally legitimate to think a year is very little time, and that the first-person voice of the perpetrator — the band’s favourite device — is harder to sustain when the person who suffered the event is alive and has a name. This archive does not believe you have to choose between the two readings.
Where the music came from
The other working title, “Seid bereit”, comes from an earlier unreleased song written around the Mutter sessions. According to members of the official fan club, the main guitar riff and some lyrical ideas were taken from it; when the Fritzl case broke, new lyrics were written and it came out in 2009.
Part of those lyrics had appeared earlier in a demo called “Augen zu”, which musically is a sketch of the album’s title track but already dealt with the same case. In other words: the song circled this material for years before it found its form.
Context
Seventh track on Liebe ist für alle da (16 October 2009), recorded in 2008 in California. It has been played 180 times live between 27 October 2009 and 31 July 2024 — one of the few songs from the record that outlived its own tour and remain in the stadium set.
Notes by Rammstein Colombia, for the purpose of analysis. The original lyrics belong to their authors and are not reproduced in this entry.