Zu Mantua in Banden

Zu Mantua in Banden is identified in the book’s explanatory apparatus as a tune with a history spanning political song and regional identity. The note connects it to Johannes Most’s 1860 poem Die Arbeitsmänner, names the Andreas-Hofer-Lied as an alternate title, and records its adoption as Tyrol’s national song in 1948.

Identification and Provenance

The note identifies Zu Mantua in Banden as the tune to which Most’s Die Arbeitsmänner was sung. It dates the poem to 1860 and describes Most as a Communist Party of Germany member. The distinction matters: the evidence identifies the poem as Most’s work and Zu Mantua in Banden as its musical setting, not as the poem’s title or author.

Alternate Name and Later Status

The tune is also known as the Andreas-Hofer-Lied. The note then places its later public status at a specific date, stating that it became the national song of Tyrol in 1948. This brief account links a melody used for a nineteenth-century political poem with a later regional designation, without giving further details about how or why that change occurred.

Musical Context in the Novel

Elsewhere, the book depicts a Tyrolean-costumed band playing a drinking song at the Neue Welt. That scene establishes music and popular entertainment as part of the novel’s public soundscape, but it does not identify the tune being played as Zu Mantua in Banden. The explanatory note supplies the tune’s historical associations; the surrounding scene should not be treated as evidence that the characters perform it.