The carol and its message of peace

"Silent Night" in the trenches

Christmas 1914 on the Western Front: Only five months after the outbreak of the First World War, more than a million soldiers had already fallen or been wounded. But then an extraordinary pacifist miracle of fraternisation took place among thousands of soldiers of different nationalities.

On Christmas Eve, a hush fell over the trenches. On both sides of the some 50-kilometre-long front in Flanders, the combatants laid down their weapons and helmets and sang Christmas carols of their native countries. “Silent Night” was one of them – sung in various mother tongues. An act of solidarity and a sign of peace in the midst of war.

The song as a political message of peace

The economist and philosopher Leopold Kohr, who was born in Oberndorf and emigrated to the US in 1938, was the author of many anti-war publications during the Second World War. With the help of “Silent Night”, Kohr initiated a number of campaigns eliciting support for his native country. For years, every Christmas season he published dozens of newspaper articles in which he used “Silent Night” as a political song against Nazi Germany and for the liberation of Austria. 

Solidarity and aid

Austria’s famous Trapp Family from “The Sound of Music” emigrated to the US before the outbreak of the Second World War. After the end of the war a US officer approached the singing family from Salzburg and described the suffering of the people of Salzburg that he witnessed when he arrived in the city with the famous “Rainbow” Division. The Trapp Family responded immediately by founding Trapp Family Austrian Relief Inc., with its headquarters in Vermont. Some 150 tonnes of relief supplies were donated when the Trapp Family from that point on began their concerts with the following appeal: “The country that gave to the world Haydn, Schubert, Mozart, and Silent Night will perish if we do not help.”