Children´s Songs: The Cuckoo and the Donkey, or: Live and Let Live

"Man is truly human only when he plays," wrote the poet of freedom, Friedrich Schiller, in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. Leaving behind the realm of necessity. Play instead of drill. What does nonviolent education look like today? Which values have been — and still are — conveyed in children's songs?

For example, by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben. The famous librarian and poet was full of surprises. He wrote over 400 children's songs and composed the lyrics to the German national anthem: "Unity and justice and freedom." Or Carl Friedrich Zelter, who composed the melody for The Cuckoo and the Donkey — a lively musical quarrel between a cuckoo and a donkey, each with their own opinion. An open discourse. One could even interpret it as a kind of hymn to democracy, where in the end, everyone will be able to sing together.