Song of the Bell

The Song of the Bell (German: Das Lied von der Glocke, also translated as The Lay of the Bell) is a poem that the German poet Friedrich Schiller published in 1798. It is one of the most famous poems of German literature and with 430 lines also one of the longest. In it, Schiller combines a knowledgeable technical description of a bell founding with points of view and comments on human life, its possibilities and risks.

As a small boy Schiller came in contact with the trade of bell founding because Georg Friderich Neubert, the son of the Ludwigsburg bell founder, was a classmate at his Latin school and the Schiller family lived only a few doors away from the casting house. It is also considered to be certain that Schiller visited the Neubert family again during his stay in Ludwigsburg 1793/94. More than ten years passed between the first basic idea for the poem and its completion. During this time Schiller closely observed the sequence of operations in a bell foundry. In the family of the Rudolstädt bell founder Johann Mayer it was related from generation to generation, "how Schiller repeatedly visited the casting works and interrogated the casting master, who at first was not pleased about this disruption to the work, and how the pale scholar considerately took a seat at the wall in a high-backed chair in order not to disturb the work."

The first indented line between the title and the first stanza is in Latin and reads "Vivos voco. Mortuos plango. Fulgura frango", approximately translating as "I call the living, I mourn the dead, I repel lightning."

A look at the assembled form: The first stanza calls attention to the preliminary work which precedes the actual casting process. The clay form is in a banked pit ready to be filled with the molten metal. The molten wax method is described, in which a wax model of the bell is first made. Because in the course of the casting both the model and the form are destroyed the procedure is also known as the lost wax process.

Preparing the alloy for casting: Schiller describes the wood fuel, the opening in the smelting furnace through which the flame sweeps over the metal, the door which permits the fire to be stirred up and when closed forces the flame into the furnace. One has to imagine the casting pit as being close to the furnace where the metal is stacked up. First the copper is introduced, and when that is liquefied the easier-to-melt tin is added.

Melting the alloy: When the three parts copper and one part tin are melted, a white foam forms on the surface which captures any impurities. Its formation is facilitated by the addition of potasch.

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