Old German Songbooks, No. 11: Max Friedlaender, Commersbuch (2 editions: 1892 & 19??)

Commercium books were very popular during the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Apparently the students used to sing much more than today. For publishers these kind of collections must have been good business. Some of them - like the Allgemeines Deutsches Commersbuch - were published in numerous editions. Here I have another Commersbuch, both the original edition published in 1892 and an expanded 4th edition with 30 more songs that came out a couple of years later: 

• Commersbuch, herausgegeben und mit kritisch-historischen Anmerkungen versehen von Max Friedlaender, C. F. Peters, Leipzig n. d. [1892]
  Available at the Internet Archive
• Kommersbuch, herausgegeben und mit kritisch-historischen Anmerkungen versehen von Max Friedlaender, C. F. Peters, Leipzig n. d. [c. 1900?]
  Available at the Internet Archive

This is a not untypical collection. Here we can find the usual amount of drinking songs - in fact one doesn't get the best impression of the young academic elite of that era - as well as many popular "Volkslied"-standards from Silcher's "Loreley" to "Geibel's "Der Mai ist gekommen". The editor notes in his preface that this book is intended for practical use and therefore only includes those songs "die jetzt überall gesungen werden" (see p. v). 

What makes this book really worthwhile are the editor's historical notes on many of the songs. Max Friedlaender (1852-1934, see Moser in NDB 5, Berlin 1961, p. 455, at BStB-DS) was a renowned scholar of both art-songs and "Volkslieder". He did some real research and much of what he found out is still essential. Anybody interested in the history of these kind of songs is well advised to check out his notes.

I must admit that I first only needed this publication to read what he had written about one particular song. Unfortunately at the moment there is no digitized version of this book available. But I was glad to find both the 1st and the 4th edition in antiquarian bookshops and scanned them myself. As usual these books are no clean library copies but were clearly heavily used by their original owners.