Between Goethe and Brecht. Rammstein texts and the poems of Till Lindemann

Till Lindemann is a poet better known as the song writer and lead singer of Rammstein. It could be interesting to compare the texts band’s lyrics and his poems, maybe gaining a better insight in how both of them are made.

For automated analysis, however, both kinds of texts might seem of little interest. With very short texts, the basis for statistical reasoning is too small. Indeed, we cannot reasonably apply the various readability indexes we usually employ when analyzing corpora. But if we restrict our statistical glimpse to some very elementary calculations, something similar to an “author’s footprint” might emerge. 

I will first use the TTR, the ratio between the number of single words (“types”) that appear in the text and the total number of words (“tokens”).Then I will have a look at the numeric relation between functional words (prepositions articles, conjunctions, etc.) and content words. Some characteristics of Till Lindemann poetic writing should become apparent. Deeper research might confirm and illustrate these findings.

We usually use the TTR in order to measure lexical variety. If every word is used only once, you’ll get 1. Journalistic texts move between .3 and .5. Long texts usually have a lower TTR.

As our poems are rather short, we’d expect a high TTR for the texts in Lindemann’s book. Yet, his .72 is really high, quite near to Emily Dickinson’s poems (.75). 

In Rammstein texts instead, we get aTTR of .47. Well, in the world of pop songs, vocabulary … Just compare:

Song                                     Tokens Types    TTR

Taylor Swift – Shake It Off     ~450    ~150     0.33

Ed Sheeran – Perfect            ~280      ~90     0.32

Beatles – Hey Jude               ~180      ~50     0.28

(data produced by ChatGPT)

Thus, the lower TTR of Rammstein songs compared to Lindemann’s poetry is not astonishing, But, compared to the other pop songs, the lexical variety is still rather high. After the removal of stopwords (functional words, more or less, words without “content”), in Lindemann’s poetry only 2926 words remain. 3024 of the poet’s words, 51% are fumctional words. They do not present, they only connect things. This could indicate a rather narrative or argumentative style, which is not only presenting ideas and images, but connecting them in

some order (that’s what functional words are for).

In Rammstein lyrics, functional words cover 50.01%, quite the same as in Lindemann’s poetry. Maybe this number is a central value for the characterization of a poet? They say the choice of function words is something guided by subconscious motives. But we are not doing psycology here.

To get an idea of the meaning of these numbers, it would be helpful to analyze some corpora of German poetry. Unfortunately, such corpora are not available. To get an idea, a short analysis of single characteristic poems must suffice. I asked ChatGPT for the numeric analysis of five characteristic works. These were: “Abend” by Andreas Gryphius, “Erlkönig”

by Goethe, “Hälfte des Lebens” by Friedrich Hälderlin, “Trieb” by Aigust Stramm, “Groddek” by Georg Trakl, and “An die Nachgeborenen” by Bertolt Brecht. With this choice, we have Baroque as well as Modernist poetry, we have a ballad and intense lyrical texts. 

ChatGPT produces:

Poem                        TTR                            Function:               

                                  (Types/Tokens)          Content Ratio   

Stramm – Trieb          0.8788                         0.10                     

Extremely high lexical density; almost pure content vocabulary.

Trakl – Groddek         0.7037                         0.35 

Elevated, image-rich diction; strong content word dominance.

Hölderlin – Hälfte       0.7407                         0.42 

Compact lyric with rich imagery, balanced lexical use.

Goethe – Erlkönig     0.5607                          0.58 

Narrative-dialogic style; higher proportion of function words.

Brecht – An die N.     0.4966                         0.64 

Prose-like, argumentative tone; function words prevalent.

The first three poems essentially create images; the last three make the images move. They narrate stories or develop thoughts. What does Lindemann do for being collocated in the

second group, with an F/C ratio of 0.51? 

He moves somewhere between Goethe and Brecht. As far as Goethe is concerned: Lindemann often uses the form of the ballad, a kind of narrative poetry:

Warum

Wenn die Fischlein aus dem Fluss

sich abends um das Mondlicht scharen

zieht es mich zum Wasser hin

dann kann ich unser Ringlein sehen

Why

When evenings are by moonlight

the tiny fish begin to teem

it draws me down to the water

to see our ringlet in the stream

Translated by Ehren Fordyce, Bowie, MD (RawDogScreaming Press) 2025

Brecht: Lindemann sometimes adopts the reflective style we know from Brecht:

Ich bin nicht böse

Was nicht schlecht ist

das ist gut oder sehr schlecht oder tot

I am not evil

What is not bad

That is good or very bad or dead

The reader might notice some ironical play on and around both axes.