Hanns Eisler carried out his work on the German Symphony in different phases of his life. He began it on his first big concert and lecture tour of the USA in 1935. This symphony is a work that gave Eisler’s years in exile an abiding fundamental note, whether in America, in the Netherlands, in Belgium or in Denmark. He revised, modified, expanded: this long and intensive occupation with the work also shows that the German Symphony was of major importance to Eisler. Without exaggeration, the composition is a monumental work, as Eisler prescribes the use of a large orchestra, a large mixed choir, three solo singers and two speakers. For this composition, as in numerous other works, Eisler collaborated with the writer Bertolt Brecht. He inserted large segments of text from his Songs, Poems and Choirs into the German Symphony. Eisler also used texts from Italian writer Ignazio Silone. The symphony is distinguished by choral singing, thus carrying Eisler’s unmistakable signature; since his first compositions, he had dedicated himself to the choir, in particular to the workers’ choir. The title German Symphony was already there at the beginnings of the work, and is closely connected with Eisler’s emigration, as no other topic concerned him as deeply in the 1930s as the protest against Nazism in Germany. And because he always saw his work as a composer in a social context, the Germany Symphony is also a political declaration. Returning to Germany, Eisler completed it in 1958. One year later, the work had its premiere in Berlin.