In my book¹ I wrote:
“Eleni’s song Troszeczkę ziemi, troszeczkę słońca is one of her greatest hits and became a popular song in Poland. The lyrics were written by Lech Konopiński², whom I knew personally – he was also a passionate philatelist.
A little bit of earth, a little bit of sky,
because we no longer need clouds and shadows.
A little bit of earth, a little bit of sunshine,
a little hope, and nothing more.”
I must, however, correct a mistake that appeared in my book. I wrote there that the song dated from the 1970s. In fact, Eleni’s Polish version was recorded in 1983. The mistake probably came from the fact that the song is so strongly associated in my memory with the music and atmosphere of the previous decade. In reality, its history is even more interesting.
There is a saying commonly attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once.” There is, however, no certainty that Goethe actually ever said or wrote these words.
Regardless of their true authorship, the thought applies surprisingly well to music too.
When we listen to songs in different languages, we often discover things of which we were previously completely unaware. That is exactly what happened to me.
For years I listened to the Polish version of Eleni’s song without realizing that its melody had not originated in Poland. It was only through learning German that I discovered that the Polish song had an original version – and a very famous one at that.
The original was “Ein bisschen Frieden”, performed in 1982 by the then seventeen-year-old Nicole Seibert. She won the Eurovision Song Contest in Harrogate with the song, giving Germany its first victory in the history of the competition.
The music was composed by Ralph Siegel, while the German lyrics were written by Bernd Meinunger.
“Ein bisschen Frieden”, meaning “A Little Peace”, was a simple and atmospheric song with a very clear message. Accompanied by an acoustic guitar and performed during the Cold War, it expressed a longing for peace, love and tranquillity. It quickly became a major European hit.
And it was this melody that later found its way to Poland.
Eleni and “Troszeczkę ziemi, troszeczkę słońca”
The Polish version was performed by Eleni, with new lyrics written by Lech Konopiński, a Poznań poet and satirist whom I had the opportunity to know personally. He was also, like me, a passionate stamp collector.
Interestingly, the Polish lyrics are not a literal translation of the German original. Konopiński essentially created a completely new version of the song, retaining Ralph Siegel’s melody but giving it a different meaning and atmosphere.
Instead of the German “a little peace”, we find earth, sunshine, hope and one’s own world. The song was therefore given a completely new life in Poland.
And perhaps that is precisely why, for such a long time, I never associated it with Germany. For the Polish listener, it was simply an Eleni song.
Only my knowledge of German opened this little musical mystery before me.
But this was not the only such case.
“Vinho Verde” – or “Griechischer Wein”
Something similar happened with the song performed by the Portuguese singer Paulo Alexandre, “Vinho Verde”. I knew the song, naturally, in Portuguese. When I first heard it, however, the melody seemed extraordinarily familiar. I had no difficulty recognizing it as the melody I knew from the Polish version “Greckie wino” (“Greek Wine”), performed by Anna German.
And once again, looking more closely at the authors revealed a surprise.
It turned out that neither the Polish nor the Portuguese version was the original. Both came from a German song.
The original was “Griechischer Wein”. The music was composed by the Austrian singer and composer Udo Jürgens, while the lyrics were written by Michael Kunze.
The song, released in 1974, quickly became a major hit in the German-speaking world. It tells the story of Greek immigrants living in Germany, longing for their homeland and remembering their country while drinking Greek wine.
A few years later, the song acquired a Portuguese life of its own. Paulo Alexandre recorded a version entitled “Vinho Verde” – also known as “Verde Vinho” – with Portuguese lyrics adapted by Santos Modesto Pereira da Silva, known simply as Santos Modesto.
And once again, the same melody began to live in different countries, in different languages and with different lyrics.
A Polish listener knew it as “Greckie wino” by Anna German. A Portuguese listener knew it as “Vinho Verde” by Paulo Alexandre. A German listener knew it as “Griechischer Wein” by Udo Jürgens.
If I had not known foreign languages, I would probably never have discovered these German originals.
And this is why, for me, languages are much more than simply a means of communication. They allow us to discover things hidden beneath the surface of words. Sometimes they lead us to a book, sometimes to an archival document, and sometimes – as in this case – to a melody we have known for years without ever realizing where it truly came from.
What is particularly interesting is that the German originals are not always as popular today as their foreign adaptations. A Polish or Portuguese version can acquire a life of its own and become more familiar to subsequent generations than the original.
Is it a question of the musicality of a particular language? Or perhaps simply a matter of a good lyric, capable of taking a song away from its original setting and giving it an entirely new meaning?
That, however, is a subject for another story.
¹ Andrzej Philips, O mnie. Chłopiec z PRL-u, 2025, p. 213.
² Lech Konopiński (16 March 1931, Poznań – 13 December 2023, Poznań) was a Polish poet, satirist, and author of works for children and young people as well as television productions.
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