O Tannenbaum

According to WIKI, the first verse of this song is as follows:

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie grün sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,
Nein auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie grün sind deine Blätter!

The way I had learned this song, many years ago, the second line was:
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!

Which way is it sung presently in Germany, the old way or the way WIKI states it?
Thanks,
Jim

I learned "treu" also (US). Doing a google search restricted to German pages gives 14,400 hits for grün (searching for "Wie grün sind deine Blätter!"
in quotes)and only 739 for treu. Same results (oddly) for a search of the web as a whole with no language restrictions. Doing a search restricted to English pages yields 851 for grün and 1040 for treu.

{quote:title=Kano_Jim wrote:}{quote}
Which way is it sung presently in Germany, the old way or the way WIKI states it?

I'm not too sure about what has been sung over the last couple of years in Germany but when I was a kid and still in favour of the Christmas fuss, it was always "wie gruen sind deine Blaetter".

"Treu" could make kind of sense, meaning that the leaves of the Tannenbaum have not yet fallen off and thus abandoned the tree, in contrary to the broad-leafed trees that lost their leaves already way back in autumn. Or so.
But I doubt you will ever hear this version in Germany.

Happy Christmas carol chanting!

I'm willing to bet that treu is older than grün and that somewhere along the line people thought grün would make more sense.

This is in accord with the principle of textual criticism called "difficilior lectio". Also with the general principle that emigrant communities tend to be more conservative (in language, folkways, etc) than the population of the mother country.

Answers.com says "‘O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum, wie treu sind deine Blätter’ /[is the/], first line of an adaptation from folk-songs made in 1819 by J. A. Zarnack (1777-1827). In this form it is a song of forlorn love; its use as a carol dates from a further adaptation made in 1824 by E. Anschütz, a schoolmaster in Leipzig."

Googling reveals that both Charlotte Church and They Might Be Giants sing it with treu. I think anything upon which Charlotte Church and They Might Be Giants agree must be correct.

German wikipedia gives both versions without discussing this vexed question.

I'm willing to bet that treu is older than grün

Yes, I get that impression from my searches on the internet. I also agree with your opinion, Vinny, that emigrant communities are more traditional than the Mother country. With an ocean to separate them, the emigrants are less influenced by the trends that come along in their country of origin.

That stricken-out "is the" in post #4 was meant to be in square brackets. Apparently if you put a / in front of opening and closing square brackets, you get a strike-out. If I recall correctly, always a dubious proposition, nutrax had discovered in the early days of TT4 that you could preserve square brackets by doing that. Not so any longer, apparently. Unless I used a / when I should have used a .

I don't understand where the two 's in post #3 came from. TT is messing with my head again.

I've actually got one CD of German Christmas songs that has the version "wie treu sind deine Blätter".
Nowadays "wie grün..." is the common version, though.

I have an old songbook from my grandmother and it is printed "treu"

Dragging up an old thread to add another data point. I asked my grandparents about this song. They grew up in Germany in the 1920s and 30s, and subsequently left Germany, preserving, they say, their 1930s German. When asked to sing the song, they both sang the "wie gruen" version. I asked about "wie treu", and my grandmother said she had heard that version and she thinks it's an alternative version that sounds a bit stilted.