Wintermärchen Lyrics in English by In Extremo
Winterhauch is a poetic compound meaning “breath of winter”: Winter means “winter” and Hauch means “breath” or “faint whisper.”
In the song, the thrush sits in a tree amid the harsh winter air, creating a vivid image of cold, wind, and stillness. It is an unusual and atmospheric German word that beautifully captures the song’s wintry fairy-tale mood.
The singer stands at a winter window and questions a thrush sitting on a bare tree: "warum wanderst du nicht auch?" (why don't you migrate too?). Every other bird has gone south, toward "eine sonnenschöne welt" (a beautiful sunny world), so why stay while storms roar over the fields?
The thrush answers that it is not like the others, who "wechseln ihren leichten sinn" (change their fickle minds) with the seasons and chase the sun from land to land without ever knowing "das stille leuchten" (the quiet glow) inside themselves. Then it turns the question back on the singer: his cheek is pale, but his eyes still shine, because his gaze looks inward. Its offer is to stay together through the cold, and from a withered branch sing of "jenem glanz der ewigkeit" (that radiance of eternity). The song keeps the old poem's argument intact: staying put through winter is a choice made by someone whose warmth comes from inside.
