O du lieber Augustin
Viennese song
"O du lieber Augustin" ("Oh, you dear Augustin") is a popular Viennese song, first published about 1800. It is said to refer to the balladeer Marx Augustin and his brush with death in 1679. Augustin himself is sometimes named as the author, but the origin is unclear.
Background
In 1679, Vienna was struck by the Great Plague and Augustin was a ballad singer and bagpiper, who toured the city's inns entertaining people. The Viennese people loved Augustin because of his charming humour in bitter times, and they called him Lieber Augustin (Dear Augustin).
According to legend, once when Augustin was walking home drunk, he fell in the gutter and passed out. He was mistaken for a dead man by the gravediggers patrolling the city for dead bodies. They picked him up and threw him, along with his bagpipes, which they presumed were infected, into a pit filled with bodies of plague victims outside the city walls. The next day when Augustin woke up, he was unable to get out of the deep mass grave. He started to play his bagpipes, wanting to die the same way he lived.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “O du lieber Augustin” as viennese song. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as viennese song. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q45311. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1800 and 1679.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “O du lieber Augustin”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow O du lieber Augustin primary sources, O du lieber Augustin archive and lieber research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “O du lieber Augustin”?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
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This entry incorporates text from “O du lieber Augustin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.