I do not believe that immigration--illegal or otherwise--is an aspect of Mein Land. The choice of directions seems to be intended to de-politicize them. Politically we talk about opposite directions: east vs. west, north vs. south. The directions in the song are first east to south, south to west, west to north, then north to east, east to west. This is not the wording a lyricist would use to express the divisive politics of immigration rhetoric.
Furthermore, as stated by others Rammstein is politically left-leaning. All 6 members grew up in East Germany before the wall came down. They have made their views on a variety of issues explicitly clear in many songs. Rammstein's second album cover was created by an artist hated by European neo-nazis for a series of massive art installations humanizing victims of the holocaust. Mann Gegen Mann calls for straight men to tolerate their homosexual brethren. Links-2-3-4 is saying "they want my heart to beat right, but when I look inside I find it beats left!" though that has many levels of meaning and also applies to the critics who want to see them as nationalists to that they can be comfortably pilloried as well.
They are also an extremely international band. They don't just sit in Germany making music for Germans, they have large fan bases worldwide, including in nations that have had historical tension with Germany such as France and Russia. Their live shows are a huge part of who they are as a band and have earned them recognition as having the best live show of any metal band in the world. They are very popular in Latin America and have said in interviews that their Mexican fans sing their lyrics louder than their fans in Germany do.
You simply cannot run a Rammstein song through Google Translate and think you understand what it is about. Many of their songs are simply impossible to translate into English because there are layers of cultural idioms, and homophones or other plays on words that work in German that just don't work at all in English. Most of their songs do not have a simple meaning in any language. Also the printed lyrics only carry a portion of the story because many Rammstein songs have lyrics that are the same or similar throughout the song but where the meaning changes due to slight changes in the wording or the way the song is sung. I think there are at least 3 and maybe four layers in Mein Land.
Initially the meaning of Mein Land seems very personal. Rammstein tours around the entire world. A lot. Every tour is a world tour on a level that no U.S. band does. So these guys spend a lot of time as foreigners in different places, going through customs in various nations etc. Probably getting asked a lot of questions like "Where are you going? Where?" and giving some trite answer like "I'm going alone from land to land." Note that the question sounds like a chorus by the band, while the answer is given by Till alone, suggesting "they ask this, I answer that." And since they sing in German many people worldwide see them as expressing German nationalism, metaphorically coming with their flag in their hands. And those people say offensive things like "You are here in my land! This is my land!"
Second, if you watch the video, in the beginning Rammstein doing a video that is nothing like any other Rammstein video except their first one. Of that video they have said basically, "we wanted to do video and didn't know how to do it so we let people who knew how to do videos do it and it sucked so we stopped doing that and do things our way now." So this is not an expression of their style, it is presenting a satirical representation of social conservatism. The text at the beginning presents this part of the video as being set in 1964. This part of the video has a very vanilla theme based on an American cultural period recognized globally as being repressively conservative. This is taking their personal observation and expressing it in a more global context.
In the end when the sun goes down, the text presents the setting as 2012 and the video turns into what one review calls "a carnal circus" with even more fire than usual for a Rammstein video and the band members in "Crow" like mime face paint smudged in a manner reminiscent of Ledger's Joker. One of the things Rammstein does in many of their songs is use the same lyrics in different contexts to mean very different things. In this case, the tactic is given away by the transition where Till screams the lyrics and beats his chest as he says "You are here in my land, My waves and my shore! Yeaaaah!!!" right before the switch to the "carnal circus" part of the video. During this sequence the lyrics are voiced in a much more aggressive fashion than in the first part and this seems to be saying that even if the nation is your land, when you come to their show you are on their ground now, and it is their land.
A fourth layer is suggested by the later choruses. In one the words are stated as coming from the sky, or from heaven, and in the final chorus the lyrics express a deep sense of alienation. This suggests that they feel they are no longer citizens of their land, but of the world. And they can no longer relate to the parochialism of the people in the lands they visit, even their own.
I do not believe that immigration--illegal or otherwise--is an aspect of Mein Land. The choice of directions seems to be intended to de-politicize them. Politically we talk about opposite directions: east vs. west, north vs. south. The directions in the song are first east to south, south to west, west to north, then north to east, east to west. This is not the wording a lyricist would use to express the divisive politics of immigration rhetoric.
Furthermore, as stated by others Rammstein is politically left-leaning. All 6 members grew up in East Germany before the wall came down. They have made their views on a variety of issues explicitly clear in many songs. Rammstein's second album cover was created by an artist hated by European neo-nazis for a series of massive art installations humanizing victims of the holocaust. Mann Gegen Mann calls for straight men to tolerate their homosexual brethren. Links-2-3-4 is saying "they want my heart to beat right, but when I look inside I find it beats left!" though that has many levels of meaning and also applies to the critics who want to see them as nationalists to that they can be comfortably pilloried as well.
They are also an extremely international band. They don't just sit in Germany making music for Germans, they have large fan bases worldwide, including in nations that have had historical tension with Germany such as France and Russia. Their live shows are a huge part of who they are as a band and have earned them recognition as having the best live show of any metal band in the world. They are very popular in Latin America and have said in interviews that their Mexican fans sing their lyrics louder than their fans in Germany do.
You simply cannot run a Rammstein song through Google Translate and think you understand what it is about. Many of their songs are simply impossible to translate into English because there are layers of cultural idioms, and homophones or other plays on words that work in German that just don't work at all in English. Most of their songs do not have a simple meaning in any language. Also the printed lyrics only carry a portion of the story because many Rammstein songs have lyrics that are the same or similar throughout the song but where the meaning changes due to slight changes in the wording or the way the song is sung. I think there are at least 3 and maybe four layers in Mein Land.
Initially the meaning of Mein Land seems very personal. Rammstein tours around the entire world. A lot. Every tour is a world tour on a level that no U.S. band does. So these guys spend a lot of time as foreigners in different places, going through customs in various nations etc. Probably getting asked a lot of questions like "Where are you going? Where?" and giving some trite answer like "I'm going alone from land to land." Note that the question sounds like a chorus by the band, while the answer is given by Till alone, suggesting "they ask this, I answer that." And since they sing in German many people worldwide see them as expressing German nationalism, metaphorically coming with their flag in their hands. And those people say offensive things like "You are here in my land! This is my land!"
Second, if you watch the video, in the beginning Rammstein doing a video that is nothing like any other Rammstein video except their first one. Of that video they have said basically, "we wanted to do video and didn't know how to do it so we let people who knew how to do videos do it and it sucked so we stopped doing that and do things our way now." So this is not an expression of their style, it is presenting a satirical representation of social conservatism. The text at the beginning presents this part of the video as being set in 1964. This part of the video has a very vanilla theme based on an American cultural period recognized globally as being repressively conservative. This is taking their personal observation and expressing it in a more global context.
In the end when the sun goes down, the text presents the setting as 2012 and the video turns into what one review calls "a carnal circus" with even more fire than usual for a Rammstein video and the band members in "Crow" like mime face paint smudged in a manner reminiscent of Ledger's Joker. One of the things Rammstein does in many of their songs is use the same lyrics in different contexts to mean very different things. In this case, the tactic is given away by the transition where Till screams the lyrics and beats his chest as he says "You are here in my land, My waves and my shore! Yeaaaah!!!" right before the switch to the "carnal circus" part of the video. During this sequence the lyrics are voiced in a much more aggressive fashion than in the first part and this seems to be saying that even if the nation is your land, when you come to their show you are on their ground now, and it is their land.
A fourth layer is suggested by the later choruses. In one the words are stated as coming from the sky, or from heaven, and in the final chorus the lyrics express a deep sense of alienation. This suggests that they feel they are no longer citizens of their land, but of the world. And they can no longer relate to the parochialism of the people in the lands they visit, even their own.
@jeff_f_f Good point. Something that non-German speakers are ever unlikely to understand.
@jeff_f_f Good point. Something that non-German speakers are ever unlikely to understand.