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Dispute over Pippi Longstocking song settled
The Swedish children’s book author Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002) is the spiritual mother of Pippi Longstocking. Photo: picture alliance / Jörg Schmitt/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Who wrote the lyrics to “Hey, Pippi Longstocking”? After years of dispute, Astrid Lindgren’s heirs and the German rights holders have come to an agreement and now want to calculate more precisely than Pippi.
In the dispute over the rights to the lyrics to the song “Hey, Pippi Longstocking”, Astrid Lindgren’s heirs have reached an agreement with the Munich film art music publishing and production company (FKM).
The heiress of Wolfgang Franke, the author of the German text version, also agreed to the agreement, the lawyers for the Astrid Lindgren Company and the Munich publisher said on Friday. This ended the legal dispute and Pippi’s anarchistic credo “Two times three makes four, widewidewitt and three makes nine, I make the world widewideas I like it” can continue to be spread.
The Hamburg Regional Court decided in December 2020 that the heirs of the Swedish children’s book author must be involved in the exploitation of the lyrics. In 1969, Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002) expressly refused the author of the German text version of “Härkommer Pippi Långstrump”, Wolfgang Franke, to name himself the sole author. Franke’s version became known through the German-Swedish television series that came out in the same year.
The court found that Franke’s text was a so-called non-free adaptation of a legally protected character. He ties directly to the creation of Astrid Lindgren. By adopting her characteristics such as house, monkey and horse, the lyrics express that it is Pippi Longstocking, which the listener already knows from Lindgren’s stories. The melody of the song by Jan Johansson and Konrad Elfers was not affected by the lawsuit.
According to the agreement, Lindgren will now be registered as a co-author of the lyrics with the collecting society Gema. The income will be shared in the future. The Lindgren heirs will share in the distribution of the income withheld because of the legal dispute. The Astrid Lindgren Company and the music publisher also signed a contract for the exploitation rights to the German version of the song. The representative of the publisher announced that the appeal against the judgment would be withdrawn.
“We are very happy that we have succeeded in securing the continued existence of the wonderful song “Hey, Pippi Longstocking” after the comprehensive success before the Hamburg Regional Court and in making Astrid Lindgren visible as the creator of the original text,” said the lawyer of the community of heirs Astrid Lindgren, Ralph Oliver Graef. The representative of the Munich music publisher, Alexandra Heyn, also welcomed the agreement. “This can result in a really great collaboration,” said Heyn.