The comeback of the sirens: An acoustic warning signal through the ages

Charles Cagniard de la Tour just wanted to make the air sing. When he first reported on his "sirène" in 1819, he could not have imagined that the instrument he had developed would one day become the inspiration for those sirens whose sound has been associated with death and ruin since the wars of the 20th century - as a warning of air raids or, conversely, as an attack signal from German dive bombers, to whose undercarriage they were attached.

At the latest with the end of the Cold War, the end of the siren seemed to be sealed; tens of thousands of them were shut down in Germany. The fact that they are now making a comeback is an unmistakable sign of changing times. When a cross-country warning day is held for the sixth time this Thursday, a sound we had hoped we would never have to hear returns.

The enticing euphony of the song of mythical bird creatures with women's heads from Greek mythology, which de la Tour must have had in mind as a model for his device, and the enervating sound of modern warning sirens have two things in common: the association with danger and, related to this, the fact that they demand absolute attention from the listener.

Christopher Nolan recently recalled the story of the deadly danger of the sirens in his Odyssey film adaptation. He shows how Odysseus' companions smear their ears with wax so as not to succumb to the beguiling sounds, but the hero himself, out of his insatiable curiosity, allows himself to be chained to the ship's mast so that he can be transported into ecstasy without paying with his life. Orpheus, on the other hand, chose a completely different tactic when he drove past the Siren Island; He drowned out the sirens' singing with his lyre and thus saved himself and his team.

Franz Kafka provided a modern version of the myth in his prose piece “The Silence of the Sirens,” published posthumously by Max Brod. Odysseus, in this version a solo sailor, has secured himself doubly with shackles and wax; The narrator makes fun of him and his little agents, because the sirens then used “an even more terrible weapon than singing”: their silence. His “feeling of having defeated them through his own strength” leads to the supposed hero’s “all-consuming arrogance” – a fate worse than destruction.

Anyone who, like Kafka's Odysseus, wants to overcome danger with “innocent joy” risks becoming deaf to their peers. When the sirens sound on warning day, whoever hears them can count themselves lucky. But what if the danger is inaudible?