Germany National Anthem
Deutschlandlied
1841
1922
August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben
Joseph Haydn
🤝 Unity 🕊 Freedom ❤ Love of homeland |
Key Facts
- 1. Haydn also used the melody in 1797 as the theme of four variations in the second movement of his String Quartet Op. 76 No. 3, known as the 'Emperor Quartet'.
- 2. After the Habsburg monarchy collapsed in 1918, Austria gave up Haydn's imperial hymn, but in 1929 it returned to the melody with new words by Ottokar Kernstock. From 1929 until the Anschluss in 1938, Germany and Austria thus had anthems with the same tune.
- 3. In March 2018, Kristin Rose-Möhring, equal opportunities officer at the federal family ministry, proposed replacing 'Vaterland' (fatherland) with 'Heimatland' (homeland) and 'brüderlich' (brotherly) with 'couragiert' (courageously) to make the anthem gender-neutral. The proposal caused a controversy; Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was satisfied with the existing lyrics, and nothing was changed.
Germany National Anthem Lyrics
Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit
Für das deutsche Vaterland!
Danach lasst uns alle streben
Brüderlich mit Herz und Hand!
Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit
Sind des Glückes Unterpfand;
Blüh im Glanze dieses Glückes,
Blühe, deutsches Vaterland!
Translations are non-official and intended to convey meaning, not replace originals
Analysis
EditorialOnly the third stanza is used as the anthem today. The first stanza, with its opening 'Deutschland über alles' ('Germany above all'), was originally a liberal call for German unification in 1841, not a supremacist slogan, but under the Nazis only that stanza was sung. When West Germany recognized the Deutschlandlied as its anthem again in 1952, only the third stanza was to be sung at state occasions; in 1991 the third stanza alone became the anthem of reunified Germany. The melody was composed by Joseph Haydn in 1797 as 'God Save Emperor Francis', a hymn for the Habsburg emperor Francis II.
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Sources & References
- el.wikisource.org: Το τραγούδι των Γερμανών . el.wikisource.org
Source & Review
- Source status
- Reliable secondary source
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- AI-assisted working translation
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- Nationalia
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