Tonga National Anthem

Key Facts

• 1. The composer, Karl Gustavus Schmitt, was a German musician born in Frankfurt in 1837; he emigrated to Australia in 1859, wrote the music of Tonga's anthem at some point before 1874, and settled for good in New Zealand in 1881. In 2016 the President of the German Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, gave Tonga's crown prince a facsimile of Schmitt's Frankfurt birth record.
• 2. The anthem is fixed in law: the National Anthem of Tonga Act, in force since 29 October 1974, sets out its words, its music and arrangement, and how the words fit the music, and allows the key to be changed.
• 3. Its official words, set out in the Act, are eight short lines: a prayer to Almighty God that ends by asking him to protect Tupou, the king.