Albert Matthai

Albert Matthäi (* 1853 or 1855 in Prussian Stargard ; † 1924 ) was a German writer and editor .

Matthäi worked for 25 years as editor of the magazine Jugend in Munich .

In 1921, under the influence of the Versailles peace treaties , which resulted in severe sanctions such as cession of territory and high reparation payments for Germany, Matthäi wrote a “fourth stanza” supplement to the Deutschlandlied . Until the 1930s it was sung mainly in front-line combatants' associations such as the “Stahlhelm” and among German nationalists , especially during the Ruhr occupation in 1923. It was included in the songbook of the German Navy from 1927, but was never an official part of the national anthem.

The "fourth stanza" of the Deutschlandlied read:

Germany Germany above all,

and even more so in disaster.

Only in adversity can love

show if they are strong and genuine.

And so it should continue to sound

from gender to gender:

Germany Germany above all,

and even more so in disaster.

Matthäi's patriotic poem Fichte to every German , which is often wrongly attributed to Johann Gottlieb Fichte because of its title , is also relatively well known . Matthäi was inspired for this poem by Fichte's speeches to the German nation :

Spruce to every German

You should believe in Germany's future

of your people resurrected.

Do not let this belief be stolen from you

in spite of everything, everything that happened.

And you should act as if you were hanging

of you and your actions alone

the fate of German things

and the responsibility would be yours.

Elsa Brändström chose these verses as the motto of her German foundation "Work sanatorium for former prisoners of war Germans" established in 1922. It later greeted each building of the foundation, which in 1922 acquired two houses in the Marienborn moor and sulfur bath in Schmeckwitz, Saxony : the Kurhaus and the bathhouse.

Single receipts

↑ Das Lied der Deutschen ( Memento from November 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
↑ Eduard Juhl , Margarete Klante, Herta Epstein: Elsa Brändström. The way and work of a great woman in Sweden, Siberia, Germany, America. Quell, Stuttgart 1962, p. 214 f.

Web links

Literature by and about Albert Matthäi in the catalog of the German National Library

personal data
SURNAME	Matthai, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German writer and editor
DATE OF BIRTH	1853 or 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH	Prussian Stargard
DATE OF DEATH	1924

[1] Das Lied der Deutschen ( Memento from November 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

[2] Eduard Juhl , Margarete Klante, Herta Epstein: Elsa Brändström. The way and work of a great woman in Sweden, Siberia, Germany, America. Quell, Stuttgart 1962, p. 214 f.