The Song of the Germans

The song of the Germans : manuscript from Hoffmann's estate

The song of the Germans , also known as Deutschlandlied , was composed by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben on August 26, 1841 on Heligoland .

The specific reason for Hoffmann to write the song were French territorial claims on the Rhineland during the Rhine crisis . He rejected these claims with the song, as happened with other German Rhine songs of the time. He supplemented this with further ideas, especially with that of German unity, which alone could provide the prerequisite for repelling enemy attacks of any magnitude (first stanza). The poet created his work expressly to the melody of the older song Gott get Franz, the Kaiser by Joseph Haydn (1797). The song was written on Hoffmann's trip to the then British island of Helgoland . For a long time, however, it was just one of the many songs of the German national movement .

The song only became more important in World War I , when the Supreme Army Command (OHL) announced that it had been spontaneously intoned by German soldiers in a battle near the Belgian town of Langemarck north of Ypres . The OHL commented on the events of November 10, 1914 on the following day with a report that was obviously formulated in a propagandistic way and that was printed on the first page of almost all German newspapers:

“To the west of Langemarck, young regiments advanced against the first line of enemy positions to the chant 'Deutschland, Deutschland über alles' and took them. Around 2,000 French line infantry were captured and six machine guns captured. "

- OHL communiqué, November 11, 1914

This OHL report was received uncritically by large parts of the German public and triggered the creation of the so-called von Langemarck myth about the heroic sacrifice of young soldiers. It was not until August 11, 1922, in the Weimar Republic , that the Deutschlandlied with all three stanzas was designated as Germany's official national anthem at the instigation of the Social Democratic Reich President Friedrich Ebert .

Shortly after the loss of the First World War, a "fourth stanza" was also written, but it was never part of the national anthem. It was included in the World War II song collection (1926), the songbook of the German Navy (1927) and the Schlesier songbook (1936). There, Albert Matthai is named as the author . Matthai wrote this stanza under the impression of the Versailles peace treaties , which resulted in severe sanctions for Germany such as the assignment of territory and high reparation payments . It was sung in front-line combatants' associations such as the " Stahlhelm " and among German nationalists until the 1930s .

At the time of National Socialism (1933–1945) only the first verse was sung, which was always followed by the Horst Wessel song .

After 1945 there were discussions about the further use of the song, until 1952 an official correspondence between Federal President Theodor Heuss (FDP) and Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (CDU) decided that the song of the Germans as a whole remained the national anthem, but only on official occasions the third verse should be sung. After reunification , in 1991, after another exchange of letters between Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker (CDU) and Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU), the third stanza was declared Germany's national anthem.

text

The song of the Germans

Germany, Germany over everything,
Over everything in the world,
If it always sticks
together brotherly to protect and defend ,
From the Meuse to the Memel,
From the Etsch to the Belt -
Germany, Germany over everything,
About everything in the world!

German women, German loyalty,
German wine and German singing
Shall keep
their old beautiful sound in the world,
inspire us for noble deed
Our whole life -
German women, German loyalty,
German wine and German singing!

Unity and justice and freedom
For the German fatherland!
Let us all strive for that,
brotherly with heart and hand!
Unity and justice and freedom
are the pledge of happiness -
Blossom in the splendor of this happiness,
blossom, German fatherland!

Rhine crisis and rhine songs

In the summer of 1840, France suffered a foreign policy defeat in the Orient Crisis against a coalition of Great Britain , Russia , Austria and Prussia . The French public felt humiliated; there was talk of a “diplomatic Waterloo ”. Adolphe Thiers' cabinet directed the growing national outrage against the treaties of the Congress of Vienna of 1815 and against the neighboring, fragmented German states: instead of conquests in the Orient, the new goal was the entire German west bank of the Rhine downstream from Alsace-Lorraine , the 150th years before the beginning of the Franco-German enmity of Louis XIV. had been conquered. The Congress of Vienna left Alsace-Lorraine to the restored French monarchy in order not to weaken it.

Now Thiers demanded the entire left bank of the Rhine in Germany, in which the French had already established four departments ( left bank of the Rhine ). The German Confederation was officially and in the press threatened with war for months and armored militarily and morally. French greats such as Edgar Quinet and Victor Hugo joined the call for the Rhine border. This Rhine crisis provided a revival of the German national movement, which called for the defense of both banks of the Rhine. Based on the Rhine song by Nikolaus Becker , other so-called Rhine songs were created, such as Die Wacht am Rhein by Max Schneckenburger or Ernst Moritz Arndt's war song against the Wälschen .

The song of the Germans, the text of which Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote in 1841, was written in this context. In contrast to the Rhine songs , neither France nor the Rhine is mentioned in the song of the Germans ; Hoffmann counts four other bodies of water that outline the German-speaking area at that time.

In 1922, however, the Rhine appeared in a parody from the National Socialist perspective: “Everything, everything about Germany. Enemies all around the world, Because it does not hold together brotherly for protection and defeat. Welsh the Rhine, the Vistula Polish, the German sea no longer German, Germania wears slave chains shamefully without defense or honor. [...] "

Background to individual passages

Germany over everything

The beginning of the song with the much-quoted first line “Germany, Germany over everything” calls on the reader or listener to value the unity of Germany more than the princes of the numerous individual states of the German Confederation . Since these would be marginalized in the event of an actual unification of Germany, the line is evidence of the author's liberalism . Later, the phrase “Germany above everything” was a symbol of German great power madness .

For protection and defense

The French philosopher Alfred Fouillée translated the third line of the first stanza with "pour se défendre et attaquer" ("to defend and attack"), thereby assuming the song to be partially aggressive; In fact, the rhyme formula used by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Schutz and Trutz, can also be understood in a purely defensive way. The musician Hellmuth von Ulmann pointed out in 1984 that the third and fourth lines syntactically represent the conditional sentence for the first and second lines: All in all, it is not about superiority or striving for great power, but about "invincibility in fraternal standing together in defense". Protection and defiance are thus to be understood as purely defensive.

Rule of law

In the period of the Vormärz (approx. 1830 to the March Revolution in 1848) national unification and the desire to overcome princely rule, for popular sovereignty , political freedom and self-determination were the goals of the liberal opposition . Therefore, in the third stanza, the freedom and brotherhood of the Germans and the law in the sense of the rule of law are invoked.

Limits

German-speaking area (green) and political borders around 1841 in comparison with the geographic text passages

The sung about “Germany” is geographically delimited by the verse “From the Meuse to the Memel, from the Adige to the Belt”. With the selection of monosyllabic and two-syllable water names, according to the meter, as well as the additional alliteration "Maas - Memel", Hoffmann von Fallersleben has succeeded in creating a particularly memorable formulation.

Of the four bodies of water mentioned (three rivers and a strait), two also marked the borders of the German Confederation at that time:

• the Meuse flowed through the Duchy of Limburg , which had belonged to the German Confederation since 1839 (with the exception of Maastricht and Venlo);
• the Etsch flows through South Tyrol towards the Adriatic Sea , along its entire length in what was then the Austrian Empire .

The other two bodies of water delimited territories that did not (yet) belong to the German Confederation, but were considered by the German national movement as part of the Germany to be created due to the German-speaking population there:

• the (Little) Belt , a strait, lies at the level of the northern border of the Duchy of Schleswig , which existed since the Treaty of Ripen in 1460 ;
• the Memel was a little south of the northern border of East Prussia, which was established in 1422 in the Peace of Lake Melno . The three eastern Prussian provinces (East and West Prussia and Posen ) did not belong to the German Confederation for most of the time, but like all of Prussia to the German Customs Union.

The German language border was not clearly delineated, most sharply in South Tyrol due to the clear edges of the mountain valleys and the Salurner Klause . At that time there were only fluent transitions to Dutch on the Meuse (as everywhere), especially since significant parts of the population north of the Benrath Line used their ancestral Lower Franconian in everyday life . In the north, Danish was more widespread than it is today, but German was also common on the banks of the Belt . In some rural areas north of the Memel , a majority of Lithuanian was spoken.

The poet avoided touching on two points that were controversial at the time - on the one hand, the demarcation from France ( Alsace and Lorraine ) in the southwest, and on the other hand the dividing line between the German-speaking areas of Austria and the Slavic, Hungarian and Romanian parts of the Habsburg monarchy , to the in the south-east also German settlement islands such as Transylvania or the Banat belonged. The Etsch as the “southern border”, although flowing into the Adriatic, only stands for South Tyrol, while the Austrian Empire then extended further south.

Today the language border is far from the Memel, especially in the east. The borders of the Federal Republic of vote on the agreement in 1990 closed the German-Polish border treaty with effect to January 16, 1992, under international law, and finally at any point with the geographical information of the song match; however, the Maas flows in parts only a few kilometers west of the German-Dutch border. North Schleswig had to be ceded in 1920, the German minority still makes up around 6% of the population there. South Tyrol fell to Italy after the First World War and became today's autonomous province of "Alto Adige" ("Hoch-Etsch"), German is - alongside Italian - now the official language again . The greatest shift in the German-speaking area borders took place in the east through the expulsions after the Second World War , as a result of which the Oder-Neisse border was created. The Memel is the border between the Russian Kaliningrad region and Lithuania.

With the idea of ​​paraphrasing Germany's borders in a song through the course of rivers, Hoffmann von Fallersleben went back to an idea by Walther von der Vogelweide , who - probably in 1198 or shortly after - had formulated in his Ir sult sein willekomen :

I've seen a lot of people and loved them. […] Tiuschiu zuht gât above all. From the Elbe to the Rîn and back to the Ungerlant, the best I can find anywhere in the world must be.

I have seen many countries and always wanted to get to know the best. […] German style and education surpass all others. From the Elbe to the Rhine and then back to the border with Hungary there certainly live the best that I have found in the whole world.

In his children's anthem (Grace does not save effort) , which Bertolt Brecht composed in 1950 on the occasion of the planned reintroduction of the song of the Germans as the national anthem of the Federal Republic as a conscious alternative, he updated the geographical reference with the verses “From the lake to the Alps / From the Oder to the Rhine ”. According to the time in the GDR raised all-German representative claim this distinction was referring to those incurred as a result of World War II boundaries of which essentially Federal Republic since 1990 are identical.

Second stanza

For the second stanza, Hoffmann von Fallersleben was also inspired by the award song Ir sult sein willekomen by Walther von der Vogelweide. In a letter of August 27, 1841 to his unfulfilled childhood sweetheart Henriette von Schwachenberg from Westphalia, he wrote:

“It is hardly worth mentioning that when I wrote 'Deutsche Frauen' I was primarily thinking of you. Like my first work, after exactly 20 years I will dedicate my Deutschland-Lied to you. "

unity

The German division symbolizing plaque in Biedenkopf / Lahn.

As early as June 1841, Hoffmann von Fallersleben referred to the idea of ​​a united Germany beyond the individual interests of princes in his poem Eins und Alles , published in the Unpolitische Liedern :

Germany only united in itself!
On! we want to bond ,
and we can
overcome any enemy loyal to each other.

The "unity" in the third verse is probably from the words of the dying Attinghausen in Schiller's William Tell ( "agree silk - agree - agree") and Seumes poem To the German people affected ( "[...] hatred and division prevails in our Tribes, unity only can restrain destruction […] ”) .

Text variant in the third stanza

The song of the Germans has also been understood by its author as a drinking song , which explains the hymn of praise to German wine, German women and German singing in the second stanza. The author has put in his own record as an alternative to

Bloom in the splendor of this happiness, bloom, German fatherland!

also the toast

Toast and shout unanimously: Cheer up the German fatherland!

intended.

melody

Joseph Haydn

→ Main article : “The Melody of Joseph Haydn” in the article Austrian Imperial Hymns

Since its creation, the song of the Germans has mostly been sung based on the hymn Gott get Franz, the Kaiser composed by Joseph Haydn to words by Lorenz Leopold Haschka for Emperor Franz II . In the first decades after 1841, 58 other settings of the text were made. Haydn was possibly inspired by the Croatian folk song Vjutro rano se ja stanem , with the first three bars of which the hymn begins. It was performed for the first time on February 12, 1797 in the Vienna Burgtheater on the occasion of the 29th birthday of Franz II (later double emperor Franz I). After he founded the Austrian Empire as Emperor of Austria in 1804, it was the melody of the Austrian imperial hymn until 1918, the text of which was adapted to the ruling emperor.

melody

history

Hoffmann's report on the development

Heinrich Hoffmann from Fallersleben

Badge 100 years of composition "Deutschlandlied" by Hanns Breitenbach

Hoffmann von Fallersleben was visited on Heligoland in 1841 by his Hamburg publisher Julius Campe , who bought the song from him. He reported about it in 1868:

“On August 28th, Campe is coming with the Stuttgart bookseller Paul Neff. He brings me the first finished copy of the second part of the U. L. ["Unpolitischen Lieder"] [...] "

“On August 29th, I'm walking on the beach with Campe. 'I made a song, but it costs 4  louis d'or .' We go to the rest room. I read to him: 'Deutschland, Deutschland über alles', and before I have finished, he puts 4 Louisd'or on my wallet. Neff is there, amazed by his great colleague. We advise on the best way to publish the song. Campe smiles: 'If it hits, it can become a Rhine song . If you get three cups, I have to get one. ' I copy it to the din of the most pathetic dance music, Campe takes it and we part. "

"On September 4th Campe brings me the song of the Germans with Haydn's melody in notes, at the same time my portrait, drawn by C. A. Lill."

First performance and use 1871–1945

Memorial plaque on today's Streit's-Haus to commemorate the first public performance of the German song

From October 3, 1841, the liberal Baden politician Karl Theodor Welcker stayed in Streit's Hotel on Jungfernstieg in Hamburg. On October 5th, “10 ½ in the evening” he was “serenaded”. In the presence of Hoffmann sang members of the Hamburg Liedertafel and the Hamburger Gymnastics of 1816 "by torchlight and with horn music" of the Hamburg citizens military front of the hotel for the first time publicly "Germany, Germany above all". The Hamburg journalist François Wille cheered Welcker. At the end they sang Hoffmann's German words I hear again (return from France) and Karl Follens federal song “Brause, du Freiheitssang”, welcomed Welcker and presented him with the “Song of the Germans”.

In the following year Hoffmann recorded the lyrics in his band German Songs from Switzerland . Although Campe had added the note "Text property of the publisher" in the first print, the song was soon reprinted because it was not legally binding at the time and found its way into numerous Kommers and other song books.

The song received little attention when it was written, because firstly, with the settlement of the Orient Crisis in the summer of 1841, the danger of war was averted and, secondly, the song was not a battle song like the Rhine song, but had a more contemplative than warlike effect. Even after the founding of the empire in 1871 , the song Heil dir , which was already common in Prussia, was used in the wreath in the sense of a national anthem and the hymn of Hoffmann von Fallersleben was rejected by the crown as republican. By contrast, Die Wacht am Rhein was also popular with the people at this time . There was no official anthem. The song of the Germans was a popular patriotic song among several at the time. It was first performed on an official occasion in 1890, at the celebration of the takeover of Heligoland (as a result of the Helgoland-Sansibar Treaty ). As a result of this contract, the Pan-German Association was founded in 1891 , which took up and channeled the imperial expansion efforts and interpreted the "above all in the world" in this direction. Since then, the “above all” has been increasingly seen in Great Britain as a sign of expansionist efforts. As Victor Klemperer later wrote in his LTI notebook of a philologist , there was still another interpretation; for him the words expressed during the First World War “only the appreciation of the spirit that the patriot shows his fatherland”.

It was not until the Weimar Republic , on August 11, 1922, that the song of the Germans with all three stanzas was declared the national anthem by the Social Democratic Reich President Friedrich Ebert .

After the takeover of the Nazis in 1933, the second and third verses of the Germans were not sung in public occasions. When the national anthem was played and sung, it was usually followed by the Horst Wessel song , the party anthem of the National Socialists; In 1940 this became a requirement. The aim was to symbolize the unity between the NSDAP and the state . By retaining at least part of the German song, the National Socialists did not tie in with the tradition of the Weimar Republic: rather, their enthusiasm for the song went back to the myth of Langemarck , after the German soldier in World War I Germany, Germany above everything went into battle singing. The symbols used by the National Socialists often tried to establish continuity with the time before the Weimar Republic. This applies not only to the hymn, but also to the term “ Third Reich ”. The Nazis' swastika flag took up the colors black, white and red , the colors of the German Empire of 1871.

After the end of the war, the Allied Control Council banned the use of characteristic "Nazi or military forms of greeting", but not the song of the Germans or even their public chant. Only in the American zone was "singing or playing [...] any military or Nazi songs or [...] German national or Nazi anthems" prohibited. It is doubtful whether the third stanza of the song of the Germans was also covered by this, because, as is well known, it was no longer officially used during the time of National Socialism . There was no ban at all in the French zone , not even in the British zone . An ordinance of the military government of September 15, 1945 merely prohibited "singing or playing military or Nazi songs or melodies in public". In 1949 these bans were lifted by the Allied High Commission .

The "fourth stanza" or "defiance stanza"

The first four lines of the “fourth stanza” on a plaque on the bell tower in Wyk auf Föhr , which was attached to commemorate the referendum in Schleswig (1920)

In 1921 Albert Matthai wrote a supplement as a reaction to the lost World War and the Versailles Treaty , which was included in the songbook of the German Navy from 1927 and until the 1930s sung mainly in front-line combatants' associations such as the Stahlhelm and among German nationalists and by them as " fourth stanza ”. However, it was never part of the national anthem.

Germany, Germany above everything,
and even more so in the event of an accident.
Only in adversity can love
show whether it is strong and genuine.
And this is how it should continue to sound
From gender to gender:
|: Germany, Germany above all
And in disaster now even more so. : |

Federal Republic of Germany

→ Main article : German national anthem

As early as April 18, 1950, Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer asked the audience in a speech in Berlin's Titania Palace to sing the third verse of the German song. This officially became the national anthem of the Federal Republic in May 1952 through an exchange of letters between Federal Chancellor Adenauer and Federal President Theodor Heuss published in the Bulletin of the German Federal Government. In it, Heuss stated that he was “complying with the request of the federal government,” which Adenauer had asked “again” to “recognize the Hoffmann-Haydn'sche Lied as the national anthem. The third verse should be sung at state events. "

Nevertheless, on his first state visit to Chicago in 1953 , Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was greeted with the Cologne carnival song Heidewitzka, Herr Kapitän instead of a national anthem. Another song by Karl Berbuer , the Trizonesia song - an allusion to the three zones of occupation of the Western powers - was previously played at official receptions.

At the request of the then Prime Minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg , Hans Filbinger , the pop singer Heino recorded the German song with all three stanzas for a single release in 1977 , which was only intended for school lessons in the state, and received critical reactions.

In 1979, the literary scholar Jost Hermand considered it impossible to separate song and historical reception. It is not enough to justify the song of the Germans simply by referring to its democratic past.

“This poem doesn't just have an intention, but also a reception. And that is clearly negative. After all, since 1914 it has been charged and fueled so strongly with false contents that its origin gradually became less and less important. "

After German reunification on October 3, 1990, only the third stanza of the song became the German national anthem of united Germany. Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker wrote to Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl in a letter dated August 19, 1991: "The 3rd stanza of the song by the Germans by Hoffmann von Fallersleben with the melody by Joseph Haydn is the national anthem for the German people," and he agreed Letter of 23 August 1991 "on behalf of the Federal Government" to. The correspondence was first published in the Federal Government Bulletin of August 27, 1991 and then again as an announcement of November 19, 1991 in Federal Law Gazette No. 63 of November 29, 1991.

As a state symbol and constitutional value, the third stanza of the song of the Germans is protected against denigration as a national anthem according to Section 90a of the Criminal Code . The protection under criminal law is limited by the fact that authors of adaptations and parodies of the national anthem may in turn invoke the artistic freedom of Article 5 (3) of the Basic Law.

The singing of the song was banned by the American military authorities for a short time after the Second World War, but today playing or singing the first and second verses - which are officially not part of the national anthem - does not constitute a criminal or prohibited act; however, the singing of the first stanza in particular is sometimes seen in public opinion as an expression of a nationalist attitude.

20 euro commemorative coin

175 years after the song was written and first performed, the Federal Ministry of Finance issued a 20 euro commemorative coin on October 6, 2016 , with a portrait of Hoffmann von Fallersleben signed UNITENESS AND RIGHT AND FREEDOM on the obverse . The edge is inscribed with ... SIND DES GLUECKES UNDERPFAND and 175 years of Germany song . On the same day, the Federal Ministry of Finance published a special postage stamp for 70 cents through Deutsche Post AG on which the national anthem can be read. Both were presented on August 26, 2016 by Werner Gatzer, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance, on Heligoland.

manuscript

The estate of the poet and philologist Hoffmann von Fallersleben came to the Royal Library , today's Berlin State Library , through his son in 1903 . Part of this estate was relocated to the Silesian monastery Grüssau in the Second World War to protect it against war destruction and came into Polish possession after the end of the war, when the area east of the Oder and Lusatian Neisse came under Polish administration. This part of the estate is now in the Biblioteka Jagiellonska in Krakow, where it is part of the Berlin holdings, the so-called Berlinka . In the smaller part of the estate, which is still kept in the manuscript department of the Berlin State Library, there is an autograph manuscript of the Deutschlandlied with the signature “Nachl. Hoffmann v. Fallersleben 70 ".

It cannot be determined whether this manuscript, which bears the handwritten date of August 26, 1841, is the original manuscript (the original ) of the Lied der Deutschen. Another handwritten manuscript of the song of the Germans with the same date can be found in the Dortmund City and State Library .

literature

• Hans Jürgen Hansen: Heil you in the wreath - the hymns of the Germans. Gerhard-Stalling-Verlag, Oldenburg / Hamburg 1978, ISBN 3-7979-1950-6 .
• Gerhard Müller: Songs of the Germans. Brecht's “Children's Hymn” as an alternative to the “Deutschlandlied” and the “Beaker Hymn”. In: Dreigroschenheft , Augsburg, issue 1/2010 ( typescript by the author (slightly expanded) ; PDF; 886 kB).
• Roland Schlink: Hoffmann von Fallersleben's fatherland and socially critical poetry. Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-88099-097-2 , especially pp. 45-69.
• Eberhard Rohse : "The German song" in its political, literary and literary studies reception. In: Hans-Joachim Behr, Herbert Blume , Eberhard Rohse (eds.): August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben 1798–1998. Festschrift for the 200th birthday (=  Braunschweig Contributions to the German Language and Literature , Vol. 1). Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, Bielefeld 1999, ISBN 3-89534-281-5 , pp. 51-100.
• Eberhard Rohse: The "End of the Song"? To Gerhart Hauptmann's reception of the Deutschlandlied. In: Marek Halub and Kurt GP Schuster (eds.): Hoffmann von Fallersleben. International Symposium Wroclaw / Breslau 2003 (= Braunschweig Contributions to German Language and Literature , Vol. 8). Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 2005, ISBN 3-89534-538-5 , pp. 257-283.
• Peter Reichel : Black, Red, Gold. A short history of German national symbols after 1945. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53514-3 .
• Rainer Daehnhardt : Birth, death and resurrection of the Germany song . A collection of documents. Publicações Quipu, Parede 2003, ISBN 972-8408-50-1 .
• Herbert Blume: Meuse, Memel, Etsch and Belt. The waters in Hoffmann's "Song of the Germans". In: Marek Halub, Kurt GP Schuster (Hrsg.): Hoffmann von Fallersleben. International Symposium Wroclaw / Breslau 2003 (=  Braunschweig Contributions to German Language and Literature , Vol. 8). Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, Bielefeld 2005, ISBN 3-89534-538-5 , pp. 247-266.
• Jürgen Drawer: Unity and Law and Freedom - On the reception history of the text and melody of the Deutschlandlied from 1933 until today. PapyRossa, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-89438-399-2 .
• Clemens Escher: Germany, Germany, you my everything. The Germans in search of their national anthem 1949–1952 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-78715-6 .

See also

• Deutschland, Deutschland über alles , anthology by Kurt Tucholsky and John Heartfield from 1929

Web links

Wiktionary: Deutschlandlied  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Wikisource: Das Lied der Deutschen  - Sources and full texts

Wikisource: "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles"  - Sources and full texts

• The national anthem - history and origin of the Deutschlandlied (source: Federal Government)
• Fundamental decision of the Federal Constitutional Court on protection under criminal law
• Gisela Probst-Effah: The 20th Century in Songs
• The Federal Government: The National Anthem of the Federal Republic of Germany
• Digitized version of the first print from 1841
• Peter Reichel: Correspondence on the national anthem of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1952/1991 on 1000dokumente.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ "Il faut que la France reprenne le Rhin" - Victor Hugo: Le Rhin: lettres à un ami , Charpentier, Paris 1845, p. 229.
2. ^ Wolfgang Mück: Nazi stronghold in Middle Franconia: The völkisch awakening in Neustadt an der Aisch 1922–1933. Verlag Ph. CW Schmidt, Neustadt ad Aisch 2016 (= Streiflichter from the local history. Special volume 4), ISBN 978-3-87707-990-4 , p. 29 f.
3. ^ Ritchie Robertson: German Literature and Thought From 1810 to 1890 . In: Helmut Walser Smith (Ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History. Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2011, p. 268.
4. ↑ Dirk van Laak : About everything in the world. German imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries . CH Beck, Munich 2005, p. 7.
5. ^ "L'Allemagne, l'Allemagne par-dessus tout, Par-dessus tout dans le monde, Si, pour se défendre et attaquer, Elle s'unit fraternellement" - Esquisse psychologique des peuples européens , 1903, p. 299 .
6. ↑ Ulrich Günther: '... about everything in the world?' Studies on the history and didactics of the German national anthem . Luchterhand, Neuwied am Rhein / Berlin 1966, p. 87.
7. ↑ Hellmuth von Ulmann: Das Deutschlandlied as a symbol. In: Journal of Religious and Intellectual History 36, No. 3 (1984), pp. 223-231, here p. 224.
8. ↑ Internet portal of the German North Schleswig region
9. ^ Fritz Andrée: Hoffmann von Fallersleben , Hoffmann-von-Fallersleben-Gesellschaft, 1972, p. 49.
10. ^ Ingrid Heinrich-Jost: August Heinrich von Fallersleben - Prussian Heads - Literature , Stapp Verlag Wolfgang Stapp, Berlin 1982, p. 85.
11. ^ Ingrid Heinrich-Jost: August Heinrich von Fallersleben - Prussian Heads - Literature , Stapp Verlag Wolfgang Stapp, Berlin 1982, p. 88.
12. ↑ Hoffmann von Fallersleben: My life. Records u. Memories , Vol. 3. Rümpler, Hannover 1868, p. 211 .
13. ^ ^{A b} Hoffmann von Fallersleben: My life. Records u. Memories , Vol. 3. Rümpler, Hannover 1868, p. 212 .
14. ↑ August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben: Unpolitische Lieder 1. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1840, ISBN 978-3-628-44089-2 , urn : nbn: de: kobv: b4-200905192626 .
15. ^ Song book of the German people. Leipzig 1845, p. 36.
16. ↑ Hoffmann von Fallersleben: My life. Records u. Memories , Vol. 3. Rümpler, Hannover 1868, p. 222 ; Deutschlandlied - Premiere in Hamburg , Hamburger Abendblatt from June 26, 2002.
17. ↑ Helmut Berschin : Das Lied der Deutschen , October 1, 2013.
18. ↑ Dirk van Laak : About everything in the world. German imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52824-4 , p. 7 .
19. ^ Victor Klemperer: LTI. Philologist's notebook. Reclam, Stuttgart 2007, p. 334.
20. ↑ Winfried Klein: Who are we, and what do we want to sing with it? , FAZ of September 5, 2012, p. N4.
21. ↑ Control Council Act No. 8 of November 30, 1945, Official Gazette of the Control Council 1945, No. 2, p. 33.
22. ↑ Act No. 154 of the American Military Government on “Elimination and Prohibition of Military Training”, Official Gazette of the Military Government of Germany, American Control Area, 1945, p. 52.
23. ↑ G. Clemens: British cultural policy in Germany 1945-1949. Stuttgart 1997, pp. 143, 144.
24. ↑ Art. II no. 2 lit. d) Ordinance No. 8 of September 15, 1945, Official Gazette of the Military Government of Germany, British Control Area 1945, p. 7.
25. ↑ Law No. 16 of December 16, 1949, Official Gazette of the Allied High Commission in Germany, 1949, No. 7.
26. ↑ ^{a b} Heidewitzka, Mr. Captain - Adenauer's hymn coup. Retrieved April 13, 2013 . 
27. ↑ Correspondence on the national anthem from 1952 , print from the Bulletin of the Federal Government No. 51 / S. 537 of May 6, 1952 .
28. ↑ National anthem and Basic Law: CDU sings Adenauer's song. taz, December 14, 2015, accessed on February 20, 2020 . 
29. ↑ Harald Wiederschein: National Anthem: That is why the “Song of the Germans” causes so many problems. Focus, February 15, 2017, accessed February 20, 2020 . 
30. ↑ Trizonesien-Lied caused a stir in 1949. Retrieved April 13, 2013 . 
31. ↑ Michael Jeismann: The national anthem . In: Etienne Francois, Hagen Schulze (ed.): German places of memory. Volume III . CH Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47224-9 , p. 663 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
32. ↑ Natural relationship. Deutschlandlied - third and / or first stanza? , Die Zeit , March 31, 1978.
33. ↑ Jost Hermand: Seven ways to suffer from Germany , Volume 2141 of the Athenaeum pocket books, Verlag Athenäum, 1979, p. 73.
34. ↑ Bulletin of the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government No. 89 of August 27, 1991, p. 713, on 1000dokumente.de
35. ^ Text of the announcement of the letters of the Federal President of August 19, 1991 and of the Federal Chancellor of August 23, 1991 on the determination of the 3rd stanza of the song of the Germans for the national anthem of the Federal Republic of Germany ( Federal Law Gazette 1991 I p. 2135 ).
36. ^ AG Lüneburg, decision of December 15, 2003, Az .: NZS 15 Gs 419/03
37. ^ Zeit Online : Lied der Deutschen , accessed on March 19, 2011.
38. ↑ Presentation of the special postage stamp and the 20 euro commemorative coin “175 Years of Germany Song”. BMF, August 24, 2016, accessed on November 17, 2016 .