Most people outside of Germany don't know this, but the national anthem today is the same one from 1943, just minus the most nationalist verses.
Thing is, it was a song whose music was written in the late 1700s, with lyrics from the mid 1800s, made the national anthem by the Weimar republic in the early 1900s, and stripped of a couple verses in the mid-1900s until today.
It's always important to remember that the postmodern conception of history as beginning in 1938 and ending in 1946, is not accurate and so some things don't make sense unless you broaden your horizon.
The history of the song is kind of incredible -- it was born during the final years of the Holy Roman Empire just a few years after the end of the Jacobin reign of terror in France, given words during the German confederation, and after the end of the German Empire during the brief Weimar Republic period was made the national anthem. Then it was picked up by uncle Adolf, and bifurcated but kept in place under West Germany (another political structure that no longer exists)
The fall of the Jacobins represented the end of the French Revolution, and many historians consider the French Revolution to be the beginning of the modern period. It's a period of grand narratives such as liberalism, Marxism, National Socialism, Fascism, and nationalism. The lyric "Deucheland, Deuscheland uber alles" was a call for all the isolated little bits of what was once the Holy Roman Empire and at the time was a loose confederation under a new national identity of Germany, because the little fiefdoms that existed under feudalism, a system which was rapidly disappearing in the new philosophical, ideological, economic, and geographical order, wasn't a sustainable way to arrange a society. A few years later, the French would try to invade the confederation, leading to unification under the Prussians in what was a very strong military order. This unification was a direct cause of World War 1, unfortunately.
Thing is, it was a song whose music was written in the late 1700s, with lyrics from the mid 1800s, made the national anthem by the Weimar republic in the early 1900s, and stripped of a couple verses in the mid-1900s until today.
It's always important to remember that the postmodern conception of history as beginning in 1938 and ending in 1946, is not accurate and so some things don't make sense unless you broaden your horizon.
The history of the song is kind of incredible -- it was born during the final years of the Holy Roman Empire just a few years after the end of the Jacobin reign of terror in France, given words during the German confederation, and after the end of the German Empire during the brief Weimar Republic period was made the national anthem. Then it was picked up by uncle Adolf, and bifurcated but kept in place under West Germany (another political structure that no longer exists)
The fall of the Jacobins represented the end of the French Revolution, and many historians consider the French Revolution to be the beginning of the modern period. It's a period of grand narratives such as liberalism, Marxism, National Socialism, Fascism, and nationalism. The lyric "Deucheland, Deuscheland uber alles" was a call for all the isolated little bits of what was once the Holy Roman Empire and at the time was a loose confederation under a new national identity of Germany, because the little fiefdoms that existed under feudalism, a system which was rapidly disappearing in the new philosophical, ideological, economic, and geographical order, wasn't a sustainable way to arrange a society. A few years later, the French would try to invade the confederation, leading to unification under the Prussians in what was a very strong military order. This unification was a direct cause of World War 1, unfortunately.
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