Deutschlandlied - Geography

Geography

In 1841, when the text was written, the German Confederation was not a unified state in the modern sense. It also included a few regions inhabited largely by non-German speakers, but excluded large areas inhabited primarily by German-speakers, like parts of Eastern Prussia. Hoffmann, who in his research had collected German writings and tales, based his definition of Germany on linguistic criteria: he described the approximate area where a majority of German speakers lived at the time, as encountered in his studies. 19th century nationalists generally relied on such linguistic criteria to determine the borders of the nation-states they desired. Thus, the borders mentioned in the first stanza loosely reflected the breadth of territory across which German speakers were spread at the time.

• In the west, the river known as the Maas or the Meuse ran through the Dutch-ruled and Limburgish-speaking Duchy of Limburg which was joined to the German Confederation between 5 September 1839 and 23 August 1866. The modern German border is close to the river in that area.
• In the east, the lower part of the Memel, known in other languages as the Neman, was located within East Prussia, part of the Kingdom of Prussia, which actually stretched north beyond the river, and beyond the city of Memel (Klaipėda). In 1920, the area north of the river was detached from Germany and became known as Memelland. Only a few German speakers remained in the area after 1945.
• In the south, the Adige river (German: Etsch) runs to the Adriatic Sea. In 1841, the Austrian Empire ruled all of its length, and much of the population of its area was German. Historically, the river was the southern border of the medieval Duchy of Carinthia, and centuries later it marked the border between Austrian Venetia and Napoleonic Italian Republic; in the middle, it was divided among the Republic of Venice, the Bishopric of Trent and Austria. After the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the river's southern part became part of Italy, while the northern one remained part of part Austrian Tirol; but it then became part of Italy too, after 1918. Now, as then, the town of Salorno (German: Salurn), marks the linguistic border between the German and the Italian speaking population in the valley.
• To the north, the strait known as the Little Belt (Danish: Lillebælt) ran alongside the ethnically mixed Danish Duchy of Schleswig, part of an area subject to a highly complex dispute, known as the Schleswig-Holstein Question, between Denmark and its neighbors. After the Second Schleswig War in 1864, the Danish-German border ran through the strait until 1920, but ultimately, the Schleswig Plebiscite moved the border to its current location, south of the Little Belt.

In the south and west, Hoffmann's definition of Germany coincided with the borders of the German Confederation as it existed then. Hoffmann went beyond the Confederation boundaries of 1841 in the north and in the east, as neither South Schleswig nor East Prussia (although both German-speaking) belonged to it at that time yet, but joined before 1866. Thus, when the German Empire was finally founded in 1871, both were parts of the German Empire, whereas Luxemburg, Limburg, and Austria were not (see Kleindeutsche Lösung). Hoffmann picked only one marker in the south and, possibly to avoid confrontation, made no mention of other areas inhabited by German speakers, like Alsace, Switzerland, or the Eastern part of the Austrian Empire.