Deutschlandlied - Use After World War II

Use After World War II

In 1945, after the end of World War II, singing Das Lied der Deutschen and other symbols used by Nazi Germany were banned for some time by the Allies.

After its founding in 1949, West Germany did not have a national anthem for official events for some years despite the growing need for proper diplomatic procedures. Different songs were discussed or used, such as Ludwig van Beethoven's Ode An die Freude (Ode To Joy). Though the black, red and gold colours of the national flag had been incorporated into Article 22 of the (West) German constitution, a national anthem was not specified. On 29 April 1952, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer asked President Theodor Heuss in a letter to accept Das Lied der Deutschen as the national anthem, with only the third stanza sung on official occasions. President Heuss agreed to this on 2 May 1952. This exchange of letters was published in the Bulletin of the Federal Government. Since it was viewed as the traditional right of the president as head of state to set the symbols of the state, the Deutschlandlied thus became the national anthem.

Meanwhile, East Germany adopted its own national anthem, Auferstanden aus Ruinen (Risen from the Ruins). As the lyrics of this anthem called for "Germany, united Fatherland", they were not sung anymore when the increasingly unrealistic idea of achieving a united communist Germany was dropped by the East German leadership in the 1970s, and a separate East German national identity was stressed instead. It is a legend that Auferstanden aus Ruinen was originally written to fit the same Haydn melody, but later got its own: The lyrics do not fit completely to the Haydn melody.

When West Germany won the 1954 FIFA World Cup Final in Bern, Switzerland, the lyrics of the first stanza dominated when the crowd sang along to celebrate the surprise victory that was later dubbed Miracle of Bern.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, efforts were made by conservatives in Germany to reclaim all three stanzas for the anthem; the Christian Democratic Union of Baden-Württemberg, for instance, attempted twice (in 1985 and 1986) to make German high school students study all three stanzas, and in 1989 CDU politician Christean Wagner decreed that all high school students in Hesse were to memorize the three stanzas.

On 7 March 1990, months before reunification, the Constitutional Court declared only the third stanza of Hoffmann von Fallersleben's poem to be protected as a national anthem under criminal law; Section 90a of the Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch) makes defamation of the national anthem a crime, but does not specify what the national anthem is.

In November 1991, President Richard von Weizsäcker and Chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed in an exchange of letters to declare the third stanza alone the national anthem of the enlarged republic. On official occasions, Haydn's music is used, and only the third stanza is supposed to be sung. For other uses, all stanzas may be performed. The opening line of the third stanza, Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit, ("Unity and justice and freedom") is widely considered to be the national motto of Germany, although it was never officially proclaimed as such. It appears on soldiers' belts (replacing the earlier Gott mit uns of the Imperial German Army and the Wehrmacht), was engraved into the rim of former 2 and 5-Deutsche Mark coins, and is present on 2-Euro coins minted in Germany.