Already in the late evening of the revolution, on 9 November 1918, Ebert had found himself as the new Reich Chancellor in the State Chancellery and had literally made an effort from this minute on to undo the revolution. He needed partners for this, and he could not find them in his own rather revolutionary camp. And just like that, the unfortunate hymn decision came later.
Heinrich August Hoffmann von Fallersleben had written the song in August 1841 on Helgoland. It was first officially sung there in 1890, in the presence of the emperor. It soon developed into a German national and anti-Semitic battle song. In World War I, the legend was spread that young soldiers would have walked into the enemy barrage singing "Germany, Germany above all". Of course Ebert knew about the burden of the song, but he belonged to those Social Democrats who only knew "Germans" at the beginning of the war. He lost two sons at the front, the SPD millions of members.

The right-wing radical Freicorps associations, which Ebert soon had shot at those former SPD supporters who were dissatisfied with his "revolution", liked to sing the German song. Just like the coup d' étatists of March 1920, who forced him to flee the capital. No, the song was never democratic in any way. It's not right to forget,"the Vossische Zeitung criticized Ebert's decision in 1922," that the radical right-wing forces of the time have recently seized the song as if it were a kind of party chant.
Ebert tried to conceal the difficult song by quoting the third verse "Unity and Justice and Freedom" as often as possible and by simply loving Germany "over all", but it didn't help. For months now, socialists and democrats have been trying to annex the' Deutschland-Lied' from the' Hakenkreuzler' camp. But this song is completely compromised,"wrote a young Social Democrat in 1922," Christmas forward.

It may well be that Hoffmann von Fallersleben did not have world domination in mind when he wrote "Germany, Germany above all" and the Hamburg publisher Campe printed it enthusiastically. During the Nazi era, the first verse was sung with verve, of course, followed by the Horst-Wessel song. Hitler's World Conquest Program had a soundtrack that had always been there and sounded as if world domination had been a priori the political destiny of the Germans:"Over and above everything in the world.

One would think that the "Song of the Germans" would have been irretrievably lost after the Hitler years at the latest. Many people saw it that way. Also "Papa Heuss", the first Federal President. For a long time he resisted Adenauer's wish to reinstate the old hymn, commissioned a text, asked Carl Orff for a melody - in vain. The new anthem, which Heuss presented after his New Year's Eve speech in 1951, failed the audience. Adenauer took advantage of the opportunity. During a visit to West Berlin, which was actually called a "state visit", he called upon the audience in Berlin-Steglitz's Titania-Palace to rise up and sing the third verse of the song of Germany:"If I now ask you to sing the third verse of the song of Germany, then this is a sacred vow that we want to be a united people, a free people, and a peacefull people." Noone noticed, that the word "peace" does not even exist within the german anthem.

Franz Neumann, leader of the Berlin SPD, left the hall in protest, others followed. The SPD called the process an "arbitrary act with the most difficult national consequences". The song was devalued by the Nazis. Jakob Kaiser, Adenauer's "Federal Minister for Pan-German Issues", enthused:"A beautiful coup d' état!" The following day in the Tagesspiegel newspaper it was said that the Chancellor could not clarify "whether it was an improvisation or a misunderstanding in the preparation of the programme". Before the event, he had the text of the third verse placed on the seats. Safe is safe.

President Heuss was heard to have said that "singing the third verse of the German anthem does not mean a decision on a national anthem". The time is not yet ripe. He hoped for the success of his new hymn and blocked Adenauer for several months. But when his hymn was not well received, he agreed with Adenauer in a gnashing of his teeth in an exchange of letters, which was subsequently published by the federal government as if it were a law. In order to "keep in touch" with himself, as Heuss wrote, he wanted to dispense with a solemn proclamation. In this correspondence, the entire song - all three verses - is explicitly declared the national anthem again. The last sentence of Adenauer reads:"At state events, the third verse is to be sung", and it is difficult to understand how this succinct sentence led to the widespread but false assumption that the first phrase prohibiting the "Germany-Germany-above-all" verse.

The fact that all three verses remained part of the national anthem resulted in a whole series of scandals and scandals over the decades. Again and again, Christian Democratic politicians in particular had the text of the entire hymn printed and distributed in schools, or demonstratively sang the first verse in public. The German national soccer team and the 20,000 German battleground players after the surprising victory also played the first verse before the 1954 final in Berne. To make sure that this was not repeated at the winner's ceremony in the Berlin Olympic Stadium, Theodor Heuss read the text of the third verse to the 80,000 spectators gathered.

During the reunification negotiations of the two German states in 1990, the idea arose to assemble a new hymn from pieces of both songs of the state, since the verse dimensions were almost identical. It didn't work out. Some also brought Brecht's so-called "children's anthem" into play, which he had written out of anger about Adenauer's coup in the Titania Palace. But Helmut Kohl had already warned back in 1987:"Those who are against the German song want a different republic". In 1949, at the age of 19, he had taken part in an election campaign in Landau, where Adenauer had already tried the trick with the third verse.


After reunification, Chancellor Kohl and Federal President von Weizsäcker remembered the Adenauer/Heuss method and took up the pen. In brief letters they told each other that now alone "the third verse of Hoffmann von Fallersleben's song by the Germans with the melody of Joseph Haydn is the national anthem for the German people".

Germany in 2012: Wouldn't it be time to look into the question of the anthem in principle, instead of reminding our national football players, especially those with a migration background, to sing this difficult song along with us? Giving us a hymn that's not embarrassing, that shames no one and hurts no one? Those who can also sing people whose homeland was destroyed by the sound of our hymn decades ago? Surely a national anthem is not a shirt that you change so easily. But this shirt is out of fashion, worn and blood-stained.