GERMAN APPROACH

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 December 1937, Page 8

GERMAN APPROACH

‘DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLES.’

“Deutschland über Alles” was the subject of an interesting and rather emotional .passage in Herr Hitler’s address to tho League of German Choral Societies at Breslau, says the “Manchester Guardian.” He claimed that it was not what we should call a Jingo song. A correspondent writes: “I think he was right. As I reineniber it, it is a pathetic or melancholy song, or, as Herr Hitler called it, a song of German yearning. Certainly it was not counted aggressive by Germans ten or eleven years ago, well before Herr Hitler’s time. In 1926 there was a British Press visit to Wiesbaden then in territory occupied by the British Army. The visitors were treated with the greatest friendliness and hospitality by the city, which was their host. The climax was a big public dinner. At the close of it the orchestra played ‘God Save the King,’ and all the Germans present rose and stood for it. Not. to be outdone, in courtesy some of the British delegation requested of the German representative that the orchestra should now play ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’ The answer was that that song was banned by the regulations of the military authorities, that ‘Deutschland über Alles’ -was not and that they would like to play that, it waa played, and the British guests rose and stood with the Germans as the Germans had stood for ! God Save the Kin’* ’

“The _ tune of ‘Deutschland über Alles’ is well known to English churchgoers as the air for the hymn Pi ais e the Lord, ye Heavens adore Him.’ It was composed bv Haydn for the Austrian National Anthem in emulation, it is said, of ‘God Save the King,’, thg tune of which he admired.”