This leaded glass window in the Chemnitz town hall survived the GDR.
Photo: imago/Wolfgang Schmidt
75 years ago, on November 6, 1949, on the first page of “New Germany,” the SED party executive wished the “dear comrades” from the Central Committee of the CPSU all the best on the 32nd anniversary of the October Revolution: “Your example gives us strength, clarity and confidence for our fight.” To celebrate this day, a new song was to be sung by the GDR government at a ceremony in the Berlin State Opera one day later: the “German National Anthem,” which was approved by the GDR Council of Ministers on November 5th was. The song, also known as “Resurrected from Ruins” after its opening line, composed by Hanns Eisler and written by Johannes R. Becher, had a pan-German appeal: It was intended for “Germany united in the Fatherland” and wished “that the sun would be more beautiful than ever shines over Germany.”
Nothing came of it and the song became the national anthem of the GDR, which had been founded a month earlier. Cleverly, its meter follows almost entirely the “Song of the Germans” by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, which is based on the melody of the Austrian imperial anthem and – as in the Weimar Republic – was declared the national anthem in the Federal Republic of Germany. Its ponderous pathos (even if the nationalistic first two verses were omitted) could have been replaced at any time by the friendly tone of the Becher text – theoretically. Instead, from the end of the 1960s onwards, the song was only played instrumentally in the GDR, as only this state and no longer “Germany” should be understood as the “Fatherland”. After its demise in 1989/90, there was neither a new constitution nor a new anthem for the larger Federal Republic of Germany – the old one continues to echo exhaustingly in the ears, phew. How much we would love to finally hear something different.
Here are three suggestions for the new federal government that will soon be in office: 1. “Star of the South” from the FC Bayern fans (“Who has won everything there was to win?”), 2. “A little man is standing in the forest ” also by Fallersleben (“Say, who is that little man standing alone in the forest?”), 3. “Germany” by Slime (“Germany must die so that we can live”).
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