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Die Wacht am Rhein ( patriotic anthem. The song is closely connected to conflicts with France, and was particularly popular in Germany during the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War . HISTORY The lyrics were written as a poem in 1840 by the Swabian merchant Max Schneckenburger , inspired by the ''Rhine Crisis'' in the same year, as Adolphe Thiers , after being cornered due to his support for Muhammad Ali Of Egypt , renewed French claims for the Rhine River as France 's "natural eastern border". Germans feared that France was planning to annex the left bank of the Rhine, as it had done during the Napoleonic Wars a few decades earlier. In the two centuries since the Thirty Years' War until Napoleon, Germans had already suffered from repeated major and minor French invasions. Today, the left side of the Rhine between Switzerland and the Netherlands is mainly part of Germany, with the Saarland , Rheinland-Pfalz and Nordrhein-Westfalen being federal states. The Alsace and Lorraine are parts of France with a German background. In the poem, with five original stanzas, a "thunderous call" is made for all Germans to rush and defend the German Rhine, to ensure that "no enemy sets his foot on the beach of the Rhine" (4th stanza). Two stanzas with a more specific text were added by others later. Unlike the older Heil Dir Im Siegerkranz which praises a monarch, also other songs written in this epoch like the Deutschlandlied (Germanys national anthem) and ''Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?'' (''What is the Germans' Fatherland''?) by Ernst Moritz Arndt call for Germans to unite, to put aside sectionalism and the rivalries of the various German states and monarchies against one another, to create a unified German state, (not least) in order to be able to defend Germany. Author Max Schneckenburger worked in Switzerland, and thus a his poem was first set to music in Berne by Swiss Organist J. Mendel, and performed by Tenor Methfessel for the Prussian ambassador, von Bunsen. This first version did not become very popular. Schneckenburger died in 1849 and never heard the more famous tune. When the musical director of the city of Krefeld , Karl Wilhelm , received the poem in 1854 , he wrote a version of his own, and performed it with his men's Choir on June 11 , the day of the silver anniversary of the marriage of Prinz Wilhelm von Preussen, which would later become German Emperor Wilhelm I . This version was spread in song festivals. After the Ems Dispatch incident in Bad Ems , which is not far away from the Rhine, France declared the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, which led finally to the establishment of the German Empire in 1871. The song became famous, and both composer and the family of the author were honoured, and granted an annual pension by Bismarck. TEXT The following is the complete text of the original 5 verses of the ''Die Wacht am Rhein'', plus additions: TRIVIA The ''Watch on the Rhine'' was, after and in two World Wars until 1945, one of the most popular songs in Germany, almost rivaling the Deutschlandlied as the de-facto national anthem. The so-called ''German-French hereditary hostility'' ended in 1963 with the Elysée Treaty , so that the danger of a French invasion that loomed for centuries over Germany no longer existed. Today, the song has only historical significance in Germany and is rarely sung or orchestrally performed. Singer Heino perfomed it on a record, though.
In several fictional settings, the song plays a role. When it is sung in the movie '' Casablanca '', it is drowned out by '' La Marseillaise '' which is sung in response; these two songs were juxtaposed in exactly the same way five years earlier, in Jean Renoir's 1937 film La Grande Illusion . It provides the title for Lillian Hellman 's cautionary pre- World War II play ''Watch on the Rhine''. Its melody is adapted by Kander And Ebb in their musical play and movie '' Cabaret '' as a fictional Nazi anthem, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me", meant to be reminiscent both of ''Die Wacht am Rhein'' and the '' Horst Wessel Lied ''. The song's title was also used as the codename for the World War II German offensive in 1944 known today as the Battle Of The Bulge . After the end of World War II, the song's popularity in Germany dropped sharply. Few Germans born and raised after the war know it. The tune for the alma mater of Yale University , "Bright College Years" was taken from Carl Wilhelm's "Die Wacht am Rhein", with new lyrics written by Henry Durand in 1881 to the "splendid tune" [http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/99_12/old_yale.html . EXTERNAL LINKS
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