Notable Performances and Covers
The Unitarian Universalist hymnbook published in 1993, "Singing the Living Tradition" (Beacon Press, Boston) contains two versions of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 'Light of Ages and of Nations:' the second hymn (#190) is sung to the tune of the 'Emperor's Hymn', labelled as 'Austria'. Because of a common misconception that the tune is of Nazi origin, some parishioners have complained of being reminded of Holocaust associations, and this version is included with caution in some congregations.
The German musician Nico sometimes performed the national anthem at concerts and dedicated it to militant Andreas Baader, leader of the Red Army Faction. She included a version of Das Lied der Deutschen on her 1973 album The End.... In 2006, the Slovenian industrial band Laibach incorporated Hoffmann's lyrics in a song titled "Germania", on the album Volk, which contains fourteen songs with adaptations of national anthems. Performing the song in Germany in 2009, the band cited the first stanza in the closing refrain, while on a video screen images were shown of a German city bombed during World War II.
In November 2009, the English singer Pete Doherty caused a stir when, live on the Bayerischer Rundfunk radio in Munich, he sang the first stanza of the anthem; he was booed by the audience and after a few more songs the radio station pulled the plug on the show and the radio transmission.
In August 2011, at the Canoe Sprint World Championships in Hungary, Anne Knorr and Debora Nich won gold for Germany in the 1000 metres K-2 women's final race. The organisers of the event caused outrage when they mistakenly played the first stanza of the anthem during the medal ceremony. In a subsequent television interview German national coach Rainer Kiessler said that he was appalled and could not accept what had happened.
In October 2011, on the American TV series Pan Am, Colette (Karine Vanasse), a French stewardess, is in West Berlin when President John F. Kennedy delivers his famous 1963 speech at the Berlin Wall. Attending a party at the US Mission that evening, she sings the controversial first verse of the "Deutschlandlied" slowly and emotionally, embarrassing the diplomats who she believes have been too quick to forgive and forget the events of World War II. Colette had been orphaned at the age of three when her parents died in Buchenwald, where they were sent by the Nazis.
Read more about this topic: Deutschlandlied, Variants, Additions, and Controversial Performances
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