The Teacher Conspiracy - Relaxed Krauts Pt.2

As you'll have noted it's not easy to keep up with the speed of events surrounding the World Cup. But sometimes it has its advantages to lag behind a bit in time. Especially when something unforeseen happens in Germany, it is amazing to view the rash transition from hysteria to perfect normality, eliminating all traces of uncertainty.
The German education and sciences sector trade union, the GEW, dared to republish a pamphlet criticizing the content and history of the German national anthem, the Deutschlandlied, arguing that you can't separate the first stanza ("Deutschland, Deutschland über alles", not used on official events) from the third, the "democratic" stanza.
The reaction was relaxed as always in Germany: a unanimous campaign by media and state against this vile denigration of the national anthem through historical facts to spoil the enthusiasm for the World Cup! The minister of education of the region of Hesse even has forbidden to spread the paper in schools. Kids – hands off this antinational poison!
And it didn’t take long until the GEW understood its mistake and apologized deeply for this unforgivable mistake. There are other fields for German trade-unionists to prove bravery: standing up against american capitalists, or learning from history by organizing boycotts against Israeli academics, like the colleagues in Britain and Canada do.
But back to the Deutschlandlied: it is a democratic and even a revolutionary song, we can read in every German newspaper these days. So it’s a pity that the whole masterpiece is cited so seldom. It’s revolutionary not only for its third stanza ("Unity and law and freedom for the German Fatherland") – its other two stanzas are the expression of a romantic revolution, as even American bloggers admit. Or did you ever hear more poetic rhymes than “German women, German loyalty, German wine and German song, to inspire us to noble deeds, our whole life long”?
And speaking about “Über alles”, I have learned something: “The Allies also pumped up the distorted meaning of Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt as part of their propaganda, which is why so many people in the U.S. think it means what they think it means.” The Allies were nearly as undifferentiated as the GEW, but in reality, “über alles, über alles in der Welt is not meant as a literal 'over all,' as in Germany 'ruling over all in the world,' but more of a 'before all others.'”
Got the difference? No? “We Germans” are rather introverted romanticists – and have to make that clear to the rest of the world from time to time. Here’s a quote from a man who got rather frustrated about the global misunderstandings about German feelings but tried his best to correct them:
The Deutschlandlied “is a great song of the longing. Many from other peoples do not understand it. They want to see in that song just something imperialistic - which is furthest distant from their own imperialism nevertheless. Because what can be a more beautiful hymn for a people than the one which is a confession, to look for its salvation and its luck in its people and to place its people over everything, which is on this earth.”
The name of this romanticist is Adolf Hitler.