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Joseph Haydn - Deutschland Uber Alles of Germany was composed by Joseph Haydn . It is a part of ... 3 min 34 sec - Click on: www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2IaFaJrmno     The title is an allusion to the first stanza of the national anthem of Germany, introduced after the downfall of the German monarchy at the end of World War I. It has been Germany's national anthem ever since, still sung, though, without this first two stanzas to avoid any expressions of superiority. The anthem, "Das Lied der Deutschen" or "Deutschlandlied" is a nineteenth century patriotic song, the lyrics written by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben on the then-British island of Helgoland in 1841, with music based upon an eighteenth century string quartet by Joseph Haydn.    It begins with the words "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles." The word-for-word translation of this line is "Germany above all," which the author intended to mean that a unified Germany was more desirable than the continued division of the Germanophonic countries (Sprachraum) into independent states. During the days of the Third Reich, anti-German political propaganda claimed the anthem was a typical Nazi expression of racial superiority, something the Nazis did nothing to dispel. To avoid such misunderstanding, only the third verse of the anthem, "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit" (literally: Unity and Justice and Freedom) is used nowadays. The lines "From the Maas to Memel (rivers), from the Etsch to the Belt" are nowadays understood as a German-expansionist claim. In the formerly communist East German GDR the anthem was forbidden.