Like gathering thunder spreads a cry,
Like clash of arms when battle’s nigh,
The Rhine! there’s danger to the Rhine!
Who’ll shield it from the foe’s design?
Dear Fatherland, no fear be thine,
Dear Fatherland, no fear be thine,
Steadfast and true, we guard our German Rhine!
Steadfast and true, we guard our German Rhine!
The tidings flash through million hearts,
From million flaming eyes it darts;
Our valiant sons, in danger strong,
Will guard our hallow’d stream from wrong!
What though the foe my life should quench,
I know thy wave will ne’er be French;
And ample as thy tide of blue,
The living stream of heroes true.
The shades of heroes past and gone
Upon our deeds are looking down;
By home and Fatherland we swear
The foeman from thy banks to scare.
While through my veins the life is poured,
As long as I can hold a sword,
No stranger shall our land despoil,
No foeman desecrate our soil.
Proclaim the vow from shore to shore,
Let banners wave and cannons roar,
The Rhine! The lovely German Rhine,
To keep it Germans all combine.
Dear Fatherland, all fear resign,
Dear Fatherland, all fear resign,
Stout hearts and true will keep watch on the Rhine,
Stout hearts and true will keep watch on the Rhine.
—Max Schneckenburger.
(Translated by Lady Natalie MacFarren.)
The Watch on the Rhine was written by Max Schneckenburger in 1840, and though not so fine a poem from a literary standpoint as many others that have embodied the same sentiment, it has about it that nameless charm which has enthralled the popular heart. Although it was thirty years old in 1870, it then struck its first great popularity and became by all odds the most popular war song in Germany.
Schneckenburger, like many another hymn writer, owes his entire reputation to a single song. He was an obscure Swabian merchant, quiet and unassuming, who never did anything in his life to attract public attention except to write this hymn. But it might well be said that in order to make a man’s name immortal he need not do anything else than write one song that voices the soul’s ambition or the heart’s longing of a great people. Max Schneckenburger is perhaps the only writer of a popular national hymn who is not the author of other lesser songs; for we have not been able to discover that he ever published anything except The Watch on the Rhine. He died in Berne, in 1849, without the slightest thought that his song would ever make his name famous. Long after his death a handsome monument was built above his grave at Thalheim, in Wurtemberg.
The music for The Watch on the Rhine was composed by Carl Wilhelm, who first arranged it as a chorus for male voices. Wilhelm was a music teacher and conductor. He was born at Schmalkalden and died in 1873. Carl Hauser says that Carl Wilhelm never dreamed of The Watch on the Rhine turning out to be a national hymn at the time he composed the music. Wilhelm was a thorough Bohemian, a sort of typical German bandmaster, who was accustomed to write music on lager-beer tables amid the fumes of smoking pipes. He was not counted as a great musician, except among a few bosom friends, and was satisfied to get a very small price for his compositions, and what he received in that way usually went to pay his beer bills.