Die Wacht am Rhein - German Patriotic Anthem

"Die Wacht am Rhein" is a German patriotic anthem. The song's origins are rooted in the historical French–German enmity, and it was particularly popular in Germany during the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II. The original poem was written by Max Schneckenburger during the Rhine crisis of 1840, and is generally sung to music written by Karl Wilhelm in 1854, seven years after Schneckenburger's death. 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 shore 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 praised a monarch, "Die Wacht am Rhein" and other songs written in this period, such as the "Deutschlandlied" (the third verse of which is Germany's current national anthem) and "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?" (What is the German's Fatherland?) by Ernst Moritz Arndt, called for Germans to unite, to put aside sectionalism, sectarianism, and the rivalries of the various German kingdoms and principalities, to establish a unified German state and defend Germany's territorial integrity.