Castleford Team Parish Magazine July & August 2014 2014-07 | Page 21

July & August 2014

(Continued from page 20)
That is where the tune for this well-loved hymn came from. It
quickly became the tune of the Austrian national anthem. It was later
even adopted by the Germans, as the tune for August Heinrich
Hoffman von Fallersleben’s (1798 – 1874) anthem Deutschlandslied ,
which began with the famous words: ‘Deutschland uber
alles’ (Germany before everything). In the ensuing political
upheavals, the tune survived in the German national anthem, but was
abandoned by the Austrians in 1946.
In the meantime, the tune had also reached England, as early as 1805.
It was then that the words of a hymn by John Newton were first
paired up with it. This meant that when the Austrian Emperor Franz
visited his grandmother Queen Y