Content note: Repeats First World War atrocity stories, including invented ones, and their wording. This object is shown as it was published. Why
A GREAT deal of play was made throughout the war with the opening lines of a German patriotic song.
“ Deutschland fiber Alles auf dcr ganzen Welt.”
(“ Germany above all things in the whole world.”)
There must have been many people who knew sufficient German to understand the meaning of the phrase, but no protest was made at the mistranslation, which was habitually used to illustrate Germany’s aggressive imperialist ambitions. It was popularly accepted as meaning, “ (Let) Germany (rule) over everywhere in the whole world,” i.e. the German domination of the world.
Mr. Lloyd George used it on September 20, 1914, at Queen’s Hall;
Treaties are gone, the honour of nations gone, liberty gone. What is left ? Germany, Germany is left.
Deutschland fiber Alles.
PuncJh kept it to the front in various cartoons.
The Kaiser, playing on a flute, having abandoned a broken big drum labelled “ Deutschland fiber Alles.”
The Kaiser trying to blow up a pricked balloon labelled “ Deutschland fiber Alles.”
The Kaiser as the High Priest of Moloch. Moloch labelled “ Deutschland fiber Alles.”
It was constantly quoted in numberless articles in the Press. When a prominent Member of Parliament used DEUTSCHLAND tJBER ALLES 89 the expression in a letter to Tie Times, the incorrect meaning he attributed to it was pointed out to him. He admitted the error, but seemed to consider that the accepted meaning of it justified his using it as he did.
The false meaning spread through the country and the Empire, and the Department of Education in Ontario went so far as to order the song to be eliminated from German school books throughout the province (The Times, March 19, 1915).
Even after the war, in November 1921, a leader-writer in a prominent newspaper declared that as long as the Germans stuck to their national anthem, “ Deutschland fiber Alles auf der ganzen Welt,” there would be no peace in Europe.
Falsehood in War-Time, Arthur Ponsonby. Published in the United Kingdom in 1928, more than 95 years ago, so in the public domain in the United States. Ponsonby died in 1946, so the text is also in the public domain in countries that count the author's life plus 70 years. Provenance and rights.