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Deutschland über alles?: The National Anthem Debate in the Federal Republic of Germany
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
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Languages evolve, and through the negotiations of public discourse, particular phrases acquire connotations and meanings beyond their grammatical structure. Occasionally, the meanings become contested and the resultant debate can be politically charged. The struggle to define language is fundamentally a struggle for power. This explains the current concerns of the French government to protect the French language from anglicisms. In recent years, the United States has become embroiled in debates over interpretations of the Constitution. Should our reconstruction of the eighteenth-century intent of the authors be the standard or should we reinterpret the language in the spirit of our present day context? The answer is fundamentally a political one. Perhaps nowhere has language been more highly contested than in postwar West Germany.
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References
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81. Efforts to create a German-German team failed. The International Olympic Committee then recognized the West German National Olympic Committee for Germany as the provisional German Olympic Committee. Only West German athletes participated in the 1952 Olympic Games.
82. A draft treaty for the European Defense Community was initialed by the intended participants in Bonn on 23 May 1952, and a related treaty ending the Federal Republic's occupied status was drafted. The French parliament rejected the proposed EDC in 1954, endangering the plans to grant sovereignty to the Federal Republic. In the fall of 1954 new agreements were reached in the Paris Treaties which allowed for the entry of the Federal Republic into NATO as an autonomous state. On 5 May 1955 the Occupation Statute lapsed, and the Federal Republic became sovereign.
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99. The editor had published a satirical text, Deutschlandlied '86, that was critical of contemporary German society.
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