"... Above all, you reign above everything; at any time, for protection and defense, brothers are forever united..."
Franz Joseph Haydn's "Emperor's Hymn," with its mellow and powerful melody, was revived through the skillful performance of the military band. The lyrics, rewritten by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, had been modified again. Once serving as the national anthem for the Austrian Empire, German Empire, Weimar Republic, Greater German Reich, and Federal Republic of Germany... the ancient song, sung for hundreds of years, was now voiced by the changing tones of youthful singers, adding a special fervor and passion. It was as if the military academy graduates before them were about to take on the hope of the nation and ethnicity, charging into the battlefield chanting "the homeland above all," to pen their own legends.
