By Online Desk
‘Deutschland uber alles’ – Germany above all. This was the phrase used by a fan which forced German player Alexander Zverev to complain to chair umpire James Keothavong resulting in the fan being ejected from a US Open tennis match early on September 5.
Zverev, the No. 12 seed, was serving at 2-2 in the fourth set of his match against No. 6 Jannik Sinner when he suddenly went to chair umpire James Keothavong and pointed toward the fan, who was sitting in a section behind the umpire.
“He just said the most famous Hitler phrase there is in this world,” Zverev told Keothavong. “It’s not acceptable,” The Associated Press reported.
This is the phrase that makes my nation hang its head in shame: ‘Deutschland uber alles’ – Germany above all. To some, it might easily be dismissed as an unremarkable, patriotic chant, wrote Constantin Eckner in the Daily Mail.
But for Germans like me it is unmistakably the phrase adopted by the Nazi party and now for ever associated with Adolf Hitler’s heinous rule, Eckner said.
There is the swastika, there is the Holocaust and there is this ugly slogan. Nazism is an indelible stain on my country’s collective memory. It is the ghost we live with every day. We learn about it in school and at university, we see it at the cinema and in the theatre, the German journalist added.
So when Alexander Zverev reacted with such fury to a spectator who shouted ‘Deutschland uber alles’ during his match at the US Open this week, I was not surprised at all. In fact, I was proud of the young German tennis player, Eckner noted in the Daily Mirror.
He explained that ‘Deutschland uber alles’ is the first line from August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s 1841 poem entitled Das Lied der Deutschen. Von Fallersleben intended the line as a call for national unity against the vested interests of 19th-century monarchs. It was only much later that it was used to express German supremacy.
Admittedly, von Fallersleben may himself have approved of the reinterpretation.
He notoriously penned a number of anti-Semitic poems over the course of his life, as well as developing a visceral hatred for France.
‘Deutschland uber alles’ – Germany above all. This was the phrase used by a fan which forced German player Alexander Zverev to complain to chair umpire James Keothavong resulting in the fan being ejected from a US Open tennis match early on September 5.
Zverev, the No. 12 seed, was serving at 2-2 in the fourth set of his match against No. 6 Jannik Sinner when he suddenly went to chair umpire James Keothavong and pointed toward the fan, who was sitting in a section behind the umpire.
“He just said the most famous Hitler phrase there is in this world,” Zverev told Keothavong. “It’s not acceptable,” The Associated Press reported.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });
This is the phrase that makes my nation hang its head in shame: ‘Deutschland uber alles’ – Germany above all. To some, it might easily be dismissed as an unremarkable, patriotic chant, wrote Constantin Eckner in the Daily Mail.
But for Germans like me it is unmistakably the phrase adopted by the Nazi party and now for ever associated with Adolf Hitler’s heinous rule, Eckner said.
There is the swastika, there is the Holocaust and there is this ugly slogan. Nazism is an indelible stain on my country’s collective memory. It is the ghost we live with every day. We learn about it in school and at university, we see it at the cinema and in the theatre, the German journalist added.
So when Alexander Zverev reacted with such fury to a spectator who shouted ‘Deutschland uber alles’ during his match at the US Open this week, I was not surprised at all. In fact, I was proud of the young German tennis player, Eckner noted in the Daily Mirror.
He explained that ‘Deutschland uber alles’ is the first line from August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s 1841 poem entitled Das Lied der Deutschen. Von Fallersleben intended the line as a call for national unity against the vested interests of 19th-century monarchs. It was only much later that it was used to express German supremacy.
Admittedly, von Fallersleben may himself have approved of the reinterpretation.
He notoriously penned a number of anti-Semitic poems over the course of his life, as well as developing a visceral hatred for France.
