The Deutschlandlied was initially unable to compete successfully against other songs. The melody, which predates the poem and was already envisioned by the poet as the music to which the poem should be set, was composed by Joseph Haydn in 1797 for the Austrian imperial anthem Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser (“God Save Emperor Francis”). He wrote this "Song of the Germans" on the island of Helgoland, then a British possession, on 26 August 1841, weaving into the text quotations from and allusions to other popular songs. The words stem from the pen of August Heinrich Hoffmann (who added “ von Fallersleben” to his name), a patriotic liberal poet and literary scholar who lost his professorship in Prussia in 1842 because of his works. The Deutschlandlied, the German national anthem, dates back to the liberal national movement of the 19th century.
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