Explore the fascinating history of Liechtenstein's national anthem, "Oben am jungen Rhein," in this episode of the Anthems podcast. The anthem's origins are intertwined with themes of nationalism and the country's unique geographical and political status as one of the world's smallest and only doubly landlocked nations. Discover how the anthem evolved from a poem written by a visiting Swiss priest to a symbol of national pride, reflecting Liechtenstein's heritage and identity. The discussion delves into the historical context that shaped the anthem and the significant changes it underwent, particularly the removal of references to Germany in the 1960s. Join us as we uncover the stories behind the music, the lyrics, and the cultural significance of this little-known gem of a national anthem.

Facts:

Back in 2001, the Prince was trying to push through a series of constitutional reforms to give himself more power—namely the right to veto and appoint judges.

As the debate raged, the Prince threatened to leave the country and take his family’s holdings with him to Vienna if he didn’t win. As for the country: He’d sell it to “Bill Gates or anyone else who can afford it”.

It’s debatable if you can actually sell a country to someone else, but it would have been pretty neat if this had actually happened.

In the end, the Prince got his way and the people supported him in a referendum.

In 2011, the entire country was put up on Airbnb.

For a fee of $70,000 a day, you could “rent” Liechtenstein. For that amount, you would get accommodations for 150 people, temporary renaming of street signs, a temporary custom-made currency, ceremonial keys to the Principality, and a wine tasting at the Prince’s estate. For additional fees, you could witness a medieval procession, and a have huge logo made out of wax. No one actually took advantage of the offer. A wedding party was planning to do it at one point, but the wedding was called off and it never happened.

WOMEN COULDNT VOTE HERE UNTIL 1986, that's ridiculous

Sources:

1. https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/ 
2. https://web.archive.org/web/20141207203448/http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/art-music-and-film/resources/my-country-%E2%80%99tis-thee 
3. https://nationalanthems.info/li.htm 
4. https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/023401/2008-01-29/ 
5. https://www.liechtensteinusa.org/page/about-liechtenstein#:~:text=The%20country%20lies%20at%20an,the%20Grauspitz%20at%208%2C527%20feet. 
6. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna16381664 
7. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/uzbekistan/ 
8. https://historisches-lexikon.li/ 
9. https://www.balzers.li/Portals/0/contortionistUniverses/772/rsc/Item_downloadLink/Geschichte%20Gemeinde%20Balzers%20_Louis%20Vogt%20-%2027%200%202007_.pdf 
10.  https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/006528/2008-11-27/ 
11. https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/GeltendeFassung.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnormen&Gesetzesnummer=10001622 
12. https://www.schwabenkinder.eu/de/schwabenkinder/das-schwabengehen/huetekindermarkt/ 
13. https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/ 
14. http://www.luxarazzi.com/2014/08/luxarazzi-101-oben-am-jungen-rhein.html 
15. https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gruendlich-geruettelt-a-86fb8cae-0002-0001-0000-000043176832?context=issue 
16. https://books.google.ch/books?id=O6toAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA16-PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false 
17. https://www.thriftbooks.com/blog/poetry-through-the-ages/ 
18. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Lucy 
19. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Diocletian 
20. https://historisches-lexikon.li/Volksdeutsche_Bewegung_in_Liechtenstein_(VDBL) 

https://historisches-lexikon.li/Matt,_Gustav_Alfons

Hello and welcome to the Anthems podcast. Today we are kind of mostly in a place that I thought I was in on the last episode.

It's an itty bitty landlocked country deep in the middle of Europe. I did know roughly where this country was because it's been an answer on worldel before. Other than that, I didn't know essentially anything about it.

I didn't just pick the country to make another bad geography joke, and I actually don't think I did make a geography joke there. Anyway, the anthem du jour is oben am ungent Rhyne or high on the young Rhine.

It's brought to us by a middle school report that one of my cousins did, probably in like 6th grade or something. Ever since then, she said she's been kind of obsessed with Liechtenstein.

So I hope to provide an interesting story with at least a few things that will be new.

So I was looking at my metrics on the podcast hosting platform that I'm using, and I noticed that I have listeners in at least a dozen countries so far. Thanks. It means more than you know for me to know that the Internet letting you reach the world thing might actually be true.

So that is a smooth as cool whip Segway into a song. So listen to this, and I will talk to you again in about two minutes and 35 seconds. Sadeena my initial impression is nostalgia.

This is because the tune is not only the tune of God save the queen, but it is also the tune of a whole lot of other patriotic songs from all over the world that were in use and are still in use in the United States. One of our de facto anthems before the Star Spangled Banner was my country, tis of thee, often just called America.

It was written by Samuel Francis Smith. Someday, uh, maybe, I'll do a sort of roundup of almost anthems, because Smith's song was around for quite a while in that role.

Regardless, my point is, is that it uses the same tune as high on the young rein, and I sang the thing constantly in grade school. I don't dislike this song, but it is not on any of my regular playlists.

As usual, I want to get us situated in the world before getting into the story. It's helpful for me, and I hope that it's helpful for all of you listening, too.

You may not be surprised to learn that the Rhine river forms part of the border of Liechtenstein with Switzerland. The river continues roughly south, where the Swiss Liechtenstein border goes east.

The country is sort of shaped like a triangle, and the hypotenuse is the border with Australia. Excuse me, Austria. That would be crazy.

The border is still split pretty equally between the two of them, about 25.5 miles with Switzerland and very close to 21 and three quarters with Austria. It's on the side of a river valley, so it is a pretty hilly place.

A tiny mountain for a tiny country that is two thirds mountainous and comes in at about 61 sq mi or 160 km² for scale. The US city of Chicago is about one and a half times the size of this principality of maybe 39,000 people depending on the day.

It is only the 6th smallest country in the world and it is one of only two doubly landlocked countries, which is my new geography term for this episode, since I seem to find one of those each time or geology.

It means that Liechtenstein is completely surrounded by countries that are also landlocked, so that you have two international borders to cross before you can reach the shore. The only other one is Uzbekistan. But no spoilers about that, because we haven't gotten there yet.

Part of the reason that I think Liechtenstein ended up being so small is because it is largely the result of a century long process of one family gathering land in just the right places and gathering similar political influences and powers.

It was made into part of the Holy Roman Empire because Schlichtenstein was located along an important trade route that allowed for the only safe and reliable access to the Rhine from the east. It remained an important area for this and agricultural reasons up into the late 17th century.

Crucially, though, sovereignty had not been established through, excuse me, not been established according to the process in place wherein a princely ranked family needed to have direct possession of a portion of the land so called holding the Rhine.

Actual sovereignty was achieved for the country, thanks to our pal Napoleon, of all people.

And we'll keep seeing him in Europe because that dude was kind of a wrecking ball after he ran roughshod over the continent and directly into a russian winter.

But shortly before him, forcing the dissolution of the Roman Empire for once and for all, Liechtenstein was admitted into the confederation of the Rhine as a courtesy to Johann I Josef, who is the 10th prince of Liechtenstein. Josef was not actually asked before the decision, so I'm sure it was at least a medium surprise to him.

But it worked out for the family because when the big powers in Europe chopped everything back up at the Congress of Vienna, the little nation was allowed to remain and be an absolutist principality admitted into the post napoleonic german confederation. It was such a model of absolutist government, in fact, that the princes of Liechtenstein were 100% not aware of any running of the government.

The administration was entirely done by bailiffs.

And while the prince and his family chilled out in Vienna and didn't even live in Liechtenstein, I learned that in this case, a bailiff, because in the US it's some sort of a. Like a court cop.

But it was also a tiny, tiny nation and they were economic isolationists. They did not industrialize and the prince rejected economic reform.

The particular code was widely implemented and is still in use today in some form, making it the oldest still used form of germanic law.

They were living in a country that was considered a european poorhouse at the time, and many of the residents became migrant workers in order to support themselves, including the swabian children. Sorry, this is one of the bad parts of history that we're going to hear about. You might be thinking.

But hey, host of the show, you don't have to mention the sad stuff. You don't have to do that. I know, but we're still gonna. Some of it we have to hear the. Because the narrative is not a highlight reel.

Because history is not a highlight reel. That's what Facebook is for. And if you don't talk about bad things at all, then people might think they were just fine.

So these children were the shepherd's kids from Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and they represented the poorest of the people there.

I did a little bit of reading about him, and you are not the prince for 70 years, and at least not occasionally a problematic human being. I encourage you to read on your own and let me know more through the channels I'll tell you about at the end of the show.

Specifically, they're from a place called the canton of Uri Aethereze, smallish bit of the german speaking part of the country with about the same population as Liechtenstein, the family built prominence and influence through very successful military contracts with the Spanish from the end of 17th century right through to the beginning of the 19th.

A couple centuries of governorships, brigadier generals, and similar flashy well paid titles practically guaranteed the Jock family some historical references. Father Jacob, as you might have assumed by the name, was a priest.

And he was summarily ordered to leave the country by the bishop of Cher.

History historians are not even sure that he is the guy who wrote this thing. So as with many anthem writers, he is mostly a historical ghost.

It's just a thing that people have always said, and no one can find any records that say different. So he gets to be the writer. I mean, in some ways, that's kind of how a bunch of history works. It's actually not entirely great that way.

And it's very frustrating that the history we were taught is not an accurate reflection of the world in which we're living. Because I have come to really enjoy a robust historical written account. I'm doing a history podcast, so I like good history available.

For me, this man is a national anthem writing, and they are turning out to fill a weird little niche. So we have the poem and it exists in its original form.

Before I tell you how that actually became the anthem and reaches its current but possibly not final form, we got to take a quick little diversion to talk about the melody. As I said, and as you have noticed, it is in fact the melody from God save the king or God save the queen.

It is a melody that is used in a bunch of stuff, although unless I'm completely wrong, usually get to edit that out if I'm completely wrong. But we'll see someday when I get through the list. Only Liechtenstein is the country that still uses the melody for a national anthem.

As I mentioned earlier, the melody takes me back to middle school with my country, tis of thee, and I recall many an awkward chorus class with that song, but we get a callback because it was also the melody for an unofficial icelandic national anthem before we got loft songer again. Maybe one day we can talk about that sort of stuff on the show.

It was also the melody for the swiss anthem, the national anthem of pre state Hawaii, and there's others, but I want to save most of that stuff for when I get to the english anthem and actually start talking about that song.

It's similar to the melody of the Star Spangled Banner in that a whole bunch of different and mostly patriotic songs, except in this case they're mostly germanic countries. I'll explore a bunch more about the history and actual construction of the melody when we talk of the corresponding anthem.

The entire thing is very unsure, and a couple of weeks of digging around on the Internet has netted me literally no more information, apart from thousands of people singing it together at the National Exhibition five years before the end of the 19th century, it can be inferred as strongly likely that the melody made its way over from Switzerland, because their anthem at the time, no spoilers here for the future swiss episode, used the same melody, and given Liechtenstein's diminutive size, there is a ton of fluidity between it and its neighbors as far as the population goes.

What is not murky is that there had been a steady, if slow and sporadic series of social progressions and economic reforms in the principality as the final standing member of the Holy Roman Empire brought itself into the modern world. Now and then that necessitated a revision to the constitution, usually despite what the prince really wanted.

But in the case of up on the young Rhine, there is a tiny twist. And I don't really like calling it a twist because that sounds silly, but I did it already, so here we are.

Anyway, there is a development in the history of the anthem.

Since before it was official, people in Liechtenstein had been lobbying to remove extensive references to another sovereignty nation from their national anthem. Even though it's not really like that, but we'll get there.

Yeah, we don't do that anymore. It is mentioned in at least six of the sources I read.

It used to be traditional that one would raise their right arm vertically up during the anthem with an open hand. The atrocities of World War Two made this exactly as common as you would think.

He was the head of the family named after the castle Liechtenstein that finally bought the right pieces of land to get on the path to running their very own sovereign nation. Fascists ruin all kinds of things because symbolic association is a powerful historical force moving on.

Musically, it's hard to call this song anything but anthem music, but I think technically it is a hymn. It's in the key of g and that's really all I'll say about the melody again. You'll get a harder look when we talk about England.

The lyrics and the stuff behind them is the real meat of the story. With Liechtenstein's anthem, which makes sense to me. They existed on their own before they were grafted onto an older melody.

And I'll admit that I find the lyrics to be another weird choice for a national anthem. I just. It's a weird series. It's a weird song to have as an anthem, even though it's an inappropriate song.

It makes more sense to fill out the discussion on a filled out poem or something like that was happening in my head. I was thinking it made sense. Then onto the song.

Up on the german Rhine Liechtenstein leans against Alpenholm this dear homeland in the german fatherland God's wise hand saw for us where once St Lucian brought peace to Raetia there at the boundary stone and along the young Rhine Liechtenstein fearlessly stands guard on Germany's watch lovely in the summertime on the high pastures of the Alps heaven's rest hovers where the chamois leaps freely the eagle swings boldly the herdsman sings the ave to home it is friendly to see from green rocky heights with one glance like the Rhine's silver band the beautiful country lines a small fatherland of quiet happiness long live Lichtenstein blooming on the german rhine happy and faithful long live the prince of the land long live our fatherland united and free through brotherly love. The work is a patriotic ode to Liechtenstein and nearly a prototypical example of that style of poem.

It's odd that it was written by someone that was just visiting the country for work, even if it was super close to his own home in Switzerland. But honestly, maybe it's not that odd, because it turns out you can write poems about literally whatever you want.

But there's a lack of mysticism, and that's an important part of romantic writing.

When the second verse refers to St Lucia and Raetia. Both of those are real things.

Raetia was a region of the Roman Empire and the explanation of where it fit into that web is wildly complicated stuff in the way that only a tiny province in the ancient Rome could be. If you want to look it up, it's an interesting, if historically dense, read that is not useful for me in this narrative.

For our purposes, it is useful to know that it is now part of Switzerland. Along the Rhine. St Lucia was a roman catholic saint. She was supposedly imprisoned and to be forced into prostitution.

But God made her immovable and immune to fire. So the Romans stabbed her in the neck.

And that worked, I don't know, maybe because the year 304 in the Roman Empire was a tough time to be Christiane.

But in reality she was just one of many, many unfortunate victims of a wave of early christian persecution, like murdering a bunch of people level persecution that was perpetuated by the emperor Diocletian. He reigned from 284 to 305 in the common era. Here's the thing, though.

As far as I can tell, there is no, absolutely no historical connection of any kind between the two. There's nothing even close between St Lucia and Racia. They're just two things that the guy mentioned in the song.

If I am completely spun out on this, please somebody correct me. Because I dug for days, I couldn't find anything connecting these two apart from those points.

It's full of praise for the little country's important role, perched at the visually stunning frontier of the german confederation. And it's, you know, it makes it sound like a real pretty place. The official version is way shorter.

It's much abridged and it removes the explicit references to Germany and reads as follows. Up on the young Rhine, Liechtenstein leans against alpine heights. This dear homeland, the dear fatherland God's wise hand saw for us.

Long live Liechtenstein blossoming on the young Rhine happy and faithful long live the prince of the land long live our fatherland united and free through brotherly love. Honestly, I can dig the change from what I consider a purely functional standpoint, this is a much better song. The other one is a poem.

It's not bad, but not all poems are meant to be sung and said to music.

Local patriotic groups after strong opposition to the local nazi party called the Volkdeutsche.

It's a surprising and interesting little place that I'm glad I got to learn more about, and hopefully you learned a few things as well. The writing, recording and production for the show are all done by me and I wrote and played the intro and outro music.

The music was used with my permission unless otherwise noted, the anthems I play are all public domain stuff. My sources and other tasty bits I found are contained in the show notes.

The most direct way to get to these notes is@anthemspodcast.com you can find me on Facebook and WhatsApp as the Anthems podcast. I not doing the other socials because I don't have the energy or the time.

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I've also heard that ratings and reviews actually super matter, so if you feel like doing that it would super matter. Apparently so thanks ahead of time.

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You can ask me questions. You can. I don't know, whatever you can do with email anthemspodmail.com.