(June 9, 2015 at 2:23 am)Alex K Wrote:(June 9, 2015 at 2:18 am)Minimalist Wrote: In Haydn's defense he called it Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser.
Yeah, they just took it and changed the words a few times. I wonder what ol Haydn would have thought of that!
It's called stealing. Even more so since the Germans already had their own anthem going by the same tune as the english one. Not only were they closely related, they couldn't even think of different anthems.