Sometimes it sounds to welcome the Federal President on visits abroad, sometimes when the national soccer team plays in the stadium.
Sometimes it's played more casually, sometimes with a little more pep.
Sometimes she is sung along, sometimes the lips don't move.
The German national anthem can be heard on many occasions, it doesn't always sound the same, and it's sometimes a problem with the lyrics of those involved.
This Thursday she will be exactly 100 years old.
In other words, she's actually a few decades older.
August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote the song of the Germans on the then British island of Helgoland on August 26, 1841.
There was no Germany then, only 39 individual states.
Their regents mostly wanted nothing to do with “unity and justice and freedom”, as the free spirit Hoffmann von Fallersleben evoked.
His lines became a song through Joseph Haydn's Kaiserquartett, which he chose for them.
The song of the Germans was by no means the national anthem.
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 ended with the formation of the German Empire.
But the federal entity had no uniform anthem.
Especially in Prussia, the imperial anthem "Heil dir im Siegerkranz" (refrain: "Heil, Kaiser, Dir") was intoned.
Their time ran out with the end of the monarchy.
In the Weimar constitution of August 11, 1919, however, there was no provision for a national anthem.
Three years later, Reich President Friedrich Ebert made up for lost time.
In an appeal on Constitutional Day in 1922, he recalled Hoffmann von Fallersleben: “We love 'Germany above all' today, just like the poet once did.
In fulfillment of his longing, the song of unity and justice and freedom should be the festive expression of our patriotic feelings under the black, red and gold flags.”
The word "national anthem" was missing from this call, but six days later Ebert, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, ordered: "In accordance with my declaration of August 11, 1922, I decree: The Reichswehr must sing the 'Deutschland-Lied' as the national anthem."
The song remained the national anthem even during the Nazi dictatorship.
Hoffmann von Fallersleben understood his poem as an appeal for the internal unity of Germany.
However, the National Socialists misused the anthem as propaganda for their claim to be a great power.
Almost only the first verse was sung ("Germany, Germany about everything, about everything in the world") and this together with the Horst Wessel song ("The flag up, the ranks firmly closed"), an SA battle song.
Ebert had emphasized that the anthem "should not serve as an expression of nationalistic arrogance" - but this is precisely the sense in which the Nazis now used it.
It was logical that the Allies initially banned the discredited anthem after the end of the war.
Even in the new, democratic Germany, many people - above all Federal President Theodor Heuss - could not imagine keeping it.
The first Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (CDU) was completely different.
It benefited from two things: First, like the Weimar Constitution before it, the Basic Law of 1949 did not contain any stipulations regarding the question of anthems.
On the other hand, Heuss failed miserably with an alternative piece he had commissioned himself.
He had the "Hymn to Germany" played for the first time after his New Year's speech on New Year's Eve 1950.
Instead of encouragement, however, he received ridicule.
The piece, which from then on was broadcast by all radio stations at the end of the broadcast, was panned as "Theo's Little Night Music" or "Theo's Night Song".
In the end, Adenauer got the upper hand.
In an exchange of letters, he and Heuss stipulated that the Deutschlandlied should be the national anthem of the Federal Republic.
The third stanza should be sung on official occasions.
"I underestimated traditionalism and its need to persevere," admitted Heuss.
With the reunification of Germany after the fall of the Wall in 1989, the question of anthems arose again.
While "Unity and Justice and Freedom" was sung in the Federal Republic, "Resurrected from the Ruins and Facing the Future" was sung in the GDR, with a text by Johannes R. Becher and music by Hanns Eisler.
Should this perhaps be the all-German national anthem?
Or a completely different piece like Bertolt Brecht's Children's Hymn?
In the end, another CDU chancellor prevailed, now Helmut Kohl.
And again there was an exchange of letters with the Federal President, now with Richard von Weizsäcker.
He wrote: "The 3rd stanza of Hoffmann-Haydn's song has proven itself as a symbol." It is played, sung and respected at home and abroad.
And: "It expresses the values to which we feel committed as Germans, as Europeans and as part of the international community."