Ever since Angela Merkel's selection of songs for the “Great Zapfenstreich” became known (FAZ of November 29), with which she was adopted by the Bundeswehr today, the repertoire has been scrutinized. Hilde Knef and Nina Hagen, old Federal Republic and youthful GDR - you find that sometimes well chosen, sometimes banal, sometimes balanced (East and West, two strong women on top of that), sometimes politically incorrect (Ostalgie, nostalgia). Only about the first of the three titles on Merkel's wish list is little heard. “Merkel's decision in favor of the best-known and cross-denominational popular version of Te Deum, the fourth-century hymn of praise and thanks of the Latin Church, is certainly no coincidence.
Translated into German by the Breslau priest Ignaz Franz in 1771, “Great God, we praise you” soon became a common property of popular Catholicism, which flourished in the nineteenth century, and also became popular with Protestants. German emigrants took it with them to North America. The English version "Holy God, we praise thy name" is now a global Christian catchy tune. The song has a different status than most church hymns, "a more powerful, more comprehensive, more fundamental one that allows one to speak of a hymn," wrote the Mainz literary scholar Hermann Kurzke: One must have experienced the elemental force with which the song is sung , for example "in the Catholic church service after the Corpus Christi procession, when entering the church again, when all the bells are ringing, the organ is giving its best and thewho otherwise only mumble listlessly to themselves, blare out loud ”. A shudder at the greatness of God went through the crowd.
What would Europe be without Te Deum?
The pious shudder is already in the original Latin version, and at the same time a whole political theology: a sea of voices, a universe of faith and doubt, a theater of power. Because the solemn hymn of praise, thanksgiving and supplication by the church is more than just a pious hymn, with which Merkel's generation comrades in the Union can be aroused warm waves. As the “third creed”, Martin Luther called the Te Deum, that “Ambrosian hymn of praise”, which legend tells that it arose from a dialogue between two saints inspired by the spirit, who as bishops of the early church were also influential rulers, administrators, Judges and legislators in personal union: Augustine and Ambrose of Milan. The Te Deum has always beenwhich in the liturgy marks the transition from working day to Sunday and public holiday, a sound of power and the mighty, affirms ordination and consecration, coronation and victory. The settings can hardly be counted, and it is no coincidence that the most famous ones today come from the heyday of absolutism: Handel's “Dettinger Te Deum” and the jingle of the European Economic Community, the Te Deum by Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
Anyway, what would Europe be without Te Deum? The Te Deum in Reims, with which the solemn “Mass for Peace” ended in July 1962, in which Adenauer and de Gaulle took part in the war-torn cathedral, is part of the history of European integration. When Merkel came to Reims half a century later with François Hollande to commemorate the reconciliation act of the two Catholic statesmen, there was neither mass nor Te Deum, and the photo opportunity took place in front of the portal. Perhaps the pastor's daughter knew very well that she had the Christian hymn on the steps of Reims cathedral visibly behind her. Because the Te Deum, even without color film and red roses, is a tremendous drama, a play of the Last Judgment, turned into stone in the tympana above the portals of the cathedrals of the Middle Ages.
Angels, cherubim and seraphim, the patriarchs of the First Testament, the martyrs and saints, the virgins and confessors, the mighty of the world and the people, a diverse community of all classes, gather around the Judge of Judgment Day, the Ignaz Franz in his free Translation puts a hopeful and at the same time serious request in the mouth: "We hope for you alone, let us not be lost." In the Latin original, the change from the bombastic angel choirs to the sober finale could not be stronger.
In the end there is only one little person who says: In te, domine, speravi.
Non confundar in aeternum - on you, O Lord, I have put my hope.
I will not be ashamed forever.