Today -100: August 13, 1922: Of dead griffiths and national anthems

Arthur Griffith, president of the Dáil Éireann and Irish foreign minister, dies suddenly from... a heart attack following a tonsillectomy? 

For the celebration of the 3rd anniversary of the Weimar Republic’s Constitution, “Deutschland Über Alles” is played. Pres. Ebert has decided it’s not an imperial song after all and names it the German national anthem (Weimar hasn’t had one), citing the alleged republicanism of the poet August Hoffmann, who wrote the words in the 1840s and attached them to a Haydn tune which was definitely an imperial song, written in 1797 for Holy Roman Emperor Franz II’s birthday.

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