Max Schneckenburger

Max Schneckenburger (18 July 1819 – 3 May 1849) was a German poet. The patriotic hymn "Die Wacht am Rhein" uses the text of a poem Schneckenburger wrote in 1840.

Schneckenburger was born in Talheim near Tuttlingen, Württemberg. The younger brother of Matthias Schneckenburger, he was a co-owner of an iron blast furnace company, and his business sent him across the Rhine River to Switzerland. Due to this connection, a first version of his poem was set to music and performed there in 1840 by local musicians. This Bern version is now largely forgotten. Schneckenburger died in Burgdorf near Bern.

The well-known music to his poem was composed by Karl Wilhelm in 1854, five years after his death. After the use of the song in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 made him and Wilhelm famous, his widow and two sons were granted an annual pension of 3,000 Mark by Otto von Bismarck's Reichskanzleramt. The rest of his German songs were published in Stuttgart in 1870.

On 18 July 1886, Schneckenburger's remains were returned to his native town Talheim near in the German Empire.

In a political essay of Schneckenburger in 1840, he calls for a re-arrangement of the "patch work" European borders into national areas, according to languages spoken, similar to the ideas espoused by Ernst Moritz Arndt.

He also called for secure borders with neighboring countries.

...
Wikipedia