The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #160809   Message #3815723
Posted By: Jack Campin
20-Oct-16 - 02:12 PM
Thread Name: Before 'God Save the King'?
Subject: RE: Before 'God Save the King'?
A few more dates:

Marseillaise - adopted as the French national anthem in 1795 (surely the first anywhere), subsequently banned and reinstated in 1879.

Hatikvah - adopted by the Zionist Congress in 1897 but not officially the anthem of Israel until 2004.

German Overalls - song of the revolution of 1848, adopted by Germany in 1922, again by West Germany in 1952 and by unified Germany in 1990.

Italian anthem - song of the Risorgimento from 1847, adopted semi-officially as a national anthem in 1946 but only ratified in 2012.

Russian anthem: based on the state anthem of the USSR from 1944, words deleted in the 50s because they mentioned Stalin, adopted as the anthem of Russia with new words under Putin in 2000.

Looks like everybody else has been playing catch-up with the French.