The melody of the Deutschlandlied (The German National Anthem) was originally composed by Joseph Haydn as the Austrian imperial anthem "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" and was first performed in 1797. (The text for the Deutschlandlied was written by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben in 1841 on Heligoland). In 1922 it became the national anthem for Germany. In March 1952, President Theodor Heuss declared the third verse of the Deutschlandlied to be the national anthem of the Federal Republic of Germany.