Swiss teletext red faced over Nazi era lyrics gaffe

By Iain Rogers
BASEL (Reuters) - Switzerland's teletext service has had to issue an embarrassing apology after it mistakenly subtitled Germany's national anthem with obsolete lyrics no longer used because of their association with the Nazis.
SWISS TXT provided the subtitles for Germany's Euro 2008 Group B match against Austria on Monday evening broadcast on Swiss national channel SF2.
Viewers turning on the subtitle service would have seen the first stanza of lyrics written by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben proclaiming "Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles, ueber alles in der Welt" or "Germany, Germany above all, above everything in the world."
During the Nazi era, the first verse was the official anthem but was dropped after World War Two and the third stanza was adopted by the Federal Republic of Germany.
SWISS TXT published a full apology on its web site (www.swisstxt.ch) and on page 776 of its television information service and national coordinator Gion Linder said it had been "an embarrassing mistake".
"One of our junior subtitlers made the error due to a lack of knowledge," Linder said, adding that the woman in question was 25 years old.
Around half a million people had tuned in for the match, which Germany won 1-0, and probably about 2,500 of those had the subtitles switched on, he said.
However, Swiss tabloid Blick said on Wednesday many bars would have had the subtitles on and music playing instead of the match commentary.
(Editing by Jon Bramley)