"Unser Land" / Our Land?

"Our Country?" Lesotho's Swiss national anthem tells the unusual story of a catchy melody. Composed in the early 1820s by the Markdorf-born music educator Ferdinand Samuel Laur, the choral piece spread from Basel to Switzerland and later to France: as a school, drinking and fatherland song with changing lyrics. Around 1870, it is found with verses by the missionary François Coillard in a schoolbook of the British crown colony Basutoland. With its opening line "Lesotho, land of our fathers," it became the national anthem of the independent Kingdom of Lesotho in 1967. The song, which fell into oblivion in Switzerland, has become part of Lesotho's state independence and is performed and discussed with self-confidence and skepticism at the same time. The book asks from different perspectives why familiar things seem foreign and.