Ernst Lissauer

[1][2] Lissauer was "a round little man, a jolly face above a double double-chin, bubbling over with self-importance and exuberance," according to his friend Stefan Zweig.

"[3] His devotion to German history, poetry, art and music was, in his own words, a monomania, and it only increased with the outbreak of World War I, when he penned his hate song.

[4] He came under attack by the vigorous anti-Semitic movement of the day for expressing such "fanatical hatred", which they considered "unreasonable", "utterly un-German", and "characteristic of nothing so much as the Jewish race".

[citation needed] Houston Stewart Chamberlain claimed that the Teutonic German did not "wallow in Old Testament hate.

"[citation needed] Over in England, Arthur Conan Doyle said in his book The German War: "This sort of thing is, it must be admitted, very painful and odious.