Used by star singers around Epiphany, it has become a popular song and is part of many German hymnals and songbooks.

[7] The song is part of the movement Neues Geistliches Lied, a revival of church music in Germany.

The star is addressed, requested to show the way ("zeig uns den Weg"), and in the final stanza to also shine at home, remembering the visit in Bethlehem.

[8] The composition of the German text, in four stanzas of four lines each, is concise, modeled on poets such as Otto Riethmüller or Rudolf Alexander Schröder.

The call "Stern über Bethlehem" begins the first and last line of every stanza, structuring the composition.