Within a German context that in particular actually rather means death of the national idea, cf. Slime’s Deutschland muss sterben, “Germany must die”, which, as correctly recognised by the constitutional court, expresses a counterpoint to the Prussian/Nazi militaristic parole “Germany must live, even if we shall die”. The song, taking up sentiment that the court traces back to at least 1844, turns that around into “Germany must die so we may live”, reaffirming individual (and regional) freedom and identity in the face of an encroaching normative force of “Germanness”.

You don’t often see a constitutional court getting into analysis of a punk song but when it happens, well, it’s glorious. And Nazis loathe that sentiment. Two years ago the Bundestag had a debate about regional and minority languages, the AfD was incapable of finding a single parliamentarian of theirs who spoke any. The thing is that while they’re the ones shouting loudest about “protecting German culture”, they’re the last ones to actually value any culture from anywhere in Germany – they want to replace everything with their own ideas, and German nationalism has been like that since pretty much forever. So, yes, Germany must die.