The most likely immediate source for the melody was a song popular in the German Imperial Navy during World War I, which Wessel would no doubt have heard being sung by Navy veterans in the Berlin of the 1920s. The song was known either by its opening line as "Vorbei, vorbei, sind all die schönen Stunden", or as the "Königsberg-Lied", after the German light cruiser "Königsberg", which is mentioned in one version of the song's lyrics. The opening stanza of the song is: