The paper uses the potential of European national anthems as texts of a ‹collective memory› for literature classes in a foreign language. Using H.A. Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s ‹Lied der Deutschen› (1841) it is shown how collective misinterpretations about the culture of a target language can be relativized by means of a text contrastive procedure. For this reason, a comparison of the historical, political and psychological circumstances of the text genesis of the German and the Polish national anthem (J. Wybicki, 1797) will be carried out.