The first official anthem adopted by West Germany after founding in 1949 was the “Hymn an Deutschland”. Despite the lingering popularit of the “Deutschlandlied”, it was the wish of West Germany’s first president to adopt the “Hymne an Deutschland” as the national anthem, possibly because of the recent misuse of the anthem by the Nazi party (and the subsequent ban on the anthem by the Allied powers for the years following). The anthem proved to be unpopular with the people, however, possibly due to the similarity of a church hymn, and in 1952, the Chancellor persuaded the president to adopt the third verse of the “Deutschlandlied” as the national anthem.
Special thanks to: Reinhard Popp for some of this information