Other German politicians have agreed. “Anthems are not written for the moment,” Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, general secretary of Ms. Merkel’s party and seen as her likely heir, said in a statement. “I wouldn’t want our anthem to be changed just so it fits in with the zeitgeist.”

The anthem has a difficult history, she added, and has to be put in context. It was originally written in 1841 to help unite Germany’s states, but its opening verse, which included the line “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” (“Germany, Germany, above all else”), gained sinister connotations under the Nazis and stopped being sung after World War II.

The anthem was again adopted for the united Germany after the Berlin Wall fell. “Our national anthem is a piece of history itself,” Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer said.

Ms. Rose-Möhring’s feelings about the controversy are unknown — the Family Ministry said she would not comment — but those who have succeeded in changing anthems before said it could take years, even decades, to achieve the change if she decides to push her suggestion.