Berlin, Germany (Weltexpress). The fact that a German cellist is co-organising a choir festival in Russia is being turned into a political scandal because the cellist is also a member of the AfD. These days, anything to do with Russia is cause for outrage.
What a scandal. At least if you believe the Zeit newspaper: ‘AfD foreign policy spokesman Moosdorf met with Putin’s adviser in Moscow.’ He was surely negotiating how to hand over the keys to the Bundestag building, right?
In reality, it’s about a choir festival to be held in Russia in 2027. And Matthias Moosdorf, the foreign policy spokesman in question, is a cellist in his normal life. A professional musician who has been touring with a string quartet for over thirty years. If it weren’t for the incredible hysteria surrounding Russia, the news that a well-known musician is involved in organising an international choir festival in Russia would be, at best, a brief mention, something completely normal.
The same applies to the fact that he has accepted an honorary professorship at the Gnessin Academy in Moscow, which, according to his own description, means that he will teach aspiring chamber musicians ‘several days once a quarter.’ Just a few years ago, this was everyday life in the music world; teachers at music academies come from all over the world, and for decades this was seen as normal and welcome, but only since…
‘In reports on the preparatory meeting with Putin’s adviser Kobjakow, Moosdorf was not mentioned as an AfD politician, but as a member of the organising committee of the World Choir Federation and the Interkultur association. A photo of the meeting shows Moosdorf alongside Hans-Joachim Frey, a German cultural manager who has been working in Russia for many years, organising balls and other events, and who has been awarded Russian citizenship and an ‘Order of Friendship’ by Vladimir Putin for his services.
Well, well, well. So this man has a civilian profession and does things that are usually done in that profession, or at least used to be, without being labelled an ‘AfD politician’. Is it only musicians who are forbidden from remaining musicians, or does the rule also apply to master bakers or plumbers? Admittedly, these are not professions in which global contacts are the norm. But no one would think of demanding a statement from a master baker’s party about his bread. In Moosdorf’s case, however, Die Zeit is actually outraged that the spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag declared that he had never heard of Moosdorf’s meeting and that it had ‘no connection to our parliamentary work.’
It is astonishing how easily Die Zeit jumps on such simple statements. Moosdorf is actually accused of saying that ‘Russian music is one of the most significant contributions to world culture’. What is wrong with this statement? It would not even be possible to isolate the contribution of a single culture to the history of music, but the current expectation is to banish everything Russian from culture.
This does not only apply to statements such as those made by Moosdorf, but also to performances and concert programmes. Incidentally, this was a step that the Nazis only took on 12 July 1941, when the invasion of the Soviet Union had already begun, on the orders of the Propaganda Ministry:
‘Without exception, Russian music and Russian literature (including the so-called classics such as … Tchaikovsky …) are no longer to be performed or sold, or removed from libraries.’
But back to the present, where Moosdorf is guilty of co-organising a choir festival. The Russian Foreign Ministry, quoting a report by TASS, ‘actively supports the initiative and considers it an important step towards strengthening international humanitarian relations.’ This is actually a perfectly normal statement, as is usually the case when a government agency co-finances a cultural event. When funds from the Foreign Ministry are used, the justification should also be in line with the tasks of a Foreign Ministry and should not contradict what is usually associated with the respective field. Business as usual, except when it comes to Russia. With whom, as if it were July 1941, we are not allowed to have anything to do culturally.
Incidentally, this is about a choir festival. The German Choir Association, which itself only includes non-church choirs, counted 55,000 choirs in Germany in 2019, not including school choirs. However, the coronavirus measures have also taken their toll here; according to the association’s managing director, around 20 per cent of singers have been lost as a result, unfortunately mainly among young people. And choirs are so formative for Germany that ‘choral music in German amateur choirs’ has been listed as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO since 2014.
But singing together has gone out of fashion. In 1973, 52 per cent of Germans still sang at home under the Christmas tree; by 2003, the figure was only 39 per cent, and in 2021 it was only one in four. This is not just a side effect of a lack of music teachers and cutbacks in music lessons. It is a real loss of quality of life, because unlike instruments, which you first have to buy (and be able to afford), singing is a form of culture that is available to everyone who is not mute. And the experience of polyphony that you can have in a choir is formative.
Choir singing is something that was once typical of Germany. So typical that when the then fledgling SPD was banned in 1878 (still as the Socialist Workers‘ Party), it hid its party organisation in workers’ singing clubs and was thus able to survive for twelve years. These singing clubs actually sang and kept the party alive well enough that it tripled its share of the vote in the 1890 Reichstag elections to 1.4 million.
There is a magic all its own in singing together; it connects people more deeply than sports, which cannot do without an element of competition. It allows us to experience how very different things merge into something greater without disappearing, carried by the breath. Even the simplest form of polyphonic singing, the canon, makes this experience possible. And choirs that meet can sing together. What Moosdorf is being accused of is one of the most peaceful and pacifying activities known to humankind.
Perhaps that is precisely the point. There are few occasions that express the idea of international understanding more clearly than an international choir meeting, and the thinking of our Russophobes here works in exactly the opposite way – the more peaceful something is, the more sinister machinations are suspected behind it; it can only be malicious deception. In the end, German participants would probably come back and be able to sing nothing but ‘Katyusha’ for the rest of their lives.
Well, trying to spin a yarn out of everything and everyone is nothing new, and the strange way in which Russian culture is treated has a long tradition, so it should come as no surprise that the opportunity to accuse an AfD politician of being too close to Russia is eagerly seized upon. Far worse is what else is discarded in the process.
My mother, born in 1933, was in a choir in her youth that sang songs from countless countries in their original languages. This was a small but important building block in reopening her eyes to the world after the Germanic cult and cultural narrow-mindedness of the Nazis. She told me about it with great pride. If you look a little deeper into how a way out of the darkness of the Nazi years was found, you realise how important culture was in this process – as the real unifying force between peoples. The hostility on display here in the Zeit is not directed at an AfD politician, who is merely a trigger. It goes deeper – it is directed against humanity itself.
