Alle Menschen werden Brüder?! Ein historisches Dokument aus dem Nationalsozialismus in den sozialen Medien

Abstract

This article deals with the recent emergence on social media of a particular kind of audiovisual sources from the time of National Socialism, namely extracts from a performance of the 9th Symphony that took place in 1942 at the ‘Berlin Philharmonie’ on Hitler‘s birthday. The concert was conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. In the footage, Joseph Goebbels can be seen in the applauding audience, before he congratulates the conductor with a handshake at the end of the concert. The material was filmed for propaganda purposes and used in a German News Reel in April 1942. Excerpts from the concert have, in varying lengths and usually without any context, been uploaded to YouTube by different users. This article examines these excerpts, revealing different layers of media within the collaged material. It then illustrates how the original propaganda material was also incorporated into documentary films after the war as part of a strategy to rehabilitate Furtwängler from his involvement with National Socialism. In the second part of the article, an analysis of user comments shows how the relationship between National Socialism, Furtwängler and the symbolism of the symphony is evaluated differently, and how these evaluations may be aligned with four political ideologies – each of which manifests a different understanding of the relationship between society and music.