"Joy, beautiful spark of the gods"

The New Year's concert with choral jubilation awakens hope for peaceful coexistence among all people. Friedrich Schiller wrote his poem "Ode to Joy", which soon occupied Beethoven. It is exactly 200 years since the German premiere of the 9th Symphony, in which Beethoven champions the great and sublime, took place in Aachen. It is not without reason that this theme of the final movement became the European anthem.