Count Egmont was a 17th century Dutch freedom fighter seeking independence from the Spanish Empire in the Low Lands in what became known as the Eighty Years War (1568 – 1648). His story was romanticised by Goethe in his 1787 play, Egmont.
The St Nicholas Church in Leipzig dates back to the 12th century. Today, as you will see, it is a lofty Neoclassical building where Bach’s St John Passion was first performed on Good Friday in 1724.
Beethoven was inspired by Egmont, the play, to compose Egmont, the musical, in about 1810. He portrays Eggers as a tragic hero whose mistress, Klärchen, kills herself before he kills himself. It’s an expression of Beethoven’s disapproval of Napoleon’s domination of Europe. He had already composed Fidelio and there are similar strands in the woof and warp of both works. While you will certainly be familiar with Fidelio you may not know Beethoven’s overture to Egmont. It is a very moving and stirring composition and this rendition, beautifully filmed in the St Nicholas Church, does it justice, in spite of a bovine audience. Listen when you have a drink in your hand and a spare eleven minutes.
I can sometimes recognise an extract from a Beethoven symphony on University Challenge but I was unaware of the Egmont overture until Bertie and I were tooling along the M4 yesterday, on our way to Cranford Park, and it was on Radio 3. There is still some good stuff on R3 and, thanks to catch-up, the dross can be side-stepped like the now seldom seen dog poo on London pavements.
During the dying days of the DDR (East Germany) in 1989 an ever increasing crowd would gather in the Nikolaikirche on Monday evenings for the Prayers for Peace, after which they would march in non-violent protest through the streets of Leibzig. On 9th October the demonstration was 70,000 strong and the authorities were preparing to intervene. Hospitals had been emptied of non-urgent cases as they expected bloodshed.
But the City leaders were uncertain and asked for guidance or confirmation from the country’s leadership. The story goes that they could not reach the most senior members of the government, trying for a couple of hours. This delay meant that the confrontation never took pace.
Thus the freedom fighter Egmond was celebrated in the Nikolaikirche, the church associated with the fight for freedom.
Another chance event with massive implications was the fateful press conference in Berlin on 9th November leading to the opening of the Berlin Wall (covered in this week’s excellent television programme with John Simpson). With more widespread protest developing in East Germany based on the example of Leipzig and the opening of the border in Hungary, the government felt obliged to react.
Günter Schabowski had missed part of the meeting, which took the decision on a new travel regulation and his briefing papers were incomplete. When asked during the press conference about the timing of the new regulation he responded that he understood it to be immediate. Thereupon people streamed to the Berlin Wall, demanding to be let through.