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West Australian
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- West Australian
Germany's big five anniversaries in 2025
While other countries in Europe mark special occasions in 2025, Germany has noteworthy dates of its own to celebrate, with legendary talents, sights and stories coming under the spotlight. 275 YEARS SINCE THE DEATH OF BACH Decades before Mozart and Beethoven were born, there was another composer who stirred hearts and minds across Europe. That's Johann Sebastian Bach, whose tunes were the sound of the late baroque era. This year, commemorative events are taking place around Germany, including Bach festivals in the state of Thuringia, where he was raised in the town of Eisenach, and in the city of Leipzig, where he composed many of his famous works and passed away on July 28, 1750. Dresden is another focal point for the anniversary celebrations. Bach was a regular visitor to the 'Florence of the Elbe' and the landmark church, the Frauenkirche, at the heart of a city rebuilt after World War II Allied bombing, will be among the concert venues showcasing his compositions, such as the Brandenburg Concertos and Goldberg Variations. 50 YEARS OF THE FAIRY TALE ROUTE Buoyed by the success of the Romantic Road, tourism bosses conjured the Germany Fairy Tale Route, hoping it would do for the country's centre and north what the former did for the south. Winding 600km between Hanau (near Frankfurt) and Buxtehude (near Hamburg), this route is heavily driven by the lives and works of those fairytale masters, Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm. There are dozens of locations to visit en route, including chocolate-box towns and villages like Marburg and Steinau and the woodlands that characters like Hansel and Gretel would have played in. Other places you may have read about in your childhood include Hamelin, famed for its pied piper, and Bremen, where there's a statue of its animal musicians. Elsewhere, there's Sababurg Castle (the model, it's said, for Sleeping Beauty's home) and Rapunzel's Tower, which soars from the medieval fortress in Trendelburg, a town in the Diemel Valley. Throughout the Fairy Tale Route, you will find museums about the Brothers Grimm, open-air performances of their stories in the warmer months, and walking tours led by guides in period and character costumes. fact file + For more information on the anniversary events and to visit Germany, see .
The Guardian
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Scholz to hand over power in Germany to sound of feminist anthem Respect
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is to be played out of office by a military band who will perform tunes chosen by him that are intended to sum up his mood and political life. Scholz will bow out to the Beatles, Johann Sebastian Bach and an Otis Redding hit made famous by Aretha Franklin. The 66-year-old will hand over office on Tuesday to Friedrich Merz, whose centre-right conservatives won Germany's federal election in February, and who will lead a coalition with Scholz's Social Democrats. In a tradition going back to the 16th century, chancellors, presidents, defence ministers and military generals are given a farewell ceremony, and their chosen playlist always receives much scrutiny. According to tradition, Scholz was allowed to request three pieces of music that will be performed by the band of the armed forces. On the programme is the Beatles' In My Life, seen as a nod to his earlier political life when he was mayor of the northern port city of Hamburg between 2011 and 2018, where the Liverpool musicians cut their teeth in its clubs and bars in the 1960s. Some commentators have suggested the song, the lyrics of which include the line 'of all these friends and lovers, there is no one compares with you', is also a tribute to his wife, the fellow politician Britta Ernst, to whom he has often expressed his affection and gratitude. An excerpt from Bach's second Brandenburg Concertos , his only classical choice, is a likely reference to the state of Brandenburg, where he lives and which he will continue to serve as a backbencher. He was the only Social Democrat to win a direct mandate in the former communist east, where the far-right Alternative für Deutschland more or less swept the board. The song choice that has caused the most mirth is the feminist anthem Respect, made famous by Franklin, which alludes to a keyword of the election campaign that brought him to power in 2021, and which he has repeated often. Critics say he has not always lived up to the motto himself, having sometimes been gruff or appearing dismissive to journalists in particular. Commentators have said Scholz's musical choices offer a rare glimpse into the emotional side of the chancellor, who was often referred to as a 'Scholzomat' due to his robotic-like responses, and whose old black leather briefcase became something of a TikTok star while he stayed in the background. Referring to him as a 'file carrier' in a farewell column, Franz Josef Wagner, a veteran columnist for the tabloid Bild, said Scholz's inability to communicate had probably contributed to the brevity of his tenure as chancellor, which lasted just over three years. 'Dear departing chancellor, if you had told us everything that went on in your heart, you would maybe still be chancellor today. But your mouth was sealed. You had a silent heart,' he wrote. Scholz's immediate predecessor Angela Merkel chose Nina Hagen's 1974 hit You Forgot the Colour Film, a mix of nostalgia for holidays on the Baltic coast and a critique of grey life in communist Germany; the chanson Red Roses Should Rain for Me, a 1968 hit by the German actor Hildegard Knef; and Great God, We Praise You, a 17th-century ecumenical hymn. Among the choices of her predecessor, the Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder, was Frank Sinatra's My Way.
