Beethoven never wrote any public political manifesto, but still we know a great deal about his views. This article will cover his position on politics and society.
Beethoven was a composer and a musician, not a politician or philosopher
It is good to state the obvious sometimes, especially if we deal with a person so complex as Beethoven. He was often emotional and sudden in rage, held views according to his impressions of the moment. When we study his political attitude, we will not find a complete set of ideas that he held and followed all his life. He matured, changed and refined his views on the world. He was working with feelings in interpreting the world, not with coherent political ideology.
Beethoven, Bonn and his cultural background
The Enlightenment was a period of intellectual and social change which began in the 1700s and lasted into the 1800s. It was a period of important philosophical and scientific advancement, and its ideals shaped the culture of Europe.
Beethoven was born in Bonn, in 1770, during the height of the Enlightenment. In Beethoven’s time Germany did not exist and German speaking territories were a network of princedoms. As such, like city states, culture was more local than universal and unified. Bonn, for example, was closer in spirit to Paris than to the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, Vienna.
|Related: What was Beethoven’s nationality?
Bonn was an important center of the Enlightenment in German-speaking Europe, and many of its citizens were leaders in the movement. The city was home to many prominent scholars, scientists, and philosophers, and its culture was heavily influenced by Enlightenment thought.
The conflict in Beethoven’s value system
Beethoven, and any contemporary musician, had to live from and walk among the aristocracy. Music was the privilege of the few, mostly nobility. The situation being as such, one had to careful in expressing opinions. It may seem dishonest or the way of the Pharisee, but realities had to be excepted.
Beethoven fully believed in the values of the Enlightenment, despised class divisions and birth-rights, but at the same time all his patrons and many of his friends were nobles. He was highly respected by many of them, and he was in constant demand to perform for them in their homes. He was a frequent visitor even at the courts of the Emperor. To say the least, Beethoven had a complicated relationship with the aristocracy of his time.
Another layer of conflict within his personality was the famous von-gate. For decades Beethoven failed to deny publicly the misunderstanding concerning the van in his name. In Europe the ‘von’ in a person’s name meant nobility, but in his name it is van, which simply means from and is a common part of any name in Flemish territories. He even let people circulate the rumor that he is an illegitimate child of Frederick the Great.
At the same time Beethoven was often very critical of the nobility, the Emperor and the political-social landscape of his time. He was a strong supporter of the ideals of the French Revolution, but probably was rather a republican idealist and not a democrat in the modern sense. He believed in the power of the people but did not believe in the dictum “Vox populi, vox Dei” (“The people’s voice is the voice of God”).
There is no record of Beethoven having any political affiliation with political parties or organizations, like Free Masonry.
Conclusion
Beethoven’s political views were shaped by his upbringing in Bonn. From childhood he was exposed to the ideas of Rousseau, Voltaire, and other Enlightenment thinkers, which emphasized reason, individualism, and liberty. Beethoven’s music often reflects these ideals, when it expresses the struggle for freedom and the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.
At the same time he had to accept the realities of his contemporary society and its flexibility. He cultivated excellent relationship with the Viennese nobility, many of them good friends of his.
Beethoven was neither a political activist nor a political theorist. His revolutionary and political views were rather philosophical, inward, not on the level of practicality. Rather focusing on the journey of the individual than on changing the society as a whole.
