Beethoven’s Ninth (for European peace and unity)
Thoroughly well-deserved (and I’m not joking):
The Euro may be washed up, but…
…the Nobel peace prize has been awarded to the European Union at a ceremony in Oslo. The EU’s three presidents Herman van Rompuy, José Manuel Barroso and Martin Schulz collected the prize.
German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president François Hollande were given a spontaneous round of applause as they were honoured in a speech. The Nobel committee pointed to the reconciliation between Germany and France after the second world war as the beginning of 60 years of European peace.
None of which means we shouldn’t fight back against austerity!
Below, a splendid musical tribute to European unity (well worth viewing – it’ll brighten up your day, I promise!):
H/t (for the Beethoven): Griff Thomas
Mike Killingworth said,
December 11, 2012 at 8:53 am
Remarkably well behaved kids, those Catalans. And as bank adverts go, definitely in the upper quartile
Francis Sedgemore said,
December 11, 2012 at 3:04 pm
Viva Europa!
SteveH said,
December 11, 2012 at 8:01 pm
You truly are the heirs of Marxism. Lol!
Roger McCarthy (@RF_McCarthy) said,
December 13, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Beautiful.
But I always found it telling that nobody saw the slightest incongruity performing the Ninth in Hitler’s Germany (I seem to remember a film of a visibly moved Hitler shaking Furtwangler’s hand after such a performance) or for that matter in Stalin’s Russia.
And I believe there are still every year a huge number of amateur performances in Japan – a tradition which dates back to WW2 when they were a state-organised homage to the Great German Ally.