It all depends.
It is a wide topic.
I agreeGermans have good food; and I like food. If I was a beer drinker, I'd only drink German beer because they know how to do it right.
And there was man living in my area, who was German, and he got called back and since he spoke perfect English (being raised American) he was put in interrogating soldiers. Well, one day, an American soldier who was fighting against the Third Reich, got captured; and the German man recognized him, and the American recognized the German. They shared the same hometown in America, and it was all, "HEY BUDDY! How's it going? So what are you doing in the war? How'd you get here?"
Further, not all Germans were NATZI's, who came to power based upon a minority government that came to power during a period of extreme social strife and ended democracy in Germany, making a great many of it's citizens, the first victims of the NATZI's.
Hanns Scharff was a really pleasant personality!@Red Gold - The website wouldn't load the video but I searched it on Youtube. I think I watched the same one you posted, and I lol'd that he made Cinderella mosaics. Best interrogator in the Nazi Party and he goes on to make Cinderella mosaics.
That was an interesting video. I think my Dad had referred to this guy once before in the past, but I don't think he had all the facts, just lost details of hearsay.
If we could ask Mozart himself if he was German, he would definitely answer “YES”. If we could ask him if he was born in Austria, he would definitely answer “NO”. So, for his time, Mozart was most certainly German, and not Austrian.
Things get messier later on, because history changes territories, definitions, and perceptions, and things get difficult if you try to adapt historical facts to modern concepts.
The very nature of your question is quite modern. Up to the late 19th Century, the idea of “Austrian” and “German” being mutually exclusive terms would be perceived as the most preposterous absurd. Saying Austrians were not Germans would be exactly the same as saying Bavarian people were not German. This is because, before 1871, there was no unified Germany and, thus, “German” was not a word to refer to a specific country, but to a broad ethno-linguistic group, of which Mozart (as well as the Austrians) was part of.
This explains why Mozart was no doubt considered a German. But this would not exclude him from being Austrian, as long as he had been born in Austria. Now we get to another complexity.
Mozart was born in Salzburg, which, at the time, was a German Archbishopric State, not a part of Austria. Nowadays, Salzburg is indeed in Austria, and this fact is one of the only two arguments that exist for considering Mozart an Austrian. It is anachronistic, though. Historically, Salzburg was Bavarian, and than independent. It was conquered by Austria some years after Mozart’s death, and had some convoluted changes of property some times, eventually ending with Austria again. Note that this was all after he died. If history had played differently, and Salzburg ended with Bavaria again, there would be not a single person today making the argument that Mozart was Austrian.
One of my favorite classical music composers.Beethoven
Is this where the eugenics ideas came in?Talking of Germany in general:
There is a trend, also within Germany, to reduce all of Germany and the Germans to the years 1933 to 1945.
Just as if there never ever was anything before or after.
No Luther, no Gutenberg, no Goethe, no Benz or Daimler, no Hertz, no Röntgen, no Eichendorff, no Mozart, no Bach or Beethoven etc etc
Only Hitler and Göring and Göbbels etc etc .....
Ethnically, I would say he was Austrian. I think there is something that drives people to their native homelands, and he spent most of his later life in Vienna (if I know my history)This brings me to the age-old question:
Was Mozart a German or an Austrian - or neither - or both?
What would you say?
It is really a tricky question!
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