Italian
There is an image that, more than any economic treaty or bureaucratic summit, defines what it means to be European: it is Christmas 1989. On the ruins of the Berlin Wall, Leonard Bernstein – with sweat running down his face and joy in his eyes – conducted musicians from Russia, America, France, and Germany
BRUSSELS. At that moment, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was not just music; it was the breath of a continent coming back to life. In the choir, Director Bernstein replaced the word freude (joy) with the word freinheit (freedom). The final part of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony opens with an invitation from the Author to change tone, no longer the pain of war and defeat, but indeed a Hymn to Joy, as the poet Schiller wrote in his poem that enchanted Beethoven.
Today, that Ode to Joy is our official soundtrack, but we risk treating it like a piece of antiquity: a mute melody echoing in the corridors of Brussels, stripped of its deepest soul. It is time for an act of cultural courage: to bring Schiller’s words back to our squares and, above all, to our schools. The European Union, in 1985, chose to adopt the purely instrumental version out of an excess of diplomacy: it did not want to privilege the German language. But diplomacy does not make history; culture does. Proposing the study and singing of the Anthem in its original language in schools across the continent would not be an act of linguistic submission, but an exercise in universal brotherhood. Singing “Alle Menschen werden Brüder” (all men become brothers) means teaching new generations that our identity does not end at the borders of the Brenner or the Pyrenees. It means understanding that the pain and hope of a boy from Bonn in 1824 are the same as those of a young person from Rome or Warsaw in 2026. The identity of a people is built through symbols. If we accept that the blue flag with the twelve stars and Beethoven’s anthem appear at every official ceremony alongside national flags, we are not erasing our roots. On the contrary, we are protecting them in a broader embrace. There is no
contradiction between the Tricolor and the European Flag, just as there is no conflict between the Hymn of Mameli and Schiller’s Ode. One celebrates the sacrifice that made us a nation; the other celebrates the wisdom that prevents us from destroying ourselves again. And we must teach it to be sung in the original language of Schiller’s poem. Education for European citizenship today is often reduced to notions about regulations and markets. But Europe was born as a dream of poets and musicians even before bankers. Teaching the Ninth in schools – its revolutionary structure, its rejection of “noise” and chaos in favor of “more pleasant accents” – means providing young people with a moral compass. Beethoven’s music reminds us that freedom is a heroic conquest and that joy is a collective duty.
It is time for Europe to sing again. Not with a timid instrumental murmur, but with the strength of millions of voices that, in an ancient yet very current language, shout to the world that we are ready to finally be brothers.
