This discussion could get really difficult, because it does touch music
as a part of our human values, and the condition of our morals.  Urgently
needed for satisfying answers should be some interestening questions.  I
will give it a try.

1. (How) is the musicality of an individual linked to its charakter
(dignity)?

*listening to phantasie & fugue, g-minor(BWV542)*

There was a quote by Ruben Stam, featuring Georg Steiner:

>...  It reminded me of a remark philosopher George Steiner once made
>during an interview in his home in Cambridge (UK).  He said something like:
>"One thing I have never been able to explain is how the Kommandant of a
>concentration camp could go home in the evening after a grizly day's doing,
>sit down behind the piano with his wife and children around him an play a
>Schubert impromptu.  And to say he played it badly would be a lie.  He
>would play it so movingly that tears would spring to your eyes."

So Mr. Steiner also can not give an answer to my question.

Is music recurring or to be put in a relation to politics?

Maybe this is easyer.  Music by Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, has
one significant attribute.  It has been created by individuals.  These
individuals are a part of a society.  Focusing their position in this
society, they only seldom belong to a social weak part of society, having
connections to aristocracy, highest officials, other high-valued artists.

So, if my thoughts are right, we have here an interestening disposition.
If you now talk about germans, which germans do you mean? Maybe the answer
is also yet given, maybe from Mr. Donald Satz:

>But what was just as interesting was the other soldier, who couldn't tell
>whether it was Bach or Mozart.  (Not exactly rocket science, one would
>think.) It drove home the notion that many Germans literally grew up with
>this cultural legacy surrounding them and yet may never have given it any
>conscious thought one way or the other.

This may be right.  But even if it is correct, it is also only matching for
a group of the society, even if it is the majority.  There are, like in any
society, many different germans.  In war, when nearly any male person was
put into the state: Soldier, there are for sure many different soldiers.
What would you feel today, if any of these cruel "Krauts" could have been
telling you the whole BWV (Index of Works by Bach) by memory? THIS would be
strange!  I think my grandfather not be able to tell you the difference
between Bach and Mozart.  I know many persons who would not be able to do
that.  But these persons are no monsters.  And if you would talk a while
with my grandfather, you would indeed find that he is also no monster.  But
he was soldier in WW II, not SS, but a Truck-Driver.  He is not angry that
american soldiers shot him, (his knee, to be exact) he just wonders about
himself having survived.  He described War at all as insanity.  But he
served for his country.  I, as a 21 year old person, am not in the poition
to blame him.

So the solution of the problem finally MUST be astonishing.

We are used to give persons character-attributes like: "Nice", "ugly",
"sweet", maybe even "divine".  In the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung"
from August the 25th, in the part "Geisteswissenschaften" (The Arts and
humanities) i read a nice article written by Manuela Lenzen.  She offers
insight into one work of: Gilbert Harman: "Moral Philosophy Meets Social
Psychology" In: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Bd.  99, part 2,
London 1999.  You for sure know the "Milgram Experiment" with elektro
shocks beeing applied by test persons to victims answering questions.  The
test person inceases the voltage, and does not stop it.  I will sum it up
shortly.  Harman says that THERE ARE NO CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES!

This means: Instead of having their own character attributes, people
decide what they do based on their situation, and based on their perception
of the situation.  This is not an excuse for holocaust, of course not.

But you may remember a person in the old troja: Cassandra, the seer, the
prophet.  To say it with Phil Collins: She "rang a bell with her heart in
her mouth", but she was not heard.  She told the trojans to finish this
stupid war against the greek, and to bring back peace into the community.
Anything failed.  She has gone seeing into death.  And nearly any trojans
with her.  So the SS-Soldier in "Schindlers List" (of course i have seen
the movie), heard the music, but obviously he did not undestand.  He was
conditioned.  Of course, in an evil way.  Not at least, Schindler was also
a (real) german, wasnt he? This reminds me of music.  "Freude schoner
Gotterfunken".  Which use do this words have, if you do not understand
them? Music is, based on Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, if i got that right,
something like true metaphysics.  Maybe the answer to all questions, if it
is simply understood.  and you really do not need to be an Mozart-Expert,
to simply understand great music.

Music, written by very strong characters, is calling for humanity.
I never heard about a cruel AND valueable composer.  But for sure,
music has nothing to do with law and order.  There is no musical
"Obersturmbandfuhrer", which gives the strict order: HUMANITY!  Sotospeak
with DalaiLama: "The love is in yourselfe." (Or something like that)
Nothing which anyone can be forced to.

I will tell you my personal opinion.  Even if there have been and there
are many interestening/god-like composers in germany, and even if it was
germany, which was the source of worldwar II, i guess the following: Music
AND cruelty are not linked to a national membership.  Not at least, other
countrys were also involved in holocaust, and some native americans, (we
talk about a number like 10 000 000) were not happy to be exctincted from
the planet.  And the crusades!  "Holy knights" singing Bach-chorals burning
down villages? I dont know much about crusades, but ther ehave been really
evil reports.

Brief: There have been many evil things before 1900.  If the population
of the icecaps would have had the same cultural surrounding like in Europe,
maybe we would have very many great composers from Greenland.  But as the
conditions there are not easy, we dont have this possible composer.
Regarding the table of evolution, we see that the time in which our
"classical" music was created, would nearly match the tip of a needle,
if we regard a very long needle as the bar of evolution.

When Serbian troops started to throw out Albanians from the country, i was
not likely to believe.  We still had that drama in that century, and now...
again.

The insight is bitter, but i am sure: The human mankind is not nearly
as far in development as individuals like Beethoven.  Maybe the ancient
monster is in everyone of us.  Freud desribed it as "Es", others call it
"the evil", who knows.  Only that can explain an SS-trooper playing
Schubert.

In that perspective, music can spend a good which becomes seldom.  It is
the message of hope.  The hope, that in future more and more persons sing
the song of joy.  The hope, that more and more persons throw away their
war-utilities, and spend their blood to the red cross, and not on the
battlefield.  Doubtless it will be a long yorney.  Maybe the
Schubert-Impromtu played by the SS-man is the tittle shining light of hope,
which has come even through his unconscious to the world.  Persons like
this soldiers are existing.  Today.

Maybe music can help persons like him to wake up.  Maybe music is the
redeeming entity.  It is worth trying it out.  We should go for it!

Best wishes.

Norman, Germany