Main Milestones in the Development of the German Festival Movement (First Half of the 19th Century)

The festival movement started developing in Germany since the 1820s. It is usually understood as a continuation of German Romanticism, which was formed against the background of the patriotic upsurge against French expansion, the project has acquired a national character. Adapting to the political reality of Germany in the 1820s, the participants of the song movement tried to separate themselves from the political sphere and to develop in the cultural direction. It is proved in the article that the movement was not able to limit itself exclusively to the cultural direction, and during the revolutionary events it transformed and reacted to what was happening in the political life of the German Union. The term “festival movement" is used in the article in the understanding of D. Duding. It is dominated by cultural national ideas, in which the problem of creating a national state commonwealth occupied a prominent place. Song festivals are used in the understanding of D. Klenke and F. Brusnyak as tools for hidden political speeches of representatives of German society. Based on the period chosen for the study, we selected three pamphlets on holding song festivals and materials from periodicals, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung and Musikalischer Wochenblatt newspapers, the work of Otto Elben, a participant of the festival movement, that correspond chronologically to the period under study.