Note 74 — HIS LIFE

In 1819 he was followed by the police for having said aloud "That, after all, Christ was only a crucified Jew." He was then writing the Mass in D. That work alone is enough to show the freedom of his religious inspirations. (For the religious opinions of Beethoven, see Theodor von Frimmel; Beethoven, 3rd Edition, Verlag Harmonie; and Beethovenia, edited Georg Müller, Vol. II, Blöchinger). No less free in politics, Beethoven boldly attacked the vices of the government. He attacked amongst other things, the administration of justice, hindered by the slowness of its process, the stupid police regulations, the rude and lazy clerks in office, who killed all individual initiative and paralysed all action: the unfair privileges of a degenerate aristocracy, the high taxation, etc. His political sympathies seemed to be with England at that time.