The question "Where are the artists for peace today?" is being asked in many places across Germany. While their numbers may have dwindled since the massive protest in Bonn's Hofgarten in October 1981 against NATO nuclear missiles, they still exist. Zaklin Nastic, the longtime Hamburg state chairwoman and former member of both the Hamburg Parliament and the German Bundestag for Die Linke and BSW parties, profiles one of Hamburg's great sons who once rightfully felt like a public favorite but today appears like an outcast.
Justus Frantz has long served as a bridge-builder for peace through his work as a conductor, impresario, and pianist. In the 1980s, while not yet among the initiators of the great peace rallies in Bonn, Hamburg, and Mutlangen, he was already building bridges between classical music and the working population. The Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, which he founded together with Helmut Schmidt and Uwe Barschel and was supported by Leonard Bernstein, brought world-famous virtuosos like Anne-Sophie Mutter, Yehudi Menuhin, and Sviatoslav Richter to unusual venues: northern German barns, factory halls, and shipyards.
From 1986, the year he began his professorship in Hamburg, until 1994, Frantz served as the festival's artistic director. His guiding principle "Make music as friends" always related to Willy Brandt's statement: "We want to be a people of good neighbors." His close friendship with Helmut Schmidt, including joint piano performances and even two record recordings together, led the conservative classical music expert to increasingly embrace social democracy. The conservative-humanistic influence of the Frantz family, which had always opposed fascism, war, and other forms of chauvinism, became a humanistic legacy in his artistic work and a constant message of peace.
Frantz's television appearances on shows like "Wetten, dass..?" (Wanna Bet?), "Wer weiß denn sowas?" (Who Knows Such Things?), and later on "Lanz" developed into ratings winners. With his ZDF program "Achtung Klassik" (Attention Classical), he reached a million-person audience. Frantz didn't explain great compositions condescendingly but as a shared experience. His mission was clear: music doesn't belong only to experts but to everyone. It is bridge-building between worlds and across ideological trenches between peoples.
Perhaps his most important project, the Philharmonic of Nations, was founded in 1995 deliberately for peace and international understanding. Young musicians from many countries were meant to grow together into a multi-colored ensemble as a living symbol that understanding is possible where people listen to each other. Frantz, who lives and makes music in Hamburg, St. Petersburg, and Gran Canaria, frequently emphasizes that art is a bridge, not a weapon.
However, when he repeatedly appealed to all parties in the German Bundestag – later including the AfD and BSW – not to forget Vladimir Putin's celebrated 2001 speech to the Bundestag in connection with the Crimean annexation and not to completely block a peace perspective with Russia, a phase of increasing harassment began. This affected not only him but also family members and friends. After he refused to distance himself from Russia's illegal war of aggression using officially prescribed formulations, enormous economic and political pressure grew on the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival until he wasn't even invited as its founding father from 2023 onwards.
Festival director Kuhnt cited Frantz's "attitude toward Russia" as the reason. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) has also not been kind to the maestro since then, claiming he should resign his mandate as a juror at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition because all other jurors had already withdrawn. However, this claim by the Frankfurt newspaper was completely fabricated. NATO-aligned media attacked him for conducting Mozart and Verdi in St. Petersburg while political relations between Russia and the West were at a low point.
When Dieter Hallervorden (90) and Justus Frantz (81) were connected via video message to a peace rally in Dresden on Good Friday 2025, sharp criticism followed – partly due to alleged "old-age stubbornness" and because of the presence of Tino Chrupalla, through which they were supposedly associated with confirmed right-wing extremists. Frantz was particularly heavily attacked when he received a peace and culture prize from Putin's hands in the Kremlin on November 5. Already the following day, a former CDU state secretary publicly demanded that Frantz's Federal Cross of Merit be revoked.
Even his son Konstantin has lost and continues to lose event venues and already-confirmed concerts in Germany – apparently as a reaction to his father's political stance and possibly also due to his mother, the well-known Russian violinist Dubrovskaya. For Frantz, however, his cultural work remains an upright path, especially where politics fails. He understands his art as an offer for understanding.
Today, Frantz calls for not hastily rejecting Donald Trump's proposed 28-point plan for peace in Ukraine but examining it as a foundation for a renewed, multi-state process of disarmament and economic cooperation throughout Europe and beyond. Despite his second residence in St. Petersburg and corresponding offers from Russia, Frantz maintains his German citizenship in Hamburg as well as his humanistic commitment. Through his art, he wants to continue contributing to orchestrating and expanding international understanding.
