Preceded by Kulturfilm: Big Boat-Big City (1939, 19 mins). (Schlußakkord). The Third Reich emphasized aesthetic activity in its political designs, relying on both the formative power of high art and the standardized appeal of mass culture. The Nazi myth, according to Lacoue-Labarthe/Nancy, emphasized "the construction, the formation, and the production of the German people in, through, and as a work of art." Music brings Garvenberg and Hanna together in the striking opening sequence; he conducts Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Berlin and, in a series of dissolves across the ocean, we see a despairing Hanna listen to it on the radio in New York. The aesthetic experience spirits the wayward mother back to Germany; she is yet another Sierck expatriate who returns to the homeland. The narrative will clean house, exorcising a wayward wife and empowering a legitimate mother, reconstructing an authentic German family, celebrating the accomplishment as Hanna holds her child and listens to Garvenberg once again conduct Beethoven's Ninth. "Art and artists are not only there to unite; their far more important task is to create a form, to expel the ill trends and make room for the healthy to develop" (Goebbels).-E.R.