Abstract
Handel’s Ode Eternal source of light divine (1713), both an artistic and a strategic masterpiece, not only precipitated the support of the London court and its aristocratic elite. It catapulted the composer into the premiere position within English music society throughout the remaining five decades of his lifetime. As debatable as Handel’s success in England was among many German music historians, especially in the Nazi era, it was not able to encumber the positive reception this subsequently newly worded ode came to enjoy in its role as a socialistic Friedenskantate, which enabled it to satisfactorily fulfill the ideological needs of the GDR’s cultural policy in the 1950s.
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