*1.1. The Situation in Germany at the Start of the Pandemic*

When lockdown in Germany started on 13 March 2020, stores, restaurants, bars, and discos had to close. Parties and (sporting, music) events had to be cancelled, and schools and universities had to change to online lessons and homeschooling. Many people had to work from home and reduce their working hours, and some lost their jobs. The unemployment rate in Germany rose by 0.7% from March to April, and there were 10.1 million applications from employers to temporarily reduce employee working hours between March to April. Therefore, the number of people working fewer hours increased to an unprecedented level in Germany during this time [1].

From 13 March until 5 June 2020, people were only allowed to meet people from one other household. Between March and May, there were 181,482 infected people in

**Citation:** Roese, N.A.; Merrill, J. Consequences of the COVID-19 Lockdown in Germany: Effects of Changes in Daily Life on Musical Engagement and Functions of Music. *Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health* **2021**, *18*, 10463. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ijerph181910463

Academic Editors: Paolo Roma, Merylin Monaro, Cristina Mazza and Paul Tchounwou

Received: 11 August 2021 Accepted: 2 October 2021 Published: 5 October 2021

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Germany, and 8500 people had died of SARS-CoV-2 [2]. Through the media, the people in Germany were confronted with the possibility of an increase in the development of the COVID-19 pandemic comparable to other, strongly affected regions in the world. Based on the proportion of infected people and number of ICU stations, the German government justified the lockdown (and has ever since) to reduce the risk as much as possible of being in a position where the healthcare system has to make ethical judgements about whom to grant intensive care.

There is mixed evidence of the effect of consequences due to COVID-19 on the mental health of the German population. Entringer and Kröger (2020) [3] reported an increase in subjective loneliness during the first months of the restrictions in Germany, which was described as a discrepancy between desired and existing social relationships. Otherwise, the authors report that life satisfaction, emotional well-being, and symptoms of depression and anxiety were, interestingly, unchanged. People were even more satisfied with their health, which was probably because of the contrast to people who were infected with COVID-19 and suffered from health problems of SARS-CoV-2.

In a study by Bäuerle et al. (2020) [4], a high prevalence of generalized anxiety symptoms, depression symptoms, psychological distress, and COVID-19 related worries were seen from March until May, which shows that there was an increased mental health burden during the lockdown (although with a lower prevalence compared to China, which was also investigated). While in times before the pandemic, healthy people were shown to spend 28–55 min worrying [5,6], during the lockdown, people indicate on average spending 4.45 h per day thinking about COVID-19 and its effects [7]. The reported worries were more related to social than to personal aspects; that is, people were more concerned about social consequences than about getting infected or dealing with changes in their daily lives. Additionally, social consequences weighed more than the fear of economic consequences, and people indicated that anxiety due to the pandemic impacted their lives [7].
