When the film closes, the first-person frame is flouted: a transcendent perspective replaces the human one. The point of view does not coincide with the teacher’s, who has been our guide and instructor. The White Ribbon ends with a long shot of the church interior, as the children's chorus begins to sing (fig. 27). The teacher positions himself to the left of the choir at the top of the tableau. He directs Martin Luther's hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” The lyrics stress the spatial dimensions of unwavering faith, envisioning belief as a secure military fortress. “A mighty fortress [Ein’ feste Burg] is our God, / A bulwark never failing: / Our helper He, amid the flood / Of mortal ills prevailing,” sing the children, with a professional choir acoustically overlaying their voices.

In closing, the narrator re-articulates the lack of knowledge he had thematized at the beginning. But before he does so, his language plays on the “hardiness” and “festiveness” inherent in the word “fest” mentioned in the children's chorale (ein’ feste Burg). The sense of enclosure, whereby home is imagined as a fortification (Festung), conflicts with the joyous festival (Fest) and centripetal force of impending change. The fortress has long been breached metaphorically, and for viewers the scene becomes a proleptic funerary mass. Before the final fade-out, the narrator describes the general excitement: