Anthony Charles: Wilhelm Furtwängler and Music in the Third Reich
Premise Checker
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n3p-2_Charles.html
Not only during his lifetime, but also in the decades since his
death in 1954, Wilhelm Furtwängler has been globally recognized as
one of the greatest musicians of this century, above all as the
brilliant primary conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra,
which he lead from 1922 to 1945, and again after 1950. On his
death, the Encyclopaedia Britannica commented: "By temperament a
Wagnerian, his restrained dynamism, superb control of his orchestra
and mastery of sweeping rhythms also made him an outstanding
exponent of Beethoven." Furtwängler was also a composer of merit
Underscoring his enduring greatness have been several recent
in-depth biographies and a successful 1996 Broadway play, "Taking
Sides," that portrays his postwar "denazification" purgatory, as
well as steadily strong sales of CD recordings of his performances
(some of them available only in recent years). Furtwängler
societies are active in the United States, France, Britain, Germany
and other countries. His overall reputation, however, especially in
America, is still a controversial one.
Following the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933, some
prominent musicians -- most notably such Jewish artists as Bruno
Walter, Otto Klemperer and Arnold Schoenberg -- left Germany. Most
of the nation's musicians, however, including the great majority of
its most gifted musical talents, remained -- and even flourished.
With the possible exception of the composer Richard Strauss,
Furtwängler was the most prominent musician to stay and
"collaborate."
Consequently, discussion of his life -- even today -- still
provokes heated debate about the role of art and artists under
Hitler and, on a more fundamental level, about the relationship of
art and politics.
A Non-Political Patriot
Wilhelm Furtwängler drew great inspiration from his homeland's rich
cultural heritage, and his world revolved around music, especially
German music. Although essentially non-political, he was an ardent
patriot, and leaving his fatherland was simply out of the question.
Ideologically he may perhaps be best characterized as a man of the
"old" Germany -- a Wilhelmine conservative and an authoritarian
elitist. Along with the great majority of his countrymen, he
welcomed the demise of the ineffectual democratic regime of
Germany's "Weimar republic" (1918-1933). Indeed, he was the
conductor chosen to direct the gala performance of Wagner's "Die
Meistersinger" for the "Day of Potsdam," a solemn state ceremony on
March 21, 1933, at which President von Hindenburg, the youthful new
Chancellor Adolf Hitler and the newly-elected Reichstag formally
ushered in the new government of "national awakening." All the
same, Furtwängler never joined the National Socialist Party (unlike
his chief musical rival, fellow conductor Herbert von Karajan).
It wasn't long before Furtwängler came into conflict with the new
authorities. In a public dispute in late 1934 with Propaganda
Minister Joseph Goebbels over artistic direction and independence,
he resigned his positions as director of the Berlin Philharmonic
and as head of the Berlin State Opera. Soon, however, a compromise
agreement was reached whereby he resumed his posts, along with a
measure of artistic independence. He was also able to exploit both
his prestigious position and the artistic and jurisdictional
rivalries between Goebbels and Göring to play a greater and more
independent role in the cultural life of Third Reich Germany.
From then on, until the Reich's defeat in the spring of 1945, he
continued to conduct to much acclaim both at home and abroad
(including, for example, a highly successful concert tour of
Britain in 1935). He was also a guest conductor of the Vienna
Philharmonic, 1939-1940, and at the Bayreuth Festival. On several
occasions he led concerts in support of the German war effort. He
also nominally served as a member of the Prussian State Council and
as vice-president of the "Reich Music Chamber," the state-sponsored
professional musicians' association.
Throughout the Third Reich era, Furtwängler's eminent influence on
Europe's musical life never diminished.
Cultural Vitality
For Americans conditioned to believe that nothing of real cultural
or artistic merit was produced in Germany during the Hitler era,
the phrase "Nazi art" is an oxymoron -- a contradiction in terms.
The reality, though, is not so simple, and it is gratifying to note
that some progress is being made to set straight the historical
record.
This is manifest, for example, in the publication in recent years
of two studies that deal extensively with Furtwängler, and which
generally defend his conduct during the Third Reich: The Devil's
Music Master by Sam Shirakawa [reviewed in the Jan.-Feb. 1994
Journal, pp. 41-43] and Trial of Strength by Fred K. Prieberg.
These revisionist works not only contest the widely accepted
perception of the place of artists and arts in the Third Reich,
they express a healthy striving for a more factual and objective
understanding of the reality of National Socialist Germany.
Prieberg's Trial of Strength concentrates almost entirely on
Furtwängler's intricate dealings with Goebbels, Göring, Hitler and
various other figures in the cultural life of the Third Reich. In
so doing, he demonstrates that in spite of official measures to
"coordinate" the arts, the regime also permitted a surprising
degree of artistic freedom. Even the anti-Jewish racial laws and
regulations were not always applied with rigor, and exceptions were
frequent. (Among many instances that could be cited, Leo Blech
retained his conducting post until 1937, in spite of his Jewish
ancestry.) Furtwängler exploited this situation to intervene
successfully in a number of cases on behalf of artists, including
Jews, who were out of favor with the regime. He also championed
Paul Hindemith, a "modern" composer whose music was regarded as
degenerate.
The artists and musicians who left the country (especially the
Jewish ones) contended that without them, Germany's cultural life
would collapse. High culture, they and other critics of Hitler and
his regime arrogantly believed, would wither in an ardently
nationalist and authoritarian state. As Prieberg notes: "The
musicians who emigrated or were thrown out of Germany from 1933
onwards indeed felt they were irreplaceable and in consequence
believed firmly that Hitler's Germany would, following their
departure, become a dreary and empty cultural wasteland. This would
inevitably cause the rapid collapse of the regime."
Time would prove the critics wrong. While it is true that the
departure of such artists as Fritz Busch and Bruno Walter did hurt
initially (and dealt a blow to German prestige), the nation's most
renowned musicians -- including Richard Strauss, Carl Orff, Karl
Böhm, Hans Pfitzner, Wilhelm Kempff, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Herbert
von Karajan, Anton Webern, as well as Furtwängler -- remained to
produce musical art of the highest standards. Regardless of the
emigration of a number of Jewish and a few non-Jewish artists, as
well as the promulgation of sweeping anti-Jewish restrictions,
Germany's cultural life not only continued at a high level, it
flourished.
The National Socialists regarded art, and especially music, as an
expression of a society's soul, character and ideals. A widespread
appreciation of Germany's cultural achievements, they believed,
encouraged a joyful national pride and fostered a healthy sense of
national unity and mission. Because they regarded themselves as
guardians of their nation's cultural heritage, they opposed
liberal, modernistic trends in music and the other arts, as
degenerate assaults against the cultural-spiritual traditions of
Germany and the West.
Acting swiftly to promote a broad revival of the nation's cultural
life, the new National Socialist government made prodigious efforts
to further the arts and, in particular, music. As detailed in two
recent studies (Kater's The Twisted Muse and Levi's Music in the
Third Reich), not only did the new leadership greatly increase
state funding for such important cultural institutions as the
Berlin Philharmonic and the Bayreuth Wagner Festival, it used
radio, recordings and other means to make Germany's musical
heritage as accessible as possible to all its citizens.
As part of its efforts to bring art to the people, it strove to
erase classical music's snobbish and "class" image, and to make it
widely familiar and enjoyable, especially to the working class. At
the same time, the new regime's leaders were mindful of popular
musical tastes. Thus, by far most of the music heard during the
Third Reich era on the radio or in films was neither classical nor
even traditional. Light music with catchy tunes -- similar to those
popular with listeners elsewhere in Europe and in the United States
-- predominated on radio and in motion pictures, especially during
the war years.
The person primarily responsible for implementing the new cultural
policies was Joseph Goebbels. In his positions as Propaganda
Minister and head of the "Reich Culture Chamber," the umbrella
association for professionals in cultural life, he promoted music,
literature, painting and film in keeping with German values and
traditions, while at the same time consistent with popular tastes.
Hitler's Attitude
No political leader had a keener interest in art, or was a more
enthusiastic booster of his nation's musical heritage than Hitler,
who regarded the compositions of Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner and
the other German masters as sublime expressions of the Germanic
"soul."
Hitler's reputation as a bitter, second rate "failed artist" is
undeserved. As John Lukacs acknowledges in his recently published
work, The Hitler of History (pp. 70-72), the German leader was a
man of real artistic talent and considerable artistic discernment.
We perhaps can never fully understand Hitler and the spirit behind
his political movement without knowing that he drew great
inspiration from, and identified with, the heroic figures of
European legend who fought to liberate their peoples from tyranny,
and whose stories are immortalized in the great musical dramas of
Wagner and others.
This was vividly brought out by August Kubizek, Hitler's closest
friend as a teenager and young man, in his postwar memoir
(published in the US under the title The Young Hitler I Knew).
Kubizek describes how, after the two young men together attended
for the first time a performance in Linz of Wagner's opera
"Rienzi," Hitler spoke passionately and at length about how this
work's inspiring story of a popular Roman tribune had so deeply
moved him. Years later, after he had become Chancellor, he related
to Kubizek how that performance of "Rienzi" had radically changed
his life. "In that hour it began," he confided.
Hitler of course recognized Furtwängler's greatness and understood
his significance for Germany and German music. Thus, when other
officials (including Himmler) complained of the conductor's
nonconformity, Hitler overrode their objections. Until the end,
Furtwängler remained his favorite conductor. He was similarly
indulgent toward his favorite heldentenor, Max Lorenz, and
Wagnerian soprano Frida Leider, each of whom was married to a Jew.
Their cultural importance trumped racial or political
considerations.
Postwar Humiliations
A year and a half after the end of the war in Europe, Furtwängler
was brought before a humiliating "denazification" tribunal. Staged
by American occupation authorities and headed by a Communist, it
was a farce. So much vital information was withheld from both the
tribunal and the defendant that, Shirakawa suggests, the occupation
authorities may well have been determined to "get" the conductor.
In his closing remarks at the hearing, Furtwängler defiantly
defended his record:
The fear of being misused for propaganda purposes was wiped out
by the greater concern for preserving German music as far as was
possible ... I could not leave Germany in her deepest misery. To
get out would have been a shameful flight. After all, I am a
German, whatever may be thought of that abroad, and I do not
regret having done it for the German people.
Even with a prejudiced judge and serious gaps in the record, the
tribunal was still unable to establish a credible case against the
conductor, and he was, in effect, cleared.
A short time later, Furtwängler was invited to assume direction of
the Chicago Symphony. (He was no stranger to the United States: in
1927-29 he had served as visiting conductor of the New York
Philharmonic.)
On learning of the invitation, America's Jewish cultural
establishment launched an intense campaign -- spearheaded by The
New York Times, musicians Artur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz,
and New York critic Ira Hirschmann -- to scuttle Furtwängler's
appointment. As described in detail by Shirakawa and writer Daniel
Gillis (in Furtwängler and America) the campaigners used
falsehoods, innuendos and even death threats.
Typical of its emotionally charged rhetoric was the bitter reproach
of Chicago Rabbi Morton Berman:
Furtwängler preferred to swear fealty to Hitler. He accepted at
Hitler's hands his reappointment as director of the Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra. He was unfailing in his service to
Goebbels' ministry of culture and propaganda ... The token
saving of a few Jewish lives does not excuse Mr. Furtwängler
from official, active participation in a regime which murdered
six million Jews and millions of non-Jews. Furtwängler is a
symbol of all those hateful things for the defeat of which the
youth of our city and nation paid an ineffable price.
Among prominent Jews in classical music, only the famous violinist
Yehudi Menuhin defended the German artist. After Furtwängler was
finally obliged to withdrew his name from consideration for the
Chicago post, a disillusioned Moshe Menuhin, Yehudi's father,
scathingly denounced his co-religionists. Furtwängler, he declared,
was a victim of envious and jealous rivals who had to resort to
publicity, to smear, to calumny, in order to keep him out of
America so it could remain their private bailiwick. He was the
victim of the small fry and puny souls among concert artists,
who, in order to get a bit of national publicity, joined the
bandwagon of professional idealists, the professional Jews and
hired hands who irresponsibly assaulted an innocent and humane
and broad-minded man ...
A Double Standard
Third Reich Germany is so routinely demonized in our society that
any acknowledgment of its cultural achievements is regarded as
tantamount to defending "fascism" and that most unpardonable of
sins, anti-Semitism. But as Professor John London suggests (in an
essay in The Jewish Quarterly, "Why Bother about Fascist Culture?,"
Autumn 1995), this simplistic attitude can present awkward
problems:
Far from being a totally ugly, unpopular, destructive entity,
culture under fascism was sometimes accomplished, indeed
beautiful ... If you admit the presence, and in some instances
the richness, of a culture produced under fascist regimes, then
you are not defending their ethos. On the other hand, once you
start dismissing elements, where do you stop?
In this regard, is it worth comparing the way that many media and
cultural leaders treat artists of National Socialist Germany with
their treatment of the artists of Soviet Russia. Whereas
Furtwängler and other artists who performed in Germany during the
Hitler era are castigated for their cooperation with the regime,
Soviet-era musicians, such as composers Aram Khachaturian and
Sergei Prokofiev, and conductors Evgeny Svetlanov and Evgeny
Mravinsky -- all of whom toadied to the Communist regime in varying
degrees -- are rarely, if ever, chastised for their
"collaboration." The double standard that is clearly at work here
is, of course, a reflection of our society's obligatory concern for
Jewish sensitivities.
The artist and his work occupy a unique place in society and
history. Although great art can never be entirely divorced from its
political or social environment, it must be considered apart from
that. In short, art transcends politics.
No reasonable person would denigrate the artists and sculptors of
ancient Greece because they glorified a society that, by today's
standards, was hardly democratic. Similarly, no one belittles the
builders of medieval Europe's great cathedrals on the grounds that
the social order of the Middle Ages was dogmatic and hierarchical.
No cultured person would disparage William Shakespeare because he
flourished during England's fervently nationalistic and anti-Jewish
Elizabethan age. Nor does anyone chastise the magnificent composers
of Russia's Tsarist era because they prospered under an autocratic
regime. In truth, mankind's greatest cultural achievements have
most often been the products not of liberal or egalitarian
societies, but rather of quite un-democratic ones.
A close look at the life and career of Wilhelm Furtwängler reveals
"politically incorrect" facts about the role of art and artists in
Third Reich Germany, and reminds us that great artistic creativity
and achievement are by no means the exclusive products of
democratic societies.
Bibliography
Gillis, Daniel. Furtwängler and America. Palo Alto: Rampart Press,
1970
Kater, Michael H. The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in
the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997
Levi, Erik. Music in the Third Reich. New York: St. Martin's Press,
1994
Prieberg, Fred K. Trial of Strength: Wilhelm Furtwängler in the
Third Reich. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994
Shirakawa, Sam H. The Devil's Music Master: The Controversial Life
and Career of Wilhelm Furtwängler. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992
A Note on Wartime Recordings
Among the most historically fascinating and sought-after recordings
of Wilhelm Furtwängler performances are his live wartime concerts
with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras. Many were
recorded by the Reich Broadcasting Company on magnetophonic tape
with comparatively good sound quality. Music & Arts (Berkeley,
California) and Tahra (France) have specialized in releasing good
quality CD recordings of these performances. Among the most
noteworthy are:
Beethoven, Third "Eroica" Symphony (1944) -- Tahra 1031 or Music &
Arts CD 814
Beethoven, Fifth Symphony (1943) -- Tahra set 1032/33, which also
includes Furtwängler's performances of this same symphony from 1937
and 1954.
Beethoven, Ninth "Choral" Symphony (1942) -- Music & Arts CD 653 or
Tahra 1004/7.
Brahms, Four Symphonies -- Music & Arts set CD 941 (includes two
January 1945 performances, Furtwängler's last during the war).
Bruckner, Fifth Symphony (1942) -- Music & Arts CD 538
Bruckner, Ninth Symphony (1944) -- Music & Arts CD 730 (also
available in Europe on Deutsche Gramophon CD, and in the USA as an
import item).
R. Strauss, "Don Juan" (1942), and Four Songs, with Peter Anders
(1942), etc. -- Music & Arts CD 829.
Wagner, "Die Meistersinger:" Act I, Prelude (1943), and "Tristan
und Isolde:" Prelude and Liebestod (1942), etc. -- Music & Arts CD
794.
Wagner, "Der Ring des Nibelungen," excerpts from "Die Walküre" and
"Gotterdämmerung" -- Music & Arts set CD 1035 (although not from
the war years, these 1937 Covent Garden performances are legendary)
"Great Conductors of the Third Reich: Art in the Service of Evil"
is a worthwhile 53-minute VHS videocassette produced by the Bel
Canto Society (New York). Released in 1997, it is distributed by
Allegro (Portland, Oregon). It features footage of Furtwängler
conducting Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for Hitler's birthday
celebration in April 1942. He is also shown conducting at Bayreuth,
and leading a concert for wounded soldiers and workers at an AEG
factory during the war. Although the notes are highly tendentious,
the rare film footage is fascinating.
______________________________________________________________
About the author:
Antony Charles is the pen name of an educator and writer who holds
both a master's and a doctoral degree in history. He has taught
history and is the author of several books. A resident of North
Carolina, he currently works for a government agency.
Ian Pace
Historical Review, who publish this article on their site, are.
"Premise Checker" <che...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.NEB.4.64.06...@panix1.panix.com...
John W. Kennedy
> I hope anyone reading this knows quite what sort of a body the Institute for
> Historical Review, who publish this article on their site, are.
/I/ know that they're Nazi scum who deserve to be lined up against a
wall and shot, but it's a bit much to assume that everyone does.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The blind rulers of Logres
Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
-- Charles Williams. "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"
Gabriel Parra
> I hope anyone reading this knows quite what sort of a body the Institute for
> Historical Review, who publish this article on their site, are.
Sad, despicable and disgusting. Few are the times when I have been so
dismayed at reading such a damning "defense" of Furtwängler. As the
saying goes, with friends like these, who needs Nazis? Surely the
Menuhins would have been outraged at reading their legitimate defense
of Furtwängler's actions during the Third Reich used for such
illegitimate means. There is no Jewish musician that I can conjure up
in my worst nightmares who would ever consent to have their name used
in the name of an apologia such as this. Neither do I believe
Furtwängler would have approved to be "defended" by an organization
such as this. I am literally nauseaous. No wonder Furtwängler is so
often (wrongly) villified when essays such as these are offered up as
evidence of his "greatness" (not to mention Hitler's "sublime" artistic
sensibilities). For once, Pace, I agree with the crux of what you were
obviously trying to say...
Ian Pace
"Gabriel Parra" <gparrab...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1162865971....@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
I didn't even read the article when I saw where it came from. Now I have -
it's utterly despicable in every sense. And a grotesque insult to
Furtwängler (who certainly cannot be seen as an innocent during the Third
Reich). The article is clearly written by a neo-Nazi - can one believe the
stuff about how 'Even the anti-Jewish racial laws and regulations were not
always applied with rigor'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ian
Bob Harper
Not an innocent, to be sure, but as guilty as you imply? I don't think
so. Or if he's guilty, then so were Mravinsky, et al in the SU.
Bob Harper
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in
news:Pine.NEB.4.64.06...@panix1.panix.com:
> Antony Charles is the pen name of a
coward.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Harrington/Coy is a gay wrestler who won't come out of the closet
Matthew B. Tepper
following letters to be typed in news:FnR3h.141$S84...@newsfe08.lga:
> Ian Pace wrote:
>> I hope anyone reading this knows quite what sort of a body the
>> Institute for Historical Review, who publish this article on their
>> site, are.
>
> /I/ know that they're Nazi scum who deserve to be lined up against a
> wall and shot, but it's a bit much to assume that everyone does.
Not shot; publicly humiliated again, and again, and again, and again, and
again, and again, and again....
TareeDawg
news:r1R3h.7150$fz1....@newsfe4-win.ntli.net...
>I hope anyone reading this knows quite what sort of a body the Institute
>for Historical Review, who publish this article on their site, are.
Well I don't. Please enlighten the unenlightened..
Ta.
Ray H
Taree, NSW
TareeDawg
news:GOCdnRql7uv1mM3Y...@comcast.com...
>
> Not an innocent, to be sure, but as guilty as you imply? I don't think so.
> Or if he's guilty, then so were Mravinsky, et al in the SU.
Different people, different countries. But assuming they are 'guilty', by
association, why should Mravinsky not be as well? Or Fred Bloggsovich come
to that. Both conductors seem to have their fanatical followings in this
group, and it seems to me as if the bog-standard excuses are being prepared
by their followers. Never knock an icon. Must keep the lustre aglow.
Meanwhile, Herbie the K, a very very young up-and-coming conductor during
the thirties, gets the Nazi thing thrown at him again and again. But then he
wasn't quite the icon that WF and Mravinsky was, was he?
Ray H
Taree, NSW
Frank Berger
"TareeDawg" <rayt...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
news:KLU3h.60322$rP1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
From Wikipedia:
The Institute for Historical Review (IHR), founded in 1978, is a highly
controversial American organization. It describes itself as a "public
interest educational, research and publishing center dedicated to promoting
greater public awareness of history." Its many critics in the United States,
Europe and elsewhere call it, among other things, an anti-semitic
"pseudo-academic body" linked to Neo-Nazi organizations and to Holocaust
denial.[1] Broadcaster CNN has called the IHR the "world's leading Holocaust
denial organization."[2]
IHR publishes the widely criticized non-peer reviewed Journal of Historical
Review.
Gabriel Parra
> From Wikipedia:
>
> The Institute for Historical Review (IHR), founded in 1978, is a highly
> controversial American organization. It describes itself as a "public
> interest educational, research and publishing center dedicated to promoting
> greater public awareness of history." Its many critics in the United States,
> Europe and elsewhere call it, among other things, an anti-semitic
> "pseudo-academic body" linked to Neo-Nazi organizations and to Holocaust
> denial.[1] Broadcaster CNN has called the IHR the "world's leading Holocaust
> denial organization."[2]
>
> IHR publishes the widely criticized non-peer reviewed Journal of Historical
> Review.
One need not refer to Wiki to draw their own first-hand impresions.
Going to their website is sufficient evidence. No one does a better job
of damning that group than themselves.
Considering this organization, I realize how dangerous it is to label
this or that person or group as being "anti-Semitic." While this group
clearly deserves to be called such, I do think it is a term that is far
too hastily applied by some, including, perhaps, myself. Same goes for
neo-Nazi. The power of these terms--their credibility--is certainly
subverted by liberal and facile application. Just a thought. That's why
instead of having Wiki tell us that its many critics regard this group
as anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi, I would urge anyone interested to learn
more about them first-hand so that they may reach what will probably be
the same conclusions for themselves.
Paul Ilechko
> Ian Pace wrote:
>> I hope anyone reading this knows quite what sort of a body the
>> Institute for Historical Review, who publish this article on their
>> site, are.
>
> /I/ know that they're Nazi scum who deserve to be lined up against a
> wall and shot, but it's a bit much to assume that everyone does.
>
"Premise Checker" has historically shown a fondness for such types ...
Dan Fowler
"Taking Sides" that discussed some of these issues. The plot takes place in
Germany shortly after WW II and covers the trial of Furtwangler by the
Americans. Stellan Skarsgard played Furtwangler and Harvey Keitel played the
American officer charged with prosecuting him. Some of the music played in
the movie was conducted by Furtwangler, the rest by Daniel Barenboim and the
Staatskapelle of Berlin. During the course of the movie, Keitel kept saying
that Furtwangler referred to the up and coming Karajan as "little K".
Dan
"TareeDawg" <rayt...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
news:TZU3h.60332$rP1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
Gabriel Parra
> I didn't even read the article when I saw where it came from. Now I have -
> it's utterly despicable in every sense. And a grotesque insult to
> Furtwängler (who certainly cannot be seen as an innocent during the Third
> Reich). The article is clearly written by a neo-Nazi - can one believe the
> stuff about how 'Even the anti-Jewish racial laws and regulations were not
> always applied with rigor'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By the way, I've read both The Devil's Music Master and Trial of
Strength and you can hardly call them "revisionist" works, much less
somehow laudatory of the artistic context in Nazi Germany. Quite the
contrary: they both paint harrowing pictures of what it must have been
like to live and work as an artist under such a regime. And of course,
far from the Nazi's nurturing art for art's sake, they used their
"support" for the arts principally for propaganda purposes. Furtwanger
was thus himself used, and both Shirakawa and Prieberg hammer that
point home without in any way seeking to absolve Furtwangler for his
naivete and own machinations, and much less National Socialism's regime
of terror.
Gabriel Parra
> I recently saw a pretty interesting (to me, anyway) movie drama called
> "Taking Sides" that discussed some of these issues. The plot takes place in
> Germany shortly after WW II and covers the trial of Furtwangler by the
> Americans. Stellan Skarsgard played Furtwangler and Harvey Keitel played the
> American officer charged with prosecuting him. Some of the music played in
> the movie was conducted by Furtwangler, the rest by Daniel Barenboim and the
> Staatskapelle of Berlin. During the course of the movie, Keitel kept saying
> that Furtwangler referred to the up and coming Karajan as "little K".
>
> Dan
I once toyed with the idea of writing a script for a Furtwangler-based
film, which I kept seeing in my head in the epic style of a Citizen
Kane, and when this film came out I was, well, yes, pleased overall
with the film, but somewhat disappointed with it for having wasted an
opportunity to explore his character more fully (of course, having been
based on the play, it was a small-scaled affair). Nevertheless,
Furtwangler has all the makings of a tragic (anti-)hero and would make
a fascinating subject for a movie, again, along the lines of a Citizen
Kane.
Frank Berger
Do you have type to do ALL your research first hand? I don't.
Gabriel Parra
Frank Berger wrote:
> Do you have type to do ALL your research first hand? I don't.
I assume you meant "time" rather than "type." In answer to your
question, depends on whether it's a subject I care about. In this
particular instance, it did not take long to browse through this
organization's website to very clearly define their "editorial slant,"
if you will. Also, since I tend to be wary of terms like
"anti-Semitism" and "racism" without some very convincing proof, I like
to look at the evidence myself. And there is no doubt that this is an
anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi group. Most repugnant and vile, to be sure.
Ian Pace
know. Skinhead thugs are one thing and easily recognisable; many others try
to give the impression of respectability, and scholarly objectivity in their
work. And mystify it with countless references to obscure sources, so that
it is very difficult to falsify unless one has a lot of time to spend.
Though you don't have to look that closely at the IHR's website to see what
sort of people they are. But issues like the Iraq war or the role of
neo-cons in the Republican Party, perfectly legitimate issues of which
people of all political shades have various views on, can become tainted
when hijacked by such people. Like with the expulsion of ethnic Germans from
Eastern Europe after the end of WW2, about which there is very little
discussion of knowledge outside of Germany. This was a calamitous event,
involving the forcible movement of around 12 million people (one of the
largest enforced ethnic cleansings in the whole of history), 2 million of
which died in the process, and deserves serious historical consideration.
However, it was hijacked by right-wing historians and more unsavoury types
to try and relativise the Holocaust by claiming equivalence. And as such to
some any discussion of this, hardly a small event, is tainted by
association.
Yesterday I noticed that my local library still stocks a copy of David
Irving's biography of Goebbels. It comes with endorsements on the back from
A.J.P. Taylor, Norman Stone and Hugh Trevor-Roper on the back. That three
such eminent historians could have been duped by Irving's 'scholarship' is
deeply concerning.
Ian
John W. Kennedy
> 'Even the anti-Jewish racial laws and regulations were not
> always applied with rigor'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well... it's not /strictly/ false. Ordinary human randomness would
demand that some cases would be less rigorous than the norm....
(Consider the attempt to have the beloved Kálmán declared an "honorary
Aryan", which at least gave him enough time to escape to America.)
John W. Kennedy
> Yesterday I noticed that my local library still stocks a copy of David
> Irving's biography of Goebbels. It comes with endorsements on the back from
> A.J.P. Taylor, Norman Stone and Hugh Trevor-Roper on the back. That three
> such eminent historians could have been duped by Irving's 'scholarship' is
> deeply concerning.
Scholars assume that other scholars don't lie.
Andrew Clarke
Ian Pace wrote:
> However, it [the forced repatriation of Germans in Eastern Europe] was hijacked by right->wing historians and more unsavoury types to try and relativise the Holocaust by claiming
> equivalence. And as such to some any discussion of this, hardly a small event, is tainted > by association.
To claim equivalence is not necessarily to relativise is it? In
non-relativist terms, both are equally appalling. And there remains the
awful possibility that if Stalin had lived a few years longer there
would have been a second holocaust of "cosmopolitan elements" (NKVD
newspeak for Jews.)
And "tainting by association" usually amounts to hidden ad hominem
arguments. E.g.
a) it's a good thing if we have stable families who raise at least
three children (cohort replacement)
b) Hitler applauded stable families who raised at least three children
c) therefore anybody who supports the notion of stable families with
more than three children is some kind of Nazi "by association".
> Yesterday I noticed that my local library still stocks a copy of David
> Irving's biography of Goebbels. It comes with endorsements on the back from
> A.J.P. Taylor, Norman Stone and Hugh Trevor-Roper on the back. That three
> such eminent historians could have been duped by Irving's 'scholarship' is
> deeply concerning.
Ian, at some stage of their lives, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot all
wrote down that 2 + 2 = 4 and that Paris was the capital of France. The
fact that these were mass murderers and tortures does not invalidate
these propositions.
David Irvine's early book on the bombing of Dresden shows no sign of
holocaust denial or antisemitism. It is quite possible that his book on
Goebbels -- which I haven't read -- is similarly untainted and that the
propositions advanced in that book are similarly worthy of serious
consideration. It could also be that the blurbs are selective, as is
usually the case!
andrew clarke
canberra
Michael Haslam
> Ian Pace wrote:
> > Yesterday I noticed that my local library still stocks a copy of David
> > Irving's biography of Goebbels. It comes with endorsements on the back from
> > A.J.P. Taylor, Norman Stone and Hugh Trevor-Roper on the back. That three
> > such eminent historians could have been duped by Irving's 'scholarship' is
> > deeply concerning.
>
> Scholars assume that other scholars don't lie.
That's true, but it doesn't follow that scholars don't make mistakes.
Think how Trevor-Roper was duped by the Hitler Diaries.
--
MJHaslam
Remove accidentals to obtain correct e-address
Ian Pace
"Andrew Clarke" <a...@cts.canberra.edu.au> wrote in message
news:1162961317....@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> David Irvine's early book on the bombing of Dresden shows no sign of
> holocaust denial or antisemitism. It is quite possible that his book on
> Goebbels -- which I haven't read -- is similarly untainted and that the
> propositions advanced in that book are similarly worthy of serious
> consideration. It could also be that the blurbs are selective, as is
> usually the case!
>
been used as a reference text for far too long (happily, there have been new
and important works to supercede it, such as that by Frederick Taylor). Have
a look at Chapter 5 of Evans's 'Telling Lies About Hitler' if you don't
believe me. Irving claimed equivalence between the bombing of Dresden and
the Holocaust. Now, there are plenty of reasons to question the nature of
the bombing of Dresden, but to claim equivalence (even on the basis of
inflated figures using his distorting techniques) in that respect is obscene
and close to a form of denial. I can post some more detail about the nature
of the fraud in the Dresden book if you like.
In the Goebbels biography, just to give an example, Irving uses some
statistics for crimes, drug trafficking, pimping, theft apparently committed
by Jews. He uses this as part of his argument that Reichkristallsnacht was a
spontaneous event, not one controlled from above (he even argues that Hitler
was really a friend of the Jews). This statistics look authoritative, but
closer inspection show that he relies on nothing other than Nazi propaganda
for his 'evidence'.
Have a look at http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/ieindex.html - click on
'Evidence' and you can read Evans' expert report.
Ian
Ian Pace
"Andrew Clarke" <a...@cts.canberra.edu.au> wrote in message
news:1162961317....@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
>
> arguments. E.g.
>
> a) it's a good thing if we have stable families who raise at least
> three children (cohort replacement)
> b) Hitler applauded stable families who raised at least three children
> c) therefore anybody who supports the notion of stable families with
> more than three children is some kind of Nazi "by association".
>
statement:
(b) Hitler saw the stable family as the bedrock of Nazi society, and
despised woman who did not conform to their allocated role as wholesome
German Frauen, mothers and housekeepers, and even more despised homosexuals,
perceived as a threat to the family and 'diseased', committing genocide
against them on that basis.
(c) Anybody who feels the same way abut the family and advocates genocide
against homosexuals for the same reasons is a type of Nazi "by association".
To deduce (c) is not something that can be made into an absolute, but a very
likely probability. (b) needs to be a defining attribute of the person/group
in question, not simply something they share with many other distinct
individuals/groups.
Ian
Ian Pace
"John W. Kennedy" <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:7Pc4h.39$Rw...@newsfe09.lga...
> Ian Pace wrote:
>> Yesterday I noticed that my local library still stocks a copy of David
>> Irving's biography of Goebbels. It comes with endorsements on the back
>> from A.J.P. Taylor, Norman Stone and Hugh Trevor-Roper on the back. That
>> three such eminent historians could have been duped by Irving's
>> 'scholarship' is deeply concerning.
>
> Scholars assume that other scholars don't lie.
>
them of incompetence, disingenuousness, malicious fraud, etc., etc.
(historians in particular do this). With that in mind, the fact that Irving
could maintain respectability within a large sector of the British
historians establishment raises big questions. It's been suggested that the
conservative historians basically thought that Irving was, at heart, 'one of
us'. In light of the fact that a very significant percentage of the British
aristocracy wanted to form a pact with Hitler in the 1930s, they might not
be wrong.
Ian
The Historian
John W. Kennedy wrote:
> Ian Pace wrote:
> > Yesterday I noticed that my local library still stocks a copy of David
> > Irving's biography of Goebbels. It comes with endorsements on the back from
> > A.J.P. Taylor, Norman Stone and Hugh Trevor-Roper on the back. That three
> > such eminent historians could have been duped by Irving's 'scholarship' is
> > deeply concerning.
>
> Scholars assume that other scholars don't lie.
David Irving a "scholar?" You must be joking.
Ian Pace
"The Historian" <Spam...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1162988212.3...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
Ian
Peter T. Daniels
Ian Pace wrote:
> "Andrew Clarke" <a...@cts.canberra.edu.au> wrote in message
> news:1162961317....@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > David Irvine's early book on the bombing of Dresden shows no sign of
> > holocaust denial or antisemitism. It is quite possible that his book on
> > Goebbels -- which I haven't read -- is similarly untainted and that the
> > propositions advanced in that book are similarly worthy of serious
> > consideration. It could also be that the blurbs are selective, as is
> > usually the case!
> >
> Irving's book on Dresden is as much of a fraud as the others, but has alas
> been used as a reference text for far too long (happily, there have been new
> and important works to supercede it, such as that by Frederick Taylor). Have
> a look at Chapter 5 of Evans's 'Telling Lies About Hitler' if you don't
> believe me. Irving claimed equivalence between the bombing of Dresden and
> the Holocaust. Now, there are plenty of reasons to question the nature of
> the bombing of Dresden, but to claim equivalence (even on the basis of
> inflated figures using his distorting techniques) in that respect is obscene
> and close to a form of denial. I can post some more detail about the nature
> of the fraud in the Dresden book if you like.
Toynbee was accused of antisemitism because he likened the expulsion of
Palestinians from Eretz Israel to the expulsion of Jews from Nazi
realms.
He wasn't antisemitic, he was naive (and by that time, rather elderly).
Kinda like Kerry's "botched joke" -- his opponents took everything in
as bad faith as possible.
Ian Pace
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:1162997052....@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
can be compared with other acts of mass terror, systematic genocide is
another matter. Even non-genocidal, though comprehensive, 'ethnic cleansing'
is a different category. Genocide is a term that should not be used lightly,
IMO. It's pushing a point to compare the genocides against the Armenians,
Congolese, Ukranians, Native Americans with the Nazi genocide which aimed
for 100% wipe-out of a people (which is not at all to minimise the
importance of the former category). If someone can present me with
comprehensive evidence that Young Turks aimed to wipe out every single
Armenian person, King Leopold wanted to exterminate every native Congolese,
Stalin wished to exterminate every Ukranian, then I'll accept equivalence.
The British genocide against the Tasmanians might qualify, though. However,
I can accept that some would argue that the difference between partial and
total genocide against a people might be exaggerated.
But comparisons not simply with the Holocaust, but more widely with the
actions of the Third Reich, hinge to an extent upon whether one takes a more
'intentionalist' or 'functionalist' view of the Holocaust (I'm aware that
most scholars take a position between the two nowadays). If one believes
that the Endloesung was not inevitable in the 1930s, say, then comparisons
between expulsions, internment, murder suffered by the Jews prior to and at
the beginning of the war might legitimately be compared with other such
actions to other peoples. If on the other hand, one believes that these
events were already intrinsically linked to a plan for eventual
extermination, then comparisons are only really tenable if an equivalent
process can be identified elsewhere.
Ian
Bob Lombard
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:1162997052....@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
>
> of
> Palestinians from Eretz Israel to the expulsion of Jews from Nazi
> realms.
>
bl
Richard Loeb
A rather more comprehensive reply is below
The message <rNWdnf9z1Iksd9LY...@comcast.com>
from "Richard Loeb" <loe...@comcast.net> contains these words:
> Forwarded to Wagner group who I am sure would find this of interest:
> I hope anyone reading this knows quite what sort of a body the Institute
> for
> Historical Review, who publish this article on their site, are.
I think I could maybe guess, even without the weasel words -- "Americans
conditioned..." There's a lot that's perfectly straightforward here, but
underlying assumptions ooze up through the cracks
> Throughout the Third Reich era, Furtwängler's eminent influence on
> Europe's musical life never diminished.
Well, no, it did rather, since it only extended to the German states and
their occupied victims. Would one count a couple of show concerts
mounted in Paris early in the German occupation, part of the short-lived
German charm offensive, as "influential"? In any musical sense, that is.
> Cultural Vitality
> For Americans conditioned to believe that nothing of real cultural
> or artistic merit was produced in Germany during the Hitler era,
> the phrase "Nazi art" is an oxymoron -- a contradiction in terms.
> The reality, though, is not so simple, and it is gratifying to note
> that some progress is being made to set straight the historical
> record.
Some people are saying Arno Breker sculptures are maybe not as bad as
all that... And what else was there? Lousy sterile architecture and
chocolate-box paintings of happy Aryans. And hardly a note of music more
worth hearing than the Horst Wessel Lied. Everything else they
inherited, and generally, like Wagner, loused up.
> This is manifest, for example, in the publication in recent years
> of two studies that deal extensively with Furtwängler, and which
> generally defend his conduct during the Third Reich: The Devil's
> Music Master by Sam Shirakawa [reviewed in the Jan.-Feb. 1994
> Journal, pp. 41-43] and Trial of Strength by Fred K. Prieberg.
> These revisionist works not only contest the widely accepted
> perception of the place of artists and arts in the Third Reich,
> they express a healthy striving for a more factual and objective
> understanding of the reality of National Socialist Germany.
They're going to have to strive seriously hard to find one worthwhile
piece of Third Reich art, music, or you name it. A few films, maybe; no
more.
> Prieberg's Trial of Strength concentrates almost entirely on
> Furtwängler's intricate dealings with Goebbels, Göring, Hitler and
> various other figures in the cultural life of the Third Reich. In
> so doing, he demonstrates that in spite of official measures to
> "coordinate" the arts, the regime also permitted a surprising
> degree of artistic freedom. Even the anti-Jewish racial laws and
> regulations were not always applied with rigor, and exceptions were
> frequent. (Among many instances that could be cited, Leo Blech
> retained his conducting post until 1937, in spite of his Jewish
> ancestry.)
Wow, big of them.
Furtwängler exploited this situation to intervene
> successfully in a number of cases on behalf of artists, including
> Jews, who were out of favor with the regime. He also championed
> Paul Hindemith, a "modern" composer whose music was regarded as
> degenerate.
The main effect of his intervention was to let them get out alive. That
doesn't exactly suggest a healthy artistic climate.
> The artists and musicians who left the country (especially the
> Jewish ones) contended that without them, Germany's cultural life
> would collapse. High culture, they and other critics of Hitler and
> his regime arrogantly believed, would wither in an ardently
> nationalist and authoritarian state. As Prieberg notes: "The
> musicians who emigrated or were thrown out of Germany from 1933
> onwards indeed felt they were irreplaceable and in consequence
> believed firmly that Hitler's Germany would, following their
> departure, become a dreary and empty cultural wasteland. This would
> inevitably cause the rapid collapse of the regime."
> Time would prove the critics wrong. While it is true that the
> departure of such artists as Fritz Busch and Bruno Walter did hurt
> initially (and dealt a blow to German prestige), the nation's most
> renowned musicians -- including Richard Strauss, Carl Orff, Karl
> Böhm, Hans Pfitzner, Wilhelm Kempff, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Herbert
> von Karajan, Anton Webern, as well as Furtwängler -- remained to
> produce musical art of the highest standards. Regardless of the
> emigration of a number of Jewish and a few non-Jewish artists, as
> well as the promulgation of sweeping anti-Jewish restrictions,
> Germany's cultural life not only continued at a high level, it
> flourished.
Crap. They performed a fairly narrow range of mainstream works quite
well -- carefully leaving out Mendelssohn and others, including Bruch,
who was banned because these nurturing Nazi aesthetes ignorantly assumed
he was Jewish. Amazing, how caring they could be, eh? And they covered
up the Strauss family's smidgen of Jewish blood because they were afraid
to ban them. Not even consistent.
And compared to what Germany had had before, the range of performance
was terribly restricted. A *number* of artists? For every Kempff or
Schwarzkopf there were a dozen great performers in exile -- or dying in
a concentration camp. Schwarzkopf and von K. both have some excuse,
because they were young enough to have had their horizons narrowed by
Nazism. Pfitzner and Strauss were too old to up stakes.
> The National Socialists regarded art, and especially music, as an
> expression of a society's soul, character and ideals. A widespread
> appreciation of Germany's cultural achievements, they believed,
> encouraged a joyful national pride and fostered a healthy sense of
> national unity and mission. Because they regarded themselves as
> guardians of their nation's cultural heritage, they opposed
> liberal, modernistic trends in music and the other arts, as
> degenerate assaults against the cultural-spiritual traditions of
> Germany and the West.
> Acting swiftly to promote a broad revival of the nation's cultural
> life, the new National Socialist government made prodigious efforts
> to further the arts and, in particular, music. As detailed in two
> recent studies (Kater's The Twisted Muse and Levi's Music in the
> Third Reich), not only did the new leadership greatly increase
> state funding for such important cultural institutions as the
> Berlin Philharmonic and the Bayreuth Wagner Festival, it used
> radio, recordings and other means to make Germany's musical
> heritage as accessible as possible to all its citizens.
> As part of its efforts to bring art to the people, it strove to
> erase classical music's snobbish and "class" image, and to make it
> widely familiar and enjoyable, especially to the working class. At
> the same time, the new regime's leaders were mindful of popular
> musical tastes. Thus, by far most of the music heard during the
> Third Reich era on the radio or in films was neither classical nor
> even traditional. Light music with catchy tunes -- similar to those
> popular with listeners elsewhere in Europe and in the United States
> -- predominated on radio and in motion pictures, especially during
> the war years.
> The person primarily responsible for implementing the new cultural
> policies was Joseph Goebbels. In his positions as Propaganda
> Minister and head of the "Reich Culture Chamber," the umbrella
> association for professionals in cultural life, he promoted music,
> literature, painting and film in keeping with German values and
> traditions, while at the same time consistent with popular tastes.
He created incredible anti-semitic cinematic farragos. He created
brainless, saccharine musical comedies with plenty of underclad chorus
girls, on whom he battened, to distract an increasingly demoralized
populace. The painting and literature agencies were very much on the
lines of their Soviet equivalents -- control agencies to make sure
nobody produced anything that didn't conform to the State line. And just
as in Stalin's Russia, they put enormous power into the hands of
politically adept mediocrities. The results are also remarkably similar.
> Hitler's Attitude
> No political leader had a keener interest in art, or was a more
> enthusiastic booster of his nation's musical heritage than Hitler,
> who regarded the compositions of Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner and
> the other German masters as sublime expressions of the Germanic
> "soul."
> Hitler's reputation as a bitter, second rate "failed artist" is
> undeserved. As John Lukacs acknowledges in his recently published
> work, The Hitler of History (pp. 70-72), the German leader was a
> man of real artistic talent and considerable artistic discernment.
Bollocks. He was not a total clown, as Frederic Spotts's Hitler & the
Power of Aesthetics details, but as in all else except raw oratory, he
was a half-educated dilettante. His musical knowledge was slight, his
understanding, on the basis of his published comments, shallow. He liked
to pose as a connoisseur, useful in such a cultivated country, but the
evidence of anything except some general understanding of architecture
is very slight. One only has to look at his private life and
entertainments at the Eagle's Nest -- few books, wretched paintings,
lumpen furnishings, whiling away his evenings listening to Lehar and
classical excerpts and watching Hollywood films (rarely German!) His
favourite was King Kong -- enjoyable enough, but hardly profound Kultur.
(I was rather horrified to discover recently that King Kong's German
title is *still* "King Kong und die Weisse Frau" -- "King Kong and the
White Woman" -- which suggests a twist the makers never intended, but no
doubt added Hitlerian appeal.)
> We perhaps can never fully understand Hitler and the spirit behind
> his political movement without knowing that he drew great
> inspiration from, and identified with, the heroic figures of
> European legend who fought to liberate their peoples from tyranny,
> and whose stories are immortalized in the great musical dramas of
> Wagner and others.
Another giveaway. Any liberators in Wagner? Not that the Nazis believed
in liberating anybody, quite the contrary -- even themselves. Their
ultimate social plan was for a pyramidal, hierarchical society, ruled
absolutely by a self-perpetuating "racial aristocracy" commanding
simple-life, minimally educated farm-soldiers who would in turn subject
a wide population of helot labourers. If it resembles anything, it's the
ideal state intended by the Khmer Rouge, to be created by remarkably
similar methods.
> This was vividly brought out by August Kubizek, Hitler's closest
> friend as a teenager and young man, in his postwar memoir
> (published in the US under the title The Young Hitler I Knew).
> Kubizek describes how, after the two young men together attended
> for the first time a performance in Linz of Wagner's opera
> "Rienzi," Hitler spoke passionately and at length about how this
> work's inspiring story of a popular Roman tribune had so deeply
> moved him. Years later, after he had become Chancellor, he related
> to Kubizek how that performance of "Rienzi" had radically changed
> his life. "In that hour it began," he confided.
Bollocks. Kubizek's account is well established -- by reputable
historians, that is -- as having been beefed up by Nazi propagandists to
boost Hitler's image. There's no evidence that Hitler was inspired by
Rienzi, in any specific sense, and plenty to suggest that he wasn't --
the years of workshy drifting that followed Linz, the total lack of
political will, the absence of any apparent beliefs (including
anti-semitism) at all. All these he seems to have acquired after he
began his political activities, not before.
> Hitler of course recognized Furtwängler's greatness and understood
> his significance for Germany and German music. Thus, when other
> officials (including Himmler) complained of the conductor's
> nonconformity, Hitler overrode their objections. Until the end,
> Furtwängler remained his favorite conductor. He was similarly
> indulgent toward his favorite heldentenor, Max Lorenz, and
> Wagnerian soprano Frida Leider, each of whom was married to a Jew.
> Their cultural importance trumped racial or political
> considerations.
Again, big of him. The problem is that those vicious "considerations"
were there in the first place. For every bit of art that might blossom
in those circumstances, how many more are trodden under?
> Postwar Humiliations
> A year and a half after the end of the war in Europe, Furtwängler
> was brought before a humiliating "denazification" tribunal. Staged
> by American occupation authorities and headed by a Communist, it
> was a farce. So much vital information was withheld from both the
> tribunal and the defendant that, Shirakawa suggests, the occupation
> authorities may well have been determined to "get" the conductor.
Why not? After everything the Nazis had done, nobody was exactly eager
to do their hangers-on any particular favours. Furtwangler had not
committed any actual crimes, but nor had he done much against them.
> In his closing remarks at the hearing, Furtwängler defiantly
> defended his record:
> The fear of being misused for propaganda purposes was wiped out
> by the greater concern for preserving German music as far as was
> possible ... I could not leave Germany in her deepest misery. To
> get out would have been a shameful flight. After all, I am a
> German, whatever may be thought of that abroad, and I do not
> regret having done it for the German people.
> Even with a prejudiced judge and serious gaps in the record, the
> tribunal was still unable to establish a credible case against the
> conductor, and he was, in effect, cleared.
> A short time later, Furtwängler was invited to assume direction of
> the Chicago Symphony. (He was no stranger to the United States: in
> 1927-29 he had served as visiting conductor of the New York
> Philharmonic.)
> On learning of the invitation, America's Jewish cultural
> establishment launched an intense campaign -- spearheaded by The
> New York Times, musicians Artur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz,
> and New York critic Ira Hirschmann -- to scuttle Furtwängler's
> appointment. As described in detail by Shirakawa and writer Daniel
> Gillis (in Furtwängler and America) the campaigners used
> falsehoods, innuendos and even death threats.
> Typical of its emotionally charged rhetoric was the bitter reproach
> of Chicago Rabbi Morton Berman:
> Furtwängler preferred to swear fealty to Hitler. He accepted at
> Hitler's hands his reappointment as director of the Berlin
> Philharmonic Orchestra. He was unfailing in his service to
> Goebbels' ministry of culture and propaganda ... The token
> saving of a few Jewish lives does not excuse Mr. Furtwängler
> from official, active participation in a regime which murdered
> six million Jews and millions of non-Jews. Furtwängler is a
> symbol of all those hateful things for the defeat of which the
> youth of our city and nation paid an ineffable price.
Since a great many of these people had had relatives made into soap and
lampshades, they can be forgiven some extreme rhetoric. The row raised
against Flagstad, for example, was much less justified. I'd say
Furtwangler got out of it about as well as he deserved. He rode high on
a Nazi wave, so he had to endure the trough that followed. Nevertheless,
his career continued, he was never (unlike many of his countrymen) in
serious want, and within a few years he was more or less rehabilitated.
Had he lived longer, he would have regained more status. In which he was
more adept than many less prominent fellow-travellers.
> A Double Standard
> Third Reich Germany is so routinely demonized in our society that
> any acknowledgment of its cultural achievements is regarded as
> tantamount to defending "fascism" and that most unpardonable of
> sins, anti-Semitism. But as Professor John London suggests (in an
> essay in The Jewish Quarterly, "Why Bother about Fascist Culture?,"
> Autumn 1995), this simplistic attitude can present awkward
> problems:
> Far from being a totally ugly, unpopular, destructive entity,
> culture under fascism was sometimes accomplished, indeed
> beautiful ...
In Nazi Germany? When?
If you admit the presence, and in some instances
> the richness, of a culture produced under fascist regimes, then
> you are not defending their ethos. On the other hand, once you
> start dismissing elements, where do you stop?
> In this regard, is it worth comparing the way that many media and
> cultural leaders treat artists of National Socialist Germany with
> their treatment of the artists of Soviet Russia. Whereas
> Furtwängler and other artists who performed in Germany during the
> Hitler era are castigated for their cooperation with the regime,
> Soviet-era musicians, such as composers Aram Khachaturian and
> Sergei Prokofiev, and conductors Evgeny Svetlanov and Evgeny
> Mravinsky -- all of whom toadied to the Communist regime in varying
> degrees -- are rarely, if ever, chastised for their
> "collaboration." The double standard that is clearly at work here
> is, of course, a reflection of our society's obligatory concern for
> Jewish sensitivities.
Rubbish. Prokofiev was terrorized into acquiescence in a way Furtwangler
was not, and I hear plenty about the allegiances of Khatchaturian and
the rest -- as much as I do about Furtwangler, in fact. There has been
some imbalance, perhaps, in the past, when the Soviet regime still held
some credibility in the eyes of Western intellectuals -- which does them
no credit -- but this is now being redressed.
> The artist and his work occupy a unique place in society and
> history. Although great art can never be entirely divorced from its
> political or social environment, it must be considered apart from
> that. In short, art transcends politics.
> No reasonable person would denigrate the artists and sculptors of
> ancient Greece because they glorified a society that, by today's
> standards, was hardly democratic. Similarly, no one belittles the
> builders of medieval Europe's great cathedrals on the grounds that
> the social order of the Middle Ages was dogmatic and hierarchical.
> No cultured person would disparage William Shakespeare because he
> flourished during England's fervently nationalistic and anti-Jewish
> Elizabethan age. Nor does anyone chastise the magnificent composers
> of Russia's Tsarist era because they prospered under an autocratic
> regime. In truth, mankind's greatest cultural achievements have
> most often been the products not of liberal or egalitarian
> societies, but rather of quite un-democratic ones.
But usually not of unstable societies dominated by psychopathic
ignoramuses. The Greek sculptors and Shakespeare actually lived in
fairly relaxed societies with some degree of representative government,
and dominated by practicality rather than raving ideology. And the
Russian composers were the product of a more liberal and enlightened era
of government.
> A close look at the life and career of Wilhelm Furtwängler reveals
> "politically incorrect" facts about the role of art and artists in
> Third Reich Germany, and reminds us that great artistic creativity
> and achievement are by no means the exclusive products of
> democratic societies.
One Furtwangler doesn't make an artistic spring. Even he was inherited,
a relic of a culture the Nazis did nothing to create, but a great deal
to discredit and destroy. And whatever one thinks of democracies, they
make official mass murder, artistic censorship and large-scale thought
policing just a smidgen more difficult; and that is a lot better for
art, as it is for everything else.
> About the author:
> Antony Charles is the pen name of an educator and writer who holds
> both a master's and a doctoral degree in history. He has taught
> history and is the author of several books.
All of which could describe David Irving, without making him one bit
less of a fraud.
A resident of North
> Carolina, he currently works for a government agency.
Sewage control, maybe?
>
> "
Ian Pace
"Richard Loeb" <loe...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:4YidnboR0sv0l8_Y...@comcast.com...
>
>> This is manifest, for example, in the publication in recent years
>> of two studies that deal extensively with Furtwängler, and which
>> generally defend his conduct during the Third Reich: The Devil's
>> Music Master by Sam Shirakawa [reviewed in the Jan.-Feb. 1994
>> Journal, pp. 41-43] and Trial of Strength by Fred K. Prieberg.
>> These revisionist works not only contest the widely accepted
>> perception of the place of artists and arts in the Third Reich,
>> they express a healthy striving for a more factual and objective
>> understanding of the reality of National Socialist Germany.
>
> They're going to have to strive seriously hard to find one worthwhile
> piece of Third Reich art, music, or you name it. A few films, maybe; no
> more.
The most prominent piece of music produced in the Nazi era was Orff's
Carmina Burana. Trash, I think, but powerful trash, which continues to exert
a hold over a great number of people. But within the first decade after the
end of the war, Orff could still obtain high-profile performances in Germany
of works essentially in a similar vein, including Antigonae and Trionfo di
Afrodite.
What I read from that is that criteria which are still conventionally used
to judge music - in terms of power, emotional directness, etc. - should be
put under serious question, as the No. 1 Nazi piece of music satisfies them
almost as well as anything could. A large amount of popular and classical
music alike still aspires to the same propagandistic conditions.
>
>> In this regard, is it worth comparing the way that many media and
>> cultural leaders treat artists of National Socialist Germany with
>> their treatment of the artists of Soviet Russia. Whereas
>> Furtwängler and other artists who performed in Germany during the
>> Hitler era are castigated for their cooperation with the regime,
>> Soviet-era musicians, such as composers Aram Khachaturian and
>> Sergei Prokofiev, and conductors Evgeny Svetlanov and Evgeny
>> Mravinsky -- all of whom toadied to the Communist regime in varying
>> degrees -- are rarely, if ever, chastised for their
>> "collaboration." The double standard that is clearly at work here
>> is, of course, a reflection of our society's obligatory concern for
>> Jewish sensitivities.
>
> Rubbish. Prokofiev was terrorized into acquiescence in a way Furtwangler
> was not, and I hear plenty about the allegiances of Khatchaturian and
> the rest -- as much as I do about Furtwangler, in fact. There has been
> some imbalance, perhaps, in the past, when the Soviet regime still held
> some credibility in the eyes of Western intellectuals -- which does them
> no credit -- but this is now being redressed.
Certainly. I think it is fair to make a distinction between those who
romanticised the Soviet regime without being cognisant of its real nature
(after all, plenty of people of all persuasions idolised Stalin during the
war years, for example), and those who continued (or continue) to lend it
support after its atrocities became known (that said, in the West what we
know about the deaths and tryanny under Stalin is a drop in the water
compared to what we know about the Third Reich. So that there are massive
discrepancies amongst figures for deaths, etc. Maybe the reason for this has
to do with the much greater number of German than Russian speakers in the
West, and the obvious fact that many archives in the former Soviet Union
have only very recently become accessible?). But if I say that, then the
same standards have to be applied to those who foolishly supported Hitler
when he had just been elected - Wyndham Lewis was one, but he definitively
recanted on this later as he came to know more.
Also, there are important differences in the Soviet regime under Stalin and
that which existed after his death, also differences with other Eastern
European countries and their forms of communism, especially that of
Yugoslavia. To lend support to Stalin's regime is not the same as lending
support to that of Andropov or Gorbachev - or Tito.
>
>> The artist and his work occupy a unique place in society and
>> history. Although great art can never be entirely divorced from its
>> political or social environment, it must be considered apart from
>> that. In short, art transcends politics.
>
>> No reasonable person would denigrate the artists and sculptors of
>> ancient Greece because they glorified a society that, by today's
>> standards, was hardly democratic. Similarly, no one belittles the
>> builders of medieval Europe's great cathedrals on the grounds that
>> the social order of the Middle Ages was dogmatic and hierarchical.
>> No cultured person would disparage William Shakespeare because he
>> flourished during England's fervently nationalistic and anti-Jewish
>> Elizabethan age. Nor does anyone chastise the magnificent composers
>> of Russia's Tsarist era because they prospered under an autocratic
>> regime. In truth, mankind's greatest cultural achievements have
>> most often been the products not of liberal or egalitarian
>> societies, but rather of quite un-democratic ones.
>
> But usually not of unstable societies dominated by psychopathic
> ignoramuses. The Greek sculptors and Shakespeare actually lived in
> fairly relaxed societies with some degree of representative government,
> and dominated by practicality rather than raving ideology.
I think that's a rather dangerous claim to make.
> And the
> Russian composers were the product of a more liberal and enlightened era
> of government.
Hmmmm.
>
>> About the author:
>> Antony Charles is the pen name of an educator and writer who holds
>> both a master's and a doctoral degree in history. He has taught
>> history and is the author of several books.
>
> All of which could describe David Irving, without making him one bit
> less of a fraud.
No - Irving did not have any degree, let alone a doctorate in history, nor
did he teach. Not that those are the issue, though. Irving was not a fool or
stupid - that's why he was all the more dangerous.
Ian
Peter T. Daniels
Well, now, I don't know who you are, or what you're getting at, but are
you not aware that before the Final Solution, they tried simply to make
the Jews go away?
Peter T. Daniels
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in message
> > Toynbee was accused of antisemitism because he likened the expulsion of
> > Palestinians from Eretz Israel to the expulsion of Jews from Nazi
> > realms.
> >
> > He wasn't antisemitic, he was naive (and by that time, rather elderly).
> > Kinda like Kerry's "botched joke" -- his opponents took everything in
> > as bad faith as possible.
> >
> Expulsions can be compared with other expulsions, bombings against civilians
> can be compared with other acts of mass terror, systematic genocide is
> another matter. Even non-genocidal, though comprehensive, 'ethnic cleansing'
> is a different category. Genocide is a term that should not be used lightly,
> IMO. It's pushing a point to compare the genocides against the Armenians,
> Congolese, Ukranians, Native Americans with the Nazi genocide which aimed
> for 100% wipe-out of a people (which is not at all to minimise the
> importance of the former category). If someone can present me with
> comprehensive evidence that Young Turks aimed to wipe out every single
> Armenian person, King Leopold wanted to exterminate every native Congolese,
> Stalin wished to exterminate every Ukranian, then I'll accept equivalence.
> The British genocide against the Tasmanians might qualify, though. However,
> I can accept that some would argue that the difference between partial and
> total genocide against a people might be exaggerated.
Over the summer I edited a book (David Gaunt, *Massacres, Resistance,
Protectors* [Gorgias Press, 2006]) documenting the genocide of the
other Eastern Christians of the Ottoman Empire that succeeded the
Armenian genocide. Many of the eyewitness accounts were collected and
published by (ironically) Toynbee (it was his first job), and just in
the last few years, the Turkish government has begun to permit limited
access to the extensive Ottoman archives having to do with the
genocides (including direct orders). A rather major difficulty is that
they're written in Ottoman Turkish, and very few people in the world
are able to read that language (the Arabic script was replaced with the
Roman alphabet in 1928, and study of the old available materials --
which, after all, were mostly religious tracts -- was discouraged by
the secular governments). So there are few people anywhere who can use
these documents. Some, though, have been put up at websites, with
translations into Modern Turkish. (Yes, just transliterating from
Arabic to Roman script doesn't render them readable.)
Gabriel Parra
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Well, now, I don't know who you are, or what you're getting at, but are
> you not aware that before the Final Solution, they tried simply to make
> the Jews go away?
"They tried simply to make the Jews go away"? Your choice of words says
a lot. Would have been different to have written, "They tried to expel
the Jews from Germany." As it is, your statement reads like, "I am
simply trying to have the cockroaches leave my apartment." Are you,
indeed, outing yourself?
Ian Pace
Blackwell Companion to the Ancient Near East not so long ago, actually
quoted some of your thoughts on Said - was interested to know what your
thoughts are on Aijaz Ahmad's critiques of his work, which to me seem as
powerful as any?
With respect to massacres and genocides in general, would you say it's true
to say that our knowledge in the West of certain events tends to be in
direct proportion to the number of people here who speak the requisite
languages?
Ian
Peter T. Daniels
You, I've seen in these mad r.m.c.r. crosspostings before, and I know
you're beneath notice.
Peter T. Daniels
I didn't write the chapter they published.
Unless the paperback is out -- they promised they would print my actual
text (and also that by Gonzalo Rubio) in the new edition.
I've never heard of Aijaz Ahmad (I just amazoned him to see if he'd
written one of those books with Orientalism in the title, but he
hasn't). A review was just emailed on some list or other of a book by
someone or other that's just come out, about 30 years late, taking
Said's book down in great detail.
> With respect to massacres and genocides in general, would you say it's true
> to say that our knowledge in the West of certain events tends to be in
> direct proportion to the number of people here who speak the requisite
> languages?
Only if it's a matter of historians doing primary research.
Ian Pace
>
> Ian Pace wrote:
>> >
>> I'd be very interested to read it. I was reading your chapter in the
>> Blackwell Companion to the Ancient Near East not so long ago, actually
>> quoted some of your thoughts on Said - was interested to know what your
>> thoughts are on Aijaz Ahmad's critiques of his work, which to me seem as
>> powerful as any?
>
> I didn't write the chapter they published.
>
> Unless the paperback is out -- they promised they would print my actual
> text (and also that by Gonzalo Rubio) in the new edition.
What are the differences between your version and the published version?
>
> I've never heard of Aijaz Ahmad (I just amazoned him to see if he'd
> written one of those books with Orientalism in the title, but he
> hasn't). A review was just emailed on some list or other of a book by
> someone or other that's just come out, about 30 years late, taking
> Said's book down in great detail.
>
Ahmad is an Indian Marxist writer. Here's a devastating observation from
him:
'Its most passionate following in the metropolitan countries is within those
sectors of the university intelligentsia which either originate in the
ethnic minorities or affiliate themselves ideologically with the academic
sections of those minorities. . . . These [immigrants] who came as graduate
students and then joined the faculties, especially in the Humanities and
Social Sciences, tended to come from upper classes in their home countries.
In the process of relocating themselves in the metropolitan countries they
needed documents of their assertion, proof that they had always been
oppressed.... What the upwardly mobile professionals in this new immigration
needed were narratives of oppression that would get them preferential
treatment, reserved jobs, higher salaries in the social position they
already occupied: namely, as middle-class professionals, mostly male. For
such purposes, Orientalism was the perfect narrative' (cited in Martin
Kramer - 'Said's Splash' -
http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/SaidSplash.htm ).
I'd be interested to see that review you mention - have you a link?
Ian
Ian Pace
>
> I've never heard of Aijaz Ahmad (I just amazoned him to see if he'd
> written one of those books with Orientalism in the title, but he
> hasn't). A review was just emailed on some list or other of a book by
> someone or other that's just come out, about 30 years late, taking
> Said's book down in great detail.
>
you might be interested in the following excellent essay by him -
http://maximumred.blogspot.com/2005/02/aijaz-ahmad-on-marx-on-india.html
Ian
Peter T. Daniels
Ian Pace wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:1163029428.1...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > Ian Pace wrote:
> >> >
> >> I'd be very interested to read it. I was reading your chapter in the
> >> Blackwell Companion to the Ancient Near East not so long ago, actually
> >> quoted some of your thoughts on Said - was interested to know what your
> >> thoughts are on Aijaz Ahmad's critiques of his work, which to me seem as
> >> powerful as any?
> >
> > I didn't write the chapter they published.
> >
> > Unless the paperback is out -- they promised they would print my actual
> > text (and also that by Gonzalo Rubio) in the new edition.
>
> What are the differences between your version and the published version?
I never actually read it -- I was so disgusted by what they'd done to
the first two paragraphs. (None of the authors ever saw an edited
manuscript or proofs.) But I glanced through it and found they'd, for
instance, removed the footnotes and the "bibliographic essay in the
form of endnotes."
> > I've never heard of Aijaz Ahmad (I just amazoned him to see if he'd
> > written one of those books with Orientalism in the title, but he
> > hasn't). A review was just emailed on some list or other of a book by
> > someone or other that's just come out, about 30 years late, taking
> > Said's book down in great detail.
> >
> Ahmad is an Indian Marxist writer. Here's a devastating observation from
> him:
>
> 'Its most passionate following in the metropolitan countries is within those
> sectors of the university intelligentsia which either originate in the
> ethnic minorities or affiliate themselves ideologically with the academic
> sections of those minorities. . . . These [immigrants] who came as graduate
> students and then joined the faculties, especially in the Humanities and
> Social Sciences, tended to come from upper classes in their home countries.
> In the process of relocating themselves in the metropolitan countries they
> needed documents of their assertion, proof that they had always been
> oppressed.... What the upwardly mobile professionals in this new immigration
> needed were narratives of oppression that would get them preferential
> treatment, reserved jobs, higher salaries in the social position they
> already occupied: namely, as middle-class professionals, mostly male. For
> such purposes, Orientalism was the perfect narrative' (cited in Martin
> Kramer - 'Said's Splash' -
He must be talking about South Asians. There are virtually no Arabs in
Western Near Eastern Studies programs. Elizabeth Stone has tried to
rectify that with a program for training Iraqi archeologists at Stony
Brook, but one of Bushrummie's last acts seems to have been to defund
it.
> http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/SaidSplash.htm ).
>
> I'd be interested to see that review you mention - have you a link?
Nope! When you Delete an email in Verizon Yahoo, it doesn't stay in the
Trash for months until you think to empty the trash (as it did with
Netscape); it just goes away after a couple of days.
Peter T. Daniels
India's not my area ....
(though I did write the chapter on South Asian scripts for Cambridge's
upcoming *Language in South Asia*)
Andrew Clarke
> the Holocaust. Now, there are plenty of reasons to question the nature of
> the bombing of Dresden, but to claim equivalence (even on the basis of
> inflated figures using his distorting techniques) in that respect is obscene
> and close to a form of denial. I can post some more detail about the nature
> of the fraud in the Dresden book if you like.
Yes please!
You can find one or two websites that still promote wildly exaggerated
figures for Dresden raid, usually to promote the idea that Churchill
was a "war criminal" rather than to whitewash the Third Reich. But I'd
prefer to take the moral argument about equivalences one step up the
ladder.
The major injustice we are looking at is the punishment by death of
people who are not individually culpable of any serious crime. Hitler
did so on the basis of "race". Lenin and his epigonies did so on the
basis of social class, as defined by the requirements of who the leader
of the proletarian vanguard happened to be at the time. By the time we
get to the Great Purges, the politically incorrect elements could be
anybody, including virtually every Communist who made the mistake of
emigrating from Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy to the USSR.
Like Carola Neher, Brecht's first "Polly Peachum", sentenced to 10
years in the gulag for "Trotskiite-Fascist activities"; she survived 6.
A slow death from overwork, malnutrition and exposure, while her former
director (and bedmate) Brecht carefully and comfortably equivocated in
the United States of America. Urrrghhh ...
>From the same premise, there's a whole argument about civilian
casualties in war, usually killed for being in the wrong place at the
wrong time. Should the UK have remained at war after 1940 when her only
weapon was aerial bombardment of German industrial areas by night?
Incidentally, you mention, in another posting, the presumed genocide in
Tasmania. There is a major debate about this in Australia at the
moment, due to the publication of a book by Keith Windshuttle who finds
little or no evidence for many of the supposed massacres, or indeed any
evidence for a deliberate government policy of extermination (the early
governors being expressly required by the Foreign Office to deal
peacefully with the aboriginal population). But it's difficult to
support Windshuttle's thesis without becoming 'tainted with holocaust
denial' by the black-armband brigade and their supporters.
Best wishes,
Andrew C.
Ian Pace
>> Irving claimed equivalence between the bombing of Dresden and
>> the Holocaust. Now, there are plenty of reasons to question the nature of
>> the bombing of Dresden, but to claim equivalence (even on the basis of
>> inflated figures using his distorting techniques) in that respect is
>> obscene
>> and close to a form of denial. I can post some more detail about the
>> nature
>> of the fraud in the Dresden book if you like.
>
> Yes please!
I don't really have time at the moment, but you can find all the detail at
http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/evidence/evans005.asp
Ian
John W. Kennedy
The mere act of writing and publishing a biography of someone who's been
dead for decades makes one a "scholar" -- though not necessarily a
competent or honest one.
Matthew B. Tepper
following letters to be typed in news:yz45h.472$K54...@newsfe09.lga:
> The Historian wrote:
>> John W. Kennedy wrote:
>>> Ian Pace wrote:
>>>> Yesterday I noticed that my local library still stocks a copy of
>>>> David Irving's biography of Goebbels. It comes with endorsements on
>>>> the back from A.J.P. Taylor, Norman Stone and Hugh Trevor-Roper on
>>>> the back. That three such eminent historians could have been duped by
>>>> Irving's 'scholarship' is deeply concerning.
>>> Scholars assume that other scholars don't lie.
>>
>> David Irving a "scholar?" You must be joking.
>
> The mere act of writing and publishing a biography of someone who's been
> dead for decades makes one a "scholar" -- though not necessarily a
> competent or honest one.
Indeed, just as one could refer to Tiny Tim, Britney Spears, and every
member of the Portsmouth Sinfonia as a "musician."
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Harrington/Coy is a gay wrestler who won't come out of the closet
Michael Haslam
>
> Indeed, just as one could refer to Tiny Tim, Britney Spears, and every
> member of the Portsmouth Sinfonia as a "musician."
I thought the whole point of the Portsmouth Sinfonia was that it was
composed entirely of bona fide musicians who just happened to be
complete novices on the instruments they played in that particular
ensemble.