Marcelle Meyer under the Occupation

[ljk...@aol.com]

Any information about what this fine pianist was up to under the Occupation? I know that she concertized and recorded during that time, and Poulenc weighed in on her behalf in a 1945 article in Le Figaro, which suggests that Meyer was under some pressure for her behavior during those years. (Poulenc mentions only, as though that were all, an "unfortunate" Mozart concerto performance that Meyer gave with a visiting German chamber orchestra in I think 1943.) Also, Stephen Walsh's Stravinsky biography says that Meyer's husband "made a fortune" from confiscated Jewish property.

Larry Kart

[Andrew Clarke]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 3:04:18 PM UTC+11, dk wrote:

> On Monday, December 12, 2016 at 7:25:19 PM UTC-8, ljk...@aol.com wrote:
> >
> > Any information about what this fine pianist was up to under the Occupation?
>

> Apparently nothing good. After WWII there appears to have been a
> concerted effort to push everything under the rug -- or at least
> as much as possible.

>
> > I know that she concertized and recorded during that time, and Poulenc
> > weighed in on her behalf in a 1945 article in Le Figaro, which suggests
> > that Meyer was under some pressure for her behavior during those years.
>

> Apparently well deserved. After WWII there appears to have been a
> concerted effort to push everything under the rug -- or at least
> as much as possible.

>
> > (Poulenc mentions only, as though that were all, an "unfortunate" Mozart
> > concerto performance that Meyer gave with a visiting German chamber
> > orchestra in I think 1943.) Also, Stephen Walsh's Stravinsky biography
> > says that Meyer's husband "made a fortune" from confiscated Jewish property.
>

> I once did a bit of googling on the topic and found bits and pieces of
> documents including some court papers. If you're interested in researching
> the matter Google is probably your first/best friend.
>
> dk

May I ask what positive evidence you have that this fine pianist was in any real sense of the word a Nazi collaborator? So far the only evidence we have is her appearance with the Berlin Chamber Orchestra, which may have been an invitation she couldn't safely refuse, especially with her looks and a name like Meyer?

Could you tell us which of her two husbands made a fortune from the sale of Jewish assets - the first, a French actor whom she divorced in 1937, or the second, who was an Italian lawyer?

I can't find these "court papers": could you be a bit more specific? Is the absence of incriminating evidence due to somebody "pushing everything under the rug" or to the fact that there was really no evidence in the first place?

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

'Mon coeur est francais, mais mon cul est international' - Arlety, a French actress under suspicion of collaboration during the Occupation, ca. 1945.

[Andrew Clarke]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 10:02:29 PM UTC+11, Andrew Clarke wrote:

> Could you tell us which of her two husbands made a fortune from the sale of Jewish assets - the first, a French actor whom she divorced in 1937, or the second, who was an Italian lawyer?

The accusation is to be found in another document produced by Poulenc for Milhaud, in which he summarised the alleged goings-on in Occupied Paris:

"One needed a good deal of agility to keep out of trouble without giving anything in return" Not all had succeeded: Honneger had been "a bit weak", Cocteau "un peu leger" (easygoing) ... Marcel Meyer's husband had made a fortune out of sequestrated Jewish property, and they had both had to flee."

- Stephen Walsh. Stravinsky, The Second Exile, p. 178 available in Google Books.

<https://books.google.com.au/books?redir_esc=y&id=uzXtKwJQv1gC&q=marcelle+meyer#v=onepage&q=marcelle%20meyer&f=false>

Certainly the couple went to live in Italy after the war. It should be borne in mind, however, that all kinds of rumours were being circulated in France at this time, by people with scores to settle or the many who wished to deflect attention from their own acts of 'collaboration' e.g. accepting gifts of silk stockings from a Wehrmacht admirer.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Andrew Clarke]

Sorry to again reply to my own post, but it appears that Mme Meyer and her family didn't move to Rome until 1948, which hardly suggests that her "flight" was an urgent necessity.

<http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Meyer-Marcelle.htm>

[Frank Berger]

On 12/13/2016 7:47 AM, dk wrote:

> http://www.crt-ii.org/_awards/_apdfs/Meyer_Andre_Isaac_and_Marcelle.pdf
>
> dk
>

I don't see where this document bears at all on the question
of Marcelle Meyer's (or her husband's) activities during the
war. Am I missing something?

[ljk...@aol.com]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 6:51:55 AM UTC-6, dk wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 3:02:29 AM UTC-8, Andrew Clarke wrote:

> > On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 3:04:18 PM UTC+11, dk wrote:
> > > On Monday, December 12, 2016 at 7:25:19 PM UTC-8, ljk...@aol.com wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Any information about what this fine pianist was up to under the Occupation?
> > >
> > > Apparently nothing good. After WWII there appears to have been a
> > > concerted effort to push everything under the rug -- or at least
> > > as much as possible.
> > >
> > > > I know that she concertized and recorded during that time, and Poulenc
> > > > weighed in on her behalf in a 1945 article in Le Figaro, which suggests
> > > > that Meyer was under some pressure for her behavior during those years.
> > >
> > > Apparently well deserved. After WWII there appears to have been a
> > > concerted effort to push everything under the rug -- or at least
> > > as much as possible.
> > >
> > > > (Poulenc mentions only, as though that were all, an "unfortunate" Mozart
> > > > concerto performance that Meyer gave with a visiting German chamber
> > > > orchestra in I think 1943.) Also, Stephen Walsh's Stravinsky biography
> > > > says that Meyer's husband "made a fortune" from confiscated Jewish property.
> > >
> > > I once did a bit of googling on the topic and found bits and pieces of
> > > documents including some court papers. If you're interested in researching
> > > the matter Google is probably your first/best friend.
> >

> > May I ask what positive evidence you have that this fine pianist
> > was in any real sense of the word a Nazi collaborator? So far the
> > only evidence we have is her appearance with the Berlin Chamber
> > Orchestra, which may have been an invitation she couldn't safely
> > refuse, especially with her looks and a name like Meyer?
>

> What do her looks have to do with anything?
>
> dk

Poulenc’s 1945 Le Figaro “defense” of Meyer (which one might think is more notable for what it doesn't say than what it does):

http://musicalgeography.org/2863-2/

FWIW, from Stephen Walsh’s “The Second Exile: Stravinsky in France and America, 1934-1971” — this in the context of an account of Soulima Stravinsky’s “pragmatic streak where the Nazis were concerned”:

“Marcelle Meyer’s husband had made a fortune from sequestrations of Jewish property, and they both had to flee: 'A pity,’ Poulenc reflected, ‘as she was playing better than ever.’"

As for Meyer's looks and name, I assume that Andrew means that Meyer had a prominent (in some quarters, "Jewish" nose) and that Meyer could be a Jewish name (or, just as easily, not). Google yields no information that I could find as to Meyer's Jewishness or lack of same; however, , it doesn't seem likely that a well-known pianist, if Jewish, would have concertized under German auspices during the Occupation .OTOH, if that's the way to put it, what a fine pianist Meyer was.

Larry Kart

[Frank Berger]

On 12/13/2016 12:14 PM, dk wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 6:41:08 AM UTC-8, Frank

I don't see where this document bears at all on the question
>> of Marcelle Meyer's (or her husband's) activities
>> during the war. Am I missing something?
>

> Have you read it?
>
> dk
>

Yes, quickly, once. Obviously, from my question. If you
don't want to bother to explain it to me, then don't. I
thought it had to do with Meyer's children trying to get
money from her parents' abandoned accounts. What does that
have to do with Meyer's activities during the war?

[Lawrence Kart]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 11:14:55 AM UTC-6, dk wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 6:41:08 AM UTC-8, Frank Berger wrote:

> > I don't see where this document bears at all on the question
> > of Marcelle Meyer's (or her husband's) activities during the
> > war. Am I missing something?
>

> Have you read it?
>
> dk

Doesn't seem to be the same Marcelle Myer:

Wikipedia:

"Marcelle Meyer was born in Lille, France on 22 May 1897....
"She died on 17 November 1958 in Paris after suffering a heart attack....
"The actor Pierre Bertin was her first husband. She later married Carlo Di Vieto, an Italian lawyer, with whom she had two daughters."

LK

[Frank Berger]

Ha Ha. It doesn't bear on the other Marcelle Meyer's
behavior during the war either, as far as i can see.

[Lawrence Kart]

No, it it doesn't seem to. There's 1897 for the birth date of the pianist versus 1899 for this Marcelle Meyer, and Lille, where the pianist was born, is about four hours by train from Nancy.

LK

[nmsz...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 11:21:20 AM UTC-5, Lawrence Kart wrote:
"As for Meyer's looks and name, I assume that Andrew means that Meyer had a prominent (in some quarters, "Jewish" nose) and that Meyer could be a Jewish name (or, just as easily, not). Google yields no information that I could find as to Meyer's Jewishness or lack of same; however, , it doesn't seem likely that a well-known pianist, if Jewish, would have concertized under German auspices during the Occupation.

Well maybe they Frenchised it from Meyerbeer? :-)

[Lawrence Kart]

"Meyer is a surname of English, German, Dutch and Jewish origin, many branches of the Meyer(s) family trace their origins to ancient Anglo-Saxon culture. The name is derived from the Old English name maire, meaning Mayor, or an officer in charge of legal matters."

As for Marcelle Meyer's fairly prominent nose necessarily marking her as Jewish, where does that leave De Gaulle?

LK

[dk]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 10:36:30 AM UTC-8, Lawrence Kart wrote:
>
> As for Marcelle Meyer's fairly prominent nose necessarily
> marking her as Jewish, where does that leave De Gaulle?

De Gaulle had too little humor to be suspected of being
Jewish.

dk

[Lawrence Kart]

You just didn't get his jokes. ):

LK

[Frank Berger]

Remind me not to hire DK as an investigator.

[Frank Berger]

Seen any Turks lately?

[Frank Berger]

One of my pet peeves, actually, is being told that I didn't
get the joke when I think it isn't funny. My daughter, a
big New Yorker Magazine fan, tried this on me when I
mentioned I very, very rarely find a New Yorker cartoon
funny. I then proceeded, to her satisfaction, to "explain"
the joke of a bunch of them. It's just a fairly benign
variant of the attitude, all too prevalent, that if you're
different than me there must be something wrong with you.

[Frank Berger]

On 12/13/2016 2:03 PM, dk wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 10:36:30 AM UTC-8,

> Lawrence Kart wrote:
>> On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 12:26:52 PM UTC-6,
>> nmsz...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 11:21:20 AM UTC-5,
>>> Lawrence Kart wrote: "As for Meyer's looks and name,
>>> I assume that Andrew means that Meyer had a
>>> prominent (in some quarters, "Jewish" nose) and that
>>> Meyer could be a Jewish name (or, just as easily,
>>> not). Google yields no information that I could find
>>> as to Meyer's Jewishness or lack of same; however,

>>> it doesn't seem likely that a well-known pianist, if
>>> Jewish, would have concertized under German auspices
>>> during the Occupation.
>>

>> "Meyer is a surname of English, German, Dutch and
>> Jewish origin, many branches of the Meyer(s) family
>> trace their origins to ancient Anglo-Saxon culture.
>> The name is derived from the Old English name maire,
>> meaning Mayor, or an officer in charge of legal
>> matters."
>

> This sounds self-contradictory. If the Meyer surname
> comes from Anglo-Saxon culture, it cannot be of "Jewish
> origin". Of course many Jews have adopted it, however
> there is nothing inherently Jewish in the name itself.
> AFAIK more than 50% of the Meyers and various spellings
> (Mayer, Meier, Maier, etc...) are not Jewish.
>
> dk
>

Depends where you are probably. In my 40% Jewish high
school, all
three Meyers I know were Jewish. I'm guessing that few
Maiers are Jewish. I also wonder how often the surname
Meyer is derived from the Hebrew first name Meir, which
means something like "one who shines," and is unrelated to
the old English for mayor or officer.

[Frank Berger]

On 12/13/2016 2:28 PM, dk wrote:

> On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 11:24:21 AM UTC-8, Frank Berger wrote:
>>
>> Remind me not to hire DK as an investigator.
>

> I am better than Clouseau! ;-)
>
> dk
>

Says you.

[cooper...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 6:59:34 AM UTC-5, Andrew Clarke wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 10:02:29 PM UTC+11, Andrew Clarke wrote:
>

> > Could you tell us which of her two husbands made a fortune from the sale of Jewish assets - the first, a French actor whom she divorced in 1937, or the second, who was an Italian lawyer?
>

> The accusation is to be found in another document produced by Poulenc for Milhaud, in which he summarised the alleged goings-on in Occupied Paris:
>
> "One needed a good deal of agility to keep out of trouble without giving anything in return" Not all had succeeded: Honneger had been "a bit weak", Cocteau "un peu leger" (easygoing) ... Marcel Meyer's husband had made a fortune out of sequestrated Jewish property, and they had both had to flee."
>
> - Stephen Walsh. Stravinsky, The Second Exile, p. 178 available in Google Books.
>
> <https://books.google.com.au/books?redir_esc=y&id=uzXtKwJQv1gC&q=marcelle+meyer#v=onepage&q=marcelle%20meyer&f=false>
>
> Certainly the couple went to live in Italy after the war. It should be borne in mind, however, that all kinds of rumours were being circulated in France at this time, by people with scores to settle or the many who wished to deflect attention from their own acts of 'collaboration' e.g. accepting gifts of silk stockings from a Wehrmacht admirer.
>
> Andrew Clarke
> Canberra

Rigorous investigation of musical life in occupied France only began about 25 years ago, and there is much to learn, not least how complicated it was. I have found the pioneering work by Myriam Chimènes and colleagues, beginning with La Vie musicale sous Vichy (2001), to be especially illuminating.

There relatively few cases of open collaboration (Cortot; the music section of the Groupe Collaboration, which apparently included Florent Schmitt) or overt resistance (Louis Durey; Roger Désormière; the publisher Raymond Deiss, who was executed by the Nazis).

As Nigel Simeone (biographer of Messiaen) wrote in The Musical Times in 2006, "For the majority of Parisians, including its musicians, the way they dealt with life under the Occupation was to express few opinions on anything, to keep their heads down, to avoid trouble, and to carry on almost as if nothing had happened, in the hope that things would eventually change for the better. With hindsight, it is all too easy to take the moral high ground and to find this kind of silence or inaction culpable in some way. But the idea that it amounted to a kind of passive collaboration fails to take account of the day-to-day realities of existence in Occupied Paris...."

I know little about the case of Marcelle Meyer. I have heard some of the rumors over the years, but have not come across anything more substantial than the snippets reported here. I would be hesitant to judge her on the basis of her husband's purported actions.

Just my $.02.

AC

[MiNe109]

On 12/13/16 1:39 PM, Frank Berger wrote:
> One of my pet peeves, actually, is being told that I didn't
> get the joke when I think it isn't funny. My daughter, a
> big New Yorker Magazine fan, tried this on me when I
> mentioned I very, very rarely find a New Yorker cartoon
> funny. I then proceeded, to her satisfaction, to "explain"
> the joke of a bunch of them. It's just a fairly benign
> variant of the attitude, all too prevalent, that if you're
> different than me there must be something wrong with you.

Fortunately, New Yorker cartoons don't have to be assessed individually.

http://www.what-a-misunderstanding.com/

If this seems OT, let me say, "What a misunderstanding!"

Stephen

[Frank Berger]

On 12/13/2016 3:37 PM, dk wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 11:47:56 AM UTC-8,

>> Depends where you are probably. In my 40% Jewish high
>> school, all three Meyers I know were Jewish.
>

> That is probably because Jews were already represented
> out of proportion with the population at large. How many
> kids of German extraction were there?
>

That's what I meant.

>> I'm guessing that few Maiers are Jewish.
>

> There seems to be little correlation between ethnicity
> and the way the name is spelled. Meyer, Mayer, Maier,
> Meier are the same for all practical purposes.
>

I don't know that is the case.

>> I also wonder how often the surname Meyer is derived
>> from the Hebrew first name Meir,
>

> It probably isn't. In Hebrew first names and surnames
> are not as interchangeable as in English.
>
> dk
>

I don't know that is the case either. If someone's name
was, say, David ben Meir and was ordered to take a surname,
might he not choose Meir and spell it like the German Maier
or Mayer or Meyer? I don't know that this happened, but I
think Jews adopted surnames of all sorts of different
origins, like occupation, where they lived, etc. Why not
their father's name? If you want to argue persuasively
against it, you'll need to cite some authority, not make
assertions. One case in point is the Jewish name Katz,
which is an acronym for Righteous Kohane (priest). When
ordered to take German surnames, some Kohanim choose Katz
because of the acronym (it was meaningful to them), but it
satisfied the requirement to adopt a German language surname.

[Andrew Clarke]

Not to mention the embarrassing fact that the pianist Marcelle Meyer never had a husband called Andr'e Isaac, and that this case is in no way relevant to whether Signor Carlo Di Vieto did or did not profit from the sequestration of Jewish assets in France.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Frank Berger]

It's hard to know what Dan was thinking. It's hard to
imagine he would ask if I had read it, when he hadn't.
Yesterday I said to my wife, after peeking in the classroom
window when picking
up our pre-school grandchildren,
"I think Sander has new shoes." She responded, "They're in
the classroom." I asked if she had heard what I said, figuring
she thought I said something else. She repeated exactly
what I said, and at first didn't understand that her
response made no sense. I thought she was having a stroke or
something. Maybe she was.

[Andrew Clarke]

Or for that matter Jimmy Durante? Both had big schnozzes (good Yiddish word) but neither had the archetypal "Jewish nose", which, in grossly exaggerated form, appeared in Nazi propaganda throughout Occupied France and elsewhere.

With reference to the Jewish / non-Jewish implications of "Meier", remember Hermann Goering's taunt that if a single British bomb fell on Berlin "you can call me Meier" which is pointless if the the name didn't have recognisably Jewish associations. And of course when the bombing raids forced the man to take refuge in communal shelters, he did introduce himself as "Herr Meier".

I've always assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the name was one of those imposed on Prussian Jews when the census authorities required them to adopt surnames instead of the traditional patronymic. In German it means "steward" (of an estate).

Andrew Clarke
Canberra
once employed as a fifteen year old casual by Myer's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Myer

[Steve Emerson]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 3:02:29 AM UTC-8, Andrew Clarke wrote:

> Could you tell us which of her two husbands made a fortune from the sale of Jewish assets - the first, a French actor whom she divorced in 1937, or the second, who was an Italian lawyer?

I think that date is off, Andrew. The Donald Manildi notes for EMI's large Meyer box of 2007 tell us she divorced the actor, Pierre Bertin, in 1927. She married Carlo di Vieto in 1932. Presumably any fortune made in the way described was made by the lawyer; in any case there isn't much to go on, this tiny factoid from the Stravinsky biography. Inconclusive, I'd say.

Meyer lived in Rome from 1947 onwards.

SE.

[Frank Berger]

A seemingly authoritative source for understanding
German-Jewish names in the unlikely case anyone is interested:

http://oldgermantranslations.com/translations/page4/page4.html

[Andrew Clarke]

Thanks for that, Steve. I've seen the 1927 date elsewhere: there is an alarming inconsistency in Marcelle Meyer web pages with regard to dates.

I'd agree that there simply isn't enough evidence against Mme Meyer to make any assumptions about what she and di Vieto were doing between 1940 and 1944.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Lawrence Kart]

Hard evidence of the-court-of-law type we don't have here. But look again at the first two sentences of Poulenc's April 1945 Le Figaro piece:

"I am writing in order that I might advocate for Mme Marcelle Meyer, one of the most truly authentic French pianists of our time. Many have taken issue with her of late because of her unfortunate appearance with the Berlin Chamber Orchestra during the Occupation performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A Major, K. 488."

Several things seem fairly obvious or very likely: Meyer and her friends were under stress because it was felt in some quarters, and by "many" people, that she had been something of a collaborationist under the Occupation. How much of one she actually was, or how much of one "many" people felt she was -- that we don't know. But if that were not a view of Meyer's behavior under the Occupation that "many" entertained in the spring of 1945, 1) what would the fuss have been about? and 2) why would Poulenc have felt it necessary to write his piece of advocacy on Meyer's behalf?

Further, Poulenc mentions only her "unfortunate appearance with the Berlin Chamber Orchestra during the Occupation performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A Major, K. 488." Yes, that could have been the only performance Meyer gave under German auspices during the Occupation, and it also could have been one that aroused special ire. But how likely is it that If Meyer was a pianist prominent enough to be asked to to perform with the presumably visiting Berlin Chamber Orchestra, that this was (as Poulenc seems to suggest) the sole such performance she gave during the Occupation?

BTW, elsewhere Poulenc refers to the behavior during the Occupation of his great interpreter and friend Pierre Bernac, saying that Bernac under the Occupation withdrew into the role of teaching voice so that he would not be asked to perform on the German-controlled radio.

LK

[Frank Berger]

There are infinite degrees of evil. There's no way to tell
if Meyer was in any way a Nazi-sympathizer. I'd go further
- there's no reason to even suspect it. At worst, based on
the evidence we have, we can say she was not sufficiently
anti-Nazi and/or not sufficiently courageous, to risk her
life or career or abandon her country. So she wasn't a
hero. Big deal.

[Lawrence Kart]

Nobody --certainly not me -- has said that Meyer was a Nazi-sympathizer. Rather, it seems that under the Occupation she was something of a get-along, go-along type -- enough so, as Poulenc said, to offend "many" people. Yes, infinite degrees.

LK

[Andrew Clarke]

That's a good article, Frank, and corrects my oversimplified view of the situation. It's interesting that names like Rosenbaum or Goldstein, now invariably associated with Jewishness in the English-speaking world, are also the names of non-Jewish families in the German-speaking one. My guess is that the non-Jewish families were the ones that didn't emigrate to London or New York. The Jewish families were the ones that did, and they are the ones we know about.

Incidentally my Israel correspondent, formerly at school with me in Melbourne, has sent me a photocopy of one of the personal papers belonging to a great-great-grandmother. Her name was Segal, she lived in Tsafat, and the form is printed in Ottoman Turkish.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Lawrence Kart]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 11:38:19 PM UTC-6, dk wrote:

> Also shrewd enough to trade in sequestered
> Jewish assets. To my mind, this goes beyond
> "get-along, go-along".
>
> dk

Yes, but if so, that was Meyer's husband, not Meyer herself. Her degree of complicity there is an unanswered question.

LK

[Bob Harper]

On 12/13/16 6:53 PM, Frank Berger wrote:
(snip)

>>
>
> There are infinite degrees of evil. There's no way to tell if Meyer was
> in any way a Nazi-sympathizer. I'd go further - there's no reason to
> even suspect it. At worst, based on the evidence we have, we can say
> she was not sufficiently anti-Nazi and/or not sufficiently courageous,
> to risk her life or career or abandon her country. So she wasn't a
> hero. Big deal.

A very sensible take on the matter.

Bob Harper

[Frank Berger]

From Wikipedia: "The name Segal has been said to be
derived either from Hebrew segan leCohen (assistant to the
Cohens), although a minority of sources claim that "Segal"
is an abbreviation for segan le-kehunah (assistant to the
priest) instead."

All or most of the Segals I have known (variants include
Siegel) have the family tradition of being Levites. When
the Torah is read in the synagogue. it is divided into
sections. Each section that is read is preceded and
followed by a blessing. Congregants are called up to recite
these blessings. A Kohane is given the first honor and a
Levite the second. One's status as Kohane, Levite or
Israelite (meaning neither), is determined purely by family
tradition. There is no DNA or document testing. Synagogues
often give the honor of reciting the blessings to visitors.
The gabbai (ritual leader) will come over and ask the
visitor if he is a Kohane or Levite and offer him an aliyah
(going up to recite the blessings) depending on the answer.

[graham]

On 12/13/2016 11:20 PM, dk wrote:

>> Yes, but if so, that was Meyer's husband, not
>> Meyer herself. Her degree of complicity there
>> is an unanswered question.
>

> Behind every successful man, there is a woman!
That's because his wallet is in his back pocket!

[nmsz...@gmail.com]

Some immigration workers assigned a name to those they couldn't understand. That new name stuck with them and their descendants. Could have been applied to persons of any faith.

[Frank Berger]

That's true, but was the exception rather than the rule, and
probably more common with multi-syllabic, multi-consonant
Eastern European names. FWIW, on a tour of Ellis Island
years ago, the guide said that, contrary to popular belief,
most name changes took place on the ship, not by U.S.
immigration officials.

[Lawrence Kart]

In light of Poulenc's Le Figaro article in defense of Meyer (linked to above), Ii there was "no reason" in April 1945 to even suspect that Meyer was a collaborator of some sort, why does Poulenc, who clearly wished to defend Meyer, need to defend her? Obviously because "many" (Poulenc's word) in France at that time were questioning her behavior under the Occupation. Again, that's not proof/legal evidence that she did anything wrong under the Occupation, but it's certainly evidence that Meyer was under, as they say, "a cloud of suspicion."

Larry Kart

[Frank Berger]

Again, there are degrees of collaboration. And people are
quick to judge. A regular person may never be faced with
the kind of decision an artist or community leader may be
faced with, and find all to easy to condemn someone who
performs one concert under the occupation. The rest of
Poulenc's article mostly defends Meyer as being a true
French musician, whatever that means. Something about not
performing Beethoven and Schubert much. Bach and Mozart are
OK, though. I didn't really get it.

[Lawrence Kart]

Nor did I "really get it." Which is why I suspect that more probably lies behind the one "unfortunate" performance with the Berlin Chamber Orchestra that Poulenc mentions.

BTW, Poulenc's emphasis on Meyer's "Frenchness" may something have to do with Cortot's situation. Cortot played a major administrative role in the music world under Vichy and performed in Germany during the war. That much of Cortot's repertoire was Germanic apparently was being used post-Occupation to poke holes in his defenders' claims that Cortot under the Occupation was merely doing his level best to protect French musicians and French music during stressful times. Poulenc's claims of virtuous "Frenchness" on Meyer's behalf may seem bizarre to us, but they certainly had some validity in the light of Cortot's situation.

No doubt "many" in France in the post-Occupation era (not just "people" per se) were "quick to judge," but I in turn am not going to readily dismiss the judgments of people who actually lived under Vichy and Nazi rule. Poulenc's article is evidence that there were "many" such people.

Larry Kart

[Gerard]

Op woensdag 14 december 2016 17:04:52 UTC+1 schreef Frank Berger:

>
> That's true, but was the exception rather than the rule, and
> probably more common with multi-syllabic, multi-consonant
> Eastern European names. FWIW, on a tour of Ellis Island
> years ago, the guide said that, contrary to popular belief,
> most name changes took place on the ship, not by U.S.
> immigration officials.

I would not trust any guide on that.
I suppose other guides tell other stories.
It's not a simple "popular belief", but it is a story told by many, also in movies (those are more accurate and right generally).

[Charles]

ENOUGH conjecture and opinion-mongering!!! The reals facts about French musical life under the Occupation (and Meyer's career, based on interviews with her daughter) may be read in the recent book "La Vie musicale sous Vichy" by Myriam Chimènes. Read it, and then come back to talk...........

[cooper...@gmail.com]

Oddly enough, I recommended that book in this thread about two dozen postings ago. Note also Chimènes' more recent book, La musique à Paris sous l'Occupation (2013). Also an excellent article by Nigel Simeone (biographer of Messiaen) that appeared in The Musical Times in 2006, from which I quoted (which does not specifically mention Meyer, however). How this thread degenerated into an idiotic discussion of whether Meyer is a Jewish name is just one o' those RMCR things.

AC

[Frank Berger]

Why don't you share what you know, so that we don't have to
learn French and spend a lot of money.

[Frank Berger]

I'm surprised you think that discussion was idiotic. Off
topic? Very? Why idiotic?

[Andrew Clarke]

I think the issue was whether she was a true and patriotic Frenchwoman. And you're right, the question of how much amounts to collaboration and whether Mme X should have joined the Resistance is not an easy one, especially when the SS started to take hostages and shoot a dozen of them or so every time a German was assassinated. The behaviour of the Reichwehr, incidentally, was usually impeccable in their dealings with civilians: sadly the Waffen SS was less so, especially when in retreat.

It has to be remembered also that the French Assembly had overwhelmingly voted to give Petain absolute power to deal with the Germans and to form a new government. He had the support of many French people who felt that anything had to be better than the chaos of the Third Republic, whom they blamed, with some justification, for the military collapse of 1940. Vichy's policy was to try and establish France as some kind of junior partner of Germany and Italy, and were to slowly but surely descend into the mire of collaboration in doing so, and without any tangible result. France gave Hitler her Jews: Hitler gave France nothing. And most of the French population was too busy trying to keep warm or find something to eat to think about the high moral ground.

Cinephiles may like to watch "Le dernier metro" and "Monsieur Batignolles" to get some idea of what it might have been like.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Andrew Clarke]

An introduction to, and some excerpts from La musique a Paris is available here:

http://www.fayard.fr/la-musique-paris-sous-loccupation-9782213677217

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[MickeyBoy]

On Wednesday, December 14, 2016 at 8:25:31 PM UTC-6, Charles wrote:
>
> ENOUGH conjecture and opinion-mongering!!! The reals facts about French musical life under the Occupation (and Meyer's career, based on interviews with her daughter) may be read in the recent book "La Vie musicale sous Vichy" by Myriam Chimènes. Read it, and then come back to talk...........

I'll second Prof Timbrell's comment and recommend to all his book on French Pianism, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I have also enjoyed this thread, even the interesting and off-topic discussion re the family name, Meyer. I'll just add that the French people and government were in an impossible situation. Hitler held over a million (IIRC) French prisoners hostage in Germany...And the German people were also in an impossible but different situation, White Roses notwithstanding.

[Andrew Clarke]

For an extreme polemic on the subject of musical collaboration, try Francois Coadou's essay here:

http://www.musicologie.org/publirem/coadou_musique_france_occupation.html

Among the principal findings of this tremendous rhetoric is the notion that the Nazi cultural administration, which followed hot on the heels of the Wehrmacht, didn't have to exert much pressure on the French musical world to embrace the new German ideology because it was already fascist anyway: Canteloube and D'Indy are singled out for special mention, because of their "back to the soil" nationalism: in fact Canteloube made no secret of his allegiance to the Vichy regime.

A fairly sober appreciation of Chimenes' book on Paris is given here:

http://www.musicologie.org/publirem/la_musique_a_paris_sous_l_occupation.html

The reviewer, Jean-Marc Warszawski, argues that the papers included in the book - they're the proceedings of a conference, in fact - are uneven in quality and by overly dwelling on personalities loses sight of the big picture, especially with regard to degrees of collaboration:

"D'autant qu'il ne s'agit pas, dans le cadre d'un travail historique, de juger les uns et les autres en bien ou en mal — l'histoire ne juge pas —, ou de dénombrer collaborateurs et opposants, mais de montrer ce que fut la collaboration et discerner les divers degrés : engagement politique, opportunisme carriériste, besoin de travailler, soumission à l'autorité ou au groupe, etc."

"Especially as it's not a matter, within the context of an historical work, of judging who's good and who's bad - history does not judge - or of enumerating collaborators and those in opposition, but to show what collaboration [actually] was, and distinguish the various degrees: political engagement, careerist opportunism, the need to work, submission to authority or to a group, etc."

AC (the other one)
Canberra

[Andrew Clarke]

Much of 'La vie musicale sous Vichy' is available in Google Books

<https://books.google.com.au/books?redir_esc=y&id=qcBpfEu74c8C&q=marcelle+meyer#v=onepage&q=marcelle%20meyer&f=false>

but there are only three brief mentions of MM:

1. That when Radio France was shifted to Rennes after the outbreak of war, MM and many others followed it

2. That by 1943-44 only recordings of German music were made, in orchestras with young conductors and young soloists, as well as MM who hadn't made a recording since 1930. Half of these recordings were left to rot in the Path'e archives.

3. Those who had commenced a recording career waited to see if somehow or other there might be more opportunities. MM is mentioned this category

The Google Books edition includes the index, which lists only the above: therefore it's unlikely that the pages not included in Google Books contain more about MM. There is no mention of her husband, Carlo di Vieto.

Is there more in the later volume dealing with Paris?

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[O]

In article <o2plii$1d74$1...@gioia.aioe.org>, MiNe109
<pianof...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On 12/13/16 1:39 PM, Frank Berger wrote:
> > One of my pet peeves, actually, is being told that I didn't
> > get the joke when I think it isn't funny. My daughter, a
> > big New Yorker Magazine fan, tried this on me when I
> > mentioned I very, very rarely find a New Yorker cartoon
> > funny. I then proceeded, to her satisfaction, to "explain"
> > the joke of a bunch of them. It's just a fairly benign
> > variant of the attitude, all too prevalent, that if you're
> > different than me there must be something wrong with you.
>
> Fortunately, New Yorker cartoons don't have to be assessed individually.
>
> http://www.what-a-misunderstanding.com/
>
> If this seems OT, let me say, "What a misunderstanding!"
>
> Stephen

It is said that every caption on a New Yorker cartoon can be replaced
with the caption "I'd like to add you to my professional network on
LinkedIn."

Most of the time the above caption is funnier.

-Owen

[Lawrence Kart]

Some seemingly sober information (and in English) about various aspects and shadings of collaboration and resistance among musicians in Vichy and post-Vichy France. Meyer's name is not mentioned:

http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/french-resistance/musical-life-under-vichy/

http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/french-resistance/role-of-radio-in-wartime-france-x266b/

http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/french-resistance/front-national-des-musiciens/

http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/french-resistance/jewish-musicians-in-vichy-france/

Larry Kart

[Frank Berger]

In other words, Professor Timbrell's scold was without
substance.

[Andrew Clarke]

On Saturday, December 17, 2016 at 3:39:49 AM UTC+11, Lawrence Kart wrote:

> http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/french-resistance/musical-life-under-vichy/
>
> http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/french-resistance/role-of-radio-in-wartime-france-x266b/
>
> http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/french-resistance/front-national-des-musiciens/
>
> http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/french-resistance/jewish-musicians-in-vichy-france/
>

Another study in English is Leslie A. Sprout: The musical legacy of wartime France

<http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520275300>

Andrew Clarke
Canberra