Wagner article
Richard Loeb
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.
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Anthony Charles: Wilhelm Furtwängler and Music in the Third Reich
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.
Mike Scott Rohan
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.
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.
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?
Dogbert Dilbert
<mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>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.
<big snip>
>
>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.
>
<mighty snip>
Sorry to go OT here, but I've often wondered what R. Strauss'
complicity with the Nazis was, and how is it that he is spared the
Nazi tag that is so often applied to Wagner? I've very often seen the
argument, advanced here by Mike, that his age somehow excuses him from
being a Nazi. But is this really viable? I know plenty of octa- and
even nona-genarians who have their marbles completely intact and who
certainly know the difference between right and wrong (let alone good
and evil!) So why is Strauss absolved because he was old?
To return to the topic, I've often wondered why Furtwangler seemed to
suffer more from the Nazi tag than Karajan or Knappertsbusch, who both
seemed to weasel out of it better than F. did. Was he completely naive
to think that he could stay "to protect German art". Kna is often
excused because he called the Nazis nasty names - is this a better
reason for staying. Finally I wonder how many of us living in the UK
would leave home if we were ruled by a government which curtailed our
civil liberties, persecuted religious minorities and invaded other
countries...hey, wait a minute!
Dogbertd
Mike Scott Rohan
from Dogbert Dilbert <dogb...@hotmail.com> contains these words:
{snip}
> Sorry to go OT here, but I've often wondered what R. Strauss'
> complicity with the Nazis was, and how is it that he is spared the
> Nazi tag that is so often applied to Wagner? I've very often seen the
> argument, advanced here by Mike, that his age somehow excuses him from
> being a Nazi. But is this really viable? I know plenty of octa- and
> even nona-genarians who have their marbles completely intact and who
> certainly know the difference between right and wrong (let alone good
> and evil!) So why is Strauss absolved because he was old?
Extremely old, and his collaboration as such was very early on, when the
Nazis first came to power, long before war, extermination camps etc. In
those days they represented a legitimate hope to many people, chiefly
because the alternative was so awful. The Weimar regime, with its
chaotic, ineffectual and corrupt parliament, and incompetent (and
equally corrupt) economic management, had not only made itself unpopular
but discredited the idea of democracy and liberal policies in a country
with almost no experience of either. The social and moral upheaval that
accompanied it also alienated a lot of people. Many longed for a strong
government to replace the monarchy they'd been used to, even a
dictatorship if that was what it took. Thus Strauss, who also blamed the
Weimar regime for neglecting musical culture. When the Nazis came to
power he sucked up to Hitler in fairly minor ways -- for example, taking
over at Bayreuth when Toscanini refused (in protest against the
persecution of Bruno Walther), and signing a letter condemning Thomas
Mann's lectures on Wagner. In 1934 he was offered an appointment as
president of the newly created Reichskammer, essentially in charge of
all music in the country -- an egotist's dream -- and continued to laud
Hitler and Goebbels. He created a song called, if I remember rightly
"Das Bachlein", The Stream, which uses the image of a clear mountain
stream as a guide, ending "Du sollst mein Fuhrer sein!" Which is utterly
neutral in itself -- and is still sung -- but is nevertheless
brown-nosing. He had some excuse for this. He wanted to help his Jewish
family connections and friends, notably his librettist Stefan Zweig;
with great trouble he squeezed out Hitler's permission to allow Die
Schweigsame Frau to go ahead, only to find that Zweig was reluctant to
do so -- Strauss tactfully castigated him for his "Jewish arrogance".
And less creditably, he also began exploiting his position to impose
heavy controls on musical performance -- heavy limits on the light music
played by orchestras at spas, "no Viennese operetta trash", no
brass-band Wagner arrangements, quotas of German music and limitations
on foreign composers, that kind of thing -- in effect a grumpy old
bugger's idea of what people *ought* to be listening to. Which, as
Hitler himself noted, seemed to favour the maximum possible amount of
R.Strauss. As president he also rubber-stamped Goebbels' blacklists of
forbidden composers (though notably without correcting its ignorant
omissions, such as Meyerbeer, Halevy and Schoenberg!).
Strauss rapidly became disgusted with the Nazis, though, and feuded with
Goebbels, who preferred "the music of the people" and openly called him
senile and yelled at him that he was a thing of the past. Goebbels
plotted his downfall. Strauss wrote a letter to Zweig, assuring him that
he was just using the Reichskammer for good ends, and had no belief in
anti-Semitism or similar ideology -- which was undoubtedly true -- and
that he wanted to keep on collaborating with Zweig. Goebbels had this
intercepted and presented it to Hitler as evidence of treason. Hitler
preferred to have Germany's most famous living artist resign quietly.
Strauss continued to grovel, but Hitler essentially made him an
"unperson", ignored more than persecuted, although Goebbels seems to
have enjoyed spiteful acts such as confiscating part of his estate to
dump evacuees on.
All in all, not a pretty story, but not a deeply evil one, either.
Strauss's story was that of a large number of basically decent but
deluded people who blinded themselves to the Nazis' inner darkness in
favour of the regeneration they promised, and their own self-interest.
They mostly resigned or were thrown off as he was, at an early stage;
but by that time were in no position to protest, and had to endure as
best they could. At worst they gave a degree of aid and comfort to a
regime that would have been just the same without them.
> To return to the topic, I've often wondered why Furtwangler seemed to
> suffer more from the Nazi tag than Karajan or Knappertsbusch, who both
> seemed to weasel out of it better than F. did. Was he completely naive
> to think that he could stay "to protect German art". Kna is often
> excused because he called the Nazis nasty names - is this a better
> reason for staying. Finally I wonder how many of us living in the UK
> would leave home if we were ruled by a government which curtailed our
> civil liberties, persecuted religious minorities and invaded other
> countries...hey, wait a minute!
And did so with mouthfuls of pious cant -- although IMHO some minorities
are actually the persecutors.
Karajan and Schwarzkopf were young or youngish artists and party members
who hobnobbed with the higher-ups. Admittedly they had to be to survive;
but it was more than hobnobbing, in Schwarzkopf's case, according to
reliable rumour. Karajan was unpopular with Hitler, and was effectively
sidelined. Neither seems to have had any more ideological allegiance
than Furtwangler. Furtwangler, though, allowed himself to become the
jewel in the Third Reich's cultural showcase, taking the BPO on tour to
neutral states or occupied countries where the Nazis wanted to present a
cultural aspect over their brutal one, for the benefit of the undecided
USA in particular. No doubt he chose to ignore the implications and bury
his head in culture; but, like Strauss, you can't always do that. And
Furtwangler was much younger than Strauss, and continued his activities
into the war. Knappertsbusch, like Hotter, lived much nearer the edge of
the knife; they were allowed to live and perform, and their open dislike
of the regime was tolerated, within bounds, but they lived restricted
lives, forbidden to travel, for example, and without Furtwangler's
privileges which made his life much more comfortable while the German
population as a whole was suffering. So I do feel there was a
difference. I don't think any of them were culpable enough to punish
harshly, though.
Cheers,
Mike
Dogbert Dilbert
Thanks Mike, for both the interesting history and comments.
Dogbertd
Richard Loeb
<dogb...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:oan6l2l6qrv7j2jd4...@4ax.com...
As always - one can get a comprehensive musical history education just by
reading some of the messages here. Richard
Derrick Everett
<snip>
>
> Karajan and Schwarzkopf were young or youngish artists and party members
> who hobnobbed with the higher-ups. Admittedly they had to be to survive;
> but it was more than hobnobbing, in Schwarzkopf's case, according to
> reliable rumour. Karajan was unpopular with Hitler, and was effectively
> sidelined. Neither seems to have had any more ideological allegiance
> than Furtwangler.
I do not agree where Karajan is concerned. He joined the Nazi party early
on, I think even before it came to power, and probably for ideological
reasons rather than with a view to furthering his career. By the time
Schwarzkopf got her party membership card, it was more a case of an
artistic being unable to work without one. That does not apply to "von"
Karajan (as the egoist liked to call himself).
--
Derrick Everett
====== Writing from 59°54'N 10°37'E =======
http://home.c2i.net/monsalvat/index.htm
http://home.c2i.net/monsalvat/wagnerfaq.htm
Richard Partridge
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk, wrote the following:
> The message <hcs5l29jvimnggakl...@4ax.com>
> from Dogbert Dilbert <dogb...@hotmail.com> contains these words:
>
[snip]
[snip]
Thank you for that very interesting account of Richard Strauss's
collaboration with the Nazis.
Dick Partridge
REP
news:3130303032303...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk...
> The message <hcs5l29jvimnggakl...@4ax.com>
> from Dogbert Dilbert <dogb...@hotmail.com> contains these words:
>
> {snip}
>
>> Sorry to go OT here, but I've often wondered what R. Strauss'
>> complicity with the Nazis was, and how is it that he is spared the
>> Nazi tag that is so often applied to Wagner? I've very often seen the
>> argument, advanced here by Mike, that his age somehow excuses him from
>> being a Nazi. But is this really viable? I know plenty of octa- and
>> even nona-genarians who have their marbles completely intact and who
>> certainly know the difference between right and wrong (let alone good
>> and evil!) So why is Strauss absolved because he was old?
>
Which included most of his surviving family, I think. Strauss's
daughter-in-law was Jewish, and that was enough to endanger his son's entire
family, including a very young grandson or two.
Also, Strauss's musical upbringing was quite favorably Jewish. His father
was a musician in the classical strain, emphasizing (specifically)
Mendelssohn -- while Wagner was practically forbidden.
REP
Mike Scott Rohan
from Derrick Everett <sparafu...@yahoo.com> contains these words:
> On Thu, 09 Nov 2006 13:04:52 +0000, Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> <snip>
> >
> > Karajan and Schwarzkopf were young or youngish artists and party members
> > who hobnobbed with the higher-ups. Admittedly they had to be to survive;
> > but it was more than hobnobbing, in Schwarzkopf's case, according to
> > reliable rumour. Karajan was unpopular with Hitler, and was effectively
> > sidelined. Neither seems to have had any more ideological allegiance
> > than Furtwangler.
> I do not agree where Karajan is concerned. He joined the Nazi party early
> on, I think even before it came to power, and probably for ideological
> reasons rather than with a view to furthering his career. By the time
> Schwarzkopf got her party membership card, it was more a case of an
> artistic being unable to work without one. That does not apply to "von"
> Karajan (as the egoist liked to call himself).
When they came to power he was only 23 or 24, still a repetiteur and
assistant conductor at Ulm. He probably was committed at first; so were
a lot of people, including many older and wiser. At that age, and in the
climate of the time, joining either the Nazis or the Communists was very
common, just as becoming a Maoist was in the 60s (or, it seems, a
suicide bomber now); it's a good age for being carried away by romantic
ideologies offering easy solutions, and just as embarrassing in later
years*. He certainly never impressed the Party with his committment, or
gained much by it. Furtwangler hated him passionately, and used his
influence to hold him back. Hitler hated his habit of conducting without
a score, blaming a major performance slip on this, and thereafter he was
largely sidelined, by wartime relegated to guest conductor status,
mostly in the provinces or on tour, and passed over for opera house
directorates such as Berlin. Which is not to say he wasn't a Nazi in
spirit; but he committed no crimes beyond this, and was therefore only
barred from conducting for a year or two.
Schwarzkopf is more problematic. I agree. She was only about six years
younger than Karajan, and began her career about that long after him.
Unlike him, though, she was based in Berlin until 1943, and moved
constantly in the circles of the Nazi elite. Rumours that she was the
mistress of several of them, and at least one extremely high-ranker,
were common at the time, and appear likely to have been true. That may
have been behind her transfer to Vienna. I don't know if there's any
evidence she was less of a Nazi than v. K, but she certainly was quite
at home with them. She got off more or less scot-free, and that may have
been better than she deserved.
Furtwanger, incidentally, did officially and publicly kowtow to the
Reich's right to determine cultural policy, as early as 1934. He
conducted concerts for the Hitler Youth and the Nuremberg rallies, and
Meistersinger for Hitler's birthday -- and in Prague, celebrating the
German conquest, and likewise in Denmark, Norway and Hungary. He
shamelessly used his influence to attack a long list of rivals and
enemies, albeit not always successfully; he wanted to take Bayreuth away
from Winifred Wagner. His services to propaganda are constantly praised
in Goebbels' diary, with remarks like "he is now thoroughly on our side"
and "he has become an out-and-out chauvinist". That would seem to have
been the truth; he was certainly no Nazi ideologically, but he did get
drunk on German supremacism. He excused his conducting in occupied
countries at his trial by claiming that they were "under German
protection".
What a shower, the whole pack of them! Selfish monomaniac opportunists,
imbued with national arrogance. But not real war criminals, except in
the sense that most adult Germans were.
Cheers,
Mike
*(except in the case of the suicide bombers, of course, who aren't
around to worry. Though mind you, I've heard surviving kamikaze pilots
sound pretty sheepish about their attitudes.).
Derrick Everett
> The message <pan.2006.11.09....@yahoo.com> from Derrick
> Everett <sparafu...@yahoo.com> contains these words:
>
>> On Thu, 09 Nov 2006 13:04:52 +0000, Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
>
>> <snip>
>> >
>> > Karajan and Schwarzkopf were young or youngish artists and party
>> > members who hobnobbed with the higher-ups. Admittedly they had to be
>> > to survive; but it was more than hobnobbing, in Schwarzkopf's case,
>> > according to reliable rumour. Karajan was unpopular with Hitler, and
>> > was effectively sidelined. Neither seems to have had any more
>> > ideological allegiance than Furtwangler.
>
>> I do not agree where Karajan is concerned. He joined the Nazi party
>> early on, I think even before it came to power, and probably for
>> ideological reasons rather than with a view to furthering his career.
>> By the time Schwarzkopf got her party membership card, it was more a
>> case of an artistic being unable to work without one. That does not
>> apply to "von" Karajan (as the egoist liked to call himself).
>
> When they came to power he was only 23 or 24, still a repetiteur and
> assistant conductor at Ulm. He probably was committed at first; so were
> a lot of people, including many older and wiser. At that age, and in the
> climate of the time, joining either the Nazis or the Communists was very
> common, just as becoming a Maoist was in the 60s (or, it seems, a
> suicide bomber now); it's a good age for being carried away by romantic
> ideologies offering easy solutions, and just as embarrassing in later
> years*. <snip>
>
>
> *(except in the case of the suicide bombers, of course, who aren't
> around to worry. Though mind you, I've heard surviving kamikaze pilots
> sound pretty sheepish about their attitudes.).
It must be *awfully* embarrassing to be either a failed kamikaze pilot or
an unsuccessful suicide bomber. Neither of them would be something to
want appearing on one's CV.
> Schwarzkopf is more problematic. I agree. She was only about six years
> younger than Karajan, and began her career about that long after him.
> Unlike him, though, she was based in Berlin until 1943, and moved
> constantly in the circles of the Nazi elite. Rumours that she was the
> mistress of several of them, and at least one extremely high-ranker,
> were common at the time, and appear likely to have been true. That may
> have been behind her transfer to Vienna. I don't know if there's any
> evidence she was less of a Nazi than v. K, but she certainly was quite
> at home with them. She got off more or less scot-free, and that may have
> been better than she deserved.
Your points are well taken. Even those who had moved in high Nazi circles
were quick to distance themselves from their party colleagues as soon as
the Allied troops arrived. Leni Riefenstahl was bold enough to deny that
she had ever been a Nazi, "just an artist"; this is not entirely
convincing, when one considers that Riefenstahl sent Hitler a
congratulatory telegram every time his troops invaded another country.
Bryant Fujimoto
> 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.
>
>
A belated thanks (I have a slow news server) for a very interesting
discussion.
Bryant Fujimoto
Mike Scott Rohan
from Derrick Everett <sparafu...@yahoo.com> contains these words:
> > *(except in the case of the suicide bombers, of course, who aren't
> > around to worry. Though mind you, I've heard surviving kamikaze pilots
> > sound pretty sheepish about their attitudes.).
> It must be *awfully* embarrassing to be either a failed kamikaze pilot or
> an unsuccessful suicide bomber. Neither of them would be something to
> want appearing on one's CV.
Like the Indian gentleman who used to have "BA (failed)" on his card.
Or the aspiring teenage rock guitarist who got offered operatic training
-- me, actually.
> > Schwarzkopf is more problematic. I agree. She was only about six years
> > younger than Karajan, and began her career about that long after him.
> > Unlike him, though, she was based in Berlin until 1943, and moved
> > constantly in the circles of the Nazi elite. Rumours that she was the
> > mistress of several of them, and at least one extremely high-ranker,
> > were common at the time, and appear likely to have been true. That may
> > have been behind her transfer to Vienna. I don't know if there's any
> > evidence she was less of a Nazi than v. K, but she certainly was quite
> > at home with them. She got off more or less scot-free, and that may have
> > been better than she deserved.
> Your points are well taken. Even those who had moved in high Nazi circles
> were quick to distance themselves from their party colleagues as soon as
> the Allied troops arrived. Leni Riefenstahl was bold enough to deny that
> she had ever been a Nazi, "just an artist"; this is not entirely
> convincing, when one considers that Riefenstahl sent Hitler a
> congratulatory telegram every time his troops invaded another country.
Absolutely. She was high as a kite on Nazi ideology, and like many
another no doubt regarded the invasion of peaceful neighbours and
persecution of obviously innocent Jews as an unfortunate side-effect --
necessary sacrifices, maybe, which was easier to believe in after the
carnage of WWI. I doubt she'd have been a brutal criminal herself, but
she found them too easy to glorify. Her kind was equally common in the
arts during the Soviet era and since -- totalitarian groupies.
Cheers,
Mike