NYT: Music as Political Tool in the Service of the Reich
Premise Checker
NYT October 25, 2004
By ALAN RIDING
PARIS, Oct. 24 - When Hitler banned modern and abstract art
as degenerate, the style that replaced it in German museums
was kitsch neo-Classicism. But in the case of degenerate
music, a more convincingly nationalistic alternative was
readily available. Reaching back into the 18th and 19th
centuries, Hitler mobilized Bach, Handel, Beethoven,
Bruckner and Wagner to stir the masses in a musical
language that was purely Germanic.
Today, in cultural terms, the Nazis are usually remembered
for what they were against. In music, this meant Jewish
composers like Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Mahler, Jewish
librettists like Stefan Zweig and myriad Jewish musicians.
It also meant atonal and avant-garde music by the likes of
Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Kurt Weill, as well as
jazz, swing and anything associated with black American
music.
But Hitler also believed that music was the art form
closest to the German soul. While Britain had literature
and France painting, Germany, in the words of Joseph
Goebbels, was "the first musical people on earth." No other
country had as many orchestras or opera houses; no people -
not even the Italians - could boast so many great classical
composers. By the mid-1930's, Germany's musical legacy had
become a pillar of the 1,000-year Reich.
The immense power of music as a political tool is at the
heart of "The Third Reich and Music," a fascinating show at
the Music Museum in the Cité de la Musique, in northeast
Paris, through Jan. 9. Along with paintings, posters,
photographs, stage designs and sculptures, it presents
recordings and film clips of important performances in the
Nazi years. Heard on its own, the music is of all ages. In
this context, it suddenly places a visitor in a crowded
German concert hall six decades ago.
The experience of studying a score of Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony as annotated by Wilhelm Furtwängler is transformed
by a recording of the same conductor leading the Berlin
Philharmonic through the "Ode to Joy" in Berlin on March
22, 1942. Similarly, to hear Herbert von Karajan conduct
the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam in Beethoven's
"Leonore" Overture No. 3 in September 1943 is to recall
that the Netherlands was under German occupation at the
time.
The music here constantly disturbs. Recordings of "Das
Rheingold" and "Götterdämmerung" made in 1933 seem to
trumpet Wagner's status as Hitler's favorite composer
(although Bruckner, too, was singled out for praise in
"Mein Kampf"). And why, one is tempted to ask, is Hitler's
much-loved "Meistersinger von Nürnberg" being sung with
such gusto under Karajan's baton in 1951? (An original
score of this opera is also in the show.)
Hitler evidently appreciated Wagner's anti-Semitism,
expressed most blatantly in his notorious 1850 pamphlet,
"Judaism in Music." But perhaps more important, Wagner's
operas gave voice to Hitler's Romantic identity with an
ancient, mystical and eternal Germany. Appropriately, the
bronze bust of Wagner on display here is by Hitler's court
sculptor, Arno Breker.
Hitler was also a frequent visitor to the Bayreuth
Festival, Wagner's musical shrine. One photograph has
German soldiers marching under a banner reading, "The city
of Richard Wagner welcomes the Führer's guests." Another
shows the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth decorated with
swastikas and a portrait of Hitler to celebrate his 50th
birthday. On that occasion, he was given eight of Wagner's
original signed scores, all of which disappeared in 1945.
Hitler's devotion to Wagner as well as the renewed public
airing of his anti-Semitism ensured that the composer's
reputation would emerge from the war bruised. In time, the
argument prevailed that the music can be separated from the
man. But when Daniel Barenboim, an Argentine-born Jew,
conducted Wagner in Israel in 2001, he provoked a storm.
And when Pascal Huynh, this show's curator, was interviewed
recently on Radio Judaïque-FM in Paris, he was asked not to
play Wagner excerpts.
But the focus of "The Third Reich and Music" is far broader
than the regime's exploitation of Germany's classical
greats. Through scores, recordings and paintings, including
Schoenberg's portraits of Mahler and Zemlinsky, it covers
the pre-Nazi burst of musical innovation. But even before
coming to power in January 1933, the Nazis were criticizing
avant-garde music. Already in 1927, they attacked Ernst
Krenek's lively jazz opera, "Jonny Spielt Auf."
One document - Schoenberg's letter, witnessed by Marc
Chagall, announcing his reconversion to Judaism in July
1933 - underlines how it was apparent by then that the
world had changed. Schoenberg himself chose exile, as did
other composers like Krenek, Zemlinsky and Paul Hindemith,
conductors like Otto Klemperer and Bruno Walter, even the
great tenor Richard Tauber. The "Degenerate Music"
exhibition in Düsseldorf in 1938 was almost a formality.
Among prominent musicians who stayed were the composers
Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner, Carl Orff and Werner Egk,
as well as the conductors Furtwängler, Karajan and Hans
Knappertsbusch. All worked under the Nazis and were able to
resume their careers after the war, with only Furtwängler
singled out for de-Nazification.
Strauss's relationship with the regime was ambivalent. He
was forced to resign as president of the Reich's Chamber of
Music in 1935 after he protested the hounding of Hindemith
and collaborated with Zweig. But he remained one of
Hitler's preferred composers. He also conducted his "Hymn"
at the opening of the Berlin Olympics in 1936, while
several of his greatest operas, including "Arabella" and
"Capriccio," were first performed between 1933 and 1945.
A far darker fate awaited Jewish musicians who did not
escape Germany, Austria or occupied countries. Many were
sent to concentration camps where, if not immediately
killed, they were encouraged to form chamber orchestras,
some of which were infamously ordered to play outside gas
chambers. One photograph in this exhibition shows a
prisoner, Hans Bonarewitz, being escorted to his death at
Mauthausen in the company of other prisoners playing
violins.
No less perversely, beginning in 1941 the Nazis gathered
many musicians at Theresienstadt outside Prague, which the
regime proclaimed a model camp. Orchestras, quartets and
choirs were formed, small operas were produced, and works
were composed. Then, after the Nazis made a propaganda film
of Theresienstadt's musical life in 1944, the composers
Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas and Hans Krasa
were sent to die in Auschwitz. (Excerpts from works by
Ullmann and Krasa can be heard in the show.)
In November the Cité de la Musique will also present a
series of concerts linked to the theme "The Third Reich and
Music," including works by Strauss, Webern, Berg,
Schoenberg, Zemlinsky, Weill and Wagner. But in the
ultramodern setting of the Cité's concert hall, even Wagner
is likely to seem distant from his assigned role in the
Nazis' cultural propaganda machine.
A more chilling reminder of the regime's identity with
music comes at the end of the exhibition: a recording of a
Berlin radio broadcast on May 2, 1945, in which one Karl
Hanke announced, "The Führer is dead." Hanke's long paean
to Hitler then climaxed in music. The chosen work was
Schubert's Eighth Symphony, the "Unfinished." For the
defeated Nazis, it was a metaphor for Hitler's life work.