Hitler and the accordion
Jeroen Nijhof
I've read Christoph Wagner: Das Akkordeon -- eine wilde Karriere
completely now (I finished two o'clock last night), and I'll
try to summarise the chapter 'Heil Handharf'.
The main player in this chapter is Hohner, the largest accordion
producer of Germany if not of the World. To my surprise, Hohner
only started to make accordions in 1903, after the death of
Mathias Hohner senior: Mathias Hohner had been against producing
accordions, because it might have spoilt the market for
mouth harmonicas.
Hohner had done a lot to promote the accordion, amongst others
by encouraging the formation of accordion orchestra, and by the
education of accordion teachers. Hohner had also initiated
the foundation of the 'Deutscher Handharmonika Verband (DHHV)'
(German accordion society), and had always played a major part in it.
The chapter 'Heil Handharf' is basically about Hohner doing everything
to keep on selling accordions (including making publicity of
accordion orchestras playing for high Nazis).
In 1933 and 1934, the DHHV came more and more under control
of the Reichsmusikkammer, i.e. the Nazis. At first, to prevent
outside control, the president and the vice president of the DHHV
had joined the NSDAP, but that helped only temporary.
At the end of 1936, the DHHV seat was moved to Berlin, and shortly
afterwards the DHHV was disbanded.
The accordion as a 'nigger-jazz' instrument
===========================================
Under the Nazis, of course only 'German' music was allowed.
One type of music that certainly was not German, was jazz music.
As the jazz music had grown up at the same time as the accordion,
they were well connected, as many Hohner ads showed. This meant
trouble for the accordion, of course. In a town in the north of
Bavaria, in 1933 'playing the piano accordion in public' was forbidden
because of its jazz connections.
Since then, Hohner did everything to deny the connection,
saying the accordion was 'excellently suited for German folk music',
that the saxophone was the real culprit, etc. That seems to have
worked.
It is noted, that even so, the accordion was still present as
a jazz instrument: in 1936 there was a picture of a army
accordion orchestra in the 'Handharmonika' magazine, with on the
bass drum clearly readible: 'JAZZ BAND'.
The accordion prosecuted by the Nazis?
======================================
On the question of what was German music, there were two camps:
the classical camp, and the folk camp. In the top of
the Reichsmusikkammer, but especially in the top of the youth
organisation, there were fierce opponents of the accordion.
The arguments were not always the same, but some arguments were:
- the accordion is unsuited for 'higher' (classical) music.
this point of view was shared by many people on the pro accordion side;
this also caused Hohner to revert its earlier policy of promoting
the accordion as a serious, classical instrument.
- the accordion came from Vienna, and was therefore not German enough
- it was not handmade
- real folk instruments ought to be melody instruments, not chord instruments
- it prevents people from learning real music, because of the tablature
notation (for diatonic instruments).
In February 1938, this led to the decree that from then on,
in the youth organisations no new accordion orchestras or groups
were to be founded, and existing groups should gradualy change
to strings and woodwinds, etc.
This decree was life threatening to Hohner, because it meant
an attack to the basis of the home market: if no young people would
play the accordion, they wouldn't start at a later age either.
And without a home market, export would be more difficult.
So Hohner wrote a letter to the minister of trade, pointing out that
this would threaten the livelyhood of the 10000 employees
in the industry, and their families included even more than 50000 people.
This argument was good enough, so that the decree was retracted a month
later, to the point that 'the accordion was well suited for folk
music etc., but definitely not for the German masters such as
Haydn, Wagner, etc.
The argument stopped definitely in 1942, when the ministry for propaganda
forbade further discussions on this point.
'war winner' and comforter of souls in World War II
===================================================
Everything changed when the war started, as the accordion was very
popular in the army. Hohner advertised with
'the rifle is the bride of the soldier, but the accordion is his girlfriend!'.
The accordion was popular on all sides
[Gary Blair told us about the English side of this],
and definitely more popular than before the war: the market
was unsatiable.
==================================================
In this chapter there is also a very nice WW-I story, I'll
give the translation in a seperate message
('Christmas in the trenches')
Jeroen
mjo...@theriver.com
nij...@th.rug.nl (Jeroen Nijhof) wrote:
>I've read Christoph Wagner: Das Akkordeon -- eine wilde Karriere
Jeroen: Is this book written in German? If so I would like to obtain
a copy. Could you please tell me the publisher.
Dzienkuje Bardzo
Matthew Prouty
Jeroen Nijhof
mjo...@theriver.com wrote:
: nij...@th.rug.nl (Jeroen Nijhof) wrote:
: >I've read Christoph Wagner: Das Akkordeon -- eine wilde Karriere
: Jeroen: Is this book written in German? If so I would like to obtain
: a copy. Could you please tell me the publisher.
: Dzienkuje Bardzo
: Matthew Prouty
It is in German. Full details:
Christoph Wagner: Das Akkordeon -- eine Wilde Karriere.
:TRANSIT, Berlin, 1993. ISBN 3-88747-088-5.
Yes, the name of the publisher is colon-T-R-A-N-S-I-T.
Address of the publisher:
:TRANSIT Buchverlag
Gneisenaustrasse 2
10961 Berlin
Germany
Jeroen
Greg Bullough
In article <4tlbnl$9...@info.service.rug.nl> nij...@th.rug.nl (Jeroen Nijhof) writes:
>'the rifle is the bride of the soldier, but the accordion is his girlfriend!'.
Ouch! Sounds painful.
Greg
Carlile@mail.nas.com Craig or Jill Carlile
I can understand why Hitler would disapprove of accordion playing, just
look at the Squeezer Profile and you will see that we are far too liberal
and ethnic to be acceptable. Besides, many of us are just the kind of
middle-aged males who are plotting to overthrow something but blame it on
those unruly youngsters.
Criag <car...@nas.com>