MUSIC IN THE THIRD REICH
Wilhelm Furtwängler and Music in the Third Reich
The
Devil's Music Master: The Controversial Life and Career
of Wilhelm Furtwängler, by Sam H. Shirakawa.
MUSIC IN THE THIRD REICH
THEN AND NOW
By A.V. Schärfenberg
A grim portrait of modem American music was presented in issue #120 of The New Order. How could it have been otherwise, given the Jews' domination of our culture? It was no coincidence that fine art in the U. S. was trashed at the same moment National Socialism triumphed in Germany. The kosher corrupters who scurried away from Europe beginning in 1933 were the same alleged 'artists who poisoned our musical life. We need only look around at the laughably deplorable state of modem American composition and performance to appreciate the magnitude of their disastrous impact.
Elsewhere, Aryan culture was suddenly freed from Jewish domination and blossomed into a late 2nd Millennium Renaissance. Naturally, the source of that Western revival was Adolf Hitler's Germany. It is nothing short of miraculous that during the brief twelve-year period of peace allowed the Third Reich, such an incredible burst of dynamically creative musical achievement took place. The spirit of Aryan genius could at last express its genuine instinct, uncoloured by the alien agendas of Jews hostile to everything German.
AN OPERATIC BATTLE
Generally regarded as the greatest symphonic composer of the 20th Century, Richard Strauss was urged by 'émigré' Jew impresarios to join them at New York's Metropolitan opera. They dangled lucrative performance fees to entice him, but he answered them indirectly by writing a public statement in support of the National Socialist Revolution, signing it in his own hand, 'Heil Hitler!' With the invention of the first sound tape recorder by Third Reich scientists, Strauss conducted performances of all his major symphonic works, recordings still prized as the best of their kind. During World War II, he composed a concert overture dedicated to the Japanese Royal House on the occasion of its 500th anniversary and to simultaneously commemorate the signing in 1940 of the Axis pact between Germany and Japan. His Metamorphoses, a tone-poem lament for the devastation wrought by the duped Allies on Germany, will forever serve as a deeply moving memorial to the worst tragedy in human history.
Strauss's contemporary, Hans Pfitzner, although not well-known outside of his homeland, was among the most important figures in neo-romantic music, and composed what many listeners consider his greatest works, a pair of symphonies in 1939 and 1940, respectively. Four years earlier, Pfitzner became the first 'Reich Cultural Senator'. The reputations of these two musical titans were so established in the world of art that not even the hysterical hatred of the Jews could destroy them, and their compositions are presently available to a larger audience than ever before, thanks to Aryan man's technological advances in audio reproduction.
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What the Jews cannot destroy they poison! |
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Wilhelm
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But what the Jews cannot destroy they poison. A case in point is perhaps the greatest orchestral director ever to take up the conductor's baton, Wilhelm Furtwängler. It would be untrue to suggest that he was a dedicated National Socialist. His life was music. Furtwängler was favourably inclined to our Idea, but he was too busy with his art for much of the outside world. As a musician who profoundly cherished traditional compositional values and no less deeply despised the cultural rot of the Weimar Republic, he often expressed his gratitude, both publicly and privately, to Hitler for kicking out the Schönbergs, Shaperos, et al, of the 1920's. Less than a year after the National Socialist Seizure of Power, however, Furtwängler found himself embroiled in an extra-musical controversy. He agreed to stage Matthias the Painter, by Paul Hindemith. Oblivious to and totally disinterested in both the story of the opera and the political identity of its composer, the innocent music director found his rehearsals being picketed by battalions of angry Stormtroopers.
It seems Hindemith, although Aryan, was a loudmouthed Communist and his Matthias the Painter a blatant propaganda piece urging its audience to take up arms against the government. "even if it had been elected"-- a transparent reference to the recent National Socialist electoral victories. Furtwängler dismissed the work's proletarian politics as so much out-dated flummery, especially in view of National Socialism's on-going popularity, but insisted the music was good. Performances would proceed as planned, he announced. In a short time, whatever artistic merits or demerits Hindemith's piece might have had were utterly eclipsed by a violent ideological storm gathering over the Berlin Opera House.
Assuming that the last of such Marxist drivel had been cleaned out after January 30th, 1933, the public in general and National Socialists in particular were outraged at news of the up-coming Red Opera. Meanwhile, scattered remnants of the country's enfeebled, dwindling Communists suddenly began to suck a reviving breath of life into their moribund movement and vowed to pack the opera house on opening night, just as they used to in the 20's. Even more so an he Communists, the Stormtroopers wanted Matthias the Painter to be staged, because they relished the opportunity of busting up the performance and exterminating the last of the Red vermin. Not without cause, the city police feared a serious ideological confrontation of the kind so common up until only a few years before. Indeed, it was to bring peace and order to public life that the voters had put Adolf Hitler in power. Even so. the National Socialist authorities were inclined to allow the performance, no matter what came to pass, if only out of respect for Furtwängler, who was, by then, an icon throughout the whole cultural world.
DR. GOEBBELS INTERVENES
Doubtless, Hindemith's music would have been heard, the old Reds would have had their last hurrah (better yet, the Stormtroopers would have beaten the be'jesus out of them all) and the controversy passed as a footnote in the history of the Third Reich. Instead. America's and England's Jew-dominated newspapers turned the premiere into a cause celebre of international proportions. With that, Dr. Josef Goebbels, as Reich Cultural Minister, decided to act. He addressed a long, polite letter to Furtwängler. The situation, he explained, had gotten out of hand. so much so that the enemies of National Socialism, to whom music was only as good as it was politically expedient, were using the impending performance for obvious, non-artistic purposes; namely, to incite hatred and violence against the new regime. Dr. Goebbels added that Hindemith belonged to a by-gone era when national greatness had been despised. The German people, after fourteen long years of difficult struggle, had overcome that shame Now was the time for art to extol the folk-genius of our Race, not down-grade it. He asked that the troublesome opera be shelved for the sake of present peace and future cultural development. But, if the conductor considered its music worthwhile, performance of an orchestral suite from Matthias the Painter could take place.
To the great disappointment of all, save the general opera-going public, Furtwängler responded with his own public letter, in which he heartily subscribed to each of Dr. Goebbels' objections, including his own observation, "There are moments when even art must make room for the good of something greater." Corning from such a fanatic musician, it was a deeply generous statement. With the cancellation of Hindemith's first and last chance at fame, the defunct Reds were disappointed because their own last chance for a big political demonstration evaporated, and the Stormtroopers were disappointed because they missed their chance to whip Germany's last Communists.
In all the hateful hullaballoo turned up by the Jews ever since, and whenever Hindemith's name is mentioned today, conveniently forgotten was the concert performance of Matthias the Painter, which did indeed take place in 1934, as Dr. Goebbels promised. The piece was even recorded in a Third Reich sound studio under Furtwängler's direction in 1934! That this concert version of musical highlights was not much performed thereafter only means that it failed to generate any lasting hold on concert-goers' imaginations, a failure which persists to this day, since it is not often heard, even though it is still touted as some kind of anti-Nazi masterpiece. Indeed, the opera which was supposed to have been too wonderful for the Nazis to appreciate or tolerate, was a huge flop when ostentatiously performed in New York. Since then, it has never again seen the light of day.
It turns out that Hindemith was not such an interesting composer after all, and the controversy surrounding his name had more to do with his obnoxious politics than his own music. Overlooked, too, is the fact that, despite his Red identity, he was allowed to compose, perform and even record in the Third Reich, hardly the tyrannical system the Jews would lead us to believe existed. Hindemith grabbed the U.S. Jews' offer of cash and fled with sheaves of his useless scores. Apparently, New York's kosher environment was less inspiring than that of evil old Nazi Germany, and his artificial reputation withered away into virtual oblivion. Happily, he lived long enough to see his life's work savaged by Jew critics in the 1950's, when they ridiculed him as 'hopelessly obsolete.' True to character, his one-time kosher benefactors eventually turned on their 'righteous Gentile.'
THE CRUCIFIXION OF AN ARYAN MUSICIAN
Only the newspaper Jews overseas manipulated by the Matthias the Painter situation to their advantage, portraying it to gullible goy readers as proof positive that great music was being suppressed by the Nazis, to whom Furtwängler had weakly capitulated. However, they, too, were soon disappointed when, sure he would defect following the Hindemith affair, they offered him (as they had offered Richard Strauss) large performance fees with the New York Philharmonic.
He turned them down and, after war came, was personally active in donating a great deal of concert time to soldiers and factory workers. Audiophiles for decades considered his greatest recorded achievement to have been a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, the Choral, given in the presence of Adolf Hitler on the occasion of the Führer's 55th birthday, April 20th, 1944. Until the very end, Furtwängler was still giving public concerts in Berlin. His last Reich recording (the Cesar Franck Symphony in D minor) is the best performance ever made of that work. It took place in the cataclysmic days of January, 1945.
The Jews castigated Germany's 'Nazi dictatorship' for censorship, a lie, as cited above, when Hindemith was allowed to perform. But immediately after the war, German artists were prevented by the occupation forces from working. Only those who could suck up to the Allies by loudly proclaiming their anti-Nazi sentiments stood a chance of employing their craft. The very censorship the Jewized Allies falsely condemned in National Socialism they practised themselves when the chance came along. Among the proscribed was Wilhelm Furtwängler, even though he never held any post in the Reich government He was not a Party member, and had never even voted for a National Socialist candidate.
The occupation authorities promised he could resume his conducting career if he agreed to sign a public statement begging them for forgiveness for his past participation "in the criminal Hitler regime." He refused, declaring his life then, as always, had been entirely musical, not political, and he objected to the accusation that he had ever been part of anything 'criminal.' The ban against him was upheld and he had to subsist on the charity of friends.
The Jews and their Gentile dupes in uniform tried to show the Germans that their culture was better off under Allied occupation than with their own, elected, National Socialist government. Trouble was, with all the country's real artists dead, jailed or censored, there wasn't much culture to go around. Desperate to maintain their facade of democratic civilisation, they returned to Furtwängler with a watered-down version of the statement presented for his endorsement two years earlier. This time it read something to the effect that he publicly condemned 'totalitarianism' in all its forms, without mentioning National Socialism. He unhesitatingly signed the document and was allowed to resume his musical duties.
'DEMOCRACY, SMOCKRACY!'
Although Furtwängler's return to the podium was greeted with universal acclaim, his performances mostly lacked the greatness of his wartime and pre-war conducting. Many concerts he held were surprisingly disappointing. The old fire seemed to have died out in him. Only occasionally was it seen to flare to life. While a few appearances, such as his performance of the Choral Symphony, at the re-opening of the Bayreuth Festival, exemplified the full scope of his genius, more typical were his lacklustre renditions of Beethoven's and Bruckner's works, his long-time favourites. He had been a Wagner specialist, too, but his post-war recordings of Tristan and The Ring are indistinguishable from any average interpretations. Clearly, the maim was not inspired by post-war democracy. Yet, he was no different than artists of all kinds who reached heights of their greatness from 1933 to 1945. Immediately thereafter, Germany and the West fell into their steep decline toward cultural sterility and extinction from which they still have not pulled out.
Artists depend for their supreme achievement on high inspiration. The Third Reich was the most inspiring epoch in all of history, and its artists thereby felt their talents lifted by the greatness of the times. In the dismal, hypocritical world of the Allies sham 'victory,' there was only despair, not inspiration. This is no idle speculation. P roof may be found in the very audio legacy left by Furtwängler himself. His Third Reich recordings are today widely prized for their universal excellence. It is well-known among collectors that any Furtwängler performance dated before 1946 will be guaranteed for its high value, even if the technical quality is inferior by later standards, while his post-war recordings are largely shunned for their reputation as mediocre. Recording companies make sure that the date of a Furtwängler appearance is displayed prominently on the disccover -- if the performance occurred during the Reich. The dates of his post-war performances are virtually never printed, a sure sign to knowledgeable collectors that the concert was made under a democracy and consequently of relatively slight artistic merit.
Furtwängler's death in 1954 was followed by decades of commonplace conductors who consistently rendered the great music of the past in uniformly colourless renditions. Almost by chance, after decades of middling music directors, audiophiles rediscovered Furtwängler's old recordings almost by chance. For a generation oblivious to his art, his preserved performances came as nothing less than a revelation. Sharply contrasting the commonplace output of Leonard Bernstein, Seji Ozawa, Dean Dixon and other non-White non-entities from the 1960's to the present, his concerts were regarded as by far the best interpretations of great music on record. The international Furtwängler resurgence which began some twenty years ago not only continues today, but has broadened and intensified, Whenever another lost recording of his is discovered, it instantly shoots to die top of the best-seller lists.
THE RECASTING OF WILHELM FURTWÄNGLER
It was only a mailer of time, of course, before the Jews were alerted to the popular renaissance of this recalcitrant 'Nazi musician'. Banning his recordings or even making them quietly disappear by pressuring C.D. companies into discontinuing them would have lost the shrewd shysters new revenues generated by such sales. Instinctually unable to forego a financial profit, they took over the Furtwängler revival themselves.
In an irony typical only of unscrupulous Jews, the same clique who fulminated against him in the 1930's and banned him in the 1940's are peddling his recordings today. As tie most politicised creatures on the planet, however, they are not content with the vast revenues his C.D.'s net them. They must distort his memory to conform with their own perverse notions of political correctness. In justifying sales of his music and using their twisted image of him to propagandise their Gentile customers, the Great Masters of the Lie are now depicting Furtwängler as an anti-Nazi who secretly hated Hitler and stayed in Germany only to help save Jews from being gassed! While such a bald-faced misrepresentation would have flabbergasted the Allied Occupation authorities who banned him from performing, it is just one more piece of the deceitful chutzpah for which the Jews have long been infamous.
No one should then be surprised that the loudest spokesman on behalf of a de-Nazified Furtwängler is Hebrew Henry Fogel. He laments that this "righteous goy, oops, Gentile" was mistaken for a Fascist. The conductor actually loved Jews and risked his life to save them from Hitler, before whom Furtwängler gave his best performance on the Führer's birthday! Such demented 'logic' could only come from die profit-fevered brain of a crazed Jew. Now that his reputation has been sanitised in the mikvah of political correctness, we no longer need trouble our conscience when buying a Furtwängler recording. The past has been re-arranged to make things work for the Jews in the present. Such insidious duplicity recalls one of the brain-washing slogans concocted by Big Brother in George Orwell's prophetic novel, 1984: "Who controls the present, controls the past; who controls the past, controls the future."
But the revival of Aryan music under National Socialism spread through the 1930's and early 1940's beyond the borders of the Third Reich. Helga Rosswänge, Askel Schiotz and Thorsten Raif, who made their careers in Hitler's Germany, were, bar none, the greatest tenors Denmark ever produced, before and especially since the end of World War II. Years before the war, Belgium's greatest tenor, Marcel Wittrich, cut a recording of the concert aria "God Bless our Führer!", which topped the best-seller charts for most of the 1930's. Kirstin Flagstad, among the most important Wagnerian sopranos of the 20th Century, left the Metropolitan Opera, where her success in Die Valkyrie had been nothing short of stupendous, to join her husband in Norway. He was not only the country's leading conductor, but a high-ranking officer in the Nasional Samlung, the Norwegian National Socialist Movement. When a post-war return engagement at the Met was scheduled for her, Flagstad was prevented from performing by hysterical mobs of incensed New York Jews. They openly and successfully prevented a world-class artist from publicly performing for ideological reasons, the very thing for which they had so long falsely condemned the Nazis.
THE VENGEFUL GHOST
OF WILLEM MENGELBERG
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Mengelberg was dedicated heart and soul to Adolf Hitler. |
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Like Furtwängler, Josef Willem Mengelberg's reputation was world-wide! |
Furtwängler's only contemporary to approach and even perhaps surpass him on occasion was the Dutch conductor, Willem Mengelberg. His recordings, too, have witnessed a spectacular comeback, although in his case the Jews are far more uncomfortable. Henry Fogel cannot bring himself to utter a dispensatory word on his behalf. While Furtwängler was little more than emotionally or artistically sympathetic to National Socialism, Mengelberg was dedicated heart and soul to Adolf Hitler. we coined 1940's German invasion of Holland as his country's liberation from Jewish tyranny. Like Furtwängler, his reputation was world-wide and he would have been welcomed in the United States, where he could have lived out his life in safety. Instead, he publicly endorsed tie greatness of National Socialism at every occasion and performed all over the Reich. Even so, he was a vigorous champion of Dutch music and all of Holland's best modern composers owed their early success to him.
No less importantly, Mengelberg moulded the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra into what many regarded as the finest symphonic ensemble ever put together. The mans contributions to music are staggering and far exceed the limitations of this newspaper article to describe. Even so, he never joined any National Socialist organisation (Dutch or German), and did not work or he is war effort, save to perform concerts for troops on R&R., German as well as Dutch, and all the other Aryan nationalities who banded together under the Swastika to fight Soviet Communism. He was content to lend the weight of his legendary reputation to support National Socialism and did what he could for it with the thing he knew best -- conducting great music better than anyone else in the world!
For this harmless involvement in the Movement, Willem Mengelberg was sentenced to death in absentia (i.e., condemned without a hearing) by Holland's Allied-dominated supreme court after the war. Fleeing for his life, he found refuge in Spain. It is to Francisco Franco's eternal credit that he refused to turn over the proscribed musician to the Dutch authorities for extradition and execution. Broken in spirit and health, the maestro never again lifted his baton to call forth the incomparably magnificent sounds only he knew how to conjure from an orchestra. He died in exile six years later, condemned and despised by his own countrymen, but cherished and protected by beloved foreigners. The once supreme Amsterdam Concertgebouw he created declined under the mediocrity of more politically correct directors like bland Bernard Haitink, until the orchestra scarcely rated as a world-class organisation. Yet, his ghost is avenging itself on all these post-war no-accounts, who are rapidly being forgotten, while Mengelberg's recordings enjoy a resurgence of unprecedented popularity.
MUSIC'S DEBT TO FASCISM
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Mascagni was also a dedicated follower of Benito Mussolini from the early days of the Duce's struggle. |
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Pietro
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A similar tragedy befell Pietro Mascagni. His Cavalleria Rusticana is one of the most often performed staples in the whole repertoire, and, with I Pagliacci, among the best-known operas in existence. Mascagni was also a dedicated follower of Benito Mussolini from the early days of the Duce's struggle. Through the 1920's and 30's and into the war, he held various posts in the Fascist cultural hierarchy and did much to promote the glory of Italian music. His long-time loyalty was proved during adversity, when he joined Mussolini (imprisoned by traitors in 1943, but rescued through the daring heroism of SS commandos) in the north.
With the catastrophic end of the war, Mascagni's name was posted on a death-list circulated by the same Communist partisans who murdered the Duce. Old and alone Italy's greatest living composer died of starvation and exposure to sub-zero temperatures while hiding from his would-be assassins in an unheated garret during the bitter winter of 1945. The death of one of Western Civilisation's last great creators was another legacy that belonged to the Allies' dishonourable triumph of brute force over culture. The legions of opera-lovers who continue, year after year, to applaud Cavalleria Rusticana are ignorant of the Fascist identity and deplorable fate of its composer.
They also applaud regular performances of music by Antonio Vivaldi, whose Seasons, particularly, has become an often-heard concert-piece. Recordings of the 18th Century Venetian's music sell in the millions, and it is recognized throughout the world as a pillar of Western art. Yet, were it not for the diligent research of a famous American Fascist working in Mussolini's Italy, Vivaldi's name and great achievements would be just as unknown today as it was before Ezra Pound made his discovery of the lost compositions. For this incomparable work of rescue, one of the greatest poets the U.S. ever produced was starved and tortured in a so-called 'tiger-cage' by his fellow countrymen after the war. His incarceration consisted of an unheated cell so tiny he could neither stand erect nor lay down full-length, a difficult ordeal even for a man younger than his 61 years. Do the Itzak Pearlmans of this world pay homage to the work of Ezra Pound, without whom they could not perform Vivaldi's music?
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Fascist Italy also inspired some of the finest conductors of all time, and the best may have been Victor de Sabata. |
Fascist Italy also inspired some of the finest conductors of all time, and the best may have been Victor de Sabata. Like Furtwängler and Mengelberg, recordings of his intelligent, dynamic interpretations, especially of Respighi, Beethoven and Puccini, are highly prized by collectors. As a measure of the greatness of the Fascist era in which he flourished, no Italian conductor since the liberal-Marxist take-over of 1945 has begun to approach de Sabata's achievements. Fascism inspired many extraordinary composers; among the greatest was Gian-Francesco Malipiero, who was also the most important musicologist of the 20th Century, largely because he restored the complete creative output of Claudio Monteverdi, the 16th Century founder of Italian opera. The huge, meticulous edition, nearly twenty years in the making, until its completion in 1942, is still sought after by musicians throughout the world as the most invaluable sourcebook of its kind. Malipiero's own 1936 opera, Julius Caesar, was based on Shakespeare's play and is a triumphant Fascist revival of the Roman origins common to all Western civilisations.
The racial-nationalist Finns, whose blue Swastika flag flew alongside Adolf Hitler's crusade against Soviet Russia, produced the most important composer in the history of their country and one of the finest of the 20th Century, Jean Sibelius. Another comrade-country, Latvia, enjoyed its golden age of composition from its independence in 1918 until its take-over by the Soviets in 1940, then again during the German liberation from 1941 to 1944. With the recent return of Latvian freedom, the splendid works of such composers as Janis Medich, who wrote during the 1930's and early 40's, are being heard with greater frequency by the outside world. Spanish Fascism lasted long after the post-war period with an equivalent endurance of great composition, as evidenced by the extraordinary guitar concertos by Joaquin Rodrigo in the 1950's.
THE UNMUSICAL ALLIES
Meanwhile, in the Allied countries, wracked with capitalist exploitation pitted against communist subversion, all the arts fell into decline. The lamentable condition of American music was examined in Issue #120. The situation was not quite as bad in England, but the country had nothing to look forward to under its increasingly Jew-dominated democracy of cultural sterility. Ralph Vaughn Williams, Arthur Bliss, Arnold Bax, Gustav Holst and their colleagues from the early part of the century were rapidly ageing with no one to match or exceed their monumental genius, save only Benjamin Britten, certainly the last English composer of any importance, who died in 1976. French musical creativity was sustained during the 1930's by one man, Florent Schmitt, a passionate Fascist, whose compositional greatness foreshadowed the Impressionists. Only his old age and status as France's greatest living composer saved him (barely!) from the post-war hangman's noose. His successor, Francis Poulenc, carried on the torch of great Gallic music. But since his death in 1963, the history of French musical composition is blank.
In the Soviet union, that Frankenstein monster of the Jews, their ludicrous efforts to mass-produce 'proletarian art' failed miserably. Having eviscerated Russian music in the 1920's, the Reds were at first alarmed by a strident nationalist style that suddenly burst forth in the work of Gentiles Serge Prokofiev, Rheinhold Gliere, Ipolatov Ivanov and Aram Katchaturian. These outstanding composers were allowed to proceed with their strongly folkish compositions, however, because the Soviet leaders knew that such art could be used to arouse patriotic fervour against the European fascists.
But after 1945, such ethnic sentiments, being no longer needed (indeed, they were dangerous to the Jews), were condemned. The same Russian composers who were honoured for writing 'patriotic' music when it was required to stir up national emotions against Hitler were denounced publicly and hounded personally as 'enemies of the Soviet people.' Some tried to please their masters by composing inoffensive music. those who could not were tossed into stinking Gulags. As in the allegedly 'democratic' societies of England, France and the U.S., serious musical composition died in the ex-USSR with Prokofiev in 1953.
The only bright spots in the musical world were those still illuminated by the sunlight of National Socialism. It is a heritage of which we who carry on in its name can be extraordinarily and justifiably proud. And when our souls are moved as we listen to a Third Reich recording of music heard and enjoyed by Adolf Hitler, we share a living, spiritual kinship with him others cannot understand. Despite the magnitude of the catastrophe that physically destroyed the Third Reich and its heroes, the music of that most glorious epoch survives for us to hear.
And it more than survives! The irrepressible force of its greatness is touching more listeners than ever before. The enduring triumph of the Reich's music represents a sacred sign, an assurance from God, that not far behind the echoing trumpets conducted by Furtwängler and Mengelberg marches just as invincibly our Movement!
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Music Today After we read the above article we realised how lucky we are today to enjoy the outstanding works of Rapping, Techno and the latest modern musical sounds, performed for us by talented and sensitive artists (photo). A gift to all of us, presented by wonderful record production companies who have managed to elevate our souls far beyond the horrendous music that was inflicted on the populations under the Fascist regimes. Thank God, modern democracy selects what we are allowed to hear, to see, to read and what we can say. |
Article Reproduced From:
Wilhelm Furtwängler and Music
in the Third Reich
Antony CharlesNot 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.
Reproduced From: The Institute of Historical Review
Reviews
Life of a Much-Maligned Conductor Examined in New Biography
The
Devil's Music Master:
The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwängler,
by Sam H. Shirakawa.
The Devil's Music Master: The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwängler, by Sam H. Shirakawa. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Hardcover. 506 pages. Photographs. Footnotes. Index. $35.00. ISBN: 0-19-506508-5.
Reviewed by Andrew Gray
Conductors in our time fall readily into two categories: Wilhelm Furtwängler and all the others. Among those who recognized this truth early on was Adolf Hitler, possessor of perhaps the best musical ear of any contemporary statesman -- except for Ignaz Paderewski. Despite many importunities and provocations in later years, Hitler never wavered in this judgment. A photograph of the Führer reaching upward to the podium to shake the conductor's hand after a 1935 concert of the Berlin Philharmonic is remarkable testimony -- such expressions of respect by Hitler were rare.
This admiration -- and Furtwängler's decision to remain in Germany to continue to lead the Berliner Philharmoniker as the nation's premier orchestra -- has fostered a decades-long campaign of denigration of the conductor by a legion of self-indulgent scribblers, musicological and otherwise. In their view, Hitler's approval condemns him to a kind of eternal damnation. It's a wonder that shepherd dogs, vegetable soup and mineral water have been spared their opprobrium.
This work's title is misleading: it is not simply another exercise in diabolization. Indeed, Mr. Shirakawa intends this as an apologia, and is at pains to show that Furtwängler's denigrators are guilty of distortion and exaggeration. What Shirakawa seems incapable of grasping, though, is that Furtwängler had nothing whatever to apologize for.
At the heart of this book is a lengthy list, alphabetically arrayed, of some of the many politically and ancestrally persecutable individuals who were spared harassment by the National Socialist government as a consequence of Furtwängler's personal intervention. This includes a number of "full" Jews who spent the entire war within Germany, entirely unmolested. Indeed, thanks to the author's commendable digging, this volume is a lode of such nuggets.
Do the performing arts flourish best in times of dire stress and emergency? There is much evidence for this. One thinks, for example, of theatrical undertakings by German prisoners in Allied P.O.W. camps of Faust, reputedly among the most intense and forceful ever given. Or of the German entertainment troupes that performed right behind the front lines in Russia, even in the latter stages of the war when many were overrun and vanished virtually without trace. Or of the 1943-44 summer performances of Die Meistersinger at Bayreuth, with audiences comprised almost entirely of wounded soldiers. (One such performance, conducted by Furtwängler himself, has happily been preserved on tape.) Or best of all, the concerts under his baton of the Berlin Philharmonic from the years 1942-4 (tapes of which were stolen by the Soviets in 1945 and then returned, in the burgeoning spirit of Glasnost, in 1987).
In this sense, these wartime concerts constitute an apogee of the performing arts; the evidence for the ear, even without consideration of the extraordinary circumstances in which the musicians and the audiences found themselves, is unmistakable. That the next century is likely to appreciate the centrality of Furtwängler to our civilization, or what is left of it, most likely accounts for the recent renewal of attacks upon his memory -- some of which have appeared in the form of reviews of this book. Mr. Shirakawa, it has been contended, is much too indulgent. Yes, he is -- but not in the sense those propagandists assume. One of the privileges of being a revisionist is to decode such texts as this, to see through and beyond it, and to sense the hollow ring many of its judgments will have to future ears. Shirakawa means well, but he remains entangled in the metaphor of diabolism.
There are a few heroes in this story -- Yehudi Menuhin chief among them. Furtwängler was never anti-Semitic, a fact his detractors obviously find embarrassing. The revolting behavior during the postwar period of such former colleagues as Bruno Walter makes excruciating reading, as do the lucubrations of that moralistic gasbag, Thomas Mann, to say nothing of his lunatic daughter Erika. (At times one has the feeling the whole Mann family was a bit bekloppt).
Furtwängler was not long on humor, but worth preserving is his tart comment about the postwar critics who condemned him for remaining in Germany after 1933: "They seem to feel all seventy million Germans should have decamped and left Hitler behind alone."
Mr. Shirakawa takes welcome and indignant aim at Delbert Clark's intentionally distorted reporting in the New York Times of the preposterous 1946 "de-nazification" proceedings endured by Furtwängler (which kept him from the podium for nearly two years). All the more heartening, then, was his return, in May 1947, to the podium of the Berlin Philharmonic, to conduct his first postwar concert. The author mentions cheering of 15 minutes duration at the close. No, the ovation lasted an hour and 15 minutes, and there were 47 curtain calls.
Andrew Gray, a writer and translator, is a former office director in the US Department of Commerce. He lives in Georgetown, Washington, DC
Reproduced From: The Institute of Historical Review
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