On Monday, October 25, 2004 at 8:32:21 AM UTC-7, Premise Checker wrote:
> Music as Political Tool in the Service of the Reich
> 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.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/arts/music/25thir.html

Could this book have influenced Hitler and the Nazis?:

https://groups.google.com/u/1/g/humanities.classics/c/YC2oxYZ0J14