The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich / Edition 1 available in Hardcover, Paperback
The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich / Edition 1
- ISBN-10:
- 0195132424
- ISBN-13:
- 9780195132427
- Pub. Date:
- 04/22/1999
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0195132424
- ISBN-13:
- 9780195132427
- Pub. Date:
- 04/22/1999
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich / Edition 1
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Overview
These questions and their implications are explored in Michael Kater's broad survey of musicians and the music they composed and performed during the Third Reich. Great and small—from Valentin Grimm, a struggling clarinetist, to Richard Strauss, renowned composer—are examined by Kater, sometimes in intimate detail, and the lives and decisions of Nazi Germany's professional musicians are laid out before the reader.
Kater tackles the issue of whether the Nazi regime, because it held music in crassly utilitarian regard, acted on musicians in such a way as to consolidate or atomize the profession. Kater's examination of the value of music for the regime and the degree to which the regime attained a positive propaganda and palliative effect through the manner in which it manipulated its musicians, and by extension, German music, is of importance for understanding culture in totalitarian systems.
This work, with its emphasis on the social and political nature of music and the political attitude of musicians during the Nazi regime, will be the first of its kind. It will be of interest to scholars and general readers eager to understand Nazi Germany, to music lovers, and to anyone interested in the interchange of music and politics, culture and ideology.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780195132427 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/22/1999 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 344 |
| Product dimensions: | 9.26(w) x 6.15(h) x 1.11(d) |
| Lexile: | 1740L (what's this?) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
1
National Socialism, the Third Reich, and the Music Scene
Music, Economics, and Political Opportunism
In March 1933 clarinetist Valentin Grimm found himself caught in a dilemma. Having learned of Hitler's victory in late January, he had returned to Germany after spending many years as a professional musician in New York City. Being a card-carrying Nazi Party member, he was now looking for a comfortable job in one of Germany's many well-known orchestras. No one offered to hire him, however, because there were no jobs. Grimm was facing a welfare existence unless things changed dramatically. They did not. In 1936 he finally landed a shaky part-time position with a Hamburg pops opera. The 185 marks he was paid every month was too little to live on and too much to starve. As late as 1938 Grimm was so poor that he could not even afford the dark suit he needed to play in the orchestra. Grimm seriously contemplated returning to New York.
In Berlin the violinist Georg Kirchner did not fare much better. He had fallen victim to the tidal wave of unemployment sweeping across the waning Weimar Republic, and he also failed to make it back into the work force after Hitler's assumption of power. After several precarious years on the dole, he gave up all hope of a musical career and accepted work in a machine factory in 1938. The cellist Friedrich Walther was only slightly better off. Having served in the Bayreuth Festival orchestra from 1927 to 1933, he suddenly was discharged. Although Winifred Wagner, daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner and patron of the festival, offered to recommend him for a newjob elsewhere, Walther was judged to be somewhat less than accomplished during auditions. Still, he managed to secure work as a backup cellist at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, earning a mere 360 marks a month plus expenses and subject to dismissal with only two weeks' notice. In 1933 conductor Otto Klein was holed up in the capital awaiting a suitable job offer. With no such prospect in sight, he begged the government for support money. Five years later Klein had still not found employment. To pass the time and sharpen his skills, he composed the opera Atlantis, which was immediately doomed to oblivion. By this time both Klein and his wife had been struck by illness. They were supported solely by Klein's two brothers, who sent him 230 marks a month. Hanns Rohr, another conductor, had a doctorate in music. Having gotten by as an itinerant guest conductor from 1928 to 1934, he now accompanied his wife, a violinist, at the piano. If not for generous handouts from music-loving friends and the odd guest conductor's job, the couple would have gone under. By 1937 Rohr was suffering from a heart condition; a year later his distraught wife entered a sanatorium.
During the first years of the Nazi regime, the fate of these musicians was hardly atypical; in fact, their personal difficulties were symptomatic of the widespread economic confusion that characterized the cultural scene in Germany following the last years of the Weimar Republic. The root cause could be traced back to January 1933. At that time the new Hitler regime had inherited from the republic a stagnant economy marked by high unemployment and low wages. This unemployment subsided only gradually; it was not until 1936 that it fell below that of 1928-29, and full employment was not achieved until 1938-39. In 1933 real earnings were a mere 87 percent of those in 1925-29, a relatively stable phase for the republic, and only in 1938 did they begin to surpass those of the peak years of republican prosperity.
As difficult as these conditions were for the average German wage earner, they were much more onerous for the country's hundred thousand or so musicians, fewer than half of whom were devoted to the so-called classics, or "serious music." Not until about 1938 were they finally on an economic par with the national standard. One reason for this lag was that in tough economic times, matters of culture usually took second place. This made itself felt even in Germany, a country with a tradition of staunch public support for its cultural institutions, including opera houses and symphony orchestras. Such support, which had been gradually withdrawn as a result of the depression during the later years of the republic, was only haltingly restored in the first years of the Third Reich, as overall conditions improved. In the summer of 1933, for instance, some members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, financially one of the best endowed of Germany's "culture orchestras" (those musical organizations dedicated exclusively to "serious music"), were still subjected to salary cuts of 40 percent. In 1935 unemployed Munich musicians were performing recitals in nursing homes on a volunteer basis just to maintain their skills. Even as circumstances were improving, by late 1936 four out of five of Germany's gainfully employed musicians were bringing home less than 200 marks a month—which was less than what most blue-collar workers earned. The jobless rate still hovered above the 20 percent mark, more than twice the national average.
Matters improved more quickly between 1936 and 1939 against the backdrop of general economic progress. More specifically, musicians of all kinds were needed after the establishment of Hitler's Wehrmacht in 1935 and the expansion of various government and Nazi Party organizations, notably the SS and the compulsory Reich Labor Service, all of which were eager to have their own bands. Moreover, geographic expansion caused by the annexation of Austria and, eventually, the Sudetenland and Memel created additional demands. In March 1938 an impending shortage of qualified musicians prompted the music lover Joseph Goebbels, head of all organized musicians under the Nazi regime, to promulgate a basic wage decree guaranteeing the profession's attractiveness. By this order, "culture orchestras" were favored over mere dance and light-entertainment bands. Orchestras were divided into five competency classes, and musicians' salaries and pension payments were standardized by law.
These developments were reflected in an ascending salary curve for orchestra musicians, soloists, and conductors alike, with variations in each category based on qualifications, experience, and national prominence. Throughout the Third Reich, those musicians at the lowest end of the professional scale who were contractually employed consistently earned more in wages than any freelance work might net them. But at the upper end of the scale, an eminent artist might make as much from frequent guest appearances as from a guaranteed salary. If a musician was so fortunate as to be securely employed in 1933, his monthly earnings as an orchestra member could be as high as 450 marks. In 1936 the same salary could be as low as 350 marks per month, but it might well have risen, as it did for first violinist Hans Ortleb of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, to over 600 marks by early 1939. Concertmasters and soloists could expect to make at least double those amounts, depending on their opportunities for independent concertizing. This income placed them very close to the category of physicians, who, topping lawyers and dentists, were the highest paid of the self-employed professional groups in the Nazi era.
Financially, conductors generally fared much better, with the world-famous Wilhelm Furtwangler the undisputed champion. In 1934 he received 1,000 marks per concert, contractually performing twenty-two of them in Berlin alone, in addition to touring, which fetched an equivalent amount per event. By 1937 Furtwangler was already getting 2,000 marks per appearance, and in 1938-39 this figure doubled again. For all of 1939 he earned well in excess of 200,000 marks, more than triple the 60,000 marks (including 20,000 marks in expenses) that his Austrian colleague Clemens Krauss was paid after assuming the directorship of the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich in 1937. Somewhat lesser-known conductors were still comfortably well off. For example, Hans Rosbaud in 1934-35 was earning about 13,000 marks per annum at Radio Frankfurt. Other conductors employed for radio programs or as assistants throughout the Reich could be paid as much as a well-placed concertmaster, but less qualified ones were dependent on touring, and received as little as 200 marks per engagement.
It is almost impossible to gauge the earnings of composers, many of whom doubled as conductors, soloists, or conservatory teachers. At one end of the spectrum was Carl Orff, who always tried to be fiercely independent. He subsisted for years on his publisher's advances, which he did not begin to make good on until the war, when Orff's operas finally began to bring him wealth. No other composer of serious music earned as much as Richard Strauss, who in 1936—not one of his banner years—earned over 80,000 marks from all sources—high for a composer but noticeably trailing Furtwangler. Hans Pfitzner, who ranked just after Strauss in national importance, was making about half that much.
Because in general terms the economic situation of musicians was so bleak until 1938, Nazi Party and government agencies tried to do what they could to help. Special symphony and chamber orchestras were financially supported and filled with jobless Nazi musicians. When the British jazz band leader Jack Hylton applied to tour Germany in 1934-35, he was allowed to do so only on condition that he contribute one quarter of his earnings to unemployed German colleagues. The Reich made grants of thousands of marks to aid the unemployed and facilitate the dignified retirement of older musicians. At Carnival time in Febrary 1935, a musicians' ball was organized in Munish's posh Four Seasons Hotel for the benefit of impoverished musicians, and in 1936 Goebbels instituted Kunstlerdank, a social-assistance program backed with millions of marks, from which the chronically indigent, such as involuntarily retired musicians and other artists, were to profit. From the fall of 1937 to the fall of 1938, Kunstlerdank benefited more than three thousand musicians with up to 300 marks each.
The program's work did not cease after economic conditions for musicians had improved. Even during World War II, when many musicians were in a position to exploit their unique talents, Goebbels called on musicians to entertain the troops and participate in various cultural schemes, to the extraordinary financial advantage of the musicians. But the very fact that Kunstlerdank was a creature of the regime raises the question of a possible interrelationship between economic performance and pro-Nazi political deportment, and specifically the question of opportunism. That is, did their financial straits motivate musicians to join the Nazi Party between 1933 and 1945? Given the insufficient evidence to date, the answer can only be equivocal. From a largely north German sample of musicians of all stripes and qualifications between 1933 and 1938, most of whom joined the party in 1934, it may be concluded that about one fifth of the profession was in the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party [NSDAP], or Nazi Party) before the war. Moreover, those who were employed showed a stronger tendency to join the NSDAP than those who were idle. Still, this does not rule out destitution as a possible motive for Nazi Party membership. In 1934, for instance, though about one third of all musicians were jobless, more than half of the employed ones had a monthly income of 100 marks or less. It may have been only these who show up as NSDAP members in the statistics. But why, then, was the proportion of Vienna Philharmonic musicians (among the best paid in the Reich) who were Nazi Party members also equal to one third after the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, and why did this membership rise over the years, even with the economy on the upswing? It is clear that in this case factors other than purely economic ones were causing many artists to jump on the Nazi bandwagon.
To be sure, interference in music professionals' lives by the Nazi regime was considerable, and not only in economic terms. Official dictates called for the nazification of music to the extent that art generally had to be "put to the service of an idea," which in this case meant the ideology of racist National Socialism. At the height of the war Wolfgang Stumme, chief of music in the Hitler-Jugend (Hitler Youth), still described German music as an antidote to "dangerous poison threatening the blood," that is, stimuli from the "Jewish, materialistic, Bolshevist environment." In theory, then, only narrowly defined "German music" was to be produced and listened to. In 1938 Hans Pfitzner, under the impression that creative freedom was being stifled, remarked sarcastically to Hermann Goring, the boss of the Preussische Staatsoper, that in present-day Germany "any criticism is forbidden, indeed abolished, so that you cannot write it if a soubrette sings badly, even when it is really so." Of course, Pfitzner knew well that such policies represented merely the ideal condition called for by Nazi fanatics, and that they could not be enforced with any degree of consistency. Goebbels knew this also when he pronounced in February 1934 that however tightly a government might rule, it had to keep loose reins on artistic and intuitive activities. Richard Strauss, as president of Goebbels's Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber, or RMK), took his cue from Goebbels when in 1935 he listed the desirable qualities of a music director: he had to have good ears, he had to be able to play the piano well, he had to understand the art of singing, and he had to comprehend the dynamics of modern opera (especially Strauss's own). Significantly, in this catalog of virtues Strauss failed to mention anything about Nazism or the Hitler regime.
These two conflicting tenets, censure and toleration, turned out to be the guidelines for music creation and administration in the Third Reich. While they expressed opposite intentions, neither one in its pure and unadulterated form dominated the musical life of the nation. Typically representing compromise in combination, they tempered each other, ensuring that some degree of artistic freedom would always obtain. Such a fluctuating system of balances, as we know today, was characteristic of the overall policy structure of Hitler's Third Reich and served to keep it going.
Germane to the question of artistic opportunism, or the premeditated blending of art and politics in the first years of the regime, the principle of compromise found its practical embodiment in a three-stage process of policy making: first, if a musician proved to possess artistic talent and loyalty to the regime in more or less equal measure, then professional success could be virtually guaranteed; second, if a lack of musical competence was painfully obvious, then no amount of political dedication could warrant artistic survival; third, even if a musician's ties to the regime were minimal or nonexistent, he could still forge an impressive career for himself if the quality and quantity of his musical output were high by any standards, unless he went out of his way to insult the regime. The third stage explains the relative success of conductors such as Rosbaud and Furtwangler, of composers such as Strauss, and of performers such as the bass-baritone Hans Hotter.
Officially, then, as with many occupations in the Third Reich, Nazi affiliation of one kind or another was held to be a prerequisite for career advancement in the serious-music business, and prospective employers often applied pressure to individual musicians to join the Nazi Party. This prompted many artists of solid but not outstanding ability to find jobs or improve their situation on the basis of existing or newly earned Nazi credentials. The conductor Gerhart Stiebler was out of work and judged to be merely competent as a musician, but because he had joined the NSDAP in 1932 and been very active as a party speaker, he was hired as musical director of the Gorlitz theater in June 1933. Regime officials as highly placed as Prussian Minister of Education Bernhard Rust had seen fit to intervene on his behalf. Although in 1936 the consensus was that Wilhelmine Holzinger, a freelance pianist always in search of a job, was but a mediocre musician, she had befriended Gauleiter Julius Streicher of Nuremberg and other party leaders and finally was deemed worthy of further support in the form of a job at Radio Nuremberg. And in Berlin in 1936 there was Walter Lutze, a repertory conductor at the city's Deutsche Oper, which was within not Goring's but Goebbels's own jurisdiction. Lutze, too, was able but not brilliant and, like Stiebler, had joined the party in 1932. In addition, he was an old friend of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's personal photographer, and father-in-law of Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach. When Lutze was served notice on artistic grounds, Goebbels personally intervened and prevented his dismissal; although the conductor was slated for removal during the war, when musicians were scarce, the propaganda minister protected him up to the end of the regime.
The entire Schirach family exemplifies Nazi patronage in the arts. Baldur's father, Karl von Schirach, long retired as Generalintendant of the Weimar stage but an old follower of Hitler since the 1920s, was made intendant of the Wiesbaden theater in 1933. Rosalind, Karl's daughter, was a run-of-the-mill soprano at the Berlin Deutsche Oper. Together with her lover Gerhard Husch, the well-known baritone, she organized a powerful Nazi cell there that wielded much influence. One trade journal hailed her as the "ideal image of a Nordic-Aryan singer."
Baldur himself wrote melodramatic poems, many of which venerated the Fuhrer and were set to music, giving cantatas such as those by the unexceptional Hans Ferdinand Schaub timely and very convenient content. In fact, gearing the thematic content of a musical composition to the spirit of the times could bring rich rewards to its creator; Schaub found himself elevated to the position of "state composer" by the Gauleiter of Hamburg and was granted an unconditional sinecure. Friedrich Leiboldt of Naumburg composed his Horst Wessel Cycle in part on verses by von Schirach; it was scheduled to be premiered by a mixed choir in 1934. Rudolf Bockelmann, another famous baritone, acted as soloist in the song "For the Fuhrer," written by the little-known Hans Gansser and marketed by Electrola Records in 1935. Paul Winter, who perhaps deservedly was to rise to the rank of general during World War II, crafted a hymn-fanfare and had it performed at Vienna Radio in April 1938, after Hitler had marched his troops into Austria; it was inspired by his profound joy over the "magnificent consummation of the union of Greater Germany." Frequently, such politically inspired compositions were generated because venal regime leaders—Goring, Goebbels, or Alfred Rosenberg—had commissioned them.
But even though in the twelve years of Hitler's rule some twenty thousand compositions with political applications were produced, the large majority, written by crass dilettantes of undoubtedly sterling party reputation, were never recognized. Hitler himself, while admitting to only moderately sophisticated musical tastes, at least was shrewd enough to see through the most blatant cases of opportunism. Hence, he "disliked the newly composed party rally music," and by 1935 he had forbidden the inflationary practice of personal dedications to the Fuhrer.
Not only career-conscious composers but also instrumentalists and conductors who, for lack of talent, had been failures in the pre-Nazi period now attempted to use the party badge or other regime paraphernalia to pursue their goal. They still failed because of incompetence. Doris Kaehler, at thirty-eight not the youngest contralto in the business, traveled from Berlin to Berchtesgaden, where she beleaguered Hitler at his Berghof, hoping that a chance to sing for him might lead to a spot at state radio Kaehler was a Nazi "Old Fighter"—one of those who had joined the party before January 1933—and the daughter of a minor party functionary, but her artistic credentials were wanting. Paul de Neve, who in the "Marxist-Jewish Reich" had directed musical events for the party for free, was hoping for restitution; yet he remained merely a candidate for Kunstlerdank, for in 1938 he was already fifty-seven and had no particular artistic merits. Party comrade Otto Wartisch, a conductor, failed dismally to land a contractual post at the Munich Philharmonic in 1936, as did party comrade Fritz Muller-Rehrmann, hoping for a post as conductor, composer, or music professor anywhere in Germany, in 1937. Typically, artists such as Wartisch and Muller-Rehrmann overestimated their chances and, on the basis of their Nazi pedigrees, aspired to positions they could never do justice to, even at the pleasure of benevolently minded dictators, as Goebbels himself correctly observed in late 1936. The composer Paul Hindemith at the start of the Nazis' regime declared that "bad works can't be pushed indefinitely, and the people they are now digging out are all complete mediocrities."
Nazi Agencies of Music Administration
One reason why the compromise between suppression and toleration was workable was the relative impotence of, and the lack of cooperation between, the agencies set up to administer music in the regime. The first of these agencies was the Kampfbund fur deutsche Kultur (Combat League for German Culture). The Kfdk, founded by the Nazi Party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg in February 1929, was a political lobby aimed at rescuing German culture from what the National Socialists considered pornography, Bolshevism, international Jewry, and the "gutter press"—all symbolized by Bauhaus art, critical writings in the left-wing Weltbuhne, and modernist (or "atonal") music. It was aimed at Germany's educated elite during Hitler's rise to power, at a time when he was eager to court the upper strata of society. Until January 1933 conservative, nationalistic, and race-conscious Germans, most of them from academic circles but also performing artists, had joined its various regional cells. In the realm of music, the local Kampfbund leaders would stage recitals and concerts, frequently with the help of unemployed musicians (such as a Kampfbund choir), and Nazi sympathizers with an interest in high culture would attend, as well as contribute money.
For administrative purposes the Kampfbund leadership created elaborate subdivisions, including sections for serious and for light music, for opera, for instrumental and vocal music, for composition, and, not least, for music education. After January 1933 the Kampfbund's ambition to be the sole regulator of music in the Third Reich became stronger, fueled by Rosenberg's own sense of mission as the party's official philosopher and warden of all things cultural. As job-creation schemes became ever more important, local music events featuring unemployed or under-employed instrumentalists, vocalists, even entire orchestras or choirs took precedence in all the German provinces, such as in Halle, where an evening of Brahms sonatas and Wagner's Wesendonk Lieder was organized in March 1933. The inclusion of Wagner signaled the Kampfbund's uppermost purpose, that of sweeping "the last bits of Jewish rot out of our German house, quickly and thoroughly." This belligerent agency acquired some official currency when it managed to put on a celebration in honor of Hitler's birthday on 20 April 1933 in Berlin, on which occasion Rosalind von Schirach's paramour Gerhard Husch presented songs by Bach and Schubert. Similarly unadulterated German fare was offered a month later in Leipzig, when Kampfbund organizers penetrated the famous Gewandhaus Orchestra hall to stage works by Brahms—supposedly in honor of the centenary of Brahms's birth. And in early summer a special arts festival in Berlin afforded Gustav Havemann's national Kampfbund Orchestra the chance to present selections from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Der Fliegende Hollander. To emphasize the Nazi Party backing, at a Kampfbund festival in Stettin in the fall the pianist Annemarie Heyne, a niece of Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess, participated, and in Plauen so did Heinrich Bienert, a reciter of poetry as well as a Standartenfuhrer in the SA.
The Kampfbund was weak, however, and its domination over German music was tenuous and short-lived for two reasons. First, it was an unofficial, unauthorized party organization, founded on impulse by one Nazi leader ambitious for overall cultural control, and without Hitler's committed backing. Throughout its existence the Kfdk had its organizational and financial base only in the Nazi Party and was never grounded in government. Soon after the regime had been installed, Rosenberg's reign was challenged by Goebbels, Goring, and Prussian (later Reich) Culture and Education Minister Bernhard Rust, because of his jurisdiction over music education. Second, despite Rosenberg's historic role as founder and spiritual figurehead, the Kampfbund never enjoyed strong central leadership, either from Berlin or from Munich, the seat of party headquarters. Instead, it was directed locally and regionally by mid-level party bosses, not all of whom were musicians, and who were likely to be engaged in internecine feuding. Every provincial hamlet seems to have had a Kampfbund dictator "who issued directives capriciously," as Hindemith's frustrated music publisher wrote him in April 1933. And so, as a consequence of the Kampfbund's shaky beginnings and lack of authority, centralization, and coordination, Rosenberg eventually was surpassed by stronger contenders for cultural control, the most persistent of whom turned out to be Goebbels.
During 1933 and early 1934 the Kampfbund sought to fortify its influence with the aid of local delegates who held key positions in municipal music circles. In Rhenish Krefeld it was conductor Walther Meyer-Giesow who lorded it over the municipal orchestra, a collegium musicum, and a madrigal choir, and who throughout 1933 planned virtually all the musical activities in town. In Munich, Kampfbund dictator Paul Ehlers so usurped the traditional Bach-Verein and its choir and orchestra that Carl Orff, who before the Third Reich had played a key role in it, withdrew in early 1934. And in Marburg the Kfdk chief used his power to organize as many musical events as possible, for the greatest number of party faithful, at preferential ticket prices.
The undoing of Rosenberg's combative organization began as early as spring 1933, for it was taking liberties in music policy and administration for which it had no mandate, thus embarrassing not only civil but party authorities as well. In April a Rhenish Kampfbund cell, allegedly with Rosenberg's authorization, offered Munich composer and conductor Hans Pfitzner the directorship of the Dusseldorf Opera. But when Pfitzner checked with the lord mayor of Dusseldorf, who was ultimately responsible, he received no commitment. The Kampfbund then explained that it had merely tried to act on a suggestion from Rosenberg, but that, naturally, Pfitzner would have to deal with the mayor himself. The Kampfbund had lost face, and Pfitzner was chagrined.
In north German Schwerin, meanwhile, concertmaster Karl Kramer was summarily dismissed from the Mecklenburg state theater for displeasing one of his superiors. Kramer had the Kampfbund intercede with the Gauleiter, but since it was without authority, nothing came of the action. In Hamburg, Kapellmeister and Kampfbund member Willi Hammer set down a definition of art meant to serve as a general directive for the Reich, but no sooner had it been promulgated than it sank into oblivion. By spreading lies, a Berlin Kampfbund functionary in February 1934 tried to discredit the noted music critic Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, but was forced to apologize after Stuckenschmidt's vigorous protest.
By this time Goebbels, who not only was in charge of propaganda for the party but also since March 1933 held a ministerial position authorizing him to oversee matters of culture almost everywhere, had put his Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber), or RMK, firmly into place, and it was now applying heavy pressure on Rosenberg's disparaged Kampfbund cells. Although Rosenberg was given an "Office for the Supervision of the Total Spiritual and Philosophical Education and Development of the NSDAP," his remained a marginal party agency, in contrast to Goebbels's dual functions in the party and the state. Within this new office Rosenberg created yet another music control post, hoping to redouble the efforts of his lackluster Kampfbund on the strength of party legitimacy while coupling the impotent Kfdk with the Kraft durch Freude (Strength-through-Joy) organization, or KdF, of Robert Ley. The new control post, known as the Main Office for Music, was handed over to Herbert Gerigk, an ambitious musicologist and music critic with impressive Nazi credentials. Meanwhile, the Kampfbund fur deutsche Kultur in its new guise became known as the NSKG, or NS-Kulturgemeinde (National Socialist Cultural Community); henceforth, it would perform merely as a music (and theater) lobby, purchasing cheap blocks of tickets for its many, now entirely passive, members throughout the Reich. It also organized concerts of its own. The NS-Kulturgemeinde was totally absorbed by Strength-through-Joy in 1937 and thereupon ceased to exist as one of Rosenberg's cultural platforms. During the war especially, the KdF organized mass events for the sake of armaments production and troop entertainment; in its service German musicians performed for BMW workers as well as for Waffen-SS soldiers and civilians on the home front. Here music's new calling as an instrument of politics and war had been fully realized.
Significant defections from the Kampfbund had occurred in the spring of 1933, when four leading functionaries left to organize a Nazi cartel of musicians in Berlin under violinist Gustav Havemann. Their Reichskartell der Deutschen Musikerschaft was organized along neocorporatist lines, using notions borrowed in part from Italian Fascism, ideally thought to serve the collective interests of a professional group and popular long before Hitler with spokesmen for other occupations, such as lawyers and physicians. In the fall this Reichskartell became the nucleus for the Reich Music Chamber.
In March 1933 Goebbels was still indicating his support for Rosenberg's Kampfbund, but by then it was already clear that he intended to take over the reins of culture in the Reich himself. Goebbels fully realized this claim when, in late June, he was officially authorized to set up the machinery for such control, utilizing his new Reichsministerium fur Volksaufklarung und Propaganda (Promi, or Reich propaganda ministry), and hence endangering any and all of Rosenberg's preexisting party institutions. Former Rosenberg sycophants such as Havemann were beginning to drift into Goebbels's camp, and Hans Hinkel, once a Kampfbund secretary, was already in his employ.
The founding of the RMK was formally announced on 1 November 1933 as part of an umbrella organization, the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Culture Chamber, or RKK) presided over by Goebbels. There were similar subchambers for visual arts, theater, literature, journalism, radio, and later also for film. Membership in the RMK, as in the other chambers, was compulsory for all professionals in their respective categories. Havemann and other cronies from the Kampfbund—such as Heinz Ihlert, a Berlin businessman, occasional piano player, and Nazi Old Fighter since 1927—commenced to staff the various sections, Havemann himself taking charge of musicians after merging his Reichskartell, and Ihlert becoming the executive secretary. Hans Hinkel became responsible for the RMK in 1935, when he was appointed secretary-general of the Reich Culture Chamber. This much larger culture chamber was ceremoniously inaugurated on 15 November 1933, with Richard Strauss conducting his own Festliches Praludium. This was no accident, for at Goebbels's behest Strauss had agreed to serve as president of the subordinate RMK.
Since 1945, and even before, there has been much speculation as to why the world-famous composer consented to take on this—to say the least—questionable job. Strauss certainly did not have to do so for financial reasons, for he was a wealthy man; he was in no need of additional publicity; and in 1933 he was not yet under any sort of political pressure. The answer is not, as one German musicologist has contended, that he was a power-hungry, dyed-in-the-wool National Socialist, but that he saw in the dictatorship of Hitler a convenient if somewhat distasteful tool to realize goals he himself had been anticipating for decades. Admittedly no friend of the democracy of Weimar, Strauss believed that a dictatorial regime could finally implement the changes toward neocorporatism that would benefit the German musical profession, and in particular composers, on behalf of which he had been toiling since the beginning of the century. As newly available documents from the Strauss family archive in Garmisch reveal, three goals were foremost in his mind. First, he wanted to upgrade musical culture in the country by instituting throughout the highest level of training and performance. Second, he wished to increase the profit share of serious composers vis-a-vis light-music composers, among whom he most detested the creators of operettas such as Franz Lehar, a constant object of his vilification. Third, he aimed to extend the period of copyright for serious-music compositions, for the sake of composers and their heirs.
His was a specialized agenda, sharply skewed toward the immediate concerns of people like himself. Significantly, Strauss chose to head the RMK section for composers personally. It is doubtful whether Goebbels recognized the potential for conflict when he appointed the maestro—a conflict that inexorably developed over time. But for now, in the fall of 1933, he merely wished to exploit Strauss's immense prestige nationally and especially internationally, for Hitler's regime craved recognition abroad, just as Strauss intended to exploit the powers of a dictatorship. In any event, because of Strauss's professional self-interest in the RMK and his reluctance to exchange the comfortable life of a composer in Garmisch for a functionary's presence in Berlin, he delegated most RMK affairs to underlings, in particular to his business manager Ihlert, becoming personally involved only in matters dear to his heart. Strauss's letters to the few men in Berlin whom he trusted and regularly corresponded with, notably Ihlert, Hugo Rasch, and Julius Kopsch, demonstrate contempt for their daily routines, which he deemed far beneath him.
One immediate result of this absentee presidency was a lack of direction in the upper ranks of the Berlin RMK, leading to confusion, corruption, and infighting. At Berlin headquarters Ihlert and Havemann especially were soon feuding with their colleagues; Ihlert himself was accused of protectionism and inefficiency, others of tardiness and sexual misconduct. A second result was a conspicuous absence of firm RMK controls throughout the Reich, normally manifested in the fascist strictures and repression that even then typified Nazi policy in other areas.
It is true that under Strauss's arm's-length presidency the RMK initiated what became its traditional policy of conscripting professional musicians and demanding monthly membership fees. The RMK also instituted musical competency tests in order to weed out amateurs and frauds and thereby help define a professional code—all in the spirit of neocorporatism that was a hallmark of the era. Moreover, the RMK granted—and withheld—permission for musicians to travel abroad and spend a predetermined amount of hard currency. And to continue the job-creation programs already begun, on a much smaller scale, by the Kampfbund, it limited the number of foreign instrumentalists allowed into Germany who might snatch jobs away from natives.
Meanwhile Goebbels, in order to assuage musicians' concerns, and in keeping with his stated principle of relative artistic freedom, maintained a fairly low profile as cultural enforcer in the early days of the regime. Hence, Strauss himself was able to hold controls and censorship to an absolute minimum. This, in fact, was one of the few areas of RMK policy that still interested him and over which he tried to reserve decisions for himself, certainly whenever he could make it his business to be informed. This was evident not only in the matter of the proscription of Jewish colleagues, which he soft-pedaled, but also with regard to the nature of the music to be performed. For instance, when in March 1934 the fanatical Nazi critic and RMK presidium member Fritz Stege wished to censure a concert pianist with a penchant for modern works, the presidium opposed him on the grounds that "in principle, the Reich Music Chamber cannot forbid works of an atonal character, for it is up to the audience to judge such compositions."
The immediate circumstances of Strauss's dismissal from his post by Goebbels in July 1935 are well known: in 1932 he had employed the Austrian Jewish novelist Stefan Zweig as librettist for his opera Die schweigsame Frau, and that was looked upon as an affront to the National Socialist regime. Moreover, when Zweig, finding his situation increasingly distasteful if not downright dangerous, attempted to extricate himself from the ongoing working relationship, Strauss wrote him on 17 June 1935 stating that he was only playacting as RMK president to prevent the worst from happening. Long suspicious of Strauss, the Gestapo intercepted the letter, and a disgusted Goebbels compelled him to resign. Public announcements indicated that Strauss had done so because of "old age" and "severely strained health."
Although in the postwar literature this has become the standard explanation of Strauss's break with the RMK, the deeper and more important reasons were structural. During Strauss's denazification hearings in 1947, it was said that the dismissal symbolized a "change in the system," of the chain of command between Goebbels as cultural overseer and his chamber leaders, and of the overall policy to be observed within a chamber. The fact was that Strauss, although prestigious, was simply too single-minded and egotistically independent to serve the Nazis well over the long run. His absence from Berlin and his general lack of interest in the day-to-day administration of the RMK had already caused disruptions; and his skeptical attitude toward the "Jewish Question" made it clear that although he was authoritarian, he was by no means ruthless enough to implement the censorship and other controls Goebbels wanted to see applied throughout the RMK. This had surfaced as a problem during the Hindemith affair of 1934-35, when Strauss advised his council that the composer should not be ostracized from the RMK. Hindemith's as yet unperformed opera Mathis der Maler hitherto had been the only contemporary serious-music composition to be declared unwanted, not by any new aesthetic-ideological criteria but for political reasons, not the least of which had to do with Hitler's long-standing dislike of that composer, with his modernist reputation. It had not been Strauss who indicted him but the highest-level regime leaders themselves.
Strauss was replaced by Peter Raabe, the retired Generalmusikdirektor of Aachen and a professor emeritus at the technical university there. He was sufficiently nondescript to serve as Goebbels's ideal puppet. Born in 1872, he had enjoyed a respectable if not spectacular career as conductor, and had earned a doctorate with a dissertation on Franz Liszt. He had just begun his retirement when the minister's call reached him. Raabe had a personal motive for accepting this post, for his conducting career was in the process of being eclipsed by the meteoric rise of Herbert von Karajan, who, though active only a few months in Aachen, had outshone him there chiefly as conductor of the municipal opera. Although Raabe did not apply for Nazi Party membership until 1937, he was a fanatical follower of Adolf Hitler and, by all accounts, was deeply committed to Nazi cultural policy. Unlike Strauss, however, and probably influenced by his idol Liszt, whose harmonic innovations anticipated the atonality of Arnold Schoenberg, Raabe was partial to the more modern composers, a weakness Goebbels liked to ridicule, and which made Raabe even softer putty in the minister's hands.
Raabe's far more subordinate position as president of the RMK became obvious in a number of ways. Unlike Strauss, Raabe was made to wait in the antechambers of Goebbels's ministry when ordered to report to his lieutenants, and Raabe's protest went unheeded. Deciding to tighten his policy of public controls somewhat while still favoring persuasion and conversion over outright restriction, Goebbels met with no objections from Raabe when he instituted closer monitoring of concert programming. In September 1935 a limited blacklist of works by Jews and foreigners was issued, something Strauss most certainly would never have consented to. In 1936 Raabe, despite his protest, finally had to acquiesce in Goebbels's decision to absorb into the RMK the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein (General German Music Society), Liszt's creation of 1859, in which Raabe played a leading role and whose independence he wished to preserve. (It was at the ADMV's annual functions that Raabe had been observed to favor "modernism.") The ADMV was duly liquidated in 1937. In the matter of Hindemith's proscription, it was Raabe who at Goebbels's insistence in October 1936 signed an order placing all of Hindemith's works on a public-performance index, something that could never have been entrusted to Strauss.
By this time, however, Raabe was no longer the minister's sole plenipotentiary in matters of musical culture in the Reich, for in late 1936 Goebbels had appointed Heinz Drewes, the Generalmusikdirektor of Altenburg, to head a department of music in the Propaganda Ministry. The reasons for this move are not entirely clear, but it can be surmised that Goebbels wished to have some sort of guarantee that Raabe would be held in check to avoid a repetition of the extreme embarrassment that Strauss had caused him. This would have been wholly in keeping with the National Socialists' practice of establishing a "fragmented administration," with double and triple levels of jurisdiction, duplication of responsibility, and crossed chains of command. Ultimately, the higher leaders benefited from such institutionalized chaos, since only they could act as arbiters in seemingly endless disputes or in cases where government efficacy was seriously at stake. Invariably this strengthened their position. This, incidentally, was the major reason why Hitler himself did not intervene in the initial rivalry between Rosenberg and Goebbels, for in the final analysis it was he who emerged supreme.
Goebbels made sure that he would always have the last word by artfully entangling the responsibilities of Raabe and Drewes. His scheme was clever enough: Raabe as president of the RMK came under Goebbels as president of the Reich Culture Chamber, of which the RMK was a part. The RKK was of course rooted in Goebbels's Promi. Drewes, while an official of the Promi, was not given responsibility for Raabe, whose formal superior was Goebbels. On the contrary, just to keep Drewes in his place, he was cross-appointed to the RMK's presidium, thus making him nominally subordinate to Raabe. Predictably, Drewes and Raabe were constantly at each other's throats regarding "the leadership in music," which made Goebbels happy, for he could always threaten either man with ammunition derived from the intrigues of the other.
In theory, Drewes's department was to have powers of policy creation and Raabe's agency powers of policy enactment. But in practice, in those areas that really mattered to him Goebbels towered over both men, conveying his wishes in person or using as his conduit a state secretary of his ministry. As long as it lasted, this delineation meant that Raabe continued to exercise responsibility in practical matters such as coopting and regulating RMK membership and devising technical rulings. In terms of ideological and content controls, however, Raabe seems to have been comparatively disadvantaged, or to have taken his cue from Drewes's department, if not—as in the case of Hindemith's banning in 1936—directly from Goebbels. This is evident from the details of the long battle Raabe waged against jazz, a battle he could not win till the end, not least because Goebbels himself divined that jazz served certain propaganda functions, especially in wartime. In the serious-music realm Raabe's subservience became transparent in the summer of 1937, when Carl Orff, whom Rosenberg's Kampfbund had been battling since 1932, premiered his scenic oratorio Carmina Burana. Drewes took an immediate dislike to Orff and, while never censuring outright any of the composer's current or future works, successfully intimidated him, keeping him in abeyance until well into the war. Raabe's office merely echoed Drewes's authority. Almost certainly it was Drewes, too, not exactly a champion of modern music, who had prevailed on Goebbels to dissolve the ADMV against Raabe's wishes; this in fact cemented the eternal enmity between the two functionaries.
Under the presidency of Peter Raabe, the Reich Music Chamber was to experience several personnel changes. The most important of these were the appointment of the composer Paul Graener as head of the composers' section, which Strauss himself had led until the summer of 1935, and then Graener's own replacement six years later by Werner Egk, a former student and friend of Carl Orff and disposed, like Orff, toward the composition of more modern music. As we shall see, this change occurred over differences concerning the place of popular music, and because Goebbels, in the hope of establishing a uniquely Nazi musical style, had found it imperative to grant some leeway to the more progressive of Germany's composers. The traditionalist Graener, whom the minister had derogatorily described as a "Santa Claus" back in 1936, could give no such assurances. In any event, Egk's appointment at a nominally inferior but in fact extremely influential level after July 1941 reduced the power of both Drewes (who intermittently found himself at the war front) and Raabe who performed his duties rather perfunctorily, delivering speeches and conducting concerts throughout the Reich. Off and on Goebbels considered replacing both Drewes and Raabe, for he could not say who was the duller of the two. Furtwangler was reportedly interested in the RMK post. In the end both men proved indispensable for carrying out the practical chores that had become their everyday routines in a period of scarce new talent. At the close of 1943 it was Drewes whom Goebbels credited with having resuscitated Berlin's musical scene after a year of severe British air attacks. But Raabe, too, had to postpone his plans to retire to private life "in order to write a couple more books." Ironically one of his final tasks was to decree, during late summer 1944, the dissolution of all major culture orchestras in the Reich, save for a fortunate few, such as the Berlin Philharmonic, that were still needed to uphold civilian and troop morale.