In an essay I wrote in the JC at the weekend (and in El Pais for Spanish readers), I argued that there was little evidence that Wagner’s music was ever played in the Nazi extermination camps. Bill Ecker, the noted antiquarian, has assembled whatever evidence there is to the contrary (below), and it remains pretty thin.
The one testimony that indicates the opposite is a claim in Sam Shirakawa’s biography of Wilhelm Furtwaengler that Wagner’s music was played in Auschwitz to drown out the screams of human victims of Josef Mengele’s monstrous experiments. Shirakawa is the only source for this assertion. Can anyone substantiate it?
The other instance comes from Dachau, where Wagner may have been heard as pre-recorded backdrop to ‘educational’ Nazi speeches.
Here is Bill’s post:
While Auschwitz is typically used as the meter for concentration camps, it would appear, the prisoners in that camp were marched to their deaths to the strains of “Eine Kleine Nacht Musik”, Strauss and Lehar Waltzes, arias like Puccini’s “Un Bel di” from Madama Butterfly and “Ave Maria”
(ref. Newman & Kirtey’s “Alma Rose, Vienna to Auschwitz”)
Wagner’s music was played in the camp in Dr. Mengele’s laboratory to drown out the screams of his victims.
(ref. Sam Shirakawa in his book on Wilhelm Furtwaengler, “The Devil’s Music Master” wrote in 1992, “The notorious Dr. Mengele reportedly conducted his heinous medical experiments with recordings of Wagner playing continuously in counterpoint to the screamings of his human guinea pigs.”)
In Dachau, Wagner’s music accompanied Nazi party speeches blared over the camp sound system.
(ref. Guido Fackler’s “Music in Concentration Camps” 1933-1945: “In some camps prescribed music was forced on the inmates in a second way: music from radio or gramophones was played over permanently installed loudspeakers. In 1933 this system was used in particular in the Dachau camp to re-educate the inmates – who were political opponents of the regime – using propaganda speeches and so-called national music, for example, from the German composer and antisemite Richard Wagner.”)
In other camps Wagner marches were used as background music.
(ref. Maria Ritter’s “Return to Dresden” “The majestic brass tunes, especially the overture from “Die Meistersinger von Nuremburg” were used as background music in the concentration camps.”)
In Theresienstadt, Wagner was not played by the inmates. This was the most musical of the camps, as a high number of musicians were sent to the
camp and as the camp was used by the Nazis to show the World how well their camps treated the Jews, they were allowed to have their own concerts with programs and Wagner’s name is absent from the selections for obvious reasons.
(ref. Jozas Karas’s Music in Terezin, “Upon closer scrutiny of the existing programs from Terezin, one cannot help but detect the ostentatious absence of the name Richard Wagner. Even when one takes into consideration his demands on the performer, the primary reason lies in the fact that the composer embodied the German megalomania and was chosen as obvious artistic representative of the Nazi regime and favorite of Adolf Hitler.”)
In regard to the music of Wagner being rejected in Israel and elsewhere, Mr. Ecker’s last sentence is the key. He notes it was an “obvious artistic representative of the Nazi regime and favorite of Adolf Hitler.” The issue is this symbolic association, which exists whether or not the music was used in the camps. For survivors and many of their descendents, this symbolic association awakens deep pain. No amount of musical pleasure could justify causing that kind of pain in others. Perhaps someday those symbolic associations will dissolve, but until then we should exercise care and consideration.
I just urge a bit of caution here. For whom, exactly, was Wagner’s music an “obvious artistic representative of the Nazi regime”? Amongst Germans themselves, it can only have been a small percentage who recognised a note of Wagner when and if they heard it. The Nazis certainly promoted Wagner, but they also equally promoted Beethoven, Bruckner and Schubert – it was music by the latter three which German Radio broadcast all day after Hitler’s suicide. I am not aware of much research of German ‘awareness’ of Wagner in the period 1933-45 (except maybe in the cinema), and without it we perhaps need to tread warily. On the other hand, Allied propaganda certainly used the pomposity and brazenness of some of Wagner’s music as a good shorthand to characterise the Nazis; have we been taken in to some extent by our own characterisation? ‘For survivors and many of their descendents, this symbolic association awakens deep pain’ – maybe so, but no-one is forcing them to listen to Wagner. I well recall seeing a film, at the Paris exhibition a few years ago on ‘Music in the Third Reich’, of Furtwangler conducting a gala performance of Beethoven’s 9th in1942 http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000243.php) – and the brutal hypocrisy of a huge choir in these circumstances singing ‘Alle Menschen werden Bruder’ comes to mind every time I have heard the work since – but the fault is scarcely in the music – is it?.
Re: willliam osborne:
I beg to differ – I think this “never forget” attitude, while understandable, generally does more harm than good. In fact, it lies at the heart of so many conflict between groups all over the world, and I can see little actual good come out of it.
The real historic lesson, in my view, is that these horrors could happen again, given certain circumstances. After the end of the First World War, many immigrants arrived in the 1920s from eastern Europe. This, together with severe economic depression, made the Germans, the world’s best educated people, with a democratically elected government, descend into the abyss. The similarities to today’s Europe are disturbing I think. Would people to be laid off in large numbers and the social welfare system collapse, with middle-class people unable to, say, buy clothes for their children, I don’t think it would take that long before bricks started flying through store windows in immigrant neighbourhoods in many European cities.
By this I certainly don’t intend to diminish the German crimes of 1933-1945. I just think that demonising will always alienate, and we should rather regard this period as a distinct, horrible possibly in our supposedly civilised post-modern age as well.
Mr. Axler,
I am not informed enough to comment on today’s Europe, its economic conditions and the similarities to Germany in early 1930s. However, I am in full agreement with your comments on memory. I once had a history professor who emigrated from Austria in the 1930s. Speaking of wars and violence, he always said, “The most peaceful countries are those that forget the event itself but remember all that led up to it.” If you examine the history of the 20th and 21st century, I believe he was right.
Mr. Axler,
I realize after re-reading my comment that it appears to minimize the suffering of targeted groups throughout history. I would neither expect nor want Holocaust survivors to forget what was done to them, of course. The point is less literal and has more to do with being able, at some point, to accept that over time the past acts will still remain but new actions may also come to define that same country. (or in some cases, group)
Just for the record, I did not speak about “never forgetting” concerning Wagner, nor do I subscribe to that view. My concern is exercising compassion toward the victims of the Third Reich and their descendents regarding symbols that cause them suffering.
In regards to the notion that Wagner was the “obvious artistic representative of the Nazi regime and favorite of Adolf Hitler”, it should be noted that in 1938-9 the five most performed operas in the Third Reich were:
1. I Pagliacci 354 performances
2. Cavalleria Rusticana 352
3. Madama Butterfly 317
4. Schwartzer Peter 298
5. Zar und Zimmerman 288
Wagner does not have any operas in the top ten; Lohengrin comes in twelfth with 236 performances. (“Music In The Third Reich” Eric Levi)
Germans apparently had the same mainstream tastes in opera that current opera lovers do. Wagner’s association with the Third Reich is undeniable, but Wagner was hardly a proletarian hero in Germany and most definitely not a proto-Nazi.
The only hard evidence that Wagner was ever played in concentration camps is, as stated, that it was used in Dachau in 1933/4 (i.e before the ‘death camp’ era) in an attempt to ‘retrain’ political prisoners. (you give the source ‘Music in Concentration Camps 1933-45′ by Guido Fackler – see http://www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/musicandpolitics/archive/2007-1/fackler.html; also see http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/.
The notion that ‘ Wagner’s music was played in Auschwitz to drown out the screams of human victims of Josef Mengele’s monstrous experiments’ is prima facie a piece of utterly ludicrous grand guignol.
Maria Ritter’s ‘memory’ of the Meistersinger overture must I think also remain suspect; she was a small child of an echt-German in 1945. How did she get to hear this music in the death camps, exactly?
All the identification of Wagner with death camps seems to me a case of a ‘posthumous victory for Hitler’. The Nazi propaganda machine put a lot of effort into identifying Wagner (and indeed Beethoven and others) as Nazis avant la lettre. Nasty as Wagner was as an individual, and pliant as Winifred and her family were, there is no reason why we should be suckered into concurring with this.
In the movie “Out of the Ashes” which depicts the Aushwitz experiences of Dr. Gisella Perl who was forced to work closely with Mengele for almost a year no mention of such use of Wagner was made.
It is worth noting the enduring popularity of Orff’s intolerable Carmina Burana in Israel – by a composer who was an actual fascist and Nazi, and to beat Wagner, the music is unbearably fascistic in its very essence. The irony speaks for itself.
Totally agree about Carmina Burana, as I’ve noted in a previous post. If the history of the piece and its composer were more widely known, I think it’s undeserved popularity (and the royalites that still pour into Schott) would decline.
–Sixtus
PS: I’ve also noted previously that it was Anton Bruckner who was held up as the ideal Volkskomponist by the Nazis. If Wagner wasn’t played in the camps, Bruckner (or pseudo-Bruckner) probably was. To the uninformed, they’d probably sound the same.
If Orff should be trashed for whatever he did to survive under the nazis, so should Richard Strauss. Start a drive to ban his music and see how far you get with that.
After that you can start going after composers who wrote music under Stalin according to communist party standards. Stalin was responsible for the deaths of far more Russians than even Hitler.
What about catholic composers working from the 13th to the 19th century, when the catholic church was responsible for auto da fes during the inquisition and catholics happily slaughtered muslims and jews en masse and drove them out of their countries by the million?
If we start to evaluate composers on this basis – unless there is direct proof that those composers were personally involved in the planning and execution of mass murder – then we’re going to have to dump an awful lot of them into the trash can.
http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/politics-and-propaganda/third-reich/orff-carl/
What in the world is “essentially fascistic” about Carmina Burana? The music is primitivst and pompous at the most, the texts are mainly about sex and drinking. If Carmina is “unbearably fascist”, then Shostakovitch 12th would be “unbearably communist”. Music in itself does not convey moral.
I would urge for a little care here. Whilst I am not a fan of Orff’s music (least of all Carmina burana), I think it is always necessary, as in any academic paper, to define terms. You call Orff a Nazi. What do you mean by that? Was he a member of the party? Is there evidence of his political views pre-war and during the conflict? What do we make of his attempts to get Schulwerk accepted into the education system prior to 1939? What do we understand by the terms Mitläufer / Sympathisant ? Crucially, how do we understand his alleged claim during the denazification process in Germany to have been a member of the resistance group die Weiße Rose? We know he was never a member, this has to do with the question as to whether he ever claimed (to Newell Jenkins, the American officer entrusted with the task of reclassifying Orff from grey non-acceptable to grey acceptable) to have been one, as this is what apparently changed the classification. I worked at the Orff-Zentrum München as a freelance musicologist for several years. It is a state-run institute. I think one needs to differentiate between a fully paid-up member of the NS party who committed war crimes and someone who tried to come to terms with a regime and continue an artistic career. I sympathize with neither. Music is not a kind of Noah’s Ark in which one can survive the flood (was this Hindemith to Orff, in a letter?) Would value comments from others on all of this.
It is worth noting that, post-War, Orff married the anti-Nazi resistant writer Luise Rinser. They weren’t together very long, but she would not have given six years of her principled life to a man she considered a Nazi.
Wagner became the “bagman” for Orff. If one reads remarks by Richard Strauss it is very clear that Orff was a “a considered and prinicpled” Nazi. During the war everyone was a Nazi, and afterward, no one was a Nazi. The couple moved back to Bayern and they wanted to put the “bad times” behind them. One must not forget, that Dr. Mengele went to work on a farm in this region where he could still stay in contact with family while working as a farm hand. Later, he was able to make it out with help from the Catholic church office in Rome.
Orff could blame Goebbels and it was an argument most people would have accepted…even those with high moral standing…it sounds plausible even if it is smoke and mirrors. After the war, every Nazi claimed to not be a Nazi. This is very true of the intellectuals…Albert Speer made similar arguments work by admitting membership, but acceptting the responsibility for personal actions. Orff did not defend Jews the way Richard Strauss did in the same position.
Orff could hide behind some very big monsters and as such pass as normal. I will not judge him, but from what I have read, he absolutely was a Nazi and his wife or girl friend’s acceptance of him has more to do with her accepting him as a German first and a Nazi second. It doesn’t really matter now that they are all dead. The good that people do lives on. Sadly the world will never know how the world would be if 6-20 million people had never had to fight or die duing WWII, will they?
As the link above by Musiker illustrates, Orff was a collaborator, and clearly to a degree that extended well beyond what was necessary for survival. One notable example was his acceptance of a commission to write a “Mid Summer Nights Dream” to replace Mendelssohn’s work – though this topic will also be obfuscated.
I understand what “Tone Row” is saying about the troubling aspects of Carmina Burana, though these perceptions are quite subjective. The aspects of the work that make it so exhilarating, such as its massive choral and orchestral unity in the service of unbridled exuberance, and its hedonistic paganism cast in a quasi-spiritual guise, can also be seen as symbolic of the emotional nature and worldview of the Reich. Of course, that is only for those with the ears to hear it. Others can perceive the work in an entirely different manner. And of course, many on both sides will insist their view is the only one that is legitimate.
I should add for the sake of clarity that my “you” in “you call Orff a Nazi” was directed to Tone Row, not Mr. Lebrecht. I think all concerned should read Michael Kater’s excellent monographs in his “Composers of the Nazi Era” (OUP) and compare the chapter on Orff with the hagiography that is the Orff entry in the New Grove (2nd Ed., 2001). The Grove text was allegedly reworked by person or persons unknown just prior to publication; possibly by Schott and likely by Werner Thomas and Oliver Rathkolb. The late-lamented Stanley Sadie called it a “whitewash”, referring to passages that declare how Orff had perhaps overestimated the autonomy of the artist within a repressive regime, this in relation to the Midsummer Night’s Dream score. Interesting too is correspondence between Orff and Schott on how this would rid cultural life once and for all of “that Jew” Mendelssohn. There might be some interesting holdings into the Schott archive still, but they are apparently not in the public domain. Yet.
Not to be too morbid about this already horrific subject, I must point out that there is little in Wagner that was available on 78s at the time that is loud enough for long enough to drown out anything that lasts more than a few seconds (the end of the Dresden version of the overture to Tannhauser is the only passage that springs to mind). And I can’t imagine even the most sadistic of the Nazis timing their work to the loud bits of any other passage as it would require a degree of musical sophistication I’m not willing to credit to them. There is much music by other composers that might have equally served (the finale of Beethoven’s 5th, Liszt’s Les Preludes, used in propaganda films, as well as many passages in Bruckner).
–Sixtus
LOL, who are you kidding, certainly could be made loud enough and records of the period could last over 3 minutes and quickly be changed.
I was not joking. The claim that “Wagner’s music was played in the camp in Dr. Mengele’s laboratory to drown out the screams of his victims” (which, by the way, is NOT an accurate precis of what Shirakawa’s Furtwangler book actually says) is itself SCIENTIFICALLY TESTABLE in the manner of the Mythbusters television program. All you need is some Wagner recordings available in Nazi Germany (which would probably have to be commercial 78s or CD dubs of them) and some recordings of screaming. Turn up the latter to a “realistic” level and find a passage from the 78s that drowns them out at any playback volume level reachable by the audio gear of the day. I contend that screaming cannot be drowned out completely by any but a few loud passages in Wagner, and those would have to have suitable acoustical spectrum characteristics (perhaps loud singing AND loud orchestra with substantial spectral content at the same pitch level as the screams). The 3-minute time limit of 78s is, in fact, a decided weakness if the screaming is continuous, since the time it takes to re-cue the record will be a period in which the screams are unmasked. And while you might think that whole swaths of Wagner’s music are inherently loud, if you listen carefully enough you’ll find that it is hardly ever CONTINUOUSLY loud for even a whole minute – there are always short but crucial gaps between musical phrases and while the singers are taking breaths during which the most monstrous crimes would be audible. For these reasons, I think the use of Wagner to drown out anything is a very grim fairy tale. That is not to say that Wagner wasn’t played in the camps, only that the utility of his music or, for that matter, any other music available back then, for the claimed ghastly function probably cannot be demonstrated. There are other far more effective and efficient ways to silence an experimental subject.
During the war itself Shostakovich used excerpts from the “Merry Widow” as a German theme because of its notoriety as Hitler’s favourite.
In the 1980-ies movie “Escape from Sobibor” the incoming trains bringing Jews were welcomed to the sounds of Strauss’ “Gescnichten aus den Wienerwald”. I do not recall any death camp themed film that featured prominently Wagner’s music. You would reckon that given the movie industry’s penchant for romantisation and simplification that there would be more attempts at forging a link between Wagner and the Holocaust, which just goes to show how little substance there is in the rumour.
Even in a book whose central thesis is the claim that Wagner inspired Hitler to commit the Holocaust the part where the issue of Wagner in death camps is examined it had to be conceeded that there is no evidence of Wagner being the soundtrack to the Holocaust.
Gurnemanz,
Wagner certainly may have fallen in goose step with Hitler’s anti-semitic insanity on a purely literary level. However, Hitler’s “Endlosung” was inspired directly by the Armenian Holocaust perpetrated by the Turks in the decades before 1915 and especially in 1915-16 when at least 1.5 million (mostly) Armenians died on death marches and in collection points in the middle of nowhere.
The Holocaust can’t be traced back to Wagner’s anti-semitic tracts anymore than other anti-semitic literature from that time period. Before WW I and until the early 1930s jews otherwise led successful lives in Germany and Austria and considered themselves Germans and Austrians in spite of all the anti-semitic crap that was written about them.
Let’s remember that back then, people’s head shapes were used to predict if they would become criminals, a subject of many books in Germany, that lots of books were written about the inferiority of blacks, gypsies and other etnic groups, etc. etc. Scientific studies were still in their infancy back then, so any quack, philosopher or lunatic could propound a kooky theory without necessarily being looked down upon. Even Marx and Engels got away with writing and publishing books that recommended a total destruction of the then existing social order.
Read Die Welt von Gestern by Stefan Zweig.
The founders of the Communist Party were for the most part Jewish. Nazi’s used this association to make them look good as an alternative to the communists. It also allowed them to say Jews were bad.. In Russia, however, they were considered progressive because they had fought to improve everyone’s life. The thinking back then was “a rising tide raises all boats”. The Nazi’s turned that into the argument that, you are not good enough for this boat.
P. S. : Larry David gets caught up in the issue here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PoPZF82FX8
Wagner may have been used by Hitler,it doesn’t mean he was a Nazi. He wash’t a particularly pleasant character but he did write some great music.
He was not a Nazi, too early, but he did write a nasty little text entitled, Judenthum in der Musik, railing against Jewish composers who were all more successful than he at the time. The text is so rotten he would not put his name to it initially, later his wife Cosima saw to it that his name was put on later printings. She was an even worse anti-Semite and an instigator of his hatred.
Also spend a little time looking at some of the characters in his operas, Mime, Alberich and Hagen (half Niebelung) are all Jewish stereotypes. Beckmesser the same, (He was even going to name the character Hans Lick after the powerful Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, a Jew, who did not approve of Wagner’s new music.) as well as the sorcerer Klingsor.
In what way precisely are the Wagner characters you name “Jewish stereotypes”?
While I agree that there seems to be no evidence regarding use of Wagner in death camps, one must not forget that association of his music with the regime by the population (Jewish and German) was primarily the result of its regular use in newsreels, esp. during the war as background music to reports of military success. Mostly the Ride of the Valkyries (in an absurdly rushed tempo) but also, frequently, short passages from the Rienzi overture, and the Flying Dutchman overture. This is where the public in general got that indoctrination. This, after Nov. 1938, excluded the Jews, unless they illicitly went to the movies which was forbidden (and highly dangerous etc.),; when the Yellow Star was introduced (’41) it became even more dangerous for Jews to go to a movie theater. However, Wagner was also used in radio propaganda. The point is that the association of Wagner & Nazis was established in a large part of the population, quite apart from whatever music was played live or on records in camps, long before the war. Of course the idea that Wagner was played live at camps is absurd, since the size of the ensembles was far too small – and because the function of ensembles like Alma Rosé’s orchestra was to soothe arriving prisoners, not to indoctrinate them. I highly recommend Newman & Kirtley’s “Alma Rosé – Vienna to Auschwitz.” As I have remarked previously, I think it is likely that survivors’ emotional rejection of Wagner is more than understandable, and should be respected; reflexively putting Wagner in the camps is not so much a fact needing corroberration as a “memory” invoked by association, again not hard to understand. At the same time, again as stated in various discussions here, other survivors had quite different reactions – like Karel Ancerl, who recorded and performed Wagner after the war.
I wonder if Mahler ever commented on Wagner’s anti-Semitism or was Mahler apolitical ?
Maybe little off-topic, but opening up my heart;
none of us are innocent.
It has been pretty tough even up here, in our “permissive” Scandinavia.
One example from Sweden; we all know Raoul Wallenberg, but:
The Swedish composer Moses Pergament (1893-1977) was repeatedly refused to be accepted as a member in the Swedish Composers’ Association in the 1930s due to “alien ancestry” [=Jewish background], even though he had Swedish citizenship and had lived all his life in Scandinavia. He had one defender; Hilding Rosenberg, who was protesting the case with great personal fervour but without any effect whatsoever.
Composer-critique Wilhelm Peterson-Berger (composer of the lovely “Frösöblomster” piano pieces) even published a review in Sweden saying that Moses Pergament was a “foreign parasite” – the same evening Pergament actually went inside Peterson-Berger’s home and slapped him straight on the face.
Finally, Pergament was actually accepted to become a member in the Swedish Composers’ Association as late as 1945, after the war, even though the officially neutral Sweden didn’t take any part in the WWII. Basically this meant, for example, that Pergament didn’t have any chance to get scholarships or to be recorded or published by the society’s own network. The climate had finally changed.
In Finland, Pergament also had a brother, Simon Parmet (1897-1969; previously Pergament) – even a bigger figure. Parmet made his first recordings in Germany back in 1929, studied in Berlin, and conducted operas in Germany (even Wagner), but had to flee from the country in 1932 because of the Nazis.
He was even actually to become the successor of Robert Kajanus in the Helsinki PO after the death of the legendaric Finnish conductor Kajanus (he died in 1933) – by the will of the maestro Kajanus himself. Yet, he did not get the position – the orchestra had expressed to Kajanus that “they prefer something of a more purely Finnish origin”. The little birds are saying that Parmet was simply never able to keep his temper in front of the orchestral musicians – true or not? And so what? Maybe he simply wanted to increase the quality of musicianships? Maybe he was more ambitious? Well, Parmet thinks it was simply because of the “the climate of the 1930s”.
After this he went to USA and Israel (he conducted some concerts by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Israel PO).
He did return to Finland in 1948 where he conducted the Finnish RSO until 1953, but then resigned due to “lack of discipline” by the orchestral musicians and “lack of collaboration” – and engaged himself into debates to his injury. Basically after this he stopped conducting and continued mainly as an esseist (e.g. a book about the Sibelius Symphonies).
It is also to be noticed that Parmet didn’t really know to speak or write in the Finnish language, but preferred to use any other languages, so he was a little bit of a strange bird on the scene. Yet, besides scandals, he did receive some recognition and awards. But it seems that he had more successes when he was conducting in other countries.
Few recordings are in the archives, but maybe his most important living legacy was that he gave lessons to Jorma Panula, the “father of the Finnish conductor generation”. So, actually, who knows, even behind the Finnish “conductor miracle” we might find a Jew ? Yet, nobody remembers anymore this conductor or a reputation of a lively character (for our freezing climate); ask anyone about Parmet, and they say: “Who…?”
A fine, but short article about Simon Parmet by Vesa Sirén (in Finnish language) to whom lot of my information is owed to:
http://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/artikkeli/Juutalaisvastaisuus+eli+my%C3%B6s+Suomen+musiikkiel%C3%A4m%C3%A4ss%C3%A4/1135242294360
-J.
Thayk you, Joel and Vesa, for this valuable information.
Hello,
Music was a major key to the rise of Adolf Hitler. He found inspiration in his youth from the opera Rienzi, the story of which is about a Tribune who seeks to save Rome…and as a poor boy, whose mother was a house cleaner, he could imagine that he was not just a poor boy with an overbearing father, and a mother who tried to protect her son from him. His sister was “simply structured” or in normal palance dumb. Her future would be to become what their mother was…i cleaning maid.
Skip forward to just after the war. Hitler had a best friend that few know: Emil Maurice. Emil was a watch maker who met Adolf in Munich in 1919. As it turns out, they lived on the same street and became buddies. When one needed help the other came and vice versa. Maurice was the handyman, and Adolf the talker. Emil was the person that funneled a lot of people to Adolf as time went by. They went to prison together, they formed the SA (brown-shirts) and the SS (SicherheitsStab) together. Emil became his driver and helped type “Mein Kampf” along side Hess in Landsberg prison.
They were so close that Geli (Angela) Rabal, the daughter of Hitler’s half sister, fell in love with him. The man who was the 1st member of the SA and the 2nd member of the SS, a man who was Hitler’s chauffer, and buddy crossed the line when that happened. Hitler fired him from his job as driver, and they turned the SA over to Göring and the SS over to Himmler. For his part, Hitler wanted to keep Geli away from Emil because he could not lead an antisemitic political party with a jew (even his best friend) in the party, if he wanted to lead it moving forward. So they split up, professionally but remained friends. (The ancestry of Hitler was never disclosed in his lifetime, but DNA tests of the Hitler relative who moved to England just before WWII, have shown jewish ancestry).
The book that Maurice had typed for Hitler (along with Hess) made Hitler wealthy and the trial in Munich after the Beer Hall putch made him well known.
In the time after getting out of prison, the oldest matron of the german piaad no manufacturer Bechstein took a huge liking to Hitler. Maurice could drive a car and Adolf never learned. So Maurice would drive his Chief to all the salons of the important Munich aristocrats such as the Bruchmanns, the Hanfstangls, and most importantly the Bechsteins. These families made him known among industrialists and music circles.
Hitler would associate his cause with the characters Wagner had created, and most Germans knew of, even if they really did not understand a lot about the characters. This led to an introduction to the wife of the grandson of Richard Wagner. This british woman had married Siegfried Wagner and borne him children only to find out that he was Bisexual. The relationship between Hitler and Mrs. Wagner was very close because Hilter could gain social stature, and Winifried Wagner would have the supreme leader of the German government, as a “nearly lover”. The Wagner family was so taken with Adolf, they built an annex on to the original home of Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. This annex became a 2nd home to Adolf Hitler.
Hitler had a problem. She was married, but her husband was in love with Max Lorenz, the leading tenor of Bayeuth in those days, and the wife of Max Lorenz was 100% Jewish. Mrs Wagner would not allow Adolf to arrest the Tenor, or deport his wife, or jail her husband. Even the leading lady of Bayreuth was married to a Jewish man, and the Wagner family had house help who were jewish. So in 1942,he gave up on Bayreuth. If a scandal had come out, it would have taken down the image of German power Hitler needed for legitimacy. Htiler never went back to Bayreuth. That is what really happened.
Much of the imagry of Hitler comes directly from set designs for Hitler’s opera Rienzi, and the jews of that generation, were fed of full dose of hate over the radio all the while the music of Wagner was used as background music, One can blame Wagner or Hitler, but they are both Opportunists. Both made themselves bigger and more important than they should be by using other people to create associations that made them look good.
They say that guns do not kill people, people do. One can say also, that music does not kill people, people do.
Mahler by comparison, was an effective administrator and had the benefit of being more Austrian than German based. This allowed him to become important independent of the German music establishment. Mahler had a more similar path, that in some ways is more similar to Mozart and Beethoven than Wagner.
In fact, Wagner got to be a cause early in his career because of a scandal surrounding the first production of one of his operas in Paris. He put the Ballet in Tannhäuser in an unconventional order. The young men who had ballet dancers as lovers, protested during performances and the show was pulled. This “happening” is what made Wagner among the German intelligencia of his day.
Otherwise, his operas are just soap operas with characters with often very German sounding names.
You better had kept that rubbish to yourself. Full of stereotypes, hyperbole and errors.
“Hitler would associate his cause with the characters Wagner had created…”
Such as? False.
“Much of the imagry of Hitler comes directly from set designs for Hitler’s opera Rienzi…”
What?
“fed of full dose of hate over the radio all the while the music of Wagner was used as background music”
False.
“This “happening” is what made Wagner among the German intelligencia of his day.”
nonsense
“his operas are just soap operas with characters with often very German sounding names.”
pfffft…
Nazi music circles wanted to return to the original Germans for inspiration. Die Bernauerin, Carmine Buranan, and the Carmine Cartulli all use these texts because they are more pure or absent of Jewish moral and character influences. They can inspire because they are human and primitive, not because they are “principled”.
I must admit to enjoying “Carmina Burana” occasionally. Riccardo Muti, speaking of his encounter with Orff after a performance he gave in Berlin in 1980, has said that Orff was a very kind, “dolcissimo” man and that he subsequently altered certain dynamics and tempi in the score in accordance with Muti’s performance.
I always feel it is a bit dangerous to accuse people of collaboration. How far were artists’ lives at stake if they refused to obey? Even Shostakovitch has been accused of being a Stalinist collaborator.
Having been born Jewish AND also a descendent of Felix Mendelssohn, the issue of Richard Wagner is a hard one. How can the music be good, GREAT, if the creator was despicable? Hitler loved his music, tore down the statue of Mendelssohn in Leipzig, so there MUST be something tainted about this music if I listen closely. Well friends, all I can say is that after having seen the entire Ring Cycle AGAIN in NYC this season, DAS RHEINGOLD is STILL my favorite opera. I suffered a lot over this at one time. It was like buying a Mercedes, after all Hitler LOVED driving in his Mercedes. The first time I drove to Germany I remember thinking that “well, it’s easy for me to get in but 60 years ago I wouldn’t have been able to get out”. I used to WONDER about his music being played in the camps, the ONE scene in SCHINDLER’S LIST that is the WORST is when the train arrives at the camp and the music is playing loudly on the speakers while chaos ensues. Beyond horrid. Still, Wagner was NO Nazi. Anti-semite? Yes. So was Chopin. I also happen to be homosexual. Would my grandparents have approved of my recent marriage to a man? Were they homophobic OR were they a product of their time? Let’s face it, finding MOST people across Europe from the upper classes who did not have disdain for Jews would be VERY HARD INDEED. I HATE that Hitler had some good taste when it came to music, No doubt he didn’t hear it the way I do. I hate that Wagner was a genius who was also intolerant of those who were Jews. I have learned to put that aside and lose myself in the glory of his music. Were he a murderer or someone who overtly sought killing Jews, I might have a different viewpoint. I will not consider paintings by John Wayne Gacy as anything but grotesque and criminal. Wagner does not rise to that level, thankfully. He was a genius, a nasty man, and he wrote some sublime music.
(on a side note, I came to this site because I saw the posting of the obituary of my dear friend Sheldon Rotenberg, who was also my violin teacher for a while. I will miss him dearly, and I might add that we recently discussed the very issue of Wagner. While more religious than I am, Sheldon said “how can anyone argue with the beauty of the LOHENGRIN overture? I brought the subject up myself of loving a lot of Wagner and wanted to hear his opinion on the matter. I will miss the chance to speak with him about such matters very much indeed).
Wagner certainly ripped Mendelssohn off in his Fliegende Hollander. Have a listen to the overture and then listen to Mendelssohn’s Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt. Not even a covert musical reference, a direct take.
“(ref. Jozas Karas’s Music in Terezin, “Upon closer scrutiny of the existing programs from Terezin, one cannot help but detect the ostentatious absence of the name Richard Wagner. Even when one takes into consideration his demands on the performer, the primary reason lies in the fact that the composer embodied the German megalomania and was chosen as obvious artistic representative of the Nazi regime and favorite of Adolf Hitler.”)”
This text passage is a good show case for the prosaic and “imaginative” way, the Wagner issue is dealt with.
The reason he wasn’t played in Theresienstadt is probably simple: Wagner didn’t write chamber music or other music suited for being played in smaller ensembles.
Question: How much Meyerbeer was played in Theresienstadt? How much Puccini? …
The same is probably true for the alleged use of Wagner by Mengele. Pure invention. Reality following imagination. Preconceived hatred of the antisemite Wagner, making him fill in nicely in the projection.
Unless someone shows us a good source, that Wagner in particular was used in these horrific scenarios.
There was a full orchestra in Theresienstadt which played large scaled Romantic works.
Thank you all for these comments and links. I am not nearly as schooled in this topic as I should be.
I find that some of the overtures to Wagner’s operas and the occasional aria can be quite enjoyable the rest of the music he wrote is quite frankly a load of boring often laughable rubbish. Unfortunately, it’s true that he was an anti-semite and ridiculously pompous snobby little man and his music will forever be associated with the other anti-semitic ridiculously pompous little man whose actions led to far greater misery than the over-long operas of the other one.