The orchestra has – as promised by its chairman, Clemens Hellsberg – posted on its website a full and independent account of its activities from the Anschluss with Germany in March 1938 to the end of the War. You can read the reports of three historians, along with memoirs by former players, in a series of documents in German here. An English translation is in preparation.
The exercise conducted by Hellsberg and the historians is altogether commendable. It is, however, not enough.
What is needed now is an investigation into how Helmut Wobisch, an SS storm-trooper from 1934 to 1945, was allowed to resume his post as solo trumpet in the orchestra in 1950 and to be elected as its manager in 1953, maintaining his contact with former Nazi rulers such as the Vienna Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach. In a cooperative like the Vienna Philharmonic, there are few secrets. Many musicians will have known of Wobisch’s past and his subsequent activities. The orchestra conspired in a cover-up about its manager. That conspiracy remains to be cleansed.
I have passed this message on to my email group which has many Jews on it. I am sure they will appreciate your comments about this shameful situation.
Shalom,
Frances
“The exercise conducted by Hellsberg and the historians is altogether commendable. It is, however, not enough.”
Will it ever be enough? If they can’t retroactively change their past they should just stop operating and close that orchestra down. Enough is enough. This orchestra is a symbol of fascism and corrupted artistry forever. Who wants to listen to Germanic classical music anyway…
Scarcely surprising when you look at the role of the British musical establishment in de-Nazifying major Austrian artists during the four power occupation of Vienna. Karajan is the obvious example but there were hundreds of others. One might argue that it was better to have such people on the inside of the tent blowing out. The good news is that the VPO is entering the last quarter of the 20th Century, albeit thirty years too late. There’s a joke about Austrians and lighbulbs which some of us may recall.
Dim comments about a serious issue.
Especially the last one.
” No more Neu Jahr Konzert for you!”
We all agree that the shameful history of the VPO should be exposed in minute details BUT looking at your picture I think I understand your childish statement. Do not mix things up! The German Classics and our appreciation of the three B:s and other German composers has nothing to do with what we think of the members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
/Goran
“they should just stop operating and close that orchestra down”
” Who wants to listen to Germanic classical music anyway…”
Two enlightened suggestions. Lets start the campaign right here.
It would appear that several people want to listen to German classical music. And if, as you appear to intimate, no one wants to listen to German classical music, then many orchestras need to be closed, since the VPO is not the only orchestra to play German classical music.
And then there are the music schools and opera houses which would need to be closed….
And the recording companies.
And the concert halls.
They should certainly find ways to express apologies and regrets for the cover up that went on so long after the Nazis were discredited and in some cases punished or unpunished. It is never too late.
Free tickets to the remaining Viennese Jews.
A few weeks ago, I was assured by certain posters on this blog that we would be inundated with new and tremendous facts concerning the VPO and that Dr Rathkolb was wrong when he stated that there was nothing really new to be discovered.
So – where’s the new stuff?
I’m on tenterhooks!
Or has it just been – as so often today – just a lot of hot air and mutual masturbation?
If you can’t see the new stuff, you really shouldn’t be reading Slipped Disc – let alone responding.
I studied under a member of the VPO very recently. Let me tell you: This is not an issue of the past. They are still very much Nazis and this is only the tip of the iceberg. The sad part is that they are so proud of it – no shame whatsoever. The Ossiach academy as well as the summer academy of the Philharmoniker in Salzburg are breeding grounds for intolerance. It is a father-son activity and deeply xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic etc. Read Kafka’s Das Schloß and you have a description of my studies at the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Wien.
Let’s give credit where due: If William Osborne had not challenged the Vienna Philharmonic beginning way back in the 1990s — along with a few women like Monique Buzzarte, whom he enlisted at the International Alliance for Women in Music and others in California, as well as in Austria — none of this would have come out.
See this: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/najp/publications/articles/herman.pdf
Osborne’s brave, unrelenting campaign not only to reveal the truth about the Vienna Philharmonic’s ideology but to change it deserves our thanks. Of course it remains to be seen whether all the truth will come out and whether the orchestra is even capable of real change. But one can hope.
“…In Germany and Austria barely anyone notices these far away storms in the teapots…”
Well, you seemed to have noticed…
“Was kümmert’s die Eiche, wenn sich ein Schwein an ihr reibt?”
Das ist doch eine beleidigende Unterstellung!
“Was kümmert’s die Eiche, wenn sich ein Schwein an ihr reibt?”
English = “What does it matter to the oak tree if a pig rubs itself against it?”
And what if the oak tree has been eaten up inside by termites?
I’m currently reading through the articles about specific members of the orchestra who were either murdered, died as a result of their harsh treatment after being expelled, or were able to escape into exile. It is absolutely heartbreaking and shocking.
I hope all of these documents will reach as wide a public readership as possible and that the English translations will be available very soon to help enable that. In fact, I find it worrying that only German material is being published at present when it would have been easy to provide English versions simultaneously. I wonder how long it will take…?
If The Vienna Philharmonic and Austria are going to apologise for thiery Nazi past shouldn’t other countries and their governments alså dó the same; I am thinking notably about the eviction of the Palestinians from their land In 1948 and the shameful way that Israel treats them today.
Wien one considers that half of the population that Israel controls is non Jewish there is not much repræsentation of “the others” In the Israel Phil, is there?
All too true.
I quote from John Drummond’s autobiography “Tainted by Experience”:
“The orchestra was riddled with anti-Semitism….When Solti later received the gold medal of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde …practically no-one from the professors of the orchestra committee turned up…On the morning of the presentation day, Solti was telephoned at his room in the Imperial Hotel and a woman’s voice said, “They’re not coming because you’re a dirty Hungarian Jew.” After receiving the award, as Solti walked down the corridor, the door of the office of Ernst Vobisch, the orchestra’s Chairman, was open, and all the missing committe members were sitting there having coffee.”
That story sounds apocryphal, way too over the top, just like something a bigoted Brit like Drummond would make up because he has a hard time stomaching Solti’s conciliatory attitude towards the Viennese. It would be much more typically Viennese for them to all come and stand there grinning even if they didn’t like him anyway. I don’t think there actually was a chairman named “Ernst Vobisch” either (correct me if I am wrong) – sounds more like Drummond somehow partially and incorrectly remembered Wobisch’ name. Overall, that doesn’t look like an unbiased and reliable source at all.
You should rather read Solti’s own autobiography, a great if all too short memoir. You can also read about how he was treated by his fellow countrymen during the time in which your namesake held the reins there. Reading the book makes it easier to understand why he was such a conciliatory and forgiving person.
John Drummond was many things, but never a bigot. Mr Schaffer, you must stop the random abuse or risk exclusion from this site.
Sorry. Wouldn’t you agree though that the story sounds a little…unlikely, a little too made up? The whole point behind the Austrian obsession with titles, medals, honors of all sorts is to maintain appearance. It doesn’t make sense that people would demonstratively stay away from such a ceremony – all the more so since the honor for Solti was richly deserved, not just a show. Fact is, Solti worked with these musicians highly successfully for decades, and from what I have heard, he was generally highly respected and also liked by them (and the latter is far from a given – there are many conductors who are respected, but not necessarily liked by their players). And before that, he spent 15 or so years in Germany, in fact starting off his conducting career there and making significant contributions to the rebuilding of music life in Munich and Frankfurt. And he and his family were actual victims of fascist terror. That makes his contributions to music life in Germany and Austria even more significant. There is really no need to diminish his relationship with these musicians with spurious stories,
The story comes from a credible source. There is no point in speculating without concrete evidence to the contrary.
You’re right. I’ll see if I can find out when Solti got that medal, and if there was a chairman named Ernst Vobisch.
Unless Solti was the bigger man.
I’m editing Leonard Bernstein’s correspondence at the moment, and Wobisch is the subject of a letter from Solti to Bernstein in 1967. It’s a good letter, but the most interesting part of it came when I was writing the accompanying commentary, since the Bernstein Collection also contains a copy of a letter from Simon Wiesenthal to Joseph Wechsberg, who sent it on to Lenny. In this letter, Wiesenthal documents Wobisch’s activities in detail. For him, the most serious problem of all was Wobisch working as a member of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst), as well as the SS, and as an active member of the party. I have a xerox of Wiesenthal’s letter (in German) which spells out the Wobisch wartime career with gruesome precision. I’ll gladly transcribe the whole of Wiesenthal’s text if it’s of any interest. Needless to say, it doesn’t make for comfortable reading.
Nigel, I assume it was also Wobisch who led the anti-Solti gang in Culshaw’s famous anecdote. Must ask Valerie. ho’s publishing the Lenny letters?
best, Norman
Norman – in a way it’s more intriguing than that – Solti’s letter is very conciliatory. Here’s a part of it:
“As another Jewish conductor, I understand your feelings surely better than anyone else. If somebody, after the Nazi horrors, does not want to work with a German or Austrian orchestra, as is the case with several Jewish artists, I understand only too well. I have been through great soul searching in the past about this, and several times have been on the verge of breaking contact with them. […]
I am aware of Wobisch’s political past, as surely you were before you went to Vienna. However, working with him and knowing him for the past ten years, I have come to the conviction that despite everything he is probably one of the few trustworthy members of that orchestra.”
Valerie said something very similar in an email to me when I asked her if I could use the letter – that W. was one of the more decent and kindly people in the orchestra at the time. Which is maybe saying something…
Thanks for asking about the Lenny letters – the book’s being done by Yale UP and should be out by the end of the year.
Best, Nigel
I think what the statement says is that Wobsich apparently was a rather direct person who didn’t make a secret out of his convictions, as misguided as they were. The letter you quote also illustrates that is has been very well known for many decades exactly what Wobisch’s past was, especially to people like Bernstein and Solti who chose to work with him and the other WP with a brown past anyway. So there aren’t any really sensational revelations here.
Abigail Clifford, this is no place for you to spew your ignorance about the history of “Palestine” and its inhabitants. Here we talk about music.
We talk about music? Why this thread then?
Indeed Daniel, Abigail Clifford if not right, She is at least talking about similar or related things concerning “Intolerance”.
I’m surprised that no one has yet mentioned Erich Schenk (1902–74) in this connection. They used to say that, well after the war had ended, there was still a brown stain at the University of Vienna, and that was Schenk. He worked with Gerigk on the Lexikon der Juden in der Musik, became professor at the University of Vienna in 1940, dean of the Faculty of Philosophy in 1950 and Rektor in 1957. He didn’t retire, draped with prizes, until 1971. He was unrepentant about his anti-Semitic past and was famous for not allowing students to undertake research into Jewish composers. And just in case anyone thinks, ah, well, it’s all in history now, stop to wonder at the complete insensitivity of the Mozartgemeinde Wien which has been awarding an Erich-Schenk-Preis since 2003. Em, excuse me? Don’t these people have any judgement?
White stain. These Nazis were a white, festering blot. Nothing brown about them except their shirts, that is, though the true color attaching to all of them is that of blood, the blood of 6 million + Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and millions of others of other faiths, ethnicities and nations.
I cannot see that this adds much to history. We all know that Austria welcomed the Nazis as a nation. And that presumably included their orchestra.
Here’s an illustration of the attitudes of Austrians in 1938: according to Ian Kershaw and his two-volume Hitler biography, Hitler’s original plan was to have Austria retain formal independence but governed by a pro-nazi puppet regime, largely to placate Mussolini. However, he was so enthralled by the raptuous welcome he had recieved that he literally changed his mind overnight and opted for a full incorporation into the Reich.
What on earth are people getting so ventilated about? If any current member of the VPO was involved in the scandal in the 1950s, let him be named and blamed. He’d have to be 80-85 years old, so I have my doubts…otherwise let these musicians live in peace.
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, and quite frankly, this particular episode of history is one that I and millions of others do not want to repeat. You are correct in stating that todays musicians are probably not involved in the scandals, but the sad fact of the matter is that the Vienna Phil remains mired in their racist and sexist past. There is still a steadfast and unapologetic refusal to admit non-white members, and while there are a handful of women, it remains very much an exclusive men’s club. If this is to change, the past must be investigated, as it tells us why the problems remain in the present, and how we can avoid this in the future. The problems of the Vienna Phil have yet to be solved, and this is very probably a very good way to start the necessary changes that will drag this orchrestra into the 21st century… even if they are kicking and screaming.
Dean, you are confusing the gender equality and the Nazi past issue. The two issues are not related.
I like the way the Vienna Phil sounds and plays very much. For me they are the best orchestra in the world.
If their members are racist or discriminate against women I can’t tell and neither can 99% of the commentators here. Maybe they are, maybe they are not. As a man I was recently refused a job vs a less qualified woman, because of gender mainstreaming policies. Who can I complain to? The mayor of London?
@ Dean Williams: as a Jewish American living in Germany (and someone who lived in Wien and knows how complex the subject is) I would like to say: yes, the VPO’s past has some very dark moments. However, I find the argument that they “remain Nazis” because of the non admission of players of color misplaced. How many African Americans play in the Chicago Symphony, the NY Phil, the Boston Symphony? Or how about this: why is this a non issue? Certainly Austria’s endless prevarication about the Nazi era is distasteful, but it is a predictable consequence of the Western Powers’ declaration that Austria was ” a victim.” If we make today’s musicians responsible for the crimes of their grandfathers, many orchestras around the world will have much to answer for … I would favor a dialogue with the VPO rather than undifferentiated attacks.
Norman said:
“What is needed now is an investigation into how Helmut Wobisch, an SS storm-trooper from 1934 to 1945, was allowed to resume his post as solo trumpet in the orchestra in 1950 and to be elected as its manager in 1953″
Norman – this is actually addressed here, on page 4:
http://www.wienerphilharmoniker.at/upload/files/ns/ns_rath_ehrungen_de_v03.pdf
One wonders whether it was possible for anyone to actually refuse to become an SS storm-trooper without the direst consequences.
It certainly was. See Christopher Browning’s important researches.
Oh, certainly joining the SS was an act of willful conspiration. Nobody was forced into the SS ranks, quite the opposite, many who wanted to join were refused entry. The SS took pride in their elite and voluntary status among all military bodies of the Nazi regime. They and the Gestapo were the worst bunch of fanatics about Aryan supremacy.
The publication of this information can be viewed as a remarkably cunning piece of offensive PR. They have controlled the spin: the VPO is a serious institution with serious principles, which has undertaken a seriously principled study of a very serious subject. All those who had been demanding this information prior to its publication now have nothing left to argue about, and the real heat of the argument has been spent on simply getting the facts out there. No further action will be taken, and those who keep on pushing the matter will be quietly ignored and ostracised. Eventually, the memory of the debate will fade, as successive waves of cheap scandal and tabloid schmutz dull the public’s attention and blunt their concentration. At the same time, they have managed to slightly shift the argument around the selection of players, as can be evidenced to the degree to which comments here and in the previous story have allowed those two issue to overlap. This makes it easier for the VPO to defend themselves as they can now simply dismiss anyone foolish enough to confuse the two in an attack. On the other hand, the VPO has the option of waving a magic wand, letting in a few more players of various tonalities and making loud noises about how much they have changed, at which point we have no choice but to applaud them for being such good chaps, and how terribly decent of them, too, what? This would have the effect of isolating those who are concerned about the current ideology of the orchestra, and make those pushing the “Nazi” button look extreme. So it’s basically a win-win situation for the VPO.
You ARE being sarcastic, I hope?
Anti-Semitism is so ingrained in Europe – all of Europe, really – that it will be a problem for generations to come. In the music world there, Wagner’s book pretty much sums up attitudes about Jews which were prevalent before, during and after he lived. For me it’s the eternal paradox of German culture.
Bernstein, Solti, and plenty of other great Jewish conductors who stood on the VPO podium after the war did so, I would imagine, in service to music above all else. The VPO is one of the great orchestras of the world and has given it consistently great work. The only thing which will overcome the historic “judenhass” of the German speaking people is time and a change of heart. Eight decades after rise of Nazism I doubt any of the people who committed such crimes against art – and their fellow artists in that orchestra – are alive to answer for their actions.
In my country, we still fight to overcome prejudice against just about every non-white group; who themselves have made enormous contributions to American art and culture. I don’t think for a minute that much of the animus against our President Obama isn’t racist based.
It is the eternal struggle: Fear of the “other.” Let the sun shine on our mistakes and shortfalls, including the VPO (and probably every orchestra in Germany and Austria) but let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Bob – I grew up in Berlin in the 70s and 80s when the process we call “Vergangeheitsbewältigung” was fully under way. That roughly means “processing the past, learning about the past, coming to terms with the past” and it entails full frontal assault education about recent German history, in schools, in exhibitions, books, magazines, movies. The history lessons in school about the period from the later 19th century through the end of WWII are very thorough. We spent about three years studying that period in great detail. They take the students to concentration camps and other historical sites in the area they live in (e.g. in Berlin to the former Gestapo HQ which houses a permanent exhibition called “The Topography of Terror”). The subject is also constantly in the public discussion.
I don’t have the impression that any other country has confronted the dark sides of its own history as thoroughly and as relentlessly. Therefore, I think it may be very difficult for people who haven’t grown up in it to picture just how intense that confrontation with the past was and still is in Germany.
As a result of this, I can honestly tell you that I think that anti-semitism is almost completely gone in Germany now. Growing up, I have never really sensed it in my environment. Meaning it’s not like it is still “in the air” but “shhhh – you can’t talk about that!”. I did sense it in some older people, you could tell they were uneasy with the subject, it was indeed so deeply ingrained in them that they weren’t able to talk and reflect about it freely. Paradoxically, it is therefore hard for me to understand from an emotional point of view rather than as historical knowledge. By which I mean that it is not an influence that we had to struggle to shake off – we were practically never exposed to it. Like I said, some older people who still seemed to have such views were not really able to be open about it, and I guess that’s a good thing because it pretty much died with their generations.
Sure – there are still some idiots who cling to such racist views, there are some Neonazis and other people who subscribe to extremist views. But they are very few and they don’t have a big voice in the public because the vast majority of the public is too well informed about the past to tolerate such views. It’s not just the historical anti-semitism and fascism as isolated subjects – most people understand that these are directly tied to totalitarian views and inseparable from the curtailing of freedom and dignity of society as a whole. In a society which gives in to these kinds of views, it is not only the actual victims of prejudice which are the target. Prejudices also serve to keep those in line who are taught to hold them, and eventually they get robbed of their freedom, too, often without really noticing it. That is what we have seen in Germany in the first decades of the 20th century, and our society today is strongly committed to making sure that won’t happen again. And it seems to work pretty well, as one can see when such tendencies pop up here and there, as they do of course – they are too ingrained in human nature. But I think it is that dark side of our nature in general, not the historical anti-semitic and fascist tendencies.
So that is not seen as a closed book kind of subject. “We have done that, so now let’s put that aside and move on”. It is seen as a continuing struggle against reactionary tendencies wherever they pop up. Which they do, of course. Unfortunately, it is too much in human nature for some people not to give in to them, for some to try to use them to influence and control others.
And that is basically also why I find a lot of the comments about the Wiener Philhamoniker and their dark past here pretty ridiculous. It is a much, much bigger and much more complex subject than that and frankly, the role the WP and other cultural institutions played in that massive maelstrom of historical forces which led to the horrendous events of the past century is, in the bigger picture, almost completely irrelevant. It is highly interesting detail history, especially for people who are interested in music and music history, and I have found the articles from the WP website gave some very important detail insights into the mechanisms of power which were at work back then.
BTW, that article – it’s really more a lengthy article than a whole book – that Wagner wrote about Jews has no influence at all anymore these days. People know he wrote it and roughly what it’s about, but nobody reads it. I haven’t read it either – I tried, but found even the first few paragraphs too hard to digest. I think I should try to read it again. But that would be more of an historical exercise, an attempt to understand how people like Wagner ticked back then, nothing which has much relevance today anymore – thankfully.