Nazi System

Because music is so important to Lieder-loving Germans, music is also important to the German Government. For generations opera houses and music schools have been supported by the state. When, in 1933, the Nazis came into power, one of their first concerns was the organization, with characteristic German thoroughness, of Germany's musical life along strictly Nazi lines. Dominant in the official Nazi attitude toward music were: 1) the Nazi theories of race, 2) Nazi objections to all satirical, "unwholesome" or experimental types of art. Public performance of works by Jewish composers like Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler was banned. Likewise banned (though somewhat less systematically) were the discordant works of atonalists and other modernist composers.

Last week in the industrial town of Duesseldorf, Nazi musical authorities opened a Reich Music Congress, attended by musical big& little-wigs from all over Germany. Outstanding event on the program was an exhibition of "degenerate music" patterned after the exhibition of "degenerate art" that drew throngs in Munich last summer (TIME, Aug. 2). Scheduled for the pillory were compositions by Atonalists Schoenberg, Berg and Hindemith, jazz, theoretical and critical writings by Jews and modernist sympathizers.

Sponsoring this meeting was the world's most formidable cultural organization, Germany's Kulturkammer (Chamber of Culture). Under the directorship of club-footed Minister of Propaganda Paul Joseph Goebbels, the Kulturkammer controls all artistic activity that takes place within German borders. Important among its seven sub-chambers (literature, music, press, theatre, art, cinema, radio) is the Musikkammer, presided over by 65-year-old Peter Raabe, one of Germany's numerous lesser symphonic conductors. Every musician in Germany, from symphonic composer to drummer in a town band, must be a member of the Musikkammer. The Kammer fixes and assures collection of composers' royalties, decrees what type of music shall be played and who shall or shall not be permitted to play it. Securely under its thumb are the activities of Germany's world-renowned opera houses, music conservatories, symphony orchestras. Periodically the Musikkammer makes recommendations to Chancellor Hitler himself who bestows upon deserving Nazi musicians the title of Professor (now an honorary designation without academic significance). Membership in the Musikkammer (and hence participation in Germany's professional music life) is limited to qualified and politically tractable "Aryans."

While the Musikkammer's ban on music by Jewish composers has been rigidly enforced, racial borderline cases, Jew-"Aryan" collaborations, and other knotty problems have kept Nazi theoreticians in a perpetual dither. "Aryan" Composer Richard Strauss's operas have escaped the ban, though several of his most successful (Die Schweigsame Frau, Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra) have librettos by Jews. Also unbanned, and of Jewish authorship, are librettos of "Aryan" Composer Franz Lehar's operettas (The Merry Widow, et al.). Carmen, a perennial favorite in German opera houses, was written by French Composer Georges Bizet, who is generally credited with some Jewish blood. Kulturkammer authorities got around this difficulty by officially "Aryanizing" Bizet. Although music by such Jewish composers as Mendelssohn, Mahler. Meyerbeer is now unheard in Germany, German publishing houses go on publishing it for export, and do a pretty good business at it.

In this penumbra of exceptions and compromises is jazz. Though officially condemned by Nazi authorities, it has never been absolutely banned. Negro jazz bands are not permitted; swing music has been publicly damned. But records by Josephine Baker, Guy Lombardo. Victor Young, Benny Goodman, Leo Reisman are still selling in Germany, as are the sheet-music compositions of George Gershwin and Irving Berlin. And British-born "sweet" Jazzband Leader Jack Hylton recently finished a two-month engagement at one of Berlin's variety show houses.

Fact is that, though they can find plenty of substitutes for blacklisted symphonies and operas, Nazis on dancing bent hardly know which way to turn. Last month an article in Die Spielschar, organ of the Hitler Youth Movement, moped long and heavily over this question. Die Spielschar agreed that the motions prescribed by swing are unworthy of a sober man, but protested that rump-slapping peasant dances were equally inappropriate for sophisticated Germans. With these two categories of dancing verboten, there would be nothing left but waltzes. "For those who seek a way to graceful and natural German dancing," sighed Die Spielschar, "the points of departure . . . are terrifyingly few."

*While the music of Jewish Atonalist Arnold Schoenberg was immediately blacklisted, compositions by "Aryan" Atonalist Paul Hindemith have occasionally been heard, those of "Aryan" Atonalist Alban Berg were heard as late as 1934. Russian Modernist Igor Stravinsky is still a popular composer in the Third Reich.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.