Furtw

The London Clipper last week brought to Manhattan a copy of the first dispassionate and detailed account of music in Adolf Hitler's Germany. The Baton and the Jackboot by Berta Geissmar (Hamish Hamilton; 155) is the record of a Mannheim Jewess who managed to stay in the midst of Nazi musical politics until her escape from Germany before the war. Miss Geissmar was secretary of the Berlin Philharmonic. Her book gives an intimate picture of one of Nazi Germany's two world-famed musical figures, Conductor Wilhelm FurtwGngler (the other: Composer Richard Strauss).

Furtwaengler is generally rated among the first half-dozen maestros of the world. In Germany, where great music has long ranked among the important responsibilities of the state, he occupied a position as essential as that of a cabinet minister. When the Nazis took over, FurtwGngler, as head of the state-supported Berlin Philharmonic and Berlin Opera, became one of their knottier problems. He detested the Nazis. But if they forced his resignation, Germany would lose one of her few remaining claims to cultural prestige. So they began seducing him into the Nazi game.

Art v. Politics. FurtwGngler was a man of idealism, deeply patriotic, with a mystical absorption in German culture. He believed that the Nazi movement was a troublesome but temporary phenomenon, and was anxious to do what he could to preserve German musical standards. He fancied that in staying in Germany, rather than going into exile, he would find ways, with art as his shield, of opposing the Nazis.

FurtwGngler managed to delay the "Aryanization" of the Berlin Philharmonic for many months. But Nazi authorities, through legal technicalities, delayed the payment of the orchestra's state subsidy, reduced it to near bankruptcy. When FurtwGngler issued a statement that art could not flourish under political domination, Goebbels cracked: "Politics, too, is an art, and what is more, the highest and most comprehensive art of all." An interview between FurtwGngler and Hitler produced two hours of shouting and led to one interesting aftermath: when FurtwGngler refused to conduct at Nuernberg party rallies, Hitler backed him up.

Hindemith v. Hanfstaengl. FurtwGngler's biggest struggle came in 1934 when he was readying Paul Hindemith's opera Mat his der Maler for the Berlin Opera. Hindemith, a modernist, was a particular enemy of Hitler's famed musical adviser, Ernst ("Putzi") Hanfstangl. Orders came from Goring to postpone the performance indefinitely. FurtwGngler thereupon wrote an article for the Berlin papers denouncing Nazi musical policy and claiming a free artist's right to perform whatever he liked.

Berliners crowded FurtwGngler's concerts to applaud his stand. A few weeks later FurtwGngler was informed that Mathis der Maler was verboten. He resigned his post, started to leave Germany for Egypt. The Nazis closed the frontiers to him. Finally he retired to a furnished room on the outskirts of Munich, decided to make no more public appearances.

But inactivity began to wear on his nerves. He began writing letters to Nazi officials complaining about their treatment of him. The Nazis let him stew, bribed his servants to spy on him, harassed him with all sorts of petty annoyances. Gestapoman Reinhard Heydrich referred laughingly to this subtle third degree as "the creation of a panic around FurtwGngler." Soon FurtwGngler was back with the Berlin Opera as "guest" conductor. By April 1935, he had made his peace with Goebbels and resumed his position as head of the Berlin Philharmonic.

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