Music in Nazi Germany
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels famously decreed radio to be "the most influential and important intermediary between a spiritual movement and the nation, between the idea and the people".
[2] When Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party took power in Germany, it stepped in to control these cultural music products as part of its general policy of Gleichschaltung or "co-ordination".
"[3] As with most other aspects of the governance of the Third Reich, the personal views and preferences of Adolf Hitler played a significant role in the Nazi control of music.
[4][5] This was the case in the realm of music, where Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg and Goebbels were pitted against each other, and their somewhat differing goals and ideological viewpoints often lead to conflicts.
Soon after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, contemporary music concerts, as well as Modernist and Expressionist scenic design and staging of operas were cancelled, and the music of Alban Berg, Hans Eisler, Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton von Webern, Kurt Weill, and other formerly prominent composers, as well as Jewish composers such as Felix Mendelssohn, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Jacques Offenbach and even George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, were no longer programmed or performed.
At the beginning, this was not the result of a coordinated centralized program, but were uncoordinated spontaneous actions by local Nazi officials "working towards the Fuhrer", and generally reflected Hitler's often-expressed views on music.
[7] For instance, Hitler's fondness for the operettas of Franz Lehár took precedence over the negative facts about the composer discovered by Rosenberg's investigation.
[8] Hitler also lashed out at those Nazis who would ban Mozart's The Magic Flute because of its Masonic theme, or wanted to suppress Christian religious music, which he deemed to be part of "the German cultural patrimony".
[10] Although these other powerful Nazis were in some respect in competition with Goebbels,[notes 1] they nevertheless were all in agreement about the desired result, which was the removal of Jewish musicians and composers and the suppression of their music.
Although it took longer than it might have, because of objections from the Economics Ministry about the possible damage to the economy, by mid-1935 Jews had been effectively removed from German culture – including music – through suppression, censorship and emigration.
[21] All musical organizations, from local chorals to professional symphonies, including the Berlin Philharmonic, had been purged of Jewish members.
To help alleviate this problem, in June 1935, Richard Strauss, who headed the Reich Music Chamber, published a register of three categories of operas that were permitted, and later in the year a list of 108 compositions which were "under no circumstances to be performed."
In an effort to regain control of this industry, and eliminate degenerate music, Goebbels soon instituted a harsh purge of Jewish musicians.
Arnold Schoenberg's pupils, for instance, such as Anton von Webern and Alban Berg, adhered to twelve-tone techniques and were therefore singled out by the regime for suppression.
[notes 3] Winfried Zillig, on the other hand, used the same techniques, but in a more tonal way, and his works depicted the self-sacrificing heroism of German peasants and other subjects close to Nazi ideology, so he was allowed to have his music performed and continued to conduct.
[28] These factors and the banning of Jewish influences produced a music industry based on Aryanism and focused primarily on classical German composers.
The music of Bruckner and Wagner were the centerpiece of the new "Aryan" spirituality, aiming to attain the same "impact generated by traditional Christian religious ecstasy and devotion".
In 1936, responding to a speech by Hitler urging that the regime increase its efforts to purify the arts, the Propaganda Ministry banned performances of Hindemith's music.
Ziegler, the manager of the national theatre in Weimar, was inspired by the tremendously popular "Degenerate Art Exhibition" which had been presented the year before in Munich.
However, long lines at the booth for Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera showed that not all of the music presented at the exhibition was disliked by the public.
The corporate entities focused more on profit than political enlightenment, motivating Goebbels to institute strict Nazi control of the industry.
Especially popular with the public was the "request concert" in which hit songs and other entertainment music was played, in style essentially unchanged from that of the Weimar Republic.
[38] Also popular were sentimental songs such as "Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen" [I know, one day a miracle will come] by Zarah Leander, and Lale Andersen singing "Es geht alles vorüber, es geht alles vorbei" [It'll all be over / It'll end one day], which the German troops in the Battle of Stalingrad huddled around radios to listen to, as well as her "Lili Marleen", which was also sung to Allied soldiers as "My Lili of the Lamplight" by Marlene Dietrich[42] and Vera Lynn, and by Édith Piaf in a French version.
Goebbels was not pleased with that song's tone of pessimism and nostalgia, and he had Andersen arrested in September 1942 for undermining the morale of the troops, blackballing her until the middle of 1943.
Now instead of regulating music on the local level in concert halls, Goebbels and the Chamber of Culture had centralized control of the massively influential medium of radio.
Through the saturation of German nationalist music and boycotting of Jewish compositions, Goebbels harnessed cultural products to further political control.
The cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum was turned away at the border when he tried to leave Austria after the Anschluss for Czechoslovakia, and was sent to Buchenwald and later to Dachau, where he died in 1941.
The noted Bohemian lyricist Fritz Löhner-Beda, who had collaborated on operas with Franz Lehár, spent time in Dachau and Buchenwald before being sent to Auschwitz, where he was beaten to death in the Monowitz sub-camp.
The Silesian writer of hit songs, Ralf Erwin, left Germany in 1933 after the Nazi "seizure of power", but was later captured in France, and died in an internment camp there.
[42] The advent of swing music, pioneered in the United States by clarinetist Benny Goodman and his groups, caught on with European youths in a major way.
