Reich Music Days

The event lasted from 22–29 May and was organized by Heinz Drewes, the head of the music department in the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

The main person responsible for the exhibition "Degenerate Music" was Hans Severus Ziegler, one of the earliest followers of Adolf Hitler and since 1935 General Director of the Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar.

Both "non-Aryan" personalities such as Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg or Kurt Weill as well as "Aryan" musicians such as Paul Hindemith, whose wife Gertrud was considered Jewish, and Igor Stravinsky from Russia were ostracized.

The Nazis chose this fictitious figure as the symbol of the exhibition and also of the entire Reich Music Days 1938 as the epitome of degeneracy.

In addition, so-called "Platzkonzerte" were given in various squares throughout Düsseldorf, at least one musicology symposium was held, where the embodiment and representation of the "German" in musical culture was discussed.

While some newspapers at least expressed their amazement at why such famous composers as Hindemith and Stravinsky were classified as "degenerate", reactions from abroad remained strangely reserved.

The regime-loyal conductor Peter Raabe, then president of the Reichsmusikkammer, demonstratively stayed away from the opening ceremonies of the 1938 Reich Music Days.