The Rise of Nazism
There is a common misconception that anti-Semitism was a phenomenon that arose suddenly in 1930s Germany because Hitler despised Jews. The latter is certainly true, but Nazi racial policies and the history of anti-Semitism were much more complex than assumed. More importantly, anti-Jewish sentiments were not exclusively confined to Germany; similar sentiments existed in the rest of Europe, including countries within the Allied Powers. How, then, did a country of people not only elect but support a party that was bent on exterminating an entire race? The party could not have garnered such widespread support in their ideologies and policies without exploiting inherent fears and prejudices in German society, and this is where the extreme degree of nationalism before the war becomes relevant.
Nazism and the Arts
The function of the arts in a repressive political system is crucial for any totalitarian regime to manipulate its people and distract them from material discomforts in their daily lives. This was particularly true for the Nazis to consolidate their power, considering Germany’s undisputed historical pre-eminence in both the performing and creative aspects of music. German music and the German nation were one and the same for the German people. Thus, to effectively restore what they perceived to be the true ‘German’ race, the Nazi policies had to infiltrate every corner of cultural life, and they were very systematic in their approach. The Weimar Republic had been a liberal, vibrant society with a colourful music scene drawing its influences from an array of foreign sources, including jazz. The Nazi propagandists had considered the artistic environment of the Republic to have been scarred by internationalism.[1]
Jews were not only to blame for Germany’s defeat in the First World War and the social and economic disorders in the 1920s-30s, but also for pressurising the Weimar government to act in support of an allegedly internationalist Jewish conspiracy. Although statistics in 1933 suggested only 2% of the German music profession was of Jewish origin, the extreme prominence of controversial musicians such as Schoenberg, Weill and Eisler helped the Nazis reinforce the idea that they were part of an organised cabal intending to debase national music values, and had to be eliminated as the solution to future German musical regeneration.[2] The influence and popularity of jazz during the 1920s also provided the clearest evidence of an alien culture undermining German national values. Jazz as a genre was thus exploited in propaganda for the Nazis to make their point and achieve integration between their ideology of racism and their aesthetic opposition to modernism.[3]
Jews were not only to blame for Germany’s defeat in the First World War and the social and economic disorders in the 1920s-30s, but also for pressurising the Weimar government to act in support of an allegedly internationalist Jewish conspiracy. Although statistics in 1933 suggested only 2% of the German music profession was of Jewish origin, the extreme prominence of controversial musicians such as Schoenberg, Weill and Eisler helped the Nazis reinforce the idea that they were part of an organised cabal intending to debase national music values, and had to be eliminated as the solution to future German musical regeneration.[2] The influence and popularity of jazz during the 1920s also provided the clearest evidence of an alien culture undermining German national values. Jazz as a genre was thus exploited in propaganda for the Nazis to make their point and achieve integration between their ideology of racism and their aesthetic opposition to modernism.[3]
Defining 'German' and 'Jewish' Music
In order to ‘purify’ German music, establish state control over cultural life and further their propaganda, the Nazis embarked upon the purge of ‘modernism’ in the music sector. However, the party also realised the importance of art for the German people, and moreover, conceived of themselves as political, social and cultural revolutionaries who wanted changes to take place in the arts in conformity with all the other changes they might cause.[4] Thus, instead of taking any sudden swift action, there was a gradual progression in the severity of their policies. The first step was to use political agitation to prevent prominent figures from carrying out their work.[5] In terms of ideology, a supposed antithesis was established with discrete categories of German music on one side and Jewish music on the other, but they could not define German or Jewish music based on empirically discernible evidence, and tried to escape this quandary by assigning arbitrary properties to both categories. This dictum was reiterated by the Reich’s musicologists and in the media until it became truism and an ideological premise for the party to persecute the minority.[6] German music was defined as that which perpetuated the traditional values of the perceived national culture: heroism and a love of battle; after great tension a resolution and the Faustian drive to creation; introspection and rootedness in “blood and soil”. The triad, the tonal system, the specifically “Aryan” rhythm with discernible weak and strong beat accentuations and syncopations, motif repetitions that moved sequentially in levels of intensity…such were the stylistic characteristics defined as ‘pure’ and ‘German’.[7]
Lacking authentic criteria, Jewish music was conveniently defined as everything German music was not. The greatest, and main insults, were that they worked for money and used cheap effects in technique (showcasing virtuosity to compensate for lack of substance) and narrative (using sex in opera to pass off as love).[8] The underlying theory was that Jews were incapable of creating anything genuine due to their lack of indigenous culture, and as a race, had no creative potency.[9] Some of these insults had much deeper origins, dating back to Wagner’s essay Das Judenthum in der Musik (Judaism in Music), which targeted Mendelssohn in particular – he was accused of exploiting exterior brilliance and superficiality, with saccharine smooth melodic lines of banal sentimentality. However, the Nazis also realised that there were many like Mendelssohn, Mahler and Schoenberg who were well-regarded and influential, and musicologists worked hard to twist the narrative to suit their purposes. Thus, their works were rationalised as such – that they were master imitators who had nearly perfected the technique of insinuating themselves into German culture, and ordinary citizens’ ears could not discern the difference. They were said to degenerate any genuine feelings of German kind, an obvious parallel to the Nazi claim that they had infiltrated German society, taken what was ‘German’ and ‘pure’, and debased it. If the works of those Jewish masters sounded German at all, then they must be fake.
Additionally, as modernist and jazz-influenced music typical of the Weimar Republic had become popular with the public, the Nazis had to dismantle its aesthetic worth. They attacked modernism and jazz vehemently, and the music of Weimar was labelled as Bolshevist, internationalist and degenerate. Atonality was the main culprit. According to Hans Ziegler, atonality in music represented ‘the extreme of decadent and artistic Bolshevism’, and argued that ‘charlatans’ had broken the ‘Germanic element of the triad’, ‘overturned basic laws’ and by ‘arbitrary sound combinations’ had ‘devalued tonality’.[10] A similar assessment by Herbert Gerigk in the Lexikon der Juden in der Musik (Encyclopedia of Jews in Music) asserted that the twelve-tone system ‘is equivalent to the Jewish levelling down in all matters of life’ and represents ‘the complete destruction of the natural order of notes in the tonal principle of our classical music’.[11] The ideological objection against atonal music was that it had been cultivated by composers with left-wing sympathies and anti-German sentiments. The parallels between Schoenberg’s dodecaphony and a perceived world Jewish conspiracy was a convenient mode of propaganda made more convincing by Schoenberg’s Jewish birth.[12] The modernity he espoused was said to be based on abstract intellectuality, dismantling Germanic tonal structures into something international and thus anti-national, symbolising destruction and chaos, and countermanding the notion of a harmonious Volksgemeinschaft, the pure, racially defined community.[13]
Lacking authentic criteria, Jewish music was conveniently defined as everything German music was not. The greatest, and main insults, were that they worked for money and used cheap effects in technique (showcasing virtuosity to compensate for lack of substance) and narrative (using sex in opera to pass off as love).[8] The underlying theory was that Jews were incapable of creating anything genuine due to their lack of indigenous culture, and as a race, had no creative potency.[9] Some of these insults had much deeper origins, dating back to Wagner’s essay Das Judenthum in der Musik (Judaism in Music), which targeted Mendelssohn in particular – he was accused of exploiting exterior brilliance and superficiality, with saccharine smooth melodic lines of banal sentimentality. However, the Nazis also realised that there were many like Mendelssohn, Mahler and Schoenberg who were well-regarded and influential, and musicologists worked hard to twist the narrative to suit their purposes. Thus, their works were rationalised as such – that they were master imitators who had nearly perfected the technique of insinuating themselves into German culture, and ordinary citizens’ ears could not discern the difference. They were said to degenerate any genuine feelings of German kind, an obvious parallel to the Nazi claim that they had infiltrated German society, taken what was ‘German’ and ‘pure’, and debased it. If the works of those Jewish masters sounded German at all, then they must be fake.
Additionally, as modernist and jazz-influenced music typical of the Weimar Republic had become popular with the public, the Nazis had to dismantle its aesthetic worth. They attacked modernism and jazz vehemently, and the music of Weimar was labelled as Bolshevist, internationalist and degenerate. Atonality was the main culprit. According to Hans Ziegler, atonality in music represented ‘the extreme of decadent and artistic Bolshevism’, and argued that ‘charlatans’ had broken the ‘Germanic element of the triad’, ‘overturned basic laws’ and by ‘arbitrary sound combinations’ had ‘devalued tonality’.[10] A similar assessment by Herbert Gerigk in the Lexikon der Juden in der Musik (Encyclopedia of Jews in Music) asserted that the twelve-tone system ‘is equivalent to the Jewish levelling down in all matters of life’ and represents ‘the complete destruction of the natural order of notes in the tonal principle of our classical music’.[11] The ideological objection against atonal music was that it had been cultivated by composers with left-wing sympathies and anti-German sentiments. The parallels between Schoenberg’s dodecaphony and a perceived world Jewish conspiracy was a convenient mode of propaganda made more convincing by Schoenberg’s Jewish birth.[12] The modernity he espoused was said to be based on abstract intellectuality, dismantling Germanic tonal structures into something international and thus anti-national, symbolising destruction and chaos, and countermanding the notion of a harmonious Volksgemeinschaft, the pure, racially defined community.[13]
[1] Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (London: Macmillan Press Limited, 1994), 98.
[2] Ibid., 39.
[3] Ibid., 120.
[4] Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and their Music in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 178.
[5] Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 14.
[6] Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and their Music in the Third Reich, 75.
[7] Ibid., 76.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 77.
[10] Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 102.
[11] Ibid., 103.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Kater, The Twisted Muse, 78.
[2] Ibid., 39.
[3] Ibid., 120.
[4] Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and their Music in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 178.
[5] Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 14.
[6] Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and their Music in the Third Reich, 75.
[7] Ibid., 76.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 77.
[10] Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 102.
[11] Ibid., 103.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Kater, The Twisted Muse, 78.