By Antony Charles
Published: 1998-06-01
Not only
during his lifetime, but also in the decades since his death in 1954, Wilhelm
Furtwängler has been globally recognized as one of the greatest musicians of
this century, above all as the brilliant primary conductor of the Berlin
Philharmonic orchestra, which he lead from 1922 to 1945, and again after 1950.
On his death, the Encyclopaedia Britannica commented: “By temperament a
Wagnerian, his restrained dynamism, superb control of his orchestra and mastery
of sweeping rhythms also made him an outstanding exponent of Beethoven.”
Furtwängler was also a composer of merit
Underscoring his enduring
greatness have been several recent in-depth biographies and a successful 1996
Broadway play, “Taking Sides,” that portrays his postwar “denazification”
purgatory, as well as steadily strong sales of CD recordings of his
performances (some of them available only in recent years). Furtwängler societies
are active in the United States, France, Britain, Germany and other countries.
His overall reputation, however, especially in America, is still a
controversial one.
Following the National
Socialist seizure of power in 1933, some prominent musicians – most notably
such Jewish artists as Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer and Arnold Schoenberg –
left Germany. Most of the nation’s musicians, however, including the great
majority of its most gifted musical talents, remained – and even flourished.
With the possible exception of the composer Richard Strauss, Furtwängler was
the most prominent musician to stay and “collaborate.”
Consequently, discussion of
his life – even today – still provokes heated debate about the role of art and
artists under Hitler and, on a more fundamental level, about the relationship
of art and politics.
A Non-Political Patriot
Wilhelm Furtwängler drew great
inspiration from his homeland’s rich cultural heritage, and his world revolved
around music, especially German music. Although essentially non-political, he
was an ardent patriot, and leaving his fatherland was simply out of the
question.
Ideologically he may perhaps
be best characterized as a man of the “old” Germany – a Wilhelmine conservative
and an authoritarian elitist. Along with the great majority of his countrymen,
he welcomed the demise of the ineffectual democratic regime of Germany’s
“Weimar republic” (1918–1933). Indeed, he was the conductor chosen to direct
the gala performance of Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger” for the “Day of Potsdam,”
a solemn state ceremony on March 21, 1933, at which President von Hindenburg,
the youthful new Chancellor Adolf Hitler and the newly-elected Reichstag
formally ushered in the new government of “national awakening.” All the same,
Furtwängler never joined the National Socialist Party (unlike his chief musical
rival, fellow conductor Herbert von Karajan).
It wasn’t long before
Furtwängler came into conflict with the new authorities. In a public dispute in
late 1934 with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels over artistic direction and
independence, he resigned his positions as director of the Berlin Philharmonic
and as head of the Berlin State Opera. Soon, however, a compromise agreement
was reached whereby he resumed his posts, along with a measure of artistic
independence. He was also able to exploit both his prestigious position and the
artistic and jurisdictional rivalries between Goebbels and Göring to play a
greater and more independent role in the cultural life of Third Reich Germany.
From then on, until the
Reich’s defeat in the spring of 1945, he continued to conduct to much acclaim
both at home and abroad (including, for example, a highly successful concert
tour of Britain in 1935). He was also a guest conductor of the Vienna
Philharmonic, 1939–1940, and at the Bayreuth Festival. On several occasions he
led concerts in support of the German war effort. He also nominally served as a
member of the Prussian State Council and as vice-president of the “Reich Music
Chamber,” the state-sponsored professional musicians’ association.
Throughout the Third Reich
era, Furtwängler’s eminent influence on Europe’s musical life never diminished.
Cultural Vitality
For Americans conditioned to
believe that nothing of real cultural or artistic merit was produced in Germany
during the Hitler era, the phrase “Nazi art” is an oxymoron – a contradiction
in terms. The reality, though, is not so simple, and it is gratifying to note
that some progress is being made to set straight the historical record.
This is manifest, for example,
in the publication in recent years of two studies that deal extensively with
Furtwängler, and which generally defend his conduct during the Third Reich: The
Devil’s Music Master by Sam Shirakawa [reviewed in the Jan.–Feb. 1994 Journal,
pp. 41–43] and Trial of Strength by Fred K. Prieberg. These revisionist
works not only contest the widely accepted perception of the place of artists
and arts in the Third Reich, they express a healthy striving for a more factual
and objective understanding of the reality of National Socialist Germany.
Prieberg’s Trial of
Strength concentrates almost entirely on Furtwängler’s intricate dealings
with Goebbels, Göring, Hitler and various other figures in the cultural life of
the Third Reich. In so doing, he demonstrates that in spite of official
measures to “coordinate” the arts, the regime also permitted a surprising
degree of artistic freedom. Even the anti-Jewish racial laws and regulations
were not always applied with rigor, and exceptions were frequent. (Among many
instances that could be cited, Leo Blech retained his conducting post until
1937, in spite of his Jewish ancestry.) Furtwängler exploited this situation to
intervene successfully in a number of cases on behalf of artists, including
Jews, who were out of favor with the regime. He also championed Paul Hindemith,
a “modern” composer whose music was regarded as degenerate.
The artists and musicians who
left the country (especially the Jewish ones) contended that without them,
Germany’s cultural life would collapse. High culture, they and other critics of
Hitler and his regime arrogantly believed, would wither in an ardently
nationalist and authoritarian state. As Prieberg notes: “The musicians who
emigrated or were thrown out of Germany from 1933 onwards indeed felt they were
irreplaceable and in consequence believed firmly that Hitler’s Germany would,
following their departure, become a dreary and empty cultural wasteland. This
would inevitably cause the rapid collapse of the regime.”
Time would prove the critics
wrong. While it is true that the departure of such artists as Fritz Busch and
Bruno Walter did hurt initially (and dealt a blow to German prestige), the
nation’s most renowned musicians – including Richard Strauss, Carl Orff, Karl
Böhm, Hans Pfitzner, Wilhelm Kempff, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Herbert von
Karajan, Anton Webern, as well as Furtwängler – remained to produce musical art
of the highest standards. Regardless of the emigration of a number of Jewish
and a few non-Jewish artists, as well as the promulgation of sweeping
anti-Jewish restrictions, Germany’s cultural life not only continued at a high
level, it flourished.
The National Socialists
regarded art, and especially music, as an expression of a society’s soul,
character and ideals. A widespread appreciation of Germany’s cultural
achievements, they believed, encouraged a joyful national pride and fostered a
healthy sense of national unity and mission. Because they regarded themselves
as guardians of their nation’s cultural heritage, they opposed liberal,
modernistic trends in music and the other arts, as degenerate assaults against
the cultural-spiritual traditions of Germany and the West.
Acting swiftly to promote a
broad revival of the nation’s cultural life, the new National Socialist
government made prodigious efforts to further the arts and, in particular,
music. As detailed in two recent studies (Kater’s The Twisted Muse and Levi’s
Music in the Third Reich), not only did the new leadership greatly increase
state funding for such important cultural institutions as the Berlin
Philharmonic and the Bayreuth Wagner Festival, it used radio, recordings and
other means to make Germany’s musical heritage as accessible as possible to all
its citizens.
As part of its efforts to bring
art to the people, it strove to erase classical music’s snobbish and “class”
image, and to make it widely familiar and enjoyable, especially to the working
class. At the same time, the new regime’s leaders were mindful of popular
musical tastes. Thus, by far most of the music heard during the Third Reich era
on the radio or in films was neither classical nor even traditional. Light
music with catchy tunes – similar to those popular with listeners elsewhere in
Europe and in the United States – predominated on radio and in motion pictures,
especially during the war years.
The person primarily
responsible for implementing the new cultural policies was Joseph Goebbels. In
his positions as Propaganda Minister and head of the “Reich Culture Chamber,”
the umbrella association for professionals in cultural life, he promoted music,
literature, painting and film in keeping with German values and traditions,
while at the same time consistent with popular tastes.
Hitler’s Attitude
No political leader had a
keener interest in art, or was a more enthusiastic booster of his nation’s
musical heritage than Hitler, who regarded the compositions of Beethoven,
Wagner, Bruckner and the other German masters as sublime expressions of the
Germanic “soul.”
Hitler’s reputation as a
bitter, second rate “failed artist” is undeserved. As John Lukacs acknowledges
in his recently published work, The Hitler of History (pp. 70–72), the
German leader was a man of real artistic talent and considerable artistic
discernment.
We perhaps can never fully
understand Hitler and the spirit behind his political movement without knowing
that he drew great inspiration from, and identified with, the heroic figures of
European legend who fought to liberate their peoples from tyranny, and whose
stories are immortalized in the great musical dramas of Wagner and others.
This was vividly brought out
by August Kubizek, Hitler’s closest friend as a teenager and young man, in his
postwar memoir (published in the US under the title The Young Hitler I Knew).
Kubizek describes how, after the two young men together attended for the first
time a performance in Linz of Wagner’s opera “Rienzi,” Hitler spoke
passionately and at length about how this work’s inspiring story of a popular
Roman tribune had so deeply moved him. Years later, after he had become
Chancellor, he related to Kubizek how that performance of “Rienzi” had
radically changed his life. “In that hour it began,” he confided.
Hitler of course recognized
Furtwängler’s greatness and understood his significance for Germany and German
music. Thus, when other officials (including Himmler) complained of the
conductor’s nonconformity, Hitler overrode their objections. Until the end,
Furtwängler remained his favorite conductor. He was similarly indulgent toward
his favorite heldentenor, Max Lorenz, and Wagnerian soprano Frida Leider, each
of whom was married to a Jew. Their cultural importance trumped racial or
political considerations.
Postwar Humiliations
A year and a half after the
end of the war in Europe, Furtwängler was brought before a humiliating
“denazification” tribunal. Staged by American occupation authorities and headed
by a Communist, it was a farce. So much vital information was withheld from
both the tribunal and the defendant that, Shirakawa suggests, the occupation
authorities may well have been determined to “get” the conductor.
In his closing remarks at the
hearing, Furtwängler defiantly defended his record:
The fear of being misused for
propaganda purposes was wiped out by the greater concern for preserving German
music as far as was possible … I could not leave Germany in her deepest misery.
To get out would have been a shameful flight. After all, I am a German,
whatever may be thought of that abroad, and I do not regret having done it for
the German people.
Even with a prejudiced judge
and serious gaps in the record, the tribunal was still unable to establish a
credible case against the conductor, and he was, in effect, cleared.
A short time later,
Furtwängler was invited to assume direction of the Chicago Symphony. (He was no
stranger to the United States: in 1927–29 he had served as visiting conductor
of the New York Philharmonic.)
On learning of the invitation,
America’s Jewish cultural establishment launched an intense campaign –
spearheaded by The New York Times, musicians Artur Rubinstein and
Vladimir Horowitz, and New York critic Ira Hirschmann – to scuttle
Furtwängler’s appointment. As described in detail by Shirakawa and writer
Daniel Gillis (in Furtwängler and America) the campaigners used
falsehoods, innuendos and even death threats.
Typical of its emotionally
charged rhetoric was the bitter reproach of Chicago Rabbi Morton Berman:
Furtwängler preferred to swear
fealty to Hitler. He accepted at Hitler’s hands his reappointment as director
of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He was unfailing in his service to
Goebbels’ ministry of culture and propaganda … The token saving of a few Jewish
lives does not excuse Mr. Furtwängler from official, active participation in a
regime which murdered six million Jews and millions of non-Jews. Furtwängler is
a symbol of all those hateful things for the defeat of which the youth of our
city and nation paid an ineffable price.
Among prominent Jews in
classical music, only the famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin defended the German
artist. After Furtwängler was finally obliged to withdrew his name from
consideration for the Chicago post, a disillusioned Moshe Menuhin, Yehudi’s
father, scathingly denounced his co-religionists. Furtwängler, he declared,
was a victim of envious and
jealous rivals who had to resort to publicity, to smear, to calumny, in order
to keep him out of America so it could remain their private bailiwick. He was
the victim of the small fry and puny souls among concert artists, who, in order
to get a bit of national publicity, joined the bandwagon of professional
idealists, the professional Jews and hired hands who irresponsibly assaulted an
innocent and humane and broad-minded man …
A Double Standard
Third Reich Germany is so routinely
demonized in our society that any acknowledgment of its cultural achievements
is regarded as tantamount to defending “fascism” and that most unpardonable of
sins, anti-Semitism. But as Professor John London suggests (in an essay in The
Jewish Quarterly, “Why Bother about Fascist Culture?,” Autumn 1995), this
simplistic attitude can present awkward problems:
Far from being a totally ugly,
unpopular, destructive entity, culture under fascism was sometimes
accomplished, indeed beautiful … If you admit the presence, and in some
instances the richness, of a culture produced under fascist regimes, then you
are not defending their ethos. On the other hand, once you start dismissing
elements, where do you stop?
In this regard, is it worth
comparing the way that many media and cultural leaders treat artists of
National Socialist Germany with their treatment of the artists of Soviet
Russia. Whereas Furtwängler and other artists who performed in Germany during
the Hitler era are castigated for their cooperation with the regime, Soviet-era
musicians, such as composers Aram Khachaturian and Sergei Prokofiev, and
conductors Evgeny Svetlanov and Evgeny Mravinsky – all of whom toadied to the
Communist regime in varying degrees – are rarely, if ever, chastised for their
“collaboration.” The double standard that is clearly at work here is, of
course, a reflection of our society’s obligatory concern for Jewish
sensitivities.
The artist and his work occupy
a unique place in society and history. Although great art can never be entirely
divorced from its political or social environment, it must be considered apart
from that. In short, art transcends politics.
No reasonable person would
denigrate the artists and sculptors of ancient Greece because they glorified a
society that, by today’s standards, was hardly democratic. Similarly, no one
belittles the builders of medieval Europe’s great cathedrals on the grounds
that the social order of the Middle Ages was dogmatic and hierarchical. No
cultured person would disparage William Shakespeare because he flourished
during England’s fervently nationalistic and anti-Jewish Elizabethan age. Nor
does anyone chastise the magnificent composers of Russia’s Tsarist era because
they prospered under an autocratic regime. In truth, mankind’s greatest
cultural achievements have most often been the products not of liberal or
egalitarian societies, but rather of quite un-democratic ones.
A close look at the life and
career of Wilhelm Furtwängler reveals “politically incorrect” facts about the
role of art and artists in Third Reich Germany, and reminds us that great
artistic creativity and achievement are by no means the exclusive products of
democratic societies.
Bibliography
Gillis, Daniel. Furtwängler
and America. Palo Alto: Rampart Press, 1970
Kater, Michael H. The
Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997
Levi, Erik. Music in the
Third Reich. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994
Prieberg, Fred K. Trial of
Strength: Wilhelm Furtwängler in the Third Reich. Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1994
Shirakawa, Sam H. The
Devil’s Music Master: The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwängler.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1992
A Note on Wartime Recordings
Among the most historically
fascinating and sought-after recordings of Wilhelm Furtwängler performances are
his live wartime concerts with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras.
Many were recorded by the Reich Broadcasting Company on magnetophonic tape with
comparatively good sound quality. Music & Arts (Berkeley, California) and
Tahra (France) have specialized in releasing good quality CD recordings of
these performances. Among the most noteworthy are:
Beethoven, Third “Eroica”
Symphony (1944) – Tahra 1031 or Music & Arts CD 814
Beethoven, Fifth Symphony
(1943) – Tahra set 1032/33, which also includes Furtwängler’s performances of
this same symphony from 1937 and 1954.
Beethoven, Ninth “Choral”
Symphony (1942) – Music & Arts CD 653 or Tahra 1004/7.
Brahms, Four Symphonies –
Music & Arts set CD 941 (includes two January 1945 performances,
Furtwängler’s last during the war).
Bruckner, Fifth Symphony
(1942) – Music & Arts CD 538
Bruckner, Ninth Symphony (1944)
– Music & Arts CD 730 (also available in Europe on Deutsche Gramophon CD,
and in the USA as an import item).
R. Strauss, “Don Juan” (1942),
and Four Songs, with Peter Anders (1942), etc. – Music & Arts CD 829.
Wagner, “Die Meistersinger:”
Act I, Prelude (1943), and “Tristan und Isolde:” Prelude and Liebestod (1942),
etc. – Music & Arts CD 794.
Wagner, “Der Ring des
Nibelungen,” excerpts from “Die Walküre” and “Gotterdämmerung” – Music &
Arts set CD 1035 (although not from the war years, these 1937 Covent Garden
performances are legendary)
“Great Conductors of the Third
Reich: Art in the Service of Evil” is a worthwhile 53-minute VHS videocassette
produced by the Bel Canto Society (New York). Released in 1997, it is
distributed by Allegro (Portland, Oregon). It features footage of Furtwängler
conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for Hitler’s birthday celebration in
April 1942. He is also shown conducting at Bayreuth, and leading a concert for
wounded soldiers and workers at an AEG factory during the war. Although the
notes are highly tendentious, the rare film footage is fascinating.
Knowledge and Power
"Knowledge will forever
govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own governors must arm
themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government, without
popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce
or a tragedy; or, perhaps both."
—James
Madison
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