The German Genius

RMK was held, billed as “The first concert in the Reich,” featuring works by Strauss, Hans Pfitzner, Siegmund von Hausegger, and Hindemith, who conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in a performance of his Concert for Strings and Wind , originally written to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1930. A month later Furtwängler conducted the same Berlin orchestra in the first performance of Hindemith’s new work, Mathis der Maler . This was well received, and former critics believed he had purged himself of the “ugly stains of the past.” Mathis was quickly performed all over Germany.
    Then denunciations started appearing, accusing him of “cultural bolshevism,” of identification with the Jews, and “atonality.” A timely invitation came from the Turkish government to establish a music school in Istanbul, and Hindemith accepted. 34
    In the first few months of taking office, forty-nine out of Germany’s eighty-five opera houses had seen a change of senior personnel. Despite their replacement by administrators and musicians more amenable to the National Socialists, Erik Levi reports that the high standards of performance that had been maintained before 1933 were sustained. 35 Furthermore, the number of musicians contracted to German theaters increased as follows:
     
     
    S EASON : 1932–33
    S INGERS : 1,859
    C HORUS : 2,955
    O RCHESTRA : 4,889
     
    S EASON : 1937–38
    S INGERS : 2,145
    C HORUS : 3,238
    O RCHESTRA : 5,577
     
     
    Even after the outbreak of war, says Levi, opera activity continued to be intensive, many theaters maintaining a “substantial” repertoire. The Nazis poured vast resources into Bayreuth, offering cheap tickets to armaments workers and war veterans. 36 German opera companies visited occupied territories until 1942.
    Contemporary composers who declared support for the regime were assiduously promoted. Max von Schillings’s operas received 117 performances in the 1933–34 season, compared with 48 and 24 in the previous two seasons. Much the same happened with Hans Pfitzner, whose performances increased from 46 in 1931–32 to 130 in 1933–34. 37 There was also a posthumous renaissance of operas by Siegfried Wagner, Richard’s son, who had died in 1930 after composing even more operas than his father. At the same time, contemporary operas by foreign composers were discouraged. According to Levi, 170 or so new German operas were performed in the Third Reich. Once the war had started, the number of new operas reaching the German stage showed no reduction until the 1943–44 season, with between sixteen and twenty premieres a year. Wagner actually suffered a decline in popularity throughout the 1930s, performances dropping from 1,837 in 1932–33 to 1,154 in 1939–40, while those of Verdi and Puccini rose. 38
    There were 181 permanent orchestras working in Germany in 1940, according to the RMK. From the time the Nazis came to power, and if we ignore the Jewish experience, orchestral musicians in Germany experienced an upturn in their fortunes. Standards remained just as high as in the Weimar period, this having to do with both an outstanding generation of conductors (Furtwängler, Erich Kleiber, Bruno Walter, Karl Böhm, Otto Klemperer, Hans Knappertsbusch, Hermann Scherchen, many of whom had to leave Germany later) and the growth of commercial recording firms, which helped establish German orchestras as preeminent throughout Europe. 39
    The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra fought hard to keep its Jewish instrumentalists, even giving them their own solo pieces during the early months of the new regime. Furtwängler fought in their corner too, arguing at least to begin with that race had nothing to do with ability. As we have seen, however, the orchestra eventually had to succumb, driven into near bankruptcy by Goebbels. Even so, the orchestra’s level of quality was maintained, conductors from abroad were still invited, and tours all over Europe were made in the 1930s. Throughout the period, contemporary music accounted for about a third of the repertoire. 40
    T HE B ROWN S HIFT IN T HEATER
     
    Germany—and Berlin in particular—had been renowned in the Weimar years for the virility of its theater. Though Berlin theater held on to its strengths for a while, elsewhere in the country the decline was swift after the Nazis took power. Performances of Goethe and Schiller continued, but for the rest the content was soon reduced to light opera and the works