Goebbels: A Biography
Page 44
With this speech, Goebbels may have staked his claim to leadership in musical life, but there is every reason to doubt that he achieved a “reorientation” of German music. Goebbels, like the Nazi musicologists, was simply unable to define what “German music” actually was.197 Marking it off against “atonal,” “modern,” “Jewish,” and “degenerate music” served only to obscure this plain fact. So it is no accident that the “Ten Principles,” Goebbels’s main testimony to musical life under National Socialism, should have been proclaimed precisely in the context of a “degenerate music” exhibition.
Such conceptual failings aside, the German music scene may have been too varied to allow the Propaganda Ministry to give it a unified direction: Musical theater and orchestral music, entertainment and dance music, amateur music and choirs, Party bands and other musical activities did not lend themselves to the imposition of one musical policy “line.”198
THEATER POLICY: PLAYHOUSES AS PLAYING FIELDS
The law of May 15, 1934, relating to theaters199 had been used by the Propaganda Ministry, or to be more precise by its theater department (run from 1935 onward by Eugen Schlösser, who doubled as the “Reich dramaturge”), to secure a decisive influence on top theater appointments200 and maintain effective censorship of programming.201
This influence of the Propaganda Ministry on theater practice showed up in a few key tendencies. The works of Jewish and politically undesirable playwrights were prohibited; this amounted, in effect, to a ban on practically all existing contemporary drama. Nationalist and völkisch authors stepped into the breach. Foreign works were out (with the exception of Shakespeare, classified as a “Nordic poet,” and Shaw), and there was a heightened respect for the classics.202
Constituting 60 percent of productions, from 1934–35 onward contemporary German theater became the dominant genre, consisting mostly of comedies, “folk plays,” and the like, but a third of plays were “serious drama,” in other words more or less undisguised Nazi ideology onstage.203 To these were added quite a few older völkisch dramatists from the first three decades of the twentieth century.204
By and large, these general tendencies in programming corresponded to Goebbels’s personal taste in theater—with one significant exception. He was not fond of drama by völkisch and contemporary authors with close ties to National Socialism. His verdict on plays by Rudolf Billinger, highly regarded by Nazis as a “blood-and-soil” writer, was that they were “deadly dull” and “clumsy, stupid, and tasteless.”205 Goebbels was equally negative about Sigmund Graff’s First World War play Die endlose Strasse (The Endless Road; Graff, who had started out in the Stahlhelm, was actually a consultant for the theater department of the Propaganda Ministry): “Really endless. […] Mind-numbing and pessimistic.”206 He characterized Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer’s Heroische Leidenschaften (Heroic Passions) as “heroic boredom. Terrible! It makes me sick, all this philosophizing on the stage. Should make something happen, not just blather on.”207 Herzog und Henker (Duke and Executioner) by the völkisch poet Hermann Burte was “an unbearable jangle of words and verse without substance in problems or attitude. The whole thing a million miles from where we are.”208 This list of negative comments could go on.209
But there were exceptions: One play that appealed to him, for example, was Friedrich Bethge’s Marsch der Veteranen (Veterans’ March), a dramatization of the march by American ex-soldiers on Washington.210 Similarly, he praised Hanns Johst’s Thomas Paine (note that Johst was president of the Reich Chamber of Literature) as a “first-class revolutionary drama.”211 He particularly liked Das Frankenburger Würfelspiel (The Frankenburg Dice Game), written by the German Prize winner for 1935, Eberhard Wolfgang Möller; Goebbels became personally involved in directing the play when it was performed in the open-air theater in the Olympic Park during the Games.212 But all in all, Goebbels seemed quite unconvinced by the idea that Nazi dramas could give the German stage an entirely new look.
Hence Goebbels preferred to promote established authors. This corresponded to his personal taste, as recorded in many comments on theater productions. Among great German writers it was Friedrich Schiller he loved best, the most-performed German classical author in the Third Reich.213 “Great Schiller, what bunglers we have,” wrote Goebbels after a performance of Maria Stuart at the Berlin Volksbühne (People’s Theater).214 He admired Shakespeare even more, and indeed after 1933 Shakespeare competed with Schiller for the title of most-performed author.215 The English playwright, said the propaganda minister after seeing a production of Coriolanus in 1937, was “more relevant and modern than all the moderns. What a huge genius! How he towers over Schiller!”216 He shared with Hitler217 a strong predilection for George Bernard Shaw, possibly because he thought of the Irish dramatist as “more journalist than [creative] writer.”218 After a performance of Saint Joan in August 1936 he praised “Shaw’s sparkling ideas and wit. Brilliant mockery! A man after my own heart.”219 On the other hand, Goebbels by no means despised light entertainment and robust folk comedies.220
When the Theater Law was passed in 1934, Göring obtained for himself the privilege of controlling the fate of several theaters under his jurisdiction. Thus the propaganda minister had no influence on the Prussian state theaters, as for example the Schauspielhaus am Gendarmenmarkt (a Berlin playhouse) and the State Opera. In 1934 Göring appointed Gustaf Gründgens director of the State Theater. Shortly after his appointment Gründgens showed that he was perfectly willing to cooperate with Goebbels. “I shall take him under my wing,” wrote Goebbels patronizingly after a conversation with him, but in fact it turned out that for the most part Gründgens was quite capable of preserving “his” theater’s independence from the Propaganda Ministry.221
From the mid-1930s onward, Goebbels began to set up several first-class “Reich theaters” in opposition to these top houses; the Reich theaters were run directly by the Propaganda Ministry, and Goebbels took a deep personal interest in them.222 Not the least of his objectives was to convince Hitler—they often went to the theater together—of the superiority of Goebbels’s taste in drama and to demonstrate his leading role in shaping the life of the German stage. The Reich theaters included the Städtische Oper (Metropolitan Opera) in Berlin, which passed into state ownership in March 1934 and then traded under the name Deutsche Oper (German Opera); the former Theater des Westens (Theater of the West), leased in 1934 by the Reich, after which it was the Volksoper (People’s Opera); the Deutsches Theater (German Theater) after August 1934; the Volksbühne (People’s Stage), which after 1933 gradually came under the direct influence of the Propaganda Ministry; and the former Grosses Schauspielhaus (Grand Playhouse), which the Propaganda Ministry ran jointly after 1933 as the Theater des Volkes (Theater of the People).
Goebbels stayed in close contact with the directors of the houses. He regularly discussed the situation of his theater with Eugen Erich Orthmann of the Volksoper without being particularly interested in his productions, which were standard opera repertoire.223 He took more interest in the other theaters, however. With Hans Hilpert, whom he had moved in April 1934 from the Volksbühne to the Deutsches Theater,224 he went over repertoires and the acquisition of new artists,225 as he did with the director of the Volksbühne, Eugen Klöpfer226 (the first director to follow Hilpert at the Volksbühne was the Nazi activist Count Bernhard Solms, but Goebbels soon came to regard his appointment as a mistake).227 Klöpfer managed to cling to his position until 1944 and the demise of theater in the Third Reich, but Goebbels took an increasingly critical view of him.228
With Wilhelm Rode, head of the Deutsche Oper, Goebbels discussed not just appointments but also individual productions.229 In January 1935, when he was dissatisfied with a performance of Boccaccio at the Deutsche Oper (and Hitler was “not very enthusiastic” either), he summoned Rode and gave him a severe dressing-down. Goebbels offered Rode a chance to redeem himself with the forthcoming production of Tristan, which he liked very much. Even so, a few days later he presen
ted Rode with some “directing notes.”230 A week later he took in the production again, accompanied by Hitler this time: “My notes on direction have been put into effect. […] Führer enthusiastic.”231 This was not the only direct intervention by the theater enthusiast Goebbels: In 1936, just before the performance was due, he made some changes to a review staged by the Kraft durch Freude organization in the Theater des Volkes to celebrate May 1. When he saw the premiere the next day, he was happy with the results of his intervention.232
In 1938 Goebbels obtained control of two more Berlin theaters. He nationalized the Nollendorftheater in Berlin and appointed the actor and director Harald Paulsen as director, mainly to put on operettas;233 at the same time, he made Heinrich George director of the city-owned Schillertheater, thus gaining a powerful influence over that house too.234 Furthermore, in the same year and the next, respectively, he acquired two further Berlin operetta theaters for the Reich: the Admiralspalast (Admiral’s Palace) and the Metropoltheater (Metropole Theater).235 In all, Goebbels presided over a considerable number of venues in Berlin that were directly under his influence, and this enabled him to showcase in all the important genres—operetta, opera, folk theater, and contemporary and classical drama—what he conceived as suitably representative theater in the National Socialist state.
“DE-JEWIFYING” CULTURAL LIFE
The complete removal of all Jews still active in his sphere of operations was an integral part of the enforced “reorientation” of the whole of culture and media policy introduced by Goebbels in 1936–37. From the autumn of 1935 onward, there are frequent diary entries showing how concerned he was to thoroughly “de-jewify” the Reich Culture Chamber. An edict from the Culture Chamber to this effect was already in force by June 1935.236 But excluding all Jews (including “half-Jews,” “quarter-Jews,” and “those related to Jews”) from German cultural life turned out not to be as easy as Goebbels had hoped. The individual chambers, which by no means operated a unified exclusion procedure, were constantly making exceptions. Thus in 1937 the Reich Chamber of Fine Art still had 156 Jewish members, mostly art dealers and art publicists. It was not until the end of 1937 that the chambers coordinated their various “Aryan” provisions.237
Although Goebbels constantly gave instructions to accelerate the “de-jewifying” process, reported “great progress,”238 and by early February 1937 considered the Reich Culture Chamber to be “completely de-jewified,”239 he was forced to acknowledge soon afterward that the “cleansing” was not yet complete.240 In the first months of 1938, Goebbels complained of considerable difficulty in “de-jewifying” the Reich Music Chamber,241 and in February 1939 he obtained Hitler’s permission to go on employing “21 non-fully-Aryan or Jewish-related theater or film actors.”242 Various entries from the first half of 1939 show that the action was still not yet over243—and in fact it would never be completed. Even by May 1943, he found himself stating with consternation that “the Reich Culture Chamber is not yet as de-jewified as I intended”; “a whole lot of quarter-Jews, even a few half-Jews, and numbers of Jewish-related are hanging around there.” But during the war he was no longer so eager to come to grips with the problem, considering that this would “kick up too much dust,” especially in artistic circles.244
BIOGRAPHICAL STOCKTAKING: SUCCESS AND DISTANCE
While Goebbels was increasingly successful in bringing the whole cultural life of the Third Reich under his control and thereby strengthening his power base, one aspect of his personal development stands out: his increasing isolation from other people. The more lavish his external lifestyle, the more he craved solitude. In his narcissistic self-absorption, he obviously did not feel the need to share the rewards of fame and success with family or friends.
After 1933, he failed to sustain friendships he had made in his youth, as a student, or during his early Berlin years. Certainly, during his visits to Rheydt, which he went on making two or three times a year,245 he met up with old friends, but these encounters mainly allowed him to measure the distance he had so gloriously put between himself and his small-town origins.246 In January 1938, for example, he invited “boyhood friends” over to his hotel in Rheydt: “How unfamiliar and distant they have become to me now,”247 he noted. And of another meeting a couple of evenings later where politics and the economy were discussed, he wrote: “You’re so far from things out here in the country.” In his circle of old friends, since he left town “so much had changed, a few were already dead, most simply petit bourgeois.”248 When old friends visited him, his verdict on them was similar in its condescension: Pille Kölsch was a “real philistine,” and Fritz Prang “a grumbler,” even if “not a bad type.”249
Contact with his brothers was confined to a bare minimum of dutiful visits. In February 1935, Konrad became director of the Völkisch Verlag in Düsseldorf250 but was forced to resign before long because of a conflict with the president of the Reich press chamber, Max Amann,251 although he soon found employment again in the newspaper sector as business affairs manager of the Gau publishing house in Frankfurt.252 After the seizure of power in 1933 Goebbels’s brother Hans, like Konrad a Nazi activist, had found a relatively favorable position in the insurance business,253 but relations with him were complicated by the fact that Joseph could not stand his sister-in-law Hertha.254
By contrast, he had a rather closer relationship with his sister Maria, who in 1936 stayed for some time as a guest in the Goebbels household and who often accompanied her brother and her sister-in-law on their visits to Hitler.255 In 1937 a new visitor often showed up at Schwanenwerder: the screenplay writer Axel Kimmich, with whom Maria had fallen deeply in love.256 Goebbels, who naturally suspected that Kimmich might be using this private relationship to further his career, immediately had him vetted by the police: The results were positive.257 Having at first cast a skeptical eye at him,258 the head of the household eventually decided he was “nice, but not over-bright.”259 Finally Kimmich, four years older than Goebbels, formally requested her brother’s permission to marry Maria: Goebbels felt “a bit silly in the role of father-in-law.”260 He had further checks carried out on his potential brother-in-law; the answers were again positive. “So as far as I’m concerned they should get married. I don’t want to stand in the way of their happiness.”261 He approved of a film script that Kimmich had shown him.262 The engagement was celebrated on Schwanenwerder in August—Hitler was among the guests263—and the wedding took place in February 1938.264 But it did not take long for Goebbels to change his mind about his brother-inlaw: “Fathead,” “numbskull,” “a proper milksop.”265 What Goebbels had feared then duly happened: Kimmich, in his view not particularly talented, tried to enlist his brother-in-law’s support in his disputes within the film business. For Goebbels this was another argument for keeping his distance from family affairs. Negative remarks about his sister Maria, too, now began to appear in the diary.266
However, Goebbels made one exception to his self-imposed rule about keeping his distance from relatives: his mother. As ever, he sought a close emotional relationship with her. She often came on visits to Berlin, where she eventually had her own apartment: “Mother is so kind and so wise. Such a refreshing time for me,” he wrote after visiting her. “My best mother! If I didn’t have you. My mainstay!”267
From about the end of 1936, Goebbels’s attitude to Magda gradually changed. Various entries scattered throughout the year indicate this development. With the house on the Bogensee, Goebbels had a refuge all to himself, one that allowed him to avoid Magda, even after the family had moved back to Berlin from their summer residence on Schwanenwerder at the beginning of October 1936.268 He often spent time there, in the solitude of his large wooded grounds.269 Goebbels was far from open in his diary entries about his private life or his emotions; it is especially noticeable that his affair with Baarová, which began in the winter of 1936–37, left no trace there at first. Certainly, this relationship was an important factor in increasing his distance from his wife,
but there are indications that Goebbels became ever more deeply caught up in the affair because he found his relationship with Magda, and his whole private situation, increasingly unsatisfactory and problematic. This is brought out by some entries at the turn of the year, 1936–37, which offer some hints about his state of mind.
Magda had arranged the festivities for Christmas 1936 on a lavish scale. But although Goebbels enjoyed being with the children, he could not get into the Christmas spirit, and he spent the whole day in “sorrow and melancholy.” On Christmas Day he felt the pull of the Bogensee again, where he spent the next few days without his family: “Away from all this festive kitsch!” On December 27 Hitler, who had invited the Goebbels family to Berchtesgaden for Christmas, wanted to know why they had not yet arrived. They packed in great haste, but in the evening they heard that the journey was off, because Hitler suddenly had an important appointment in Berlin. On December 30 Hitler called the Goebbelses in to the Reich Chancellery to wish them a happy New Year; in the evening he traveled by train to Berchtesgaden, where they joined him a few days later at his request.