Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis

by Michael Haas

  The result of bourgeois Jewish enthusiasm for the arts was that wealthy non-Jews appeared to lose interest, meaning that cultural events nearly ceased being the common meeting ground between well-off Jews and non-Jews. Alma Mahler, in her journals, hints at the distaste felt by non-Jewish Viennese towards the city's Jewish public by describing important premieres and openings disparagingly as having ‘all of Israel in attendance’, an expression that is repeated word-for-word by other chroniclers of the time.5

  No matter how wealthy and important they were, Jews would discover that even conversion to Christianity was not sufficient to offer easy entrance into mainstream society. The journals kept by the daughters of the wealthy Viennese Gallia family, patrons of the Secessionists and of the architect Josef Hoffmann as well as commissioners of one of Klimt's best portraits, indicate how rarely members of even the minor aristocracy moved within their circles. Former Jews whose parents or even grandparents had converted (as in the case with the Gallias) appeared unable to move outside the circles of other wealthy converts and Jewish professionals, academics and industrialists.6

  It was therefore no surprise that Jews and former Jews were bound by circumstance to keep to their own clubs, cafés and circles. The limitations imposed by Viennese society were more than compensated for by their presence within the media: newspapers from across the political spectrum such as Das neue Wiener Tagblatt, Die Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Arbeiter Zeitung were all Jewish-owned and run. But as we have already seen, it was the powerful Neue Freie Presse that ultimately dominated. It represented a paper with balanced, objective and fair reportage that was produced, published and largely written by secular Jews and read by nearly everyone within the educated classes and the highest reaches of government. The Neue Freie Presse predictably became a target not only for anti-Semites, but also for ultra-conservatives on the right and for Social Democrats and Communists on the left. It was respectful of the monarchy, but unsentimental as soon as it was replaced by a republic. During the years that Theodor Herzl was editor of its cultural pages, it never once allowed any coverage of Zionism. With Julius Korngold its primary music critic from 1904, it became Mahler's most important supporter and the voice of a younger, self-confident, Jewish musical élite.

  The biographical parallels between Gustav Mahler and Julius Korngold are quite surprising: both were German-speaking Jewish Moravians born in 1860, in what is today part of the Czech Republic. Both grew up in aspirational families where the father's income was earned from the sale of spirits. This allowed money and opportunities for the children that the parents were unable to enjoy. In his memoirs, Korngold mentions on more than one occasion the good fortune of growing up during the years of Liberalism. Like Mahler, he spent time studying with Bruckner while a student in Vienna, which brought him closer to understanding Wagner. Korngold makes little direct reference to his own Jewish origins, but anecdotal accounts from his grandchildren Ernst and George (sons of the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold) give the impression that though Jewish under Nazi racial law (and perceived as Jewish), the Korngolds could hardly have been more secular. This was noticeably different from Mahler's family.

  The Austrian musician and musicologist Michael Haber in Das Jüdische bei Gustav Mahler offers a very clear picture of Mahler's religious background.7 We already know that Mahler's great-grandfather Abraham Mahler (1720–1800) was a cantor who would have observed strict religious laws. Haber even offers circumstantial evidence suggesting that he may have been Hassidic. Abraham's grandson Bernard (Baruch) Mahler was Gustav's father.8 Though probably fully assimilated, as can be deduced from accounts and photographs of the time, there is reason to believe that Bernard was by no means secular. He and Gustav participated in Jewish holy services, and Bernard was even elected to the educational committee of the Jewish community – not something that would have been possible for a secular Jew in the relatively rural community of Iglau in 1878. Bernard was also close to the local cantor who stood as godparent to Gustav's sister Justine. This historic background offers enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that Gustav probably celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in common with other boys from traditional Jewish families when he was 13. Preparation for that would have required intensive study of liturgical Hebrew and sacred texts.

  There is nothing in Julius Korngold's memoirs to suggest that he enjoyed a similar religious upbringing, though the customs of the time may have dictated a minimal adherence. Such adherence would most likely have been a good deal less in the Moravian capital city of Brünn than in rural communities such as Iglau. Haber goes on to quote correspondence between the young Mahler and his family indicating his consciousness as a Jew. As late as 1886, he writes to his sister Justine that she shouldn't worry about him taking a conducting post in Leipzig as even there ‘one could find synagogues’.9 Later, Gustav and his siblings would show considerable diligence at putting cultural space between their adult lives and their provincial, religious upbringing while nevertheless making casual references to ‘the holidays’ which could only have been in reference to traditional Jewish festivals. The Mahlers were obviously from the provinces, but they were not unsophisticated and they certainly did not belong to one of the communities of bearded, kaftan-wearing Jews of Eastern Europe. Indeed, the pull to German culture probably motivated Bernard to move to German-speaking Iglau in Moravia from Czech-speaking Kalischt in Bohemia (where Gustav was born) as soon as the ‘October Diploma’ of 1860 lifted restrictions on the movements of Jews within these two provinces. Later, Alma Mahler makes it clear that her husband never tried to hide his Jewish origins – she was often irritated that he appeared to go out of his way to draw attention to them.

  Julius Korngold, on the other hand, moved seamlessly within the circles of law and journalism where religious confession played no role and he was beholden to no appointing aristocrat. Along with countless other prominent Jews of his generation, including Mahler, he saw no contradiction in being both a Moravian Jew and a German Nationalist, and his earliest articles and reviews were published in the Pan-German Czech paper, Der treue Eckart. Eduard Hanslick was alerted to Julius Korngold by Brahms, who had read a Korngold review in the Moravian press. Initial meetings led to a formal invitation to join the Neue Freie Presse from the cultural editor Theodor Herzl in 1901.

  Die Neue Freie Presse

  This anti-feudal, capitalistic and secular-liberal newspaper had been founded in 1848 as Die Presse. In 1861 Karl Marx was its London correspondent. In 1864 the editorial staff set up a new paper that was purchased by Max Friedländer and Michael Etienne, and henceforth called Die Neue Freie Presse. The paper benefited from the slow but steady trend of Liberalism that began by defining the separation of administrative powers and haltingly allowed a trickle of widening enfranchisement. One of the most important of these acts was the so-called ‘February Patent’ of 1861, which replaced the ‘October Diploma’ of 1860. Both reforms would come to fruition in the biggest victory of all championed by the paper: the December Constitution of 1867, which began the process of wider emancipation of Jews and brought about a more balanced exercise of powers between Emperor and Parliament.10 The paper suffered a loss of prestige with the role it played in the disastrous stock-market crash of 1873, but under the stewardship of Eduard Bacher and Moritz Benedikt (both of whom were also German-speaking Jews from Moravia) it became the German-language equivalent of the London Times and one of the dominant newspapers in Europe. Benedikt eventually was able to buy out Bacher, and his son Ernst took command of the paper in 1920. At the turn of the century it employed 80 to 100 foreign correspondents and the maxim of the day was that it was ‘impossible to rule the country against the will of the Neue Freie Presse’.11 The coup of an interview with Bismarck, which appeared in the paper in 1892, elevated it beyond all other German-language media, and Benedikt was the only journalist the Emperor Franz Joseph would deign to meet.

  The influence that the Neue Freie Presse and its editor wielded can be further infer
red from the attacks by the brilliant Viennese satirist Karl Kraus. In his epic ‘tragedy in five acts with prologue and epilogue’ Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit,12 Kraus refers to Benedikt as ‘Lord of the Hyenas’ and ruthlessly parodies both Julius Korngold and his son, the prodigy Erich Wolfgang. In Kraus's periodical Die Fackel13 he continuously attacked both paper and editor, once writing that for Benedikt ‘there was no wickedness that he would not represent for money and no value that out of idealism he would not betray’.14 Kraus's response to an offer made by the Neue Freie Presse to become one of its principal feuilletonists in 1899 was printed in Die Fackel: ‘there are two marvellous things in this world: either to be part of the Neue Freie Presse, or to loathe it. I never for a moment doubted which I would choose.‘15

  The paper boasted a starry array of contributing politicians and essayists. David Lloyd George wrote an article for the paper in 1914 arguing against armaments, and after 1918 he continued right through the 1920s as a regular contributor.16 Winston Churchill is quoted in an article published by the paper in 1913 also denouncing current armament policies and, incredibly, Churchill himself wrote an article published during the war in October 1917. He was a frequent contributor until 1938.17 Julius Korngold, with his doctorate in law and as a fiercely secular Jew, was a perfect fit for the environment of Die Neue Freie Presse. He remained its principal writer on musical matters until Ernst Benedikt was forced to sell his shares in 1934 to the Austro-Fascist government that had ruled Austria since March 1933. In 1938 after the Anschluss and owing to its largely Jewish staff, the Nazis had the paper closed down. By the time of Korngold's departure in 1934, he had long ceased to be the defender of Mahler's brand of Modernism and had been denounced by the President of the International Society of Contemporary Music, Edward Dent, as modern music's most ‘formidable enemy’, a quote Korngold gleefully includes in his memoirs.18

  The Metropolis Vienna: City of Music, City of Jews

  By the first decade of the twentieth century, about one third of those studying violin and piano at Vienna's conservatory were Jewish. Even allowing for the fact that many of these students came from the outer reaches of the Empire (in Vienna the Jewish population never exceeded 8 per cent), it remains a remarkable statistic. Indeed, it was such a common occurrence for Jews to make their way to the conservatories of the major cities that Alexander Moszkowski (brother of the composer Moritz) wrote an amusing Berlin-based satire entitled A Genius that appeared in the Neue Freie Presse on 12 February 1892.19 Yet in nineteenth-century Viennese society, the social structures were inherently open to Jewish musical assimilation, and membership of institutions and music societies provided an entry point for social and political integration that was not available within other guilds or fraternities. The very fact that Anton Rubinstein, a Russian Jew, could in 1871 be made head of Vienna's Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde is a remarkable demonstration of the speed of cultural integration. Its building, the Musikverein, which opened in 1870, not only was the city's most prestigious concert venue, but also housed a conservatory and an archive.

  The extent to which the social and cultural climate had improved for Jews by 1900 is related by the American conductor and scholar Leon Botstein. He cites a memorial concert for the Jewish liturgical composer Salomon Sulzer held in Vienna's Musikverein in 1900 as a key moment that symbolised this transition. Sulzer had been a reformer and principal cantor of Vienna's main synagogue, the Stadttempel. He had arrived from Western Austria's Hohenems in 1825 – during the lifetimes of Beethoven and Schubert; he was in contact with both. The collection of liturgical works composed by Sulzer under the title Shir Zion,20 first published in 1840 and reprinted in 1868, shows a marked influence of the secular music of the period, making Sulzer one of the earliest modernisers of music in the synagogue. In addition, he was also a respected teacher at Vienna's music conservatory. The musicians participating in the memorial concert included Sulzer's son, Joseph, born in Vienna and not only the solo cellist of the Vienna Philharmonic, but also the former cellist of the Hellmesberger and Prill Quartets, two of the leading ensembles of the day. He was accompanied on the piano by Heinrich Schenker, the renowned music theorist. The memorial speech was given by Adolf Ritter von Sonnenthal, Vienna's most famous actor and one of the city's principal celebrities. He was one of the first Jews to be ennobled by the Emperor following the enactment of the December Constitution and he would, incidentally, become the future grandfather-in-law of the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Botstein's fascinating point is that each of these musicians represented a different stage of Jewish participation and assimilation in Vienna's musical life. Salomon Sulzer was influenced by the non-Jewish secular music of Biedermeier Vienna. His son, born just after the Revolution of 1848, had progressed to the position of star soloist with the Vienna Philharmonic; Sonnenthal was the city's leading actor, bon vivant and social lion within Vienna's most exclusive circles setting the tone in matters of fashion, taste and style. Schenker, who had studied with Bruckner, became the music theorist who most characterised the Brahmsian values of the ‘Old German School’ that we examined in the previous chapter. Botstein goes on to point out that Schenker published his own book on harmony in 1906, five years before Schoenberg.21

  Inquisitiveness and a fascination with the past have already been mentioned as being the target of Wagner's attacks on Jews, whom he saw as reaching back into history in order to compensate for a lack of originality. Yet it was also the steady dominance of Jewish musicologists and thinkers that would further divide the Austro-German house between musical progressives and conservatives. On the one side, there was Eduard Hanslick and Heinrich Schenker, who held to the ideals of classical sobriety and balance, along with the scholar Guido Adler, who chose to classify Wagner as a conservative, in stark contrast to the prevalent view of the time. The critic Robert Hirschfeld, a virtual contemporary of Adler, was seen by many as the leader of Vienna's anti-Mahler press. Nevertheless, Hirschfeld singled out Bruckner, rather than Brahms, as the culmination of abstract musical purity. It was the pupils and followers of these scholars and writers who would not only solidify Jewish support for musical tradition, but also provide a basis for progressive thinking. With Karl Goldmark, Robert Hirschfeld, Guido Adler and Julius Korngold, we see the dogmatic lines held by Hanslick rendered meaningless, as a new generation of Jews see in Wagner a composer who was not predominantly an anti-Semite but rather an artist who redefined the purpose of music. This conflict was made poignantly clear in the creation of two Wagner Societies in Vienna: the Vienna Academic Wagner Society co-founded by Guido Adler, and a competing Wagner Society, of which Anton Bruckner was made honorary president, that explicitly excluded Jews. It was in this spirit of music renewing its very purpose that Karl Weigl, Alexander Zemlinsky and Arnold Schoenberg founded the Society of Creative Musicians (Vereinigung schaffender Tonkünstler) in 1904, with Mahler as honorary president. In 1907, Mahler would defend Schoenberg against hisses and boos at the premiere of the latter's First String Quartet in the Bösendorfersaal, while admitting privately that he was not sure what the music meant.

  Guido Adler, a childhood friend of Mahler, succeeded Eduard Hanslick at the University of Vienna. With his essay from 1885 Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft,22 along with the collection of Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich23 that he edited, Adler became the father of modern, systematic musicology. His pupils included several Schoenberg students such as Anton Webern and Paul Pisk. They also included two other composers who came to represent the Viennese musical traditions that grew from Brahms and Mahler: Hans Gál and the Schoenberg pupil, Egon Wellesz.

  The Neue Freie Presse offers a fascinating series of essays analysing the nature of anti-Semitism by Theodor Haase during April of 1887.24 Anatole France wrote again on the subject on 3 April 1904.25 Yet the Vienna of 1900 was a city where it was possible for Jews to live and work relatively openly within most circles of society. But Vienna, with the second largest Jewish population of any Europea
n city after Warsaw, also had to contend with a deeply held, ubiquitous anti-Semitism. The story that Mahler rejected Humperdinck's pupil Leo Blech as a potential assistant at the opera tells us a good deal. Mahler felt that the institution would not tolerate a second Jew, even a converted one.

  In fact it was not only in Vienna, but throughout Europe that anti-Semitism was shaping the social environment, as the Dreyfus Affair in France demonstrated. But in music, Wagner had unleashed a beast that was particularly mendacious. Vienna, with music as its cultural centre of gravity and its large Jewish population, was vulnerable. The writer Rudolf Louis published Contemporary German Music in 1909. It was an enormous success as it was the first work to deal with Austro-German composers after Wagner. After informing his readers that he had no time for anti-Semitism, he laid into Mahler with particular venom: ‘What I find so fundamentally repellent about Mahler's music is its axiomatic Jewish nature. If Mahler's music spoke Jewish, I perhaps wouldn't understand it, but what is disgusting is that it speaks German with the Jewish accent – the all too Jewish accent that comes to us from the East.‘26