Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis

by Michael Haas

  The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon, initialled Fisher's memo without comment.19 In general, and in stark contrast to other Whitehall departments, the Treasury was receptive to the idea of providing public aid for humanitarian support.

  The initial plan of the IGC was to use diplomatic means to persuade the German government to subsidise the removal of Jews by allowing refugees to retain some of their capital on leaving the country. Ultimately, the IGC provided a useful smokescreen, making it appear that governments were more involved than was actually the case. These often undermined private initiatives that would have provided more immediate aid to refugees. Official British policy clung to the idea of using diplomatic pressure to encourage other countries, especially the USA, to take more Austro-German Jewish refugees. The Americans avoided every one of these diplomatic booby-traps while Chamberlain remained paralysed by indecision.

  On the one hand, he was appalled by German policy against the Jews, while on the other, he was nervous about damaging relations, which might make matters even worse. One moment he was refusing an honorary presidency of the German Shakespeare Cooperative because it had expelled its Jewish members, while the next he was writing the following letter to his sister Hilda, dated 30 July 1939: ‘I believe that the persecution arose out of two motives, a desire to rob the Jews of their money and a jealousy of their superior cleverness. No doubt Jews aren't a lovable people; I don't care about them myself; but that is not sufficient to explain the pogrom.‘20 Ultimately, it must be to Chamberlain's credit that despite his vacillation, he expanded a policy of offering temporary refuge to Jews, in the teeth of opposition from his Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare.21

  With the annexation of the Sudetenland in September 1938, and Hitler's declaration of the Moravian and Bohemian Protectorate on 15 March 1939 effectively placing the largest Czech regions within the Nazi Reich, British reluctance to accept Jews became more pronounced. In this context, it needs to be noted that, with the break-up of the Austrian Empire in 1919, German speakers who lived within the borders of the new state of Czechoslovakia were offered the choice of becoming Czechs or remaining Austrians. Many German speakers who had lived in Vienna but who continued to maintain business or family interests in the newly founded republic of Czechoslovakia chose to become Czech citizens, a status that did not alter their rights to remain in Austria. Meanwhile, many German speakers who lived in Czechoslovakia chose to remain Austrians. The two countries were socially and culturally intertwined. Ernst Krenek chose to remain Austrian (he had always lived in Vienna and spoke only rudimentary Czech), much to the annoyance of his fellow Schreker pupil and Czech nationalist, Alois Hába. Viktor Ullmann was studying with Zemlinsky in Prague in 1919, but chose to remain Austrian – as did Zemlinsky himself, who continued working at the German Theatre in Prague until 1927. Czechoslovakia was not the ethnically homogenous country that emerged after 1945; there were pockets of Hungarians, Ukrainians, Poles and many German communities. The German-speaking Sudetenland community was the crux of the problem. Sudetenlanders saw themselves disadvantaged by the majority Czechs and appealed to Nazi Germany for annexation which was agreed after lengthy negotiations between major European powers (excluding the Czechs) on 30 September 1938. Since independence, the Czechs had indeed become more openly anti-German after centuries of anti-Slav attitudes emanating from their rulers in Austria. The Czech response to the Munich Agreement was to become even more antagonistic to its German speakers, and in September 1938 the German Theatre – one of the most prestigious German stages in Europe – was closed. Indeed, the Austrian-German equivalent of ‘Oxford English’ or ‘Tuscan Italian’ was Pragerdeutsch, the German spoken in Prague. Zemlinsky took over the music directorship of the German Theatre from the well-known entrepreneur Angelo Neumann, and he was followed by the conductors Wilhelm Steinberg and Georg Szell. Not only was this the theatre where Zemlinsky had conducted the premiere of Schoenberg's Erwartung in 1924, but also where Krenek's anti-fascist opera Karl V was first performed in June 1938 under Karl Rankl, after Clemens Kraus's decision not to mount it at Vienna's State Opera following the Nazi ban on Krenek's music, in place since 1933.

  As it was largely British negotiations that had precipitated the fall of Czechoslovakia, it is surprising that British policy towards Czech Jews would be so unsympathetic. They placed refugees into three distinct categories. The first were the Sudeten Germans who supported the anti-Nazi ‘German Social Democratic Party’. They were seen as principal collateral damage from the Munich Agreement; though they were also German speakers, they obviously did not support the aims of Hitler. But as German speakers, they now belonged to the group that Czech speakers believed to have undermined national sovereignty, leading to the Czech central government revoking their citizenship. As anti-Nazis, they were unhappy with the outcome of the Munich Agreement and were rightly seen by the British as highly vulnerable. Politically active Jews and even Communists, along with other anti-Nazi activists, also belonged to this group.

  The second group was the mix of Austrians and Czechs who had fled to Czechoslovakia following the annexation of Austria in March 1938. British officials referred to this class of refugees as ‘Old Reich’, meaning citizens of the old Habsburg Empire, and further divided this group into ‘political refugees’ and ‘Jewish refugees’.22

  The third group were the Jews who had, until the Munich Agreement, lived without difficulties in the Sudetenland. These numbered approximately 22,000 and began relocating to the still independent regions of Moravia and Bohemia. Slovakia, as a consequence of the Munich Agreement, would be partially folded back into Hungary between November 1938 and March 1939. Confusion reigned. As nearly all the Jews from these Czech regions were German speakers, they were not welcomed by the Czechs, and bureaucratic shenanigans made their continued presence dangerous. As it was, Moravia and Bohemia already had a total Jewish population numbering some 300,000, making a refugee tsunami inevitable. Britain, which had pushed for the outcome of the Munich Agreement, was caught between shoring up what remained of the Czech state and officially recognising Germany's sovereignty over the Sudetenland. It offered the Czech government huge funding, much of it private, but also a good deal of public money to deal with the refugee problem in the hope that this would somehow ease pressure on the United Kingdom.23

  It was the opinion of British officials that the Munich Agreement had left anti-Nazi Sudeten Germans and former ‘Reich-refugees’ exposed to the most danger. They felt that they had an obligation to resettle these groups at the expense of the Sudetenland Jews. As the British government, the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, and the British committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia were all agreed that that they should in principle be against the emigration of Jews, they were accorded the lowest priority. This position was held not only because of fears of anti-Semitism in host countries, but also out of concern that it would encourage Germany's continued persecution of Jews by giving the appearance that they would be resettled elsewhere. From this context, it is possible to understand why Viktor Ullmann's children were evacuated to Britain, even though he and their mother were not. Tragically, nearly all of the Jewish composers living in Czechoslovakia, including such important figures as Ullmann, Pavel Haas, Hans Krása and Erwin Schulhoff, would ultimately end in Nazi camps – as would the exceptional young composer, Gideon Klein.

  Of course, America, Britain and France were only three destinations. The Hindemith pupil Hans Joachim Koellreuter went to Brazil where he taught Antonio Carlos Jobim, the prime creator of the bossa nova. Manfred Gurlitt and Klaus Pringsheim ended up in Japan and were in no small measure responsible for fostering the talents of the postwar generation of Japanese performers. The Webern pupil Philipp Herschkowitz ended up in the Soviet Union and became the influential mentor to the ‘Underground’ composers of the post-Shostakovich generation that included Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke.24 Herbert Zipper eventually landed in the Philippines and, of course, there were m
any musicians who went to Palestine, such as Paul Ben-Haim, formerly known as Paul Frankenburg, who went on to establish a national school of the Eastern Mediterranean, a sound world that was an inspiring mix of Jewish ghetto and sacred music with a touch of Impressionism and Bauhaus Functionalism. However, the influences to come out of these far-flung destinations were ultimately marginal on postwar Western European and American music. The story of Palestine's evolution into Israel and the role music played in this process is too broad a topic to be covered in this context.

  Escape: Great Britain

  On 25 March 1938 Georg Szell wrote to his old friend Hans Gál from Marseille in France:

  I can't tell you how happy I am to know that you are safely in London. I shall drop Tovey a quick note, he's a charming but somewhat cranky and unreliable individual who never answers correspondence. I advise you to contact (by mentioning my name) Dr Adolf Aber; he was formerly of [the music publisher] Hofmeister and critic in Leipzig; he's now a representative of many German publishing houses and is partial owner of Novello's. He may have something to offer to you in dealing with music publishing – at least he can offer advice. In England you must have, above all else, lots of patience!25

  Szell then itemises his schedule for the next six months – divided between orchestras in The Hague and Glasgow – and provides his temporary addresses in the Netherlands and Sydney. Szell's future in America looked barely possible at this time. As the letter is dated less than two weeks after Austria's annexation, plotting elaborate career moves was less of a priority than getting friends and family out of Hitler's way. Writing to Gál from California a few months later, on 15 June 1938, Ernst Toch adds his advice:

  I can only offer at most an introduction to [Alexander] Korda, but I can't promise much. It certainly didn't help [Nikolai] Lopatnikoff – but take it anyway. You have to put up with everything we've already been through and continue to go through. During my time in London, I wrote to every studio in town and begged for appointments. 98% were DIS-appointments and 2% resulted in stumbling a few steps forward by way of a couple of contacts. It's astonishing that somehow things work as long as you stay patient. Only when I left London was I told that it would have been better had I had an agent. So for good measure, I'll pass this bit of advice on to you. Nevertheless, here I have five agents and not one has ever managed to do anything for me. Ultimately, you have to do everything yourself. From where I am at the moment, I can't do anything for you. I would love to have helped Lopatnikoff, but here I'm simply a kernel of dust being stirred around in a witch's cauldron of intrigues and plotting. […] Louis Greenberg [1883–1964], one of America's most respected composers who had his opera [The Emperor Jones] performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as well as in Chicago, has been sitting around here for the last two years without work, despite having an agent, while others seem to strike lucky. There seems to be no recipe of how things turn out. […] Emigration has taught me that you need to do everything tirelessly by yourself without losing patience; at some point, you find a small safe hole to slip into and from there, it all continues up-hill. What you need to appreciate is the fact that you're out of there. What would we give – my wife and I – if we could get our relatives and friends out of Vienna. Please don't be too disappointed and don't curse me too much for this idiotic letter. Believe me, it would make me the happiest man alive if I could help everyone who asked me – even if I could help those who don't ask me, but who I know need help.26

  The music historian Jutta Raab Hansen in her seminal work on musical exile in Great Britain explains in detail the restrictions to which musicians who made it to the United Kingdom were subjected by the Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM), headed by Sir George Dyson.27 Essentially, it was designed to protect the interests of British musicians who had been steadily losing employment since the demise of silent films in the late 1920s. Dyson's ISM successfully lobbied for regulations to guard against further threats by the influx of potentially better qualified musicians from the continent. These were controversial measures that were flagrantly broken by the likes of the tenor Richard Tauber, who toured the country without the slightest trace of official hindrance giving popular concerts and recitals. The wartime National Gallery Concerts organised by the pianist Myra Hess were slightly more provocative, since she involved many unknown refugees (such as the aforementioned Lopatnikoff), while numerous refugees took up employment at Glyndebourne, the country house opera company run by Sir John Christie before it closed for the duration of the war in 1939, or at the invitation of Michael Tippett, at London's Morley College. These infringements were more than balanced by the determined harassment of foreign teachers and orchestral players, a practice that relaxed slightly in the early 1940s as refugee organisations such as the German Kulturbund, the Austrian Centre and the Anglo-Austrian Music Society began admitting the public to its concerts. Hitherto, admission had been restricted to fellow refugees, who couldn't in any case pay for tickets.

  One area where refugee composers were able to work with some degree of impunity was the film industry. By 1933, motion pictures using recorded sound had been around for some six years, but experiments as to how to position music within films was still quite hit-and-miss. Most film composing simply meant writing a hit song or two that cropped up at an apposite moment during the movie. Though Baden-Baden's new music festival had already focused on the potential uses of music with cinema as early as 1928, the first dedicated original score for a Hollywood film was not until 1933, with King Kong, and music by Max Steiner, a Viennese Jew who as a student had been dismissively regarded by Mahler as being ‘without talent’.28 Already recounted in Chapter 7, silent films, such as Berlin, die Symphonie der Großstadt (1927) and Battleship Potemkin (1925), both with scores by Edmund Meisel, had shown what the combination of music and image could achieve. By 1933, the field of film composition was still so specialised that composers such as Mischa Spoliansky, who arrived in London from Berlin almost as soon as Hitler took power, could start work without raising the suspicions, let alone the hackles, of the ISM. Other composers arriving in Britain for film work included Hanns Eisler with his 1936 adaptation of Pagliacci starring Richard Tauber, and his ‘anti-Hitler’ film Abdul the Damned (1935). Ernst Toch wrote scores for two films directed by Alexander Korda, Catherine the Great and The Private Lives of Don Juan, and a third, Little Friend, directed by the Austrian Berthold Viertel; to these composers can be added the Schreker pupils Karol Rathaus and Wilhelm Grosz.

  As they were accepting commissions to produce music for films, they were not officially resident in Britain, but only in transit. They therefore did not need to apply for refugee status (though evidence has come to light that the British Secret Service was tailing Hanns Eisler and making it difficult for him to be paid for his work).29 This gave composers the same advantage as the pianist Artur Schnabel, who decided early on that the only way to continue performing in Great Britain was to be based elsewhere.

  One notable exception to this rule was the former Schoenberg pupil Allan Gray who, as Josef Zmigrod (as he was originally known), had written the music for such classics as Berlin Alexanderplatz and Emil and the Detectives, both from 1931. Though he also arrived in London in 1933, it would be ten years before he wrote another film score with The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp in 1943 and, in 1951, John Huston's The African Queen. Others who escaped the bans of the ISM by composing for the British film industry were Hans May, whose 1933 film with heartthrob tenor Joseph Schmidt, Ein Lied geht um die Welt (and its 1934 English-language remake, My Song goes Round the World), would assure him steady employment with a number of British ‘B’ movies such as No Monkey Business (1935) and a further film with Joseph Schmidt, A Star Fell from Heaven, in 1936.

  Mischa Spoliansky had made a name for himself in Berlin cabaret with the husband and wife team of Marcellus Schiffer and Margo Lion, and the then still unknown Marlene Dietrich, who would be discovered by Josef von Sternberg performing in Spoliansky's Zwe
i Kravatten (Two Neckties); von Sternberg was seeking a leading lady for his film The Blue Angel. Spoliansky remained Dietrich's regular confidant until his death in 1985, and his daughter, Irmgard or ‘Spoli’ Mills, recalled first memories of London with Dietrich preparing breakfast for them, a family of freshly arrived, excited, yet insecure, refugees. Spoliansky moved seamlessly into composing for British cinema and provided scores for such films as The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936), King Solomon's Mines (1937), Over the Moon (1939), continuing through the war and up to retirement. His career ended, appropriately, with the score for Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973), starring Alec Guinness.

  Since the beginning of the First World War, Great Britain had lost its enchantment with all things German. The British royal family's name-change from ‘Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’ to ‘Windsor’ was symbolic of their specific shift from their Hanoverian roots, and Britain's broader rejection of German cultural influence in general. British music began looking towards Paris rather than Leipzig, Vienna or Berlin. Composers who had once embarked on pilgrimages to absorb the mastery of Mendelssohn and Schumann now immersed themselves in the musical spirit of France, creating a fusion from which grew England's appetite for all things pastoral as a distinctly British take on French Impressionism. Paradoxically, this occurred as Germany was locking itself into its mood of unemotional sobriety, and the French themselves had started to shed Impressionist tendencies in favour of a leaner neo-Classicism.