Two days after the April 1 cable to Hitler, in a letter not made public, Hitler wrote to Toscanini that he hoped that summer at Bayeuth to “thank you, the great representative of art and of a people friendly to Germany, for your participation in the great Master’s work.”46 Despite this ostensibly conciliatory gesture, the Nazi regime issued instructions the next day banning the recordings and compositions from state radio and the concert hall of those who had been party to the cable. The public announcement of this policy was reported in the United States, thus fortifying the realization that the Nazis were abridging artistic expression.47
But a crucial question remained: Would the world’s most famous conductor return to Bayreuth in 1933? While today it is difficult to imagine such a question providing grist for public debate and widespread news coverage, in the 1930s, the matter was seen as highly consequential. The Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler issued a public statement asserting that the conductor should return to Bayreuth, because only then could he defend the sacred principle that “artistic utterance” should remain outside the “sphere of political and racial strife.” Such a stance, Kreisler averred, was integral to the preservation of untrammeled artistic expression. In Bayreuth, Toscanini could serve as a “herald of love and a messenger of good-will.” Moreover, the Austrian declared, those urging Toscanini to step down did not understand Germany’s recent history, which since the war had left the people in an overly emotional condition. In time, Kreisler believed, the country and its leaders would “face their domestic and external problems with their traditional sobriety and sense of order.”48
While the next ten years would prove Kreisler a better violinist than a prophet, his reproof of those who encouraged boycotting Bayreuth was worthy of reflection, especially in 1933, since the horrors Nazi Germany was capable of perpetrating were then unknowable. One would surely have pondered the idea that Toscanini’s presence at Bayreuth might enhance the possibility for change in Germany, and there was something both laudable and naive in Kreisler’s unwillingness to believe that it was far better for the famed conductor to stand aside at this perilous moment in the history of the world—when the “nerves of all nations are on edge and sinister grumblings of war are heard again.”49
From within Germany, thoughts on the dilemma that Toscanini faced made their way to America, as Winifred Wagner, the widow of the composer’s son and also a close friend of Adolf Hitler, claimed the Italian conductor would not step away from Bayreuth.50 Whatever Frau Wagner believed, reports filtered back to the United States which suggested that those connected to the festival were deeply worried that unfolding musical developments in Germany might mean that foreigners would refuse to attend.51
But the distinguished maestro had made no final decision about his summer labors, though in an altogether courteous letter to Hitler in late April, Toscanini thanked the German chancellor for writing. He apologized for not replying sooner and indicated he still hoped to conduct at Bayreuth that summer. “You know how closely I feel attached to Bayreuth and what deep pleasure it gives me to consecrate my ‘Something’ to a genius like Wagner whom I love so boundlessly.” It would be profoundly disappointing, he told the German leader, should “circumstances’’ arise that would make it impossible to participate in the festival. With more than a touch of deference, the musician concluded his message by thanking Hitler for his “kind expressions of thought.”52
A few days later, Toscanini decided he would in fact not conduct at Bayreuth that summer. In a letter to festival officials, he conveyed his decision, though he offered little elaboration. He said the distressing developments in Germany had caused him considerable pain as a man and an artist. He went on to note that he was obliged to inform the festival’s officials that he would not be attending Bayreuth. In a rather gracious conclusion to his letter, the esteemed conductor pointed out that his kind feelings for “the house of Wagner” remained unchanged.53
A few weeks before Toscanini’s public announcement, the American press reported that the 120th anniversary of Wagner’s birth had been celebrated enthusiastically by the Nazi regime on May 23 at Bayreuth’s Festival Theater, with the Nazi flag flying from the building. Outside the theater stood detachments of storm troopers, guards, and Nazi youths, while inside a ceremony unfolded, led by a Nazi official. On a wreath emblazoned with a swastika, words made clear the ostensible link between Nazism and the creative life of Wagner: “Just as the National Socialists must fight today, so Richard Wagner in time past had to fight all the world on behalf of German culture and the German spirit.” As the ceremony ended, an ensemble the New York Times described as a “Nazi symphony orchestra” played Wagner’s music.54
For Toscanini, the concerns that had caused him distress would become intolerable. Even two years before, in 1931, having completed his work at Bayreuth, he had voiced reservations about continuing there, calling it a “banal theater,” a place plagued by the sort of problems (a mediocre orchestra) one expected to encounter in less august settings. Still more repugnant was what one newspaper described as Toscanini’s sense that a “materialistic and commercial spirit” characterized the festival. He had also expressed concerns about the devotion Winifred Wagner, the widow of the composer’s son, had to Hitler, which Toscanini believed caused Wagner’s music to be “degraded to the role of a Hitler propagandist.”55 If the maestro found such things troubling in 1931, by 1933, with Hitler elevated to chancellor and the artistic situation deteriorating mercilessly for Jews and other enemies of the state, Toscanini’s anguish was still more intense.
When on June 6 the American press reported that Toscanini had decided not to conduct at Bayreuth that summer, some papers quoted from a telegram he had sent Winifred Wagner a week earlier, a version of the letter quoted above. Referring to the persecution of Jewish musicians in Germany, which had troubled him since mid-March, Toscanini wrote that the “lamentable events which injured my sentiments as a man and artist” were the same as before, though he had hoped for a change. The coverage of the decision supplied background on Toscanini’s distress and on recent developments, including the cable to Hitler and the ban Nazi officials had placed on the Italian’s recordings.56 Commenting on Toscanini’s decision, a Baltimore Sun editorial noted that Toscanini’s towering reputation and well-known gift for interpreting Wagner meant his absence would be quite significant. A “Wagnerian festival without Toscanini” would be as much an anomaly as a Wagner festival without Wagner’s music. Offering a stern judgment on German oppression, New York’s Herald Tribune asserted that “Bayreuth could not hope to remain the shrine of music . . . if the artists of any race” are kept away. In a letter to the same paper, one reader, Samuel Weintraub, said he hoped the “absence of the master from the temple” would cause the Germans “to realize that there is something wrong in their land.”57
Press coverage of Toscanini’s decision and Germany’s reaction shed light on what it was like to live under a regime intent on jettisoning the norms of civilized behavior. Germany was “relapsing into aesthetic barbarism,” the Philadelphia Inquirer declared in an editorial titled “Maestro Toscanini’s Protest.” Hitler’s Germany was a land in which books were burned, scholars were ousted from their positions, and capable workers were discharged.58 And according to the New York Times, the conductor’s decision had demonstrated to the “music-loving German masses the full weight of world condemnation” of their government’s policies.59
A few months after he announced his decision, Toscanini was acclaimed as “a great friend of justice, truth and freedom” by a leading Jewish organization, the Jewish National Fund of America, whose president, Dr. Israel Goldstein, presented him with an award for protesting Nazi policies toward Jews in Germany. Toscanini, in New York, was said to be profoundly moved and determined not to take part in any “musical activities” in Germany as long as the Germans continued persecuting “innocent people.” As Goldstein told the conductor, “millions of hearts had gone out to you in love and admirat
ion for the personal sacrifice you made in behalf of a noble principle.”60
In the spring of 1936, with his fame and ability undiminished, Toscanini decided to step down from his post at the Philharmonic. Sixty-eight years old, the Italian had been associated with the orchestra for more than a decade and was, according to biographer Harvey Sachs, worn down by the ensemble’s brutal schedule. While the Philharmonic’s management tried to convince him to remain, perhaps with a reduced conducting load, the musician had made up his mind, and in February the announcement came.61 In late April, Toscanini would conduct his final concerts as head of the orchestra, performances that were among the most memorable in the history of the city’s symphonic life.62
Now only one question animated the classical music world: Who could possibly succeed Toscanini?63 Within days, the matter of replacing America’s most celebrated conductor would be enmeshed in foreign affairs, as the name of the renowned Wilhelm Furtwängler was atop the Philharmonic’s list of potential successors. Fifty years old and born in Berlin, Furtwängler spent much of his childhood in Munich, where he studied piano and composition from an early age. By the time he was twenty, he was conducting at the Zurich Opera, and over the next several years, as his reputation grew, Furtwängler would hold a variety of increasingly important positions in Germany. In 1922, he was chosen to direct the Berlin Philharmonic, one of Europe’s finest ensembles.64
When in February 1936 the New York Philharmonic announced that Furtwängler had agreed to succeed Toscanini, the local press covered the appointment closely, and papers and magazines across the country informed readers that, starting the following season, the man considered Europe’s most distinguished conductor was set to ply his craft in New York. The orchestra’s announcement described the German-born conductor as “a rare musician, of catholic taste,” an artist renowned for his “profound and stirring interpretations.” As the statement noted, this would not be Furtwängler’s first sojourn to the United States. Some ten years earlier, in 1925, he had debuted with the Philharmonic in what was described as a “memorable evening,” the first of ten concerts he directed that season. And over the next two seasons, he led some sixty concerts with the orchestra.65
Although just ten years had passed since those appearances, the 1930s were a different time, and many American concertgoers were no longer content to bask in the glow of the German conductor’s interpretive gifts, which reflected an approach that was the polar opposite of Toscanini’s. As one musician has written, many believed Furtwängler brought to the podium a “more subjective, fluid” style, marked by an almost “improvisational” quality. However one perceived the German’s approach, and whether one was mesmerized by his “priestly aura” on stage, in the 1930s, an artist who could be linked to the Nazi regime—and many did just that with Wilhelm Furtwängler—was no longer a compelling presence in an American concert hall.66 Though some believed he had behaved honorably under challenging circumstances, others were convinced that Furtwängler’s actions between 1933, when Hitler came to power, and the current moment, rendered him a pariah in American musical life. And this controversy, which turned on whether Furtwängler was a Nazi sympathizer, a dupe who was allowing the Hitler regime to use him for its own purposes, or a principled opponent of the Nazis, made his appointment enormously contentious.
Whatever ambiguity surrounded Furtwängler’s behavior, opposition to his selection erupted immediately and emerged from a variety of sources. Within one day of the announcement, a group of Philharmonic subscribers cancelled their subscriptions for the next season. Their spokesman, Ira Hirschmann, a business executive and a music lecturer at the New School, acknowledged that Furtwängler was one of the world’s leading musicians, but he called it “unthinkable” to appoint an “official of the Nazi government” to lead America’s foremost musical organization. Hirschmann suggested the orchestra’s finances were already on unsteady ground and claimed the withdrawal of subscribers would prove ruinous. He noted that he had spoken about the appointment with New York’s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who appeared to agree with the opponents’ concerns.67 The message Hirschmann sent to the orchestra’s administration captured the stakes involved: The choice we face is “either to compromise ourselves as the sworn devotees of the cause of democracy as opposed to the Nazi dictatorship, or to welcome, recognize and acknowledge an official representative of that dictatorship.”68
Wilhelm Furtwängler
A few days later, the teachers’ and musicians’ unions added to what one newspaper called the “mounting chorus of protest.” While acknowledging that Furtwängler was a gifted artist, Charles J. Hendley, the head of the teachers’ union, labeled the conductor “a representative of the Nazi state.” Let him repudiate Hitler’s “barbaric rule” before he is permitted to raise “his baton over an orchestra.” At the same time, an organization of conductors and musicians contacted the American Federation of Musicians and the American Federation of Labor, urging them to reject the idea that members of the musicians’ union would play under a man devoted to a regime whose “ideals and purposes” were antithetical to the values of both groups.69
Across the city, opposition mushroomed, exacerbated by the fact that just one day after the announcement, the German government issued a statement of its own: Furtwängler would return to conduct at the Berlin State Opera, a plan, it was later learned, Hermann Göring, the Prussian Interior Minister, had choreographed to raise American hackles.70 (Furtwängler had left the position in 1934 after a quarrel with the Nazi leadership.) Among the groups formed to protest Furtwängler’s New York appointment, one established a committee that cabled the conductor in an effort to understand the extent of his sympathies for the Nazi regime. The committee’s chair, Dr. Frank Bohn, said they would ask him the “one question which the directors of the [orchestra] apparently failed to ask,” namely, “Are you sympathetic with the present Nazi government?” According to Bohn, the German’s record was characterized by “occasional mild protests and consistent capitulation to the Nazi authorities.” Bohn’s group would reach out to music lovers in order to “save the Philharmonic from its own self-destruction.”71 Another organization, the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, whose executive secretary was George E. Harriman, said that unless Furtwängler renounced Nazi “principles,” they intended to make his stay in New York “unsuccessful.”72 Declaring that the league believed the conductor was complicit in the activities of the German government, Harriman insisted that Furtwängler was a representative of the Nazi leadership. This question—to what extent Furtwängler supported and was complicit in the policies of Nazi Germany—was the most contentious aspect of the entire episode.73
The Furtwängler affair led many to write heartfelt letters to the local papers. A Brooklyn Eagle reader, Annie Elish, said that one had to consider who the Nazis were and what they stood for. According to Elish, Stalin was the “father of Nazism,” Mussolini was “unbearable,” and Hitler was “abominable.” And why, she asked, would Americans “import” a man lacking in “soul to interpret . . . music, which goes straight to the soul?”74 Writing to the New York Times, Julia Schachat said her family would no longer attend Philharmonic concerts, since the ensemble had chosen a “Nazi” to replace Toscanini, who had taken a stand on Hitler’s policies against “Jewish musicians.”75 Expressing similar views, Judith Ish-Kishor explained that she, too, would cancel her subscription because it was clear that “Nazism and not the spirit of music will [now] dominate the atmosphere of the Philharmonic.” As a “member of the race which they abuse,” Ish-Kishor was stunned that the “sanctuary of music in America had been successfully invaded by the hordes of Hitler.”76
Among the more thought-provoking reactions to appear was a letter from H. M. Kallen, undoubtedly the distinguished philosopher Horace M. Kallen, then associated with the New School. Kallen shared an intriguing idea with Times readers, designed to test Furtwängler’s fidelity to liberal principles. Since Furtwängler’s opponents had not question
ed his ability as a conductor, Kallen suggested they feared the “prostitution of his great talents to the policies . . . of Hitler’s Nazis.” Kallen pointed to a report about a recent Vienna Philharmonic program in Budapest, which saw Furtwängler replace a piece by Mendelssohn, whose music the Nazis had banned, with a composition acceptable to the regime. Addressing the concerns of those distressed by the appointment, Kallen offered an approach to allay their worries. The Philharmonic should announce a program to be conducted by Furtwängler the following year, which would include compositions banned in Nazi Germany. How simple it would be to include the works of composers such as Mendelssohn, Mahler, and Schoenberg on the program Furtwängler was scheduled to conduct. If all went well, this would vindicate completely the orchestra’s decision and Furtwängler, Kallen claimed.77
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