Dangerous Melodies
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CHAPTER SIX
“I Come Here as a Musician”
Furtwängler, Gieseking, Flagstad, Karajan—and Hitler’s Ghost
ON JANUARY 14, 1949, a large photograph was published in the Chicago Daily News under a bold headline: “Furtwaengler Bows To The Nazis.” Taken during the war, the half-page picture shows the maestro, looking severe, on stage with the Berlin Philharmonic; he is bowing to the Nazi leadership who are applauding in the front row. To help readers comprehend the scene, the newspaper included sizeable labels on the photo with arrows pointing to the four key figures: Wilhelm Furtwängler, Adolf Hitler, and two of the most important Nazi leaders, Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels. The newspaper also supplied a description of the scene: “Expressionless Wilhelm Furtwaengler, in his post as general music director in Adolph [sic] Hitler’s German regime, bows to the dictator’s applause.”1
The photo appeared at a moment of distress in Chicago musical circles, as the city’s orchestra had recently offered the German musician the opportunity to become its conductor the following season. If one hoped to generate support for Maestro Furtwängler, this was not the kind of image symphony officials wanted Chicagoans to encounter as they thumbed through their daily newspaper. But that is to get ahead of a story that captured the attention of a city and countless Americans across the country.
Four years earlier, on the last day of April 1945, Adolf Hitler shot and killed himself in his Berlin bunker. His wife, Eva Braun, killed herself that same afternoon by swallowing a cyanide capsule. One week later, Germany surrendered to the Allies and the war in Europe was over. By mid-August, after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese had also surrendered, ending the Second World War.
With the capitulation of Germany and Japan, a new era, marked by unprecedented challenges and energizing possibilities, took shape. For the United States, this new age would be characterized by a more assertive orientation toward the world, a transformation that would affect the lives of millions across the globe and, at the same time, reshape American domestic life. The postwar moment was replete with both irony and tragedy, as the United States, which had just won a world war by helping to vanquish horrific regimes in Europe and Asia, would soon believe it was more vulnerable than ever before.
But in late August, two weeks after the war ended, such things were far from everyone’s mind, as sixty members of an American military chorus performed for Richard Strauss, Germany’s most distinguished living composer, on the sprawling grounds of his Bavarian home. The chorus of the 102nd Infantry Division, established a few months earlier, consisted of American veterans of some of Europe’s bloodiest battles. The group was formed at the insistence of Major General Frank Keating, who had been impressed by a Russian army choir that had entertained his men. The members of the American choir were highly trained singers, including a sergeant who had once been a soloist with the Vienna Boys Choir. Billeted on a Danube steamer, the men not only performed for their division and other units, but they also made a number of recordings that were broadcast on American military radio. With the help of a former German diplomat, the visit with Strauss was arranged and the soldiers were granted an opportunity to perform several pieces for the esteemed musician. “It is a pleasure to hear such fine voices singing together,” he said. “We have missed it so much during the war.” At dinner that evening, Strauss shared with the men some of the challenges he had faced in the war, apparently to suggest—contrary to what many believed—that he had not been overly cooperative with the Nazi regime. When the time came to leave, Strauss shook hands all around, told the men he hoped the Americans would help invigorate music in postwar Germany, and gave the choir an autographed copy of one of his pieces. He also provided them with letters of introduction to important musical figures in Germany and Austria. The event surely engendered optimism that the postwar era would be characterized by harmony in every sense of the word.2
Back in the United States, there was a palpable sense that classical music might serve as a pathway to peace, as many musicians embraced the idea that their art could contribute to a more cooperative world. Nevertheless, controversies erupted over musicians whose commitment to humane values was thought dubious because of their wartime activities. Thus, even after the Nazi threat was gone, the prospect of certain artists performing in America, particularly those believed to have supported or sympathized with Hitler, cast a pall over the music scene.
For some in the United States, especially Jewish musicians, listeners, and organizations, Nazism and the Holocaust were—quite understandably—synonymous. As a result, there was little inclination to behave magnanimously toward those linked to the Hitler regime. Indeed, the murder of six million Jews made tolerance unlikely and forgiveness impossible. Given what Nazism had perpetrated across Europe, many believed that, in dealing with those whose wartime behavior was suspect, there was no room for compromise. Moreover, as America’s distress over totalitarianism intensified, a development driven by the fear of Soviet communism (a subject to be discussed), the tendency to equate Stalin’s rule with Hitler’s made it important to grapple with the meaning of Nazism. As a result, concerns persisted about Nazi Germany and what it represented.3
In reflecting on Nazism’s impact on the postwar American music world, one encounters a question Americans had grappled with for decades: Should artists who embraced antidemocratic ideas or consorted with toxic regimes be banished? This question emerged with considerable urgency in stormy postwar debates involving Wilhelm Furtwängler, pianist Walter Gieseking, soprano Kirsten Flagstad, and conductor Herbert von Karajan. Not surprisingly, their alleged wartime ties to Nazism and plans to perform in postwar America created a fevered response among musicians, listeners, government officials, and thousands of ordinary citizens who believed their presence on US soil would contaminate American society. In these postwar musical controversies, one sees—yet again—how the tension between musical universalism and musical nationalism bubbled to the surface of American life.
With the start of the concert season just after the war, ensembles across the country celebrated, often by playing German music, especially Beethoven. In Boston, Koussevitzky and his orchestra dedicated the opening concerts, according to a short note in the program, to “the peace of the world and to the heroism which had made it possible,” offering works by Beethoven and Aaron Copland.4 Writing in the Boston Herald, music critic Rudolph Elie, recently back from the Pacific where he had worked as a war correspondent, described the “sense of . . . thanksgiving” that peace had brought to those attending the concert. The world had survived the war and had “emerged unscathed,” Elie noted, a bizarre observation in the wake of a conflagration that had killed tens of millions and laid waste to vast swaths of the globe. Elie did remind his readers that many who never returned would love to have been in Symphony Hall for the opening concert.5 According to the Globe, in wartime, the orchestra had enhanced the life of the city, and in peacetime, it would continue its salutary mission, transcending the barriers of “nationality, race, color, [and] creed.” After all, art was “universal.”6
That same week, Chicagoans also heard Beethoven as part of the postwar victory theme. Désiré Defauw led performances of five national anthems, allowing the audience to savor the patriotic airs of America’s key allies. With the flags of the Soviet Union, Britain, France, China, and the United States clustered at the center of the stage, the Chicago Symphony played each country’s anthem, with “The Star-Spangled Banner” concluding the tribute.7 In Minneapolis, the theme was “Victory,” as a full house of concertgoers was treated to a program, the centerpiece of which was Beethoven’s Fifth, led by Dimitri Mitropoulos. An appropriate choice, the Fifth had been deployed throughout the war as a symbol of victory. The evening was also notable for a rousing performance of “Anchors Aweigh.”8
In Cleveland, Beethoven’s Fifth was also featured on the local orchestra’s opening concerts, led by Erich Leinsdorf. A
ccording to the concert program, the performance was “dedicated to heroism that has brought victory and restored peace to the world.”9 And fittingly, Maestro Leinsdorf, an Austrian emigré who had served in the US Army, was returning to the podium from his wartime service.10
Throughout the country, a sense of triumph and accomplishment permeated the concert hall, which no doubt reflected the feelings of joy, achievement, love of country, and optimism that washed over the landscape.11 Whether one was inside or outside the auditorium, for a time at least, the sense of “grand expectations” was pervasive.12
At this hopeful moment, one hears musicians expressing the universalist idea that classical music could help in constructing a more cooperative world. Speaking at the convocation of the 1945–1946 academic year, the composer Howard Hanson, head of the estimable Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, observed that men were physically and spiritually tired, and hungered not just for peace, but for beauty. To his aspiring musicians, he suggested that music, which possessed “powerful social implications,” could influence “the course of human history.”13
Nor was Hanson alone in arguing that music could affect human relations and perhaps even the shape of international politics. Conductor Arthur Fiedler wedded the ratification of the United Nations Charter, approved by the US Senate in July 1945, to music’s power to advance the cause of international reconstruction. According to Fiedler, music recognized “no boundary lines of race or nation,” and as “the international language,” it could join all humanity in a feeling of brotherhood.14
From the postwar moment through the 1950s and beyond, members of the music community across America claimed that music could help transform relations among the world’s peoples.15 Musical America reminded its readers that music had helped win the war, and that it would now help secure the peace. According to the editors, music possessed the capacity to “establish basic sympathies and understandings.”16 No less optimistic about music’s restorative power were the editors of the Musical Courier, who claimed that improvements in travel meant the entire globe was now the “hunting ground for the artist.” And nothing was “more uniting than music.”17 In Los Angeles, the Times’ music editor Isabel Morse Jones wrote that it was essential for the United States to lead the way in “restoring” the civilizing impulses, and claimed music must become central to the “ethics” of the future.18
But less hopeful sentiments were in the air, and the nation’s political culture was not without its darker side, which the world of music also revealed. Before turning to the uproar caused by America’s unwelcome European visitors, one must touch on the relationship between Nazism and music in postwar Germany, where the US government, along with the British, French, and Soviet governments, decided it was necessary to purify that country’s cultural life of the toxins that remained from the Hitler years. As part of the “denazification” process, US officials sought to help rebuild the German classical music scene, the larger aim of which was to democratize America’s erstwhile foe. According to historian David Monod, US officials faced the problem of “what to do with an arts sector that had made peace” with a malevolent regime. Among the challenges American officials confronted in postwar Germany, Monod writes, was that of assessing “who was guilty and of what.”19
Discussion of this task began to appear in the American press in the summer of 1945 and continued for several months, as the public encountered the idea that the war’s end did not mean America’s responsibilities in Europe were over. A Washington Post editorial, “Muted Trumpets,” spoke of the American reform program, which sought to reorient German “esthetic” and “political attitudes,” particularly in the musical realm. Quoting from a US government document, the Post highlighted the decision to ban music that advanced “militaristic ideas” or was linked to the Nazi Party.20 That same summer, Newsweek readers pondered several stories concerning American control over music in Germany; the articles explored what would be played and who would be permitted to play it. The magazine quoted army officials who asserted with simplistic self-assurance, “We destroy only Nazi culture, not German culture.” Those same officials insisted they would approach the musical challenge with care. “We are not book burners.”21
Among the more thoughtful reflections on reconstructing German musical life was a piece by Paul Nettl, a Czech musicologist affiliated with New Jersey’s Westminster Choir College, who had lived in the United States for a dozen years. In a long letter to the New York Times, Nettl suggested the Germans must be reeducated by reminding them of the damage the Nazis had done in the musical realm. In Nettl’s judgment, every German should be made to recognize how absurd and pernicious were Nazi ideas about music, which had claimed that figures like Mozart and Beethoven were Nazism’s “musical precursors.” Equally preposterous was the idea that Wagner was the composer of “German blood and soil music,” who had pointed to the destiny of the German people. In fact, Nettl contended, Wagner had never embraced “anything remotely resembling Nazi ideas.” According to Nettl, the Americans should emphasize that the Germans had “betrayed” their most esteemed figures, especially their musicians.22
As part of America’s cultural reform mission, US-government panels in Germany investigated the Nazi-era activities of leading German musicians, Wilhelm Furtwängler foremost among them. The inquiry would assess musicians’ relations with the Hitler regime and decide whether and when they would be allowed to participate in Germany’s cultural life. In the spring of 1946, US authorities began legal proceedings involving Furtwängler, which led to two days of his direct testimony in December.
In “Music and Collaboration,” Life magazine offered a sympathetic portrait, informing readers that the conductor was a German patriot who was not obligated to leave the Third Reich, and that despite the regime’s policies, he had stayed in the hope that he could maintain German music’s “finest traditions.” In response to questions from a Life correspondent, the musician had claimed he had no sympathy for Nazism and emphasized his record of fighting to “protect” Jewish musicians in his homeland.23
The Furtwängler affair attracted widespread attention in the United States when the distinguished violinist Yehudi Menuhin expressed his support for the German. Menuhin said he hoped the Allied countries would allow Furtwängler to start performing again, a perspective that rested, he said, on the conductor’s wartime behavior. Menuhin, who was Jewish, observed that when conducting in Berlin, Furtwängler would not give the Nazi salute at concerts, and he retained the Jewish musicians in his orchestra “as long as he possibly could.” The American-born violinist also said the German had not accompanied the Berlin Philharmonic on tours outside Germany, an assertion that was inaccurate.24 In publishing Menuhin’s comments, Time supplied readers with some context on the Furtwängler matter, noting that the allegedly benign conductor, who had fled to Switzerland in the final months of the war, had encountered serious problems there. Two of Furtwängler’s wartime concerts in Zurich had been cancelled by the local council and another appearance in a Swiss town had precipitated large protests.25
Menuhin’s plea to reinstate Furtwängler resulted in a rebuke from Ira A. Hirschmann, the vice president of Bloomingdale’s and a member of the War Refugee Board, who claimed Furtwängler was an “official of the Third Reich” and a Nazi. While the second statement was certainly not accurate, Hirschmann, a key figure in opposing Furtwängler’s 1936 appointment to lead the New York Philharmonic, garnered considerable attention for his incendiary rhetoric. “We are outraged at the very thought of this Nazi invading America,” he snapped. Hirschmann linked the conductor to the excesses of the Hitler regime and, referring to the ongoing Nuremberg trial of Nazi leaders, said it was “incredible,” with Furtwängler’s employers on trial for mass butchery, that there should be any effort to exonerate “one of their conspirators.” The American people will not allow the nation’s air to be polluted by a musician who was completely devoted to serving the Nazi regime, Hirschmann wrote.
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To document Furtwängler’s stance, Hirschmann had provided the press with the incriminating photograph of Furtwängler bowing from the stage to the Nazi leadership. According to Hirschmann, the picture proved Furtwängler’s devotion to the Nazi cause.27
In the face of this diatribe, Menuhin did not remain silent. Musicians in Berlin and Paris had told him that Furtwängler had helped protect Jews, and he made clear that he had never suggested the conductor should come to the United States. He could accomplish more in Germany.28 Pointing to the “prejudice” Hirschmann brought to the matter, Menuhin defended himself: “Surely my name and position and the causes I have fought for should put me beyond suspicion of trying to bring a Nazi into the United States.”29
Others have surveyed the tale of Furtwängler’s situation in postwar Germany;30 what is worth noting is the extent to which the story filtered back to the United States.31 As 1946 came to an end, Furtwängler was called to testify before the Berlin Denazification Board for Creative Artists. Between one hundred and one hundred fifty people filled a small room, a group that included American journalists and a large contingent of Germans who seemed to support the musician. Covered in some detail in the American press, the tribunal examined the conductor’s attitudes toward the Hitler regime and Furtwängler’s activities during the Nazi era.32
American readers learned that Furtwängler seemed “nervous, irritable, and unsure of himself,” and answered the charges against him with inadequate “excuses or explanations.”33 At one point, he offered the curious defense that he was “no politician, but only an artist,” adding, “Actually I am no more guilty than a potato dealer who continued to sell potatoes in the Third Reich.” As for why he had continued to lead the Berlin orchestra on foreign tours, Furtwängler claimed he had not done this for propaganda purposes. “I wanted to demonstrate by these tours that art was above politics.” Nor was he responsible for the Nazi regime’s use of the tours to advance its political ends. Indeed, he insisted, “I couldn’t have done anything else about it. Otherwise I would have had to leave Germany.” And that was the essence of the problem, for according to his critics, by deciding to stay, the maestro had offered implicit support for the regime. But the conductor saw things differently. While Nazi leaders told him he was free to leave the country, he was warned that he would not be permitted to return.34 American readers also encountered Furtwängler’s claim that he had been a “victim of lies in the world press” and had never been an “ambassador of Nazi culture.”35