In a statement a few days later, the conductor again defended himself in the American press. Surprised by the list of musicians who wanted to keep him from performing in America, he asserted, when the Nazi regime was persecuting artists, he had done his “best to help them in the cause of the international solidarity of all artists.” Yet today, “artists . . . are persecuting me.” In one of the maestro’s more revealing observations on why he had remained in wartime Germany, Furtwängler contended that some musicians would not work with him today for but one reason: “I fought Hitler in his own country instead of fighting him from abroad.” Beyond the extraordinary claim that he had fought Hitler from inside Germany, Furtwängler also said he had saved the lives of several Jewish musicians or their wives, naming two people and suggesting there were others from the orchestras of Berlin and Vienna whom he had rescued. As for the Jewish organizations that condemned him, they were “wrongly informed.”73
Responding to reports that the orchestra might rescind its offer, some spoke up on Furtwängler’s behalf, most notably Yehudi Menuhin, who risked the wrath of his colleagues by publicly rejecting what he believed were the calumnies aimed at the German maestro. From Rome, Menuhin contended that the criticism of Furtwängler was off the mark. Having recently recorded the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Furtwängler in Lucerne, the violinist claimed that of “all German musicians,” the conductor had “put up the most resistance to the Nazis.” He had never joined the party and had done his best to protect Jewish musicians in the Berlin Philharmonic, which was true. And in a curious formulation, Menuhin observed that Furtwängler had behaved “as well as could be expected of a man who is entirely German, who is a good German in the best sense of the word.” (Despite what Menuhin believed, historian Michael Kater has written that Furtwängler, in acting “on behalf” of people in Germany, had helped a wide range of figures, including Jews, opponents of the Nazi regime, anti-Semites, musicians sympathetic to the Nazis, and, in some cases, Nazis. In Kater’s estimation, the conductor was no “altruist,” but a “man obsessed with personal connections,” who needed to be “at the center of things.”)74
Writing to the Chicago Daily News, Robert Stelton, a local resident, supported bringing Furtwängler to Chicago, arguing that he was defending not the man but a principle long honored in the United States. All men are innocent until proven guilty; and in this instance, the German musician had been cleared by a denazification board. As for figures like Rubinstein, Horowitz, and Milstein, they should keep in mind how “prejudice, intolerance, and injustice have operated against those of their religion.” They should be the very people who cry out “for law and order, for justice.”75
One irascible Chicagoan argued that the true music lover “submits no protests as to who is conducting, who composed the score, or who is playing the solo in regard to their background, creed or color.” With sarcasm dripping from his pen, the correspondent declared that Furtwängler, while on the podium, was not “going to don a Nazi uniform and wear a swastika on his arm.”76 Another letter writer, a self-described “German-Jewish refugee,” backed Furtwängler, though denazification was less important than were his artistic gifts. By condemning Furtwängler, the writer told Tribune readers, people were replicating Nazi policies, such as “burning books and banning teachers.”77
The case also captured public attention outside Chicago. From Southern California, Mabel Ostbye wrote to the Los Angeles Times, rejecting the opposition of America’s leading musicians. Figures like Rubinstein and Lily Pons who had criticized Furtwängler knew nothing of his “secret convictions.” Ostbye was certain he had protected Jews and their families.78 Expressing support, if morbidly, a New York Herald Tribune reader suggested that the hundreds of thousands of Americans who had died in the struggle against Nazism would not favor the hatred and revanche undergirding the opposition to Furtwängler. According to Joseph O’Donohue, the “wounds of war were slowly healing,” and those fighting against Furtwängler were “perpetuat[ing] hatred” and hindering America’s desire to do good in the world.79
From overseas, members of the Vienna Philharmonic, a group with a problematic wartime record of its own, cabled the Chicago Symphony and begged its president to support Furtwängler against the “slander campaign against our master conductor . . . who in most difficult times has made personal sacrifices for us.”80 The Berlin Philharmonic also contacted the Chicagoans to express “astonish[ment] about the negative attitude” toward the conductor. They were indebted to him for his actions between 1933 and 1945.81
Most memorably, a poignant letter reached the orchestra from Prague, penned by a Serena Krafft, who wrote that she had just heard on the radio “that some action is being done by the Jews in Chicago with the view to hinder Mr. Furtwängler’s engagement.” Notwithstanding the anti-Semitism embedded in this characterization of local developments, Krafft identified herself as the wife of a former member of the Berlin Philharmonic who had “not returned from the Auschwitz concentration camp.” As few connected with the Berlin orchestra now remembered the prewar years, she wrote, “I feel myself obliged to write to you about Mr. Furtwängler.” Before the war, Krafft recalled, his behavior was in “no way antisemitic. I know for sure that [he] was doing his best to help Jewish musicians in his Orchestra during the hard time of the nazi regime.” She recounted a story in which Furtwängler “engaged the Jew Simon Goldberg” as the orchestra’s first concertmaster, though at the time “Jewish members were obliged to leave their permanent job” in the ensemble. But the conductor “did his best to carry through that the Jewish musicians could stay.” And even after they left the orchestra, he “kept on trying to get at least some material help for them.” Finally, Krafft told Chicago officials, “I do not believe that Dr. Furtwängler changed his standpoint and behavior during the time I was in the concentration camp.”82
In assessing the case, the Chicago Tribune published a piece by Sigrid Schultz, who had been the paper’s Berlin correspondent before and early in the war. Schultz recounted stories suggesting Furtwängler had subtly pushed back against the Nazi regime, claiming he had not kowtowed to Hitler. Moreover, Schultz wrote, unlike many wartime Germans, Furtwängler never argued that Nazism was not as bad as it appeared. No one who knew him in those years would have thought he supported the government. On one occasion, Tribune readers learned, an unwell Furtwängler called for his doctor, who had been placed in a concentration camp for his anti-Nazi sentiments. He could not conduct otherwise, he said, and his doctor was released, if only for a short time. “To Americans who do not know terror,” Schultz explained, someone who requests care from a doctor arrested by the Nazis might not seem courageous, but in “Germany people hastened to forget victims because it was dangerous to know any one in a concentration camp.”83
Then, on January 14, the disturbing wartime photo of Furtwängler and the Nazi leadership appeared in the Chicago Daily News.84 Five days later, the newspaper published a brief story, with a Geneva dateline, stating that Furtwängler had cabled the symphony board to say that he was withdrawing from his fall engagement. In a blunt and unrepentant message infused with considerable disappointment and more than a little anger, he claimed the American musicians protesting against him had based their position on reports that the “official propaganda in Nazi Germany chose to publish about me, and not on truth. It is inconceivable,” Furtwängler wrote, that “artists should perpetuate hatred indefinitely,” while the whole world desired peace. He would spare Chicago’s orchestra “further difficulties.”85
The news received wide national coverage. A lengthy piece in the Tribune traced the entire affair, including the thoughts of Edward Ryerson, the board president who said, if a touch misleadingly, that the orchestra felt it would be unfair “to ask such a distinguished musician to appear under adverse circumstances.” With resistance to the appointment rising, Ryerson claimed, the orchestra had “found clear evidence of a well organized opposition” from the public and in the “music communi
ty.”86 While Ryerson said he had known the appointment would cause “some opposition and controversy,” he had hoped America’s triumph in the war would have created “a world of tolerance.” But the Furtwängler saga suggested otherwise, he believed. Such tolerance, among the public and some leading artists, had not yet been achieved. The nation’s victory remained incomplete.87
This reaction to the denouement suggests Ryerson’s inability to grasp the degree to which Furtwängler’s arrival in Chicago would prove deeply troubling to members of the local community. By claiming the matter revealed intolerance on the part of Furtwängler’s opponents, Ryerson betrayed an unsettling failure to empathize with those for whom the wounds of war had not yet healed. Moreover, his claim that the victory achieved in 1945 remained incomplete because certain people were not yet prepared to welcome to the United States a celebrated artist who had chosen to work in Nazi Germany throughout the war displayed a disquieting unwillingness to consider the moral questions raised by Furtwängler’s wartime behavior. And the obvious but crucial fact that the defeat of Germany had occurred less than four years earlier, barely time for the war’s torment to fade, makes Ryerson’s response still more troubling.
Nevertheless, some shared Ryerson’s view. Among those dismayed by the end of the Furtwängler experiment was Yehudi Menuhin, who lashed out at his colleagues in the music world. “I have never encountered a more brazen attitude than that of three or four of the ringleaders in their frantic and furious efforts to exclude an illustrious colleague from their happy hunting grounds. I consider this behavior beneath contempt,” he said, implying that the musicians who had opposed Furtwängler’s performing in America did so to gain a professional advantage.88
Another supporter, Klaus Goetze, writing to the orchestra from Cambridge, Massachusetts, asked that his name be added to those who opposed the decision to cancel Furtwängler’s invitation. It was clear that Furtwängler’s artistic credentials were not deficient. As for the “probity of his character,” Goetze pointed out that the conductor had been cleared of charges by American military authorities. The “only fault” seemed to be that Furtwängler was a German. Apparently, Goetze observed, it made little difference that Furtwängler had been conducting in London and Paris, where the war’s impact is “more keenly felt than in Chicago.” Embracing a universalist perspective, Goetze wondered whether it could be “said of us Americans that we make the one truly international language, that of music, the football of political issues.”89
No Chicagoan, or, for that matter, anyone in the United States, would again hear a Furtwängler concert in an American concert hall. In announcing the news to subscribers, Edward Ryerson expressed his disappointment while asserting he had faith that someday soon artists and scientists of any “nationality” would have the opportunity to inspire the public.90
Ryerson was in touch with Furtwängler, penning a long letter in early February, which assessed the affair in the most heartening way he could. He told him that the orchestra had hoped the commitment between conductor and ensemble would have deepened as the years passed, and he painted a positive picture of the situation in Chicago, which suggested that many had opposed those who objected to the offer. “I am satisfied that this reaction will continue to grow,” he wrote, “and that more and more people who are honest in their opinions will come to realize that you have been unjustly attacked and that the future of music in this country [has been] seriously damaged.” Whether Ryerson genuinely believed that support for the conductor would grow is difficult to say, but to convince the maestro, he enclosed numerous press clippings intended to demonstrate the allegedly widespread enthusiasm for the musician. The orchestra had sent out a statement on the affair to thousands of subscribers and supporters, he said, which reflected well on the conductor. And Ryerson attempted to reassure Furtwängler that his reputation in America was intact. “I think you should feel reasonably well satisfied that the final handling of the matter was done in a way to redound very greatly to your credit and has improved your general public relationship rather than having injured it.”91 This, too, was wishful thinking.
Writing to Ryerson in early February, Furtwängler spoke of those who sought to portray him as being “guilty at any price.” He mentioned that the investigation of him, carried out “carefully and thoroughly,” had validated his acquittal. The conductor requested copies of everything written about him in the Chicago newspapers, because, he wrote, “I would . . . very much like to know what was said about me.”92 A few weeks later, the orchestra received a letter from Furtwängler’s aide, which noted with some candor that the “cuttings we have received were of great interest but we have the feeling that it is more or less a choice of favorable ones. Have no negative letters been published?”93 And to be sure, the opposition had been intense. As one group, the Society for the Prevention of World War III, stated in congratulating the orchestra for cancelling the invitation, “We are confident that this action will be supported by all fair-minded Americans who have been aware of Furtwaengler’s perversion of culture when he served the Nazis.” The New York–based organization lauded the orchestra’s administration for its patriotism, calling it a credit to those “who cherish the fine traditions of music which were besmirched by the Nazis.”94
Whatever Edward Ryerson thought about the need for tolerance, and despite his comforting words to Wilhelm Furtwängler, the toxicity of the Nazi ideology continued to distress those who were unwilling to sever the connection between art and politics. Though Nazi Germany had disappeared in the spring of 1945, the malevolent character of Nazism had impressed itself upon the American mind, and the war’s end did not mean its effect had evaporated.
A self-described Jewish subscriber wrote to the Chicago Daily News in January 1949 to share his thoughts on the Furtwängler affair. He acknowledged it was difficult to be unbiased, particularly since he was a “member of that religious group which suffered most under Hitler. . . . But where in the history of the world has a people had such a reason to fear and distrust?” More chillingly, in assessing the view of those who had supported the conductor based on the “sanctity of art,” he declared, “a knife wielded by an artist will cut as surely as that wielded by a butcher.”95
Wilhelm Furtwängler’s actions engendered a range of feelings, not all of which emerged at the time of the Chicago episode. Indeed, soon after the tribunal had acquitted Furtwängler of Nazi activities in 1946, a genuinely illuminating piece appeared in the New York Times, in which journalist Delbert Clark rebuked the conductor for his behavior. As Clark asserted, “Nazi activity [was] punishable under the [tribunal’s] rules,” but lacking a “moral sense” was no crime. As the Times’ reporter acknowledged, based on the evidentiary rules demanded by an American court, it was “more than probable” that Furtwängler would have been acquitted. But throughout the case, Clark observed, the conductor’s attitude was hardly that of an “opponent of Nazism.” When the trial ended, Clark reported, a “self-confident” Furtwängler had stood up and proclaimed, “I don’t regret having done this for Germans and for Germany.” Many in the small chamber applauded, which the conductor “acknowledged with several bows as in the old days.”96
To some in the United States, that 1946 declaration made clear that Furtwängler harbored no regrets about his behavior during the Hitler era, which is not the same as saying that he supported Nazism. (The evidence indicates he did not.) But whatever Furtwängler hoped to accomplish by remaining in Hitler’s Germany, there was something ignoble about his actions, for he allowed a depraved regime to use his undeniable artistic gifts in an attempt to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the world. While that effort did not succeed, a convincing case can be made that Furtwängler was complicit in the German government’s plan to burnish its image, a position he could have avoided had he left the country and continued his career elsewhere.
There was, in Furtwängler’s stance, a dogged consistency. Whether one considers his views before or after the war, his p
erspective did not waver. As American readers learned from a piece published in The Commonweal during the war, Furtwängler was convinced he could continue to perform in Nazi Germany, a land “where murder and force prevailed . . . as if all that did not concern him.” According to the author of that piece, music critic Max Graf, an Austrian refugee who had come to the United States and was teaching in New York, he had asked Furtwängler in 1937 why he had remained in Germany. “After all, I am a German” was the reply. Furtwängler believed, Graf wrote, that his duty was to support his country’s musical culture, though Graf claimed Furtwängler could not comprehend the impossibility of keeping culture alive in a “barbaric land.”97 After 1945, Furtwängler’s outlook remained unchanged. But for many Americans, the notion that an artist could remain outside politics, especially when plying his craft under a regime that did not recognize a boundary between art and politics, was unacceptable. That conviction kept Wilhelm Furtwängler from raising his baton in Chicago.
• • •
The capacity of Nazism to inflame political passions in postwar America appeared once more when pianist Walter Gieseking became entwined in the web of the defunct and discredited ideology. While the Gieseking episode of 1949, which overlapped with the Furtwängler story, generated less distress than did the conductor’s saga, it illustrates how the specter of Nazism haunted postwar political culture.
Born in 1895 in Lyon, France, and trained in Germany where he moved with his family as a teenager, Gieseking (who had served in the German army in World War I) first appeared on the American concert scene in 1926. One of the most esteemed pianists of his generation, Gieseking was especially admired for his interpretations of French music, though critics also acclaimed his Beethoven.98
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