Dangerous Melodies

by Jonathan Rosenberg

  Shortly after the end of World War II, American military authorities prohibited Gieseking from playing in the American-occupied zone in Germany. The restriction hinged on his close ties to the Nazi regime and his decision to remain in Germany and continue to perform there throughout the war. According to a lengthy 1948 article in the New York Times by the Berlin-based Delbert Clark, the military believed that Gieseking had willingly given his “talents to the furtherance of Hitlerism” during the war, and unlike Furtwängler, who had long denied supporting the regime, it was said that Gieseking harbored no reservations about having done so. The pianist said he perceived no fundamental principle at stake in the war, “except perhaps anti-communism,” and had asserted it was “difficult to tell” who had started it.99 The ban on Gieseking lasted until February 1947, at which point he was permitted to resume performing, though the US military offered no public explanation as to why.

  Walter Gieseking

  Thus, when arrangements began in 1948 for the pianist’s 1949 American tour, it was not surprising that passions flared. In New York, the street outside the Fifth Avenue office of concert promoter and Gieseking manager Charles L. Wagner was the scene of picketing by the left-wing American Veterans Committee, which demanded that the pianist cancel his tour. While only two picketers were permitted, they passed out a thousand copies of the Times article chronicling Gieseking’s alleged wartime transgressions. According to Wagner, the dismayed promoter, “Gieseking is one of the finest characters I’ve ever met . . . and was thoroughly Americanized.” Nothing had been proven against him, he said, noting the pianist had often toured the United States. Wagner also asserted that he would not represent him if it could be shown that he had “even the faintest taint of Nazism about him.” The picketers continued handing out the Times article, at the bottom of which a question appeared: “Do you still want to hear him again?”100

  A few months later, critic Irving Kolodin penned a trenchant piece on the merit of allowing artists with dubious pasts to perform in the United States. Figures like Gieseking and Furtwängler now ask us, Kolodin wrote, to “receive them in the name of the ‘universal language’ of art.” But the critic wondered, “What service to that powerful concept did they render when the time came for them to stand up and be counted as men?” There were many who decided to leave, Kolodin contended, using the era’s gendered language to praise Thomas Mann and the Busch brothers, along with Toscanini, who had stood up to Italian fascism. Such artists did the “manly thing, as men, regardless of any influence on their status as professionals.”101 Kolodin wondered if our devotion to art was so great that we jettisoned our principles. Figures like Gieseking and Furtwängler were kept from us when under the control of Hitler. Surely, we could now “live without them.”102

  Still, the pianist arrived in America for his lengthy 1949 tour two days before his first recital scheduled for January 24, at a sold-out Carnegie Hall. (His final performance was set for early April.) Upon reaching New York, Gieseking answered reporters’ questions about his activities in Nazi Germany. “The only appearance I made before Adolf Hitler was at a public concert in Berlin in 1936,” he said. “I never played privately for any Nazi official, and I only met Goebbels once—at a reception for German musicians.” Asked about government backing for his performances, Gieseking claimed, “I never played in any concert sponsored by the German Cultural Ministry,” adding, “I played more concerts for Allied soldiers than I did for Germans.”103

  Several organizations expressed opposition to Gieseking’s upcoming New York appearance. In response, the president of Carnegie Hall, Robert Simon, explained that the auditorium did not select or engage performers, but leased the hall to artists or managers who wished to rent it. The hall did not censor events, except when directed to do so by government agencies. Speaking for Gieseking, a representative stated that the pianist had been cleared of the “suspicion” of having performed in foreign countries during the Nazi era. Moreover, after the war, the local denazification board in Wiesbaden, where Gieseking lived, had not tried him because it was understood that “he was not a Nazi.” Having known the pianist for twenty-five years, Gieseking’s manager Charles Wagner lauded him as “a man of brilliance and integrity, a giant among pianists and an expert on butterflies.”104

  Although Gieseking’s scheduled appearance had led to substantial opposition from Jewish organizations, veterans’ groups, and artists like Rubinstein and Horowitz, it seemed the recital would go on as planned. While noting that the case was being considered and that the pianist was under the supervision of his office, an immigration official said no hearing was contemplated.105

  But less than two hours before Gieseking was scheduled to perform, it was announced that there would be no recital, due to a US government decision to prohibit him from taking the stage. In the late afternoon, agents of the Immigration Service had detained the pianist after initiating a preliminary investigation into his background, looking specifically at allegations that he had a pro-Nazi record and had collaborated with the Nazi Party before and during the war. According to press reports, protests against Gieseking had emerged in Washington (including concern among some in Congress) and in other cities where he was scheduled to play. On the morning of the opening day of his tour, a Department of Justice investigation had begun in New York (led by the Immigration Service), which heard evidence from representatives of several organizations about the musician’s activities during the Nazi era.106

  Among the charges against Gieseking were these: He had applied for membership in a Nazi-affiliated cultural organization in 1933; he had tried to convince an anti-Nazi conductor in the United States to soften his antagonism toward Hitler before the war; he had played before Hitler and other Nazi leaders; he had performed in Turkey on a cultural mission intended to gain support for an alliance with Germany; and he had dropped certain composers from his concert programs in accord with Nazi demands. Consequently, immigration officials determined it was necessary to hold a formal hearing to determine whether he was an “undesirable alien,” a process that could take several weeks. Rejecting this plan, Gieseking left the country on January 25, with his manager claiming this was not an admission of guilt but a practical choice made by a musician who preferred not to waste his time in the United States when he could continue his career elsewhere.107

  Just after 7:00 on the evening of the Carnegie Hall recital, the hall’s management received the unwelcome news about the cancellation, which was conveyed to a crowd that included a couple hundred picketers from the Jewish War Veterans, the American Veterans Committee, and several other groups that had gathered to protest Gieseking’s appearance. Upon hearing of the cancellation, an impromptu victory celebration began and the parade of gleeful protesters and others in the crowd began singing the national anthem. An array of placards could be seen among the throng: “GIESEKING WILL PLAY A FUNERAL DIRGE FOR 6,000,000 JEWS TONIGHT” and “WE FOUGHT THEM, DON’T YOU PAY THEM.”108

  The crowd on West Fifty-Seventh Street continued to grow, with estimates ranging up to five thousand, including nearly three thousand audience members who had planned to attend the concert. Skirmishes broke out between those supporting the cancellation and those opposed. The police did their best to quell the fistfights, which kept the situation from spinning out of control. One of the evening’s more memorable sights was that of a man walking up and down waving a rosary over the heads of the picketers. His task, he said, was to represent “Christianity.” After two hours of clamor and excitement, the crowd thinned, the handbills were swept into the street, and by 9:00 P.M., the scene was quiet, though the story would attract widespread attention across the country.109

  As newspaper readers learned, after arriving at the airport the next morning, Gieseking had a short hearing, which, according to one report, “formed the basis for an exclusion order.” The pianist did not deny the evidence presented against him and refused to appeal the decision.110 He shared bitter words with journalists at Id
lewild Field. Complaining that he had been treated harshly, Gieseking was upset by the unfair way American authorities had handled his case. “Everywhere in Europe they ask for concerts and I give them. This is the first time in my life I have not been treated as an artist should be treated.” He then offered an odd and altogether dubious observation: “If I had joined the German Army and killed 100 American soldiers I would be a hero.” He was glad to be going to France, he said, where there was “more artistic freedom.” Rather than trying to clear his name, which could take months, he had decided to leave. “I did not want to go to Ellis Island.”111 When asked if he was disappointed that he would not be returning home with a “pocketful” of dollars, Gieseking snapped, “I can make more money in Europe.” “More?” a doubting reporter asked. “Well, enough, anyway,” he retorted.112 In a news story that achieved national prominence, readers learned that the only moment of levity that morning occurred when a breathless bellhop squeezed through the crowd of reporters to present the artist with his laundry, prompting the German to observe that the “laundry service here is better than anything else.” (The paper made a point of reporting that he did not tip the bellhop.)113 As he boarded his plane, Gieseking was asked how it felt to leave America. “It is not fit to print,” he snapped.114

  Despite the long flight, the pianist’s anger had not subsided when his plane reached Orly airfield in Paris, where he spoke of Furtwängler’s “good judgment” in deciding not to fulfill his Chicago engagement (even if that was not exactly what had happened). He noted how a “few rabid anti-German columnists and demagogs [sic]” were able to “make life in the United States impossible for any one who remained in Germany during the war.” And in one of the more memorable lines uttered during the affair, which revealed his failure to imagine that artists and other leading figures possessed ethical responsibilities because of their positions, Gieseking asserted that his American opponents seemed to think that “70 million Germans should have evacuated Germany and left Hitler there alone.”115 The record is silent as to whether anyone pointed out that not all Germans had been blessed with such options. Nor did Gieseking’s departure end the conversation about his behavior during the Hitler years.

  One day after the Carnegie Hall cancellation, three pro-Gieseking picketers outside the auditorium carried placards reading “AWAKE, THE WAR’S OVER. STOP THE HATE”; “MR. GIESEKING, WE TRUE AMERICANS APOLOGIZE FOR THE WRONG DONE YOU”; and “MR. GIESEKING, DON’T BE RUN OFF BY A FALSE MINORITY. COME BACK TO PLAY.”116 But such views would be counterbalanced by the response of those thrilled by his expulsion. Indeed, in the wake of his departure, a multitude of voices was heard, as musicians, columnists, newspaper subscribers, and religious figures weighed in on Gieseking’s character and responsibility as an artist, and on the decision to expel him.

  Most outspoken was Arthur Rubinstein, who responded to the charge that America harbored an anti-Gieseking cabal by explaining that he had acted independently. “I . . . will not associate in any way with a Nazi,” he asserted. With “typical hauteur, Gieseking, himself, had told me in 1938 that he was a Nazi.” Needing no further convincing, Rubinstein said he had given concert managers a choice: “Gieseking or me.” He had done the same regarding Furtwängler. Considering the two, Rubinstein suggested he would have ignored their behavior had they offered “even the slightest evidence that they deplored their association with Nazism.” But neither had done so. They had expressed no “regret [or] sorrow . . . at the havoc wrought upon millions.” Tried in courts that had looked for an “overt act to establish their criminality,” Furtwängler and Gieseking were found innocent, Rubinstein observed. And “perhaps in a legal sense” this was true, but on moral grounds, Rubinstein contended, both had failed.117

  Columnists pondered the relationship between art and politics, at times colorfully. In his popular Daily Mirror gossip column, Walter Winchell referred to the “internationally famous” Walter Gieseking, who would be playing at “Carnazi Heil (where else?),” and examined—and rejected—the claim that Gieseking’s wartime background was benign. “This pianazi” was guilty of various transgressions during the Hitler era, Winchell asserted.118 More-thoughtful reflections on Gieseking appeared, including a column in The Nation by music critic B. H. Haggin, which imaginatively considered whether it was appropriate to turn one’s back on good art because the artist was not a good man. One should not reject outright the work of an artist who was in some way flawed, though Haggin said he would choose not to “accept personal association” with a bad man who had produced good art. Gieseking’s wartime behavior would have kept Haggin from interacting with him personally, or from attending a concert, which might suggest “approval” of the pianist. But listening to Gieseking’s recordings Haggin felt was fine, as that allowed one to appreciate his artistry without sanctioning his past behavior.119

  Writing for the New York Sun, Irving Kolodin examined how best to understand Gieseking’s actions. Appearing two days before the Carnegie Hall cancellation, the article reflected upon the oft-heard notion that “great art should be above politics,” an idea Kolodin evaluated by offering a direct, if historically inaccurate, answer: “May we patiently repeat that it always was, until the Nazis put them indissolubly together.” The journalist argued that an artist is not simply an artist. “He is a symbol of the background which produced him and the people who revere him.”120

  Not everyone favored expelling the pianist, with some suggesting the country would be better served if it had allowed him to share his artistic vision. Forgiveness was the theme of the Reverend Donald Harrington’s sermon at the Community Church of New York, in which the minister declared the time had come to “heal the wounds” that continued to “rend the body of mankind.” Calling Gieseking a regular German, whose vanity drove him to seek the praise of the German people and the Hitler regime, Harrington acknowledged that the musician had not fought against “tyranny and mass murder” when doing so would have meant a “concentration camp.” In a burst of myopic reasoning, Harrington observed that Gieseking was as “vain and cowardly” as were nearly all men, “whether German or American, Christian or Jew.” The mass protests against the pianist had revived resentment, and some were angered, Harrington claimed, because a small number had denied the rest the opportunity to hear Gieseking “not preach Nazism but play the piano.”121

  The passion aroused by the Gieseking affair spilled onto the letters page of newspapers and magazines, where readers pondered the relationship between art and politics. The New York Herald Tribune published numerous letters on the decision to prohibit the performance. Edith Talcott Prescott noted that concertgoers who had wished to hear Gieseking were motivated by one sentiment: “We want what we want when we want it.” But as Prescott reminded readers, countless families no longer had the chance to “hear the music of a son’s or father’s spoken word.” Nor would they hear the “step on the stair,” or the “joyous boyish noise of that high school kid.”122 Another reader, Norman Greene, was troubled by those who had disparaged Gieseking’s opponents by calling them “un-American and un-democratic” because they had worked to keep him off the stage. Since when was it “un-American” to engage in “peaceful picketing?” Greene asked. As for those who refused to perform with Gieseking or Furtwängler, there was nothing un-American about their unwillingness to appear with a man who had failed to “protest the murder of millions.” Finally, Greene lobbed an indictment at the German people, who did “nothing to stop the massacres . . . carried out in their name.” America’s crime would be “still greater if we are too prone to forgive and forget.”123

  But Gieseking had his supporters among Herald Tribune readers, one of whom claimed that, given the “peaceful” mission that had brought him to the United States, his treatment had been “un-American.” According to Alfred Fitzpatrick, many had wanted to hear him, and in a thinly veiled anti-Semitic reference, he pointed to the “vociferous minority, always careful to underscore discrimination against themsel
ves,” while failing to perceive their own behavior as “discriminatory.”124

  Sharing readers’ views on the Gieseking affair, The Nation published some unusually thoughtful letters on both sides of the issue in January 1949, which suggest the wounds of Nazism continued to arouse intense emotion. Writing from Beverly Hills a few weeks before Gieseking arrived in the United States, Lawrence Morton contended that Gieseking should dedicate the remainder of his life to rebuilding what “Hitler had destroyed.” Morton lamented the creative careers ruined because of “racial impurity” or opposition to Hitler. Let Gieseking work to revive the reputations or fortunes of such figures, through all-Schoenberg, all-Bartók, or all-Mendelssohn recitals offered to the German people. It was not clear, he said, that the West had experienced “cultural decay” because Gieseking had been absent from concert life. With biting sarcasm, Morton wrote that a man so committed to his art that “he never developed a sense of political responsibility, would not dream of playing just for money.” Perhaps he should announce that the proceeds from his concerts would go to the “families of artists who died in Buchenwald” or to reconstructing auditoriums German bombers had destroyed. While it might not be possible to ascertain exactly the extent of Gieseking’s guilt, Morton suggested, we know he was not completely innocent. Maybe he should stay home.125

  The impassioned discourse caused by Gieseking’s aborted 1949 trip, and the allegations that he had supported the Nazi regime, did not represent the last time he would confront public animosity in postwar America. Four years later, after touring Japan and Canada, he returned to New York for a Carnegie Hall recital in April 1953; hundreds marched outside the auditorium. In the weeks before the event, it became clear that some New Yorkers remained outraged at the prospect of a Gieseking performance.126 An official of the American Jewish Congress insisted that the pianist had utilized his considerable “skill and influence to curry favor with high Nazi officials” and to advance Germany’s malign plans. Many Americans believed Gieseking symbolized an “unregenerated Nazism.”127