Today I am going to talk about how Nazism has

affected the performers of the days. We will take look

at three of the leading conductors of the 20th century,
Klemperer, Von Karajan, and Furtwangler who
reacted to the situation very differently. Id like to
start with Klemperer who was Jewish. Before the
Nazis gained power in Germany, he served as a
general musical director of the Kroll Opera in Berlin
1927-1931. During this time, he gained his
reputation as Berlin Modernist, playing a number of
new works by modern compers such as Janacek,
Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Hindemith. (Janek's
From the House of the Dead, Schoenberg's
Erwartung, Stravinsky's Oedipus rex, and Hindemith's
Cardillac.) His experimental state of mind didnt

please anyone in POlitics, as it was attacked from

both the left and the right (The company was
attacked from both the left which was ironic
because its artistic mission was a socialist connection
of art with the workersand from the right, where
the Nazis were gaining strength and becoming bolder
with each passing year.) and finally the opera
company closed down in 1931. But Klemperer soon
was appointed conductor of the Berlin State Opera,
drawing protests by the Nazi Party because he was
Jewish. Although he was apolitical, and he had
already converted to Catholicism, it didnt really
mean much to the race-based ideology of Nazi antiSemitism. He knew he had to leave Germany and yet
before doing so, he made a few attempts to pacifying

the Nazis. He "wrote prose poems in praise of the

New Order and even suggested the formation of a
Jewish Palatine guard to protect Hitler." But we have
to remember that he had bipolar disorder so it
maybe just evidence of his disorder. When the Nazis
began arresting opponents of the Nazi government in
1933, he fled to Switzerland and eventually made his
way to the United States where he was appointed
music director of Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Now, moving on to von Karajan. Even after death,
he is still a dominant figure in the classical music
world. His career was boosted by his participation in
the Nazi party and yet when the war ended, his
political convictions were vague enough to allow the

post-war musical world to look the other way. There

is evidence that Karajan joined the Nazi Party as
early as April 8, 1933 in Salzburg. It has been argued
that this membership was not valid since Karajan
only paid the administration fee, but not the
membership fees he was supposed to. In March 1935
the conductor joined the Nazi party again. He has
always claimed that he automatically joined in 1935
upon being made General Music Director in Aachen.
Experts however, doubt such automatic membership
allowance. We have to remember that Karajan
became a very early member of the Nazi Party in
Salzburg, at a time when the party was still far from
power in Austria. People argue that Karajans
membership is a conscious political step - or career

OpporTUnism. Indeed, his career would not have

been successful at that time without the support
from the party: Karajans big breakthrough is still
considered to have taken place at October 21th
1938, where he conducted a performance of Wagner
s "Tristan and Isolde" at the Berlin State Opera.
Afterwards the journalist and music critic Edwin von
der Nll wrote a review with the famous headline
"The Miracle Karajan. This positive criticism made
the young Austrian to the level of Furtwngler who
was the powerful chief conductor of the Berlin
Philharmonic. And of course this article on Karajan
was a politically commissioned work to demean
Furwangler.

Karajan conducted Wagner's "Tannhauser"at Hitlers

birthday in 1935 and played the official anthem of
the Nazis several times during his career. Ironically,
there are stories that despite of all that, Hitler
despised Karajan. Apparently Hitler considered it
presumptuous that Karajan, before the eyes of the
leader, conducted Wagner's "Meistersinger" by heart
at the Berlin State Opera (1939). After that
performance, Hitler allegedly said that he would no
longer go to the Vienna state opera when Karajan
was on the podium.
Karajan remained in Aachen, Germany, as general
music director, until he was dismissed in the 1941/42
season allegedly because he was there too rarely. He

was informed of this decision while he was in Rome

on a tour with the Berlin State Opera. His career was
interrupted by the end of the war. If there was one
lesson Karajan took from the Nazis, it was the
supremacy of German music and the imperative of
world dominance. He demonstrated that music was
mostly a matter of power.

So far we looked at a conductor who had to leave

Germany because he was jewish, and a conductor
who chose to participate in the Nazi party in
exchange for a thriving career. Now we will look at
the conductor who stayed in Germany during the
time and tried to separate music from the Nazis.

Furtwangler was already a successful

conductor leading Berlin Phil when the Nazis
came into power. However, he was by no means an
ideal puppet for the Nazis; throughout his career,
he made it clear that it was his desire for beautiful
music, that motivated his decisions, not the desire
to gain political favor. On the one hand, he was a
conservative man, something that the Nazis liked
about him. In the time of the experimental and
avant-garde music of 1920s, he publicly showed
his hatred his distaste for modern music such as
swing, jazz, and atonal music. The ironic thing about
him is that he is a conservative man who is also a
liberal thinker. He did not ignore musical talent.

Thus, he agreed to premiere Schoenbergs

modernist Variations for Orchestra op. 31 in Berlin
in 1928. He employed many Jewish musicians in
his orchestra, and maintained friendships with
members of the Jewish German elite. In 1933,
when Hitler was named chancellor, the separation
of art and politics became simply impossible.
In 1933 He wrote a bold letter to Goebbels who was
the German propaganda minister in Nazi Germany
who persecuted the Jews in response to rumors that
Jews were to be banned from all performances. This
letter exchange, printed in the major Nazi
newspapers at Goebbels' request. In the letter he
states I only recognize one line of separation:

between good and bad art. At present, the division is

drawn between Jew and non-Jew ... while the
separation between good and bad music is neglected
... The question of the quality of music is ... a
question of life and death. Gobbels replied art must
be good: but beyond that it must be responsible,
professional, popular and aggressive.
his most famous conflict was the so-called Hindemith
case. He had planned to premiere Paul Hindemiths
opera Mathis der Maler (Matis the Painter) for the
1934/35 season. However, Nazi official prohibited
the performance. Furtwngler threatened to resign
unless the boycott of Hindemith was lifted, and wrote
open letters to the press defending the composer.

(he was ultimately pressured to resign from his

position at the RKK Reich Chamber of culture)
In his position as leader of the Berlin Philharmonic
until early in 1945, Furtwngler participated
frequently in festivals and concerts in Nazi Germany.
From the perspective of the Nazi leadership, as
Germanys military situation grew more and more
threatening, Furtwngler became increasingly
valuable as a cultural ambassador who could
promote German music throughout the occupied
lands. At the same time, Furtwngler never
completely bowed to Nazi authority. He consistently
protested the presence of flags and the Hitler salute
in concert halls. He frequently tried to avoid playing

for Hitlers birthday, although he was eventually

forced to. In 1944, he was the only prominent
German artist not to sign the brochure 'We Stand and
Fall with Adolf Hitler'.
He remained in Germany until the war was close to
an end (fleeing to safety in Switzerland.)
In 1949 Furtwngler accepted the position of
principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra. However the orchestra was forced to
rescind the offer under the threat of a boycott from
several prominent musicians including Arturo
Toscanini, George Szell, Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur
Rubinstein

Moral judgment on the conductor remains divided.

Many musicians, both German and Jewish, have
forgiven him, but many could not. Berthold
Goldschmidt publicly condemned him, calling him
a great conductor with a weak character, a man who
should have left, and who had to have been aware of
how much prestige his work gave the Nazis.