This book tells the story of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra during the period of the Nazi domination of Germany. This great orchestra was founded in 1882 as an independent, self-governing musical association where the players were the shareholders. In the following half century it became one of the greatest orchestras in the world, notably under Artur Nikisch and then Wilhelm Furtwangler.
Misha Aster makes it clear that his is not a book about musical history or Nazi aesthetics, although the orchestra’s history can only be understood in the context of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi state. In Weimar Germany Berlin eclipsed Paris as the cultural capital of the world. Far more than the world of Christopher Isherwood and his kind, Weimar culture extended intellectual and artistic frontiers. Berlin boasted three opera houses, under Erich Kleiber, Otto Klemperer and Bruno Walter, and the Berliner Philharmoniker under Furtwangler. It’s useful to supplement this book by seeing DVDs of Taking Sides, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, Great Conductors of the Third Reich and The Reichsorchester.
The Republic was economically and politically very sick; Weimar culture the flush on a diseased body kept alive by foreign loans (mostly from the United States). Tensions on the left and right threatened chaos. Public disorder and political murder were by no means rare. Hitler exploited the Reichstag fire on February 27 1933 to win 44 per cent of the vote on March 5. Not a decisive result, but President Hindenburg was persuaded to nominate him as Chancellor and the man who might save Germany from the abyss. On March 23 the newly elected Reichstag supported the Enabling Act and democracy ceased.
The Berlin Philharmonic, strapped for cash, was bought out by the state, falling like a ripe plum into Nazi hands, the musicians becoming civil servants in Dr Goebbels’ Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Furtwangler was appointed vice-president of the Reichsmusikkammer. Under Goebbels’ guidance, the Philharmonic became Nazi Germany’s proudest cultural ambassador, giving prestigious concerts in Berlin and other cities, touring other countries, broadcasting and appearing at notable public events such as party rallies, performing for visiting dignitaries, the 1936 Olympic Games and public celebrations of Hitler’s birthday as well as performing in factories to boost the war effort.
Furtwangler might not have been comfortable in this role but he loved his homeland, German music and public admiration. Son of an academic archaeologist, highly cultivated, sophisticated, and outstandingly musically gifted, Furtwangler was a devout exponent of German Romantic music. For the Germans he epitomised the idea of a romantic conductor. He was der Katzen Schlafanzug, the best thing since sliced pumpernickel.
But his behaviour continues to be puzzling. He was uncomfortable with the Nazis, never a party member (unlike his great rival Herbert von Karajan), but must have known what was going on. He was cagey about publicly shaking hands with Goebbels or Hitler, fought against some restrictions, helped many Jews escape and shielded others in trouble.
What are we to make of this letter, which he wrote on April 12 1933, just days after the passing of the Enabling Act, to Goebbels? “Dear Reich Minister, I take the liberty of drawing your attention to events within the world of music which in my opinion need not necessarily follow from the restoration of our national dignity which we all welcome with joy and gratitude. My feelings in this are purely those of an artist. The function of art and artists is to bring together, not to separate. In the final analysis, I recognise only one line of division – that between good and bad art. If the fight against Jews is mainly directed against those artists who, lacking roots themselves and being destructive, try to achieve an effect by kitsch, dry virtuosity and similar things, then this is quite all right. The fight against them and the spirit they embody cannot be pursued emphatically and consistently enough… let our fight be directed against rootless, subversive, levelling, destructive spirit, but not against the real artist who is always creative and therefore constructive, however one may judge his art.”
The Nazis banned the performance of Paul Hindemith’s opera Mathis der Maler in 1934, but Furtwangler provoked a crisis by conducting a suite from the opera in the concert hall. In the following furore, he resigned. In 1936, with Toscanini’s encouragement, he was about to accept an appointment with the New York Philharmonic and was only prevented by furtive Nazi intrigue. He remained musically active in Germany during the war, before fleeing to Switzerland in the spring of 1945.
He had to endure the de-Nazification process, but was cleared of all charges: “I knew Germany was in a terrible crisis; I felt responsible for German music, and it was my task to survive this crisis, as much as I could. The concern that my art was misused for propaganda had to yield to the greater concern that German music be preserved, that music be given to the German people by its own musicians… people never needed more, never yearned more to hear Beethoven and his message of freedom and human love.”
Bruno Walter, driven out in 1933, wrote to him: “Please bear in mind, your art was used over the years as an extremely effective means of foreign propaganda for the regime of the devil; that you, thanks to your personal fame and great talent, performed valuable services for this regime and that in Germany itself the presence and activities of an artist of your rank helped to provide cultural and moral credit to those terrible criminals or at least gave considerable help to them… In contrast to that, of what significance was your helpful behaviour in individual cases of Jewish distress?”
Furtwangler returned triumphantly to post-war musical life, notably at the Berlin and Salzburg festivals. It testifies to the unique place he occupied in the German soul that starving Berliners traded valuable coffee, cigarettes and foodstuffs in exchange for tickets to his concerts. He died in 1954. And the Berlin Philharmonic remains one of the world’s greatest orchestras, as was demonstrated last May at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, under Daniel Barenboim.
