Klarinet Archive - Posting 001318.txt from 2000/12

From: "Kevin Fay (LCA)" <kevinfay@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Strauss and the Nazi Party
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 12:43:19 -0500

cpaok@-----.net spake of Richard Strauss:

<<<Semantics be damned. . . . AND that Strauss so closely associated with
himself with the Nazi regime of
WW2 leaves us in no position to excuse him as being politically
"feebleminded".

The _enormity_ of the Holocaust rises above all these trivial explanations &
excuses.>>>

I appreciate the emotion, but decry the historical inaccuracy. R. Strauss
did not associate himself with the Nazi regime; the Nazi regime associated
itself with Strauss. The bulk of his work -- certainly in the received
canon -- was composed before Nazism was a major political movement. He was
in his dotage when the Nazis came to power.

Indeed; a little basic research sheds much light. From the Encyclopedia
Britannica:

"After 1908 Strauss lived in Garmisch, in Bavaria, in a villa that he built
with the royalties from Salome. He conducted in Berlin until 1919, when he
agreed to become joint director, with Franz Schalk, of the Vienna State
Opera. His appointment proved unfortunate, since it coincided with a postwar
mood that relegated Strauss and similar late Romantic composers to the
category of "old-fashioned." Strauss was neither interested nor skilled in
politics, national or musical, and he resigned from his post in Vienna in
1924. This political naivete tainted Strauss's reputation when the National
Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933. Though able to manipulate grand
dukes and kaisers, he proved to be no match for the ruthless totalitarians
of the Third Reich and unwittingly allowed himself to be used by them for a
time. Thus from 1933 to 1935 he served as president of Germany's
Reichsmusikkammer (Chamber of State Music), which was the state music
bureau. But in the latter year he fell foul of the Nazi regime. After
Hofmannsthal's death in 1929 he had collaborated with the Jewish dramatist
Stefan Zweig on a comic opera, Die schweigsame Frau (1935; The Silent
Woman). This collaboration was unacceptable to the Nazis. The opera was
banned after four performances and Strauss was compelled to work with a
non-Jewish librettist, Joseph Gregor. The fact that his son's wife was
Jewish was also held against him. Above all else a family man, Strauss used
every shred of his influence as Germany's greatest living composer to
protect his daughter-in-law and her two sons. He spent part of World War II
in Vienna, where he was out of the limelight, and in 1945 he went to
Switzerland. Allied denazification tribunals eventually cleared his name,
and he returned to Garmisch in 1949, where he died three months after his
85th birthday celebrations."

A longer explanation of his relationship with Zweig can be found at
http://www.suntimes.co.za/1999/01/31/lifestyle/life02.htm.

This is from "Who's Who in Nazi Germany" (c)1982, Wiederfield and Nicolsa,
London, reprinted on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's web page at
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x31/xm3141.html:

"When the Nazi seized power in Germany, Strauss, although no National
Socialist, showed little awareness of the implications, lending his name,
prestige and fame to the regime and accepting in 1933 the position of head
of the Reich Chamber of Music. He agreed to take the place of the exiled
Bruno Walter as guest conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and
deputized for Toscanini at Bayreuth. He even sent a telegram of support to
Goebbels for the measures that the regime was taking against the composer
Hindemith and his supporter, Furtwangler. Nor did Strauss come out with any
public protest against the dismissal of talented Jewish musicians who were
often personal friends, though he privately disapproved of Nazi policies in
this respect.

On the other hand, when Strauss discovered that the name of his Jewish
librettist, the renowned writer Stefan Zweig, was to be removed from the
opening performance of Die Schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman), he
threatened to leave Dresden unless it were included. He angrily rejected
Zweig's suggestion that a nom de plume be used to get around the
difficulties with the Nazi regime and wrote an exasperated, teasing letter
on 17 June 1935 in answer to his lebrettist's refusal to write a second
libretto for him: 'This Jewish stubbornness is enough to turn one into an
anti - semite! This pride of race, this feeling of solidarity - even I note
a difference here!... For me there exist only two categories of people:
those who have talent and those who have none.' Strauss claimed to Zweig
that he had often told the Nazi leadership 'that I regard the Streicher -
Goebbels anti - Jewish campaign as a shame for German honor, as the lowest
kind of warfare of talentless, lazy mediocrity against higher genius. I
confess openly that I have received from Jews so much help, sacrifice,
friendship and inspiration that it would be a crime not to acknowledge this
in greatest gratitude... My worst and most malicious adversaries and foes
were "Aryans".' The letter was intercepted by the Gestapo and led to
Strauss's dismissal from the Presidency of the Reichsmusikkammer and
Chairmanship of the Federation of German Composers. Unfortunately, Strauss
then wrote a terrified, cringing letter to Hitler, trying to dispel any
notions that he did not take his anti - semitism seriously. However craven
this behavior, much of it stemmed from naivete and the illusion that he was
'above politics', as well as the opportunistic desire to promote his own
work through the organizational power of the State.

Strauss's compositions were in fact played, sung and trumpeted through all
the opera houses and concert halls of Nazi Germany, inspiring much imitation
by younger and lesser colleagues. He continued to compose throughout the
years of the Third Reich, working away in his study at Garmisch, cherishing
his family - he protected his Jewish daughter - in - law to whom he was
strongly attached - and ignoring the cataclysmic political events in the
outside world. Capriccio (1942), an extensive one - act disquisition on the
nature of opera, was his nostalgic and evocative farewell to the medium he
had served with such distinction for so long. Only at the end of the war,
with the destruction of the great theaters in Dresden, Berlin, Vienna and
Munich, did he appear to grasp the magnitude of the disaster which had
befallen Germany and western - civilization.

In the autumn of 1945, he took refuge in Switzerland, after writing one
impassioned last lament for the Germany that had disappeared forever. On 8
June 1948, Richard Strauss was cleared by a de - Nazification court in
Munich of all charges that he had participated in the Nazi movement or
benefited from the regime. The eighty - five - year - old composer, one of
the giants of German musical history, died in Garmisch - Partenkirchen on 8
September, 1949."

It is true that Strauss did not use his position to counter the Nazi tide.
(He did, however, use it to save the life of his Jewish relatives.)
Certainly it would have been possible for him to do "more" -- but political
dissidence wasn't a good way to increase the life expectancy of a man in his
70's in Nazi Germany. In any event, he was hardly an active participant in
either the Nazi political movement or the holocaust.

kjf

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