MusicoIog undev HilIev Nev Souvces in Conlexl

AulIov|s) FaneIa M. Follev

Bevieved vovI|s)
Souvce JouvnaI oJ lIe Anevican MusicoIogicaI Sociel, VoI. 49, No. 1 |Spving, 1996), pp. 70-
113
FuIIisIed I University of California Press on IeIaIJ oJ lIe American Musicological Society
SlaIIe UBL http://www.jstor.org/stable/831954 .
Accessed 19/04/2012 1345
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of California Press and American Musicological Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological Society.
http://www.jstor.org
Musicology
Under Hitler: New Sources
in Context
By PAMELA M. POTTER
N
1982,
THE MUSIC DEPARTMENTS of Duke
University
and the
University
of North Carolina
jointly sponsored
a conference on
Mendelssohn and Schumann and invited the German scholar Wolf-
gang
Boetticher to
participate.
Two months before the
event,
after a
New York Times article
by Anthony
Lewis
nationally exposed
Boet-
ticher's collaboration in the Third
Reich-membership
in the Nazi
party,
staff
appointment
under Alfred
Rosenberg,
and anti-Semitic
distortions about Mendelssohn in his
1941
dissertation-Boetticher
promptly
withdrew from the
conference.'
Shortly
thereafter,
Chris-
toph
Wolff
issued a
pointed wake-up
call to the German
scholarly
community, reminding colleagues
that evidence about the
political
Portions of this
paper
were
presented
at the
Fifty-seventh
Annual
Meeting
of the
American
Musicological Society, Chicago,
November
I991,
and at the Sixteenth
Annual Conference of the German Studies
Association,
Minneapolis, 1992. Support
for the research and
writing
was
provided by
the Social Science Research Council
(Berlin
Program
for Advanced German and
European Studies),
the
John
F. Enders
Research Assistance Grant
(Yale University),
and the Hewlett Summer International
Fellowship (University
of
Illinois). Special
thanks
go
to Nicholas
Temperley
for his
valuable
suggestions
for
revisions,
as well as to
Bryan
Gilliam,
Herbert
Kellman,
Pamela
Starr,
and Isabelle Belance-Zank for their careful
reading
and comments.
The
following
abbreviations for archival sources will be used
throughout:
BDC Berlin Document Center
(followed by
the name of the
individual whose files were consulted and the source of the
file,
when
known)
BA Bundesarchiv Koblenz
(followed by
the
catalogued
number
of the
file,
e.g.,
NS
15/24)
UAB
Universititsarchiv
Berlin
(followed by
PA for Personalakte
[personnel file]
and name of
individual)
Sandberger Papers
Adolf
Sandberger Papers,
Ana
431,
Handschriften- und
Inkunabelabteilung, Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek Munich
Moser
Papers
Hans
Joachim
Moser
Papers,
N. Mus.
Nachl.
31,
Musik-
abteilung,
Staatsbibliothek
PreuBischer
Kulturbesitz,
Berlin
'Anthony
Lewis,
"Facing
the
Music,"
New York
Times,
18
February 1982, A23.
MUSICOLOGY UNDER HITLER
71
activities of Boetticher and other
musicologists
had
already
surfaced
two decades earlier and
questioning
their failure to deal with this
information
beforehand.2
Judging
from the ominous silence
surrounding
the
period
in
standard
bibliographical
literature and other
scholarly writings,3
postwar musicology apparently opted
to excise this controversial
chapter
from the
history
of the
discipline,
rather than to confront
head-on the
implications
of their
distinguished colleagues'
and teach-
ers'
relationships
to a barbarous
political regime.4
The
discovery
of
the Holocaust had left the world in a state of
shock,
failing
to
comprehend
how a
society
so
long respected
for its
arts, letters,
and sciences could be
capable
of such crimes
against humanity,
and
the
process
of denazification set a
precedent
for
quickly ascertaining
the
guilt
or innocence of individuals in order to
proceed
with the
rebuilding
of
occupied Germany.
The few studies of music and
musicology
in Nazi
Germany
to date have
similarly sought primarily
to hand down verdicts on the
degree
of
culpability
of selected
musicians and
scholars,5
but the
oversimplifications
established
by
the
'
Christoph
Wolff,
"Die Hand eines
Handlangers.
'Musikwissenschaft' im Dritten
Reich," Frankfurter
Rundschau 168,
24 July 1982,
"Zeit und
Bild" (weekend supple-
ment),
2. The article was
reprinted
in Entartete Musik. Zur
Diisseldorfer Ausstellung
von
1938:
Eine
kommentierte Rekonstruktion,
ed. Albrecht
Diimling
and Peter Girth
(Diisseldorf, 1988), 93-94.
3
Biographical
entries on
musicologists
active in the Third Reich in both The New
Grove
Dictionary of
Music and
Musicians,
6th
ed.,
and Die Musik in
Geschichte
und
Gegenwart,
Ist ed.,
notably
omitted numerous titles
published
between
1933
and
1945
in the works lists. Cultural and intellectual historians
generally
avoided
dealing
with
music and music
scholarship, despite-or perhaps
because of-the
centrality
of music
in German culture and
society.
4 In
the course of
conducting
research in
Germany
on
musicology
in the Third
Reich,
I interviewed at least one
prominent musicologist
who
adamantly
adhered to
the
position
that the entire
episode
was better left
alone,
and I encountered similar
attitudes
among
some archivists. I later learned that a
younger generation
of German
musicologists
who had
attempted
to embark on
projects
such as mine believed their
efforts to be hindered
by
the
musicology
establishment in
Germany. They
held the
position
that
only
an outsider such as
myself
could
successfully investigate
this
topic.
s
Since the end of the
war,
most
investigations
of the music world under Hitler
have focused on
determining
the
guilt
or innocence of
prominent personalities,
especially
Richard
Strauss,
Wilhelm
FurtwAngler,
and Herbert von
Karajan.
For a
survey
of the literature
appearing
from
1949
to
1987
on Strauss's
relationship
to the
Nazi
government
and the debates over his
degree
of
guilt,
see Pamela M.
Potter,
"Strauss and the National Socialists: The Debate and Its
Relevance,"
in
Richard
Strauss: New
Perspectives
on the
Composer
and His
Work,
ed.
Bryan
Gilliam
(Durham,
N.C.: Duke
University
Press,
1992), 93-113.
Broader
attempts
to consider musical
life
essentially
cast the net
wider,
gathering
a
preponderance
of evidence to use
against
72
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
denazification
process
failed to
encourage
an
understanding
of the
complexities
in
any given society
and further contributed to the
silence.6
Without
attempting
to incriminate or exonerate individual musi-
cologists,
this
essay
examines the
social, economic,
and intellectual
climate that enabled and
encouraged
scholars to use their
expertise
to
further the
ideological
aims of the Nazi
regime.
The creation of new
cultural outlets
by
the Nazi
government
and
party
offered
opportu-
nities for
musicologists
to
prosper
outside the
academy
and to
exploit
Germany's
famed musical
legacy
for the
purposes
of
highly developed
propaganda campaigns.
This
essay
seeks to undertake a more
fully
contextual
study
of the entire
complex
of
musicology
in the Third
Reich in an effort to restore this
neglected chapter
to the
history
of the
discipline. Countering
the tacit
assumptions
that "Nazi
musicology"7
other
suspected wrongdoers.
The most
thoroughly
researched
monograph
on music
in Nazi
Germany
is Fred K.
Prieberg,
Musik im NS-Staat
(Frankfurt: Fischer,
1983),
which uses this as its
underlying premise.
The few
published
confrontations with
musicology
tend to follow this model.
Albrecht
Diimling, responding
to a criticism
by
Hans
Joachim
Moser's
son,
focused
on bits of
evidence,
some of them
questionable
in relevance and
accuracy,
to be used
against
both Moser and
Boetticher.
His enumeration of Moser's
transgressions
included
many
instances of
guilt by
association: his
publications
in "non-neutral"
periodicals
such as Das innere
Reich,
Die
Zeitwende,
and Volkstum udnd
Rasse;
citations of
his works in
publications
on music and
race;
and involvement in
rewriting operettas
by removing
the stories from their Polish
settings, thereby "falsifying history"
and
"excluding
Poland from the arena of
high
culture."
Diimling
also
misleadingly
designated
Boetticher as the "director" since
1939
of the music division of Alfred
Rosenberg's
bureau for
ideological supervision
of the Nazi
party.
Boetticher was
named "Stellenleiter" in
1939
at the
age
of
twenty-five,
but
documentary
evidence
clearly
shows that he received all of his orders from Herbert
Gerigk,
the actual head
of the division. Albrecht
Diimling,
"Wie
schuldig
sind die
Musikwissenschaftler:
Zur
Rolle von
Wolfgang
Boetticher und
Hans-Joachim
Moser im
NS-Musikleben,"
Neue
Musikzeitung 39,
no.
5 (October-November
1990): 9.
'
The
shortcomings
of denazification have been
acknowledged
for some
time;
see
chapters 3 through
6 in Constantine
FitzGibbon,
Denazification (London:
Michael
Joseph, 1969).
It has also been
argued
that such
oversimplification
and silence
actually
paved
the
way
for an immediate
reemergence
of National Socialist
sympathy
in the
1950S
and for the current neo-Nazi movement
(see
Michael
Kater,
"Problems of
Political Reeducation in West
Germany, 1945-1 960,"
Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual
4 [1987]:
Ioi).
7
Michael
Meyer
elaborated on an ill-conceived notion of "Nazi
musicology"
in
two articles
("Musicology
in the Third Reich: A
Gap
in Historical
Studies,"
European
Studies Review 8
[I1978]:
349-64;
and "The Nazi
Musicologist
as
Myth-Maker
in the
Third
Reich,"
Journal of Contemporary History
io
[1975]: 649-65), basing
his
argu-
ments on works of
journalists
and
attorneys
whom he misidentified as
musicologists.
He referred to Friedrich Welter as "a
musicologist
of
repute" ("The
Nazi Musicol-
ogist," 655)
and to Walter Abendroth as "the authoritative Nazi
musicologist" (ibid.,
654).
He likewise
designated
the authors of
legal
tracts on the Reichsmusikkammer
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER 73
emerged spontaneously
in the first months
of
1933,
and that this
"nazified"
discipline,
like much of the adult German
population,
underwent a form of intellectual "denazification" after
1945,
evidence
suggests
that
many
of the ideas that served the nationalistic and
militaristic
purposes
of the Third Reich
predated
Hitler's rise to
power
and have survived in
postwar conceptions
of the
history
of
Western music.
The
Crisis
in German
Musicology after
World War I
Musicology
faced a number of
challenges
in the
years leading up
to
Hitler's seizure of
power
in
1933.
Wartime travel
restrictions,
a
shortage
of research
funds,
and the dissolution of the International
Music
Society
in
1914
curtailed German
musicologists' impressive
gains
in research in
European
music and
hampered
international
scholarly exchange. Prospects
of
peacetime prosperity
allowed for the
establishment of new chairs in
musicology throughout
the German
university system,8
but no one had foreseen the
job shortages
caused
by employable musicologists returning
from the
front,
the
hyperin-
flation of the
early 192os,
and the
depression.
Furthermore,
the
Weimar
government's express
concern for
democratizing
the educa-
tion
system spread panic among
members of the
scholarly community
who feared
losing
their academic freedom.9
Musicologists,
faced with
all of these
issues,
declared a state of
emergency
and started to
reconsider more
seriously
their roles as
professional
scholars and civil
servants in a democratic
society.
Concerns about the relevance of
musicology
to the
greater public
good
had
already
surfaced around the turn of the
century
when
Hermann Kretzschmar
argued
that music
scholarship
needed to serve
the
public
rather than other
sciences,"0
and his exhortations would
reverberate in debates that continued well into the
1940s."
In the
such as Karl Friedrich
Schreiber
and
attorneys
Willi Hoffmann and Wilhelm Ritter
as
"musicologists" (ibid.,
657-58; "Musicology
in the Third
Reich,"
356).
8 Eight
German universities
appointed
full
professors
in
musicology
between
1918
and
1932:
Halle
(1918),
Breslau
(192o), G6ttingen
(1920), Leipzig (192o), Heidelberg
(1921),
Kiel
(1928), Freiburg (1929),
and
Cologne (1932).
9
Fritz
Ringer,
The Decline
of
the German Mandarins: The German Academic
Community, 1890-1933 (Cambridge:
Harvard
University
Press,
1969), 67-75;
and
Walter
Laqueur, Weimar:
A Cultural
History,
i918-1933
(New
York:
Putnam,
1974),
188,
22
1-23.
"o
Hermann
Kretzschmar,
Musikalische
Zeitfragen (Leipzig:
Peters,
1903), 79.
"
See for
example
Friedrich
Blume,
"Musikforschung
und
Musikpraxis,"
Festschrift
Fritz
Stein zum 6o.
Geburtstag (Braunschweig: Litolff, 1939), 20-25;
and
74
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
years following
the
war,
scholars like
Johannes Wolf,
Hans
Joachim
Moser,
and Arnold
Schering
found it
increasingly
difficult to reconcile
their research interests with the needs of
society
and
openly
criticized
the
ivory-tower
isolationism of their
colleagues.
Wolf insisted that
musicology
in the
university
must
always
be accessible to
practicing
musicians,
Moser admonished
musicology
to
pay
more attention to
"burning
issues" of the
day,
and
Schering
chided
musicology
for
burying
itself in the
past
and
losing
contact with modern
composi-
tion.'2 Others,
like Theodor
Kroyer, outraged
that
anyone
should feel
pressured
to
justify scholarly
activities,
insisted that even if musico-
logical
work
might appear "incomprehensible
and useless
for the
people's community [Volksgemeinschaft],"
the
power
and
pervasiveness
of music
justified
even the most minute details of
musicological
scholarship:
"We too work for the state and the
Volk!"'3
In
response
to these
growing
concerns,
a
significant
number of
musicologists
set out to demonstrate an interest in musical
life,
and
"service
to the
Volksgemeinschaft"
became a
popular slogan.'4
Scholars
voiced their
opinions
on music
education,
music
policy,
Hausmusik,
Wilhelm
Ehmann,
"Das Musikleben an den deutschen
Universititen,"
in Musik im
Volk:
Gegenwartsfragen
der deutschen
Musik,
ed.
Wolfgang
Stumme,
2d ed.
(Berlin:
Vieweg, 1944), I54-61.
Both works cite Kretzschmar and address his concerns
directly.
'2Johannes Wolf,
"Musikwissenschaft und musikwissenschaftlicher
Unterricht,"
Allgemeine Musikzeitung 45 (1919): 552;
Hans
Joachim Moser,
"Die diussere und
innere Krisis in der
Musikgeschichte,"
Die Hochschule
4 (1920): 42-46;
Arnold
Schering,
"Musikwissenschaft und Kunst der
Gegenwart,"
Bericht
iiber
den I. Musik-
wissenschaftlichen Kongress
der Deutschen
Musikgesellschaft
in
Leipzig (Leipzig: Breitkopf
und
Hiirtel,
1926), 13.
'3
"Es
mag
dem Fernstehenden
scheinen,
als ob mit unserer Feier eine
unzeitge-
mai3e,
wirklichkeitsfremde Sache
angepriesen
wiirde-etwas
fiir
Feinschmecker,
fiir
Intellektualisten, fiir Alexandriner, die,
in
profunden
Kleinkram
verbohrt,
in sich
selber uneins und
fiir
die
Volksgemeinschaft
unverstindlich
und
zwecklos,
einem
Gaukelbild
nachjagten....
Haben nicht
auch
die Kiinste trotz alledem immer noch
ihren Kredit? Und
gar
erst die Musik-ist sie uns nicht eben
jetzt
eine Lebensnot-
wendigkeit,
weil sie uns alle
angeht,
ob wir wollen oder
nicht,
weil
auch
sie zur
Diitetik
der Seele
geh6rt,
eine Macht
ist,
die uns beherrscht-uns zum Heil oder
auch
zum Fluch! Und
um
dieser
Gefahr
willen-einer
Gefahr
von
geradezu
antikem
Ausma3-ist die Wissenschaft der Musik kein leerer Wahn.... Das ist der Sinn
unserer Feier...
daB
auch
die Musikwissenschaft an der
groBen,
allen
Universitdits-
wissenschaften
obliegenden gemeinsamen Aufgabe
teilhat,
die Menschheit aus der
gegenwdirtigen Zersplitterung
zu einem
einheitlichen,
ganzen
Leben zu erziehen.
Staat und Stadt haben uns
diese
Staitte
der Arbeit
gegeben-auch
wir arbeiten
fiir
Staat und Volk!" Theodor
Kroyer,
"Die
Wiedererweckung
des historischen
Klang-
bildes in der musikalischen
Denkmdilerpraxis," Mitteilungen
der Internationalen Gesell-
schaft
fiir
Musikwissenschaft
2
(1930):
80.
'4 See
chapter
2 of Pamela M.
Potter,
German
Musicology
and
Society from
the
Weimar
Republic
to the End
of
Hitler's
Reich
(Yale University
Press,
forthcoming).
MUSICOLOGY UNDER HITLER
75
the
youth
movement,
and other
topical
issues
by contributing
articles to a
variety
of
nonscholarly periodicals
destined for
a
general readership.'5s They
also tailored their
scholarly
editions to
the needs of the
growing
amateur
performance
market.'6
Musico-
logical
work could also serve to
strengthen
a
flagging
sense of
national
identity following
the
demoralizing
lost war. Wartime
isolation,
which had cut off German scholars from international
travel and
foreign
resources,
had forced the
discipline
to
recognize
the
importance
of
previously neglected topics
in German music
history.
The Deutsche
Musikgesellschaft (with
its
organ
the
Zeitschrift fiir Musikwissenschaft)
and the
Fiirstliches
Institut
fiir
deutsche
Musikforschung
zu
Biickeburg
(with
its
organ
Archiv
fiir
Musikwissenschaft),
all established between
1917
and
1919,
reflected
a nationalist
impulse by encouraging
work in German music
by
German
scholars.'7
The
results,
at least in
quantitative
terms,
show
is
In the Weimar and Nazi
periods, musicologists
contributed
generously
to such
nonscholarly
music
journals
as
Deutsche
Tonkiinstlerzeitung,
Der
Auftakt,
Die
Musik,
Allgemeine Musikzeitung,
Deutsche
Militdr-Musiker
Zeitung,
Die
Musikpflege, Collegium
Musicum
(later
renamed
Zeitschriftfiir
Hausmusik), Deutsche Musikkultur,
Vilkische
Musik-
erziehung,
Musik in
Jugend
und Volk, Deutsche
Singerbundeszeitung,
Musik im
Leben,
and
Melos,
as well as numerous nonmusic
periodicals (Allgemeiner
Rundschau, Deutsches
Volkstum,
Volk und
Welt,
Forschungen
und
Fortschritte, Illustrierte Zeitung,
Helhlweg,
Nation-
alsozialistische
Monatshefte,
and
Osterreichiscxher
Rundschau).
'6
The
Denkmiiler
deutscher
Tonkunst made its
publications
more accessible to an
amateur market
when,
after a
five-year
shutdown,
Prussian administrators and
musicologists
convened and
agreed
to revise the format to create
"performance-
ready"
editions of
early
music.
"Mitteilungen," Zeitschrift
fiir
Musikwissenschaft 7
(1924-25): 252-53.
See Pamela M.
Potter,
"German
Musicology
and
Early
Music
Performance,
1918-1933,"
in Music and
Performance During
the Weimar
Republic,
ed.
Bryan Gilliam,
Cambridge
Studies in Performance Practice
(Cambridge: Cambridge
University
Press,
I994),
94-106.
'7 In
his
proposal
to form the Deutsche
Musikgesellschaft,
Hermann Abert
contended that the First World War had not inhibited the
growth
of musical
scholarship
but had
actually
contributed to the awareness that there was much to be
done in the area of German music:
"ja
der
Krieg
hat uns
auch auf
diesem Gebiete vor
eine
ganze
Reihe neuer
Aufgaben,
vor allem nationalen Charakters
gestellt
und uns
daran
erinnert, daf3
unser im
eigenen
Hause noch sehr viel
ungetane
Arbeit
harrt,
an
der wir
friiher
zugunsten
internationaler
Beziehungen
und nicht immer
zum
Vorteil
unserer nationaler Musikkultur
voriibergegangen
sind." "Aufruf zur
Grundung
der
Deutschen
Musikgesellschaft,"
i December
[I19 7], Sandberger Papers.
This
message
was carried further in Alfred Einstein's introduction to the first volume of the
society's
organ,
the
Zeitschrift fir Musikwissenschaft,
in which he states that the new
journal
could
justifiably
limit its
scope
to German music
history
and the work of German
scholars: "Wir
k6nnen
uns den Luxus dieser
Beschrankung
erlauben: unsere
musikalische
Vergangenheit
ist so reich an
Gegenstinden,
so reich an
sch6pferischen
Helden,
daf unsere Kammer sicherlich nicht leer werden sollte.... In der Stoffwahl
wird sich das Deutsche
wahrscheinlich
mehr
aussprechen
als bisher
geschehen
ist."
Alfred
Einstein, "Geleitwort,"
Zeitschrifi
iir
Musikwissenschaft
i
(1918-19): 3.
For a
76
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL
SOCIETY
a
steady
increase in
publications
on German
topics.'8
The
generation
of
students,
returning
veterans,
and recent doc-
torates who had serious doubts about
opportunities
to
pursue
an
academic career after the First World War saw the current "crisis" in
an even harsher
light. During
the
period
of
hyperinflation,
Friedrich
Blume asked the
University
of
Leipzig
to
support
his bid for more
seniority by confirming
that he had intended to finish his doctorate
before his induction into
military
service. Blume
added,
"You will
certainly
understand that in the current economic situation one has to
strive to
recognize any advantages
that
present
themselves,
in order at
least to retrieve a
part
of those
years
lost
during
the
war."'9
Dimin-
ishing
career
opportunities during
the
depression
then forced some
younger musicologists
to venture
beyond
the
academy
into the
radio,
film,
and
recording
industries,"2
where a doctoral
degree
in musicol-
ogy,
as
they
sometimes
discovered,
proved
more of a
liability
than an
asset.21
detailed discussion of the
origins
of the Deutsche
Musikgesellschaft,
see Pamela M.
Potter,
"The Deutsche
Musikgesellschaft, I918-1938," Journal of Musicological
Re-
search
Ii
(1991): 151-76.
The
primary goal
of the
Fiirstliches
Institut was the centralization of archival
resources for German music
history.
Active
membership
was limited to German
scholars,
its
publications
were
mainly
on German
subject
matter,
and
prizes
were
bestowed
upon
German citizens for works that contributed to a better
understanding
of German culture
(Max Schneider,
"Bericht
iiber
die erste
Vollversammlung,"
Archiv
fir Musikwissenschaft
2
[19 19-20]: 5, 7).
Its
scholarly journal,
Archivfiir
Musikwissen-
schaft,
was even more
explicitly
devoted to German music research than the
Zeitschrift:
"Wird die
Gesamthaltung
des 'Archivs' somit eine
gewisse
Ahnlichkeit mit den
'Sammelbinden'
der durch den
Krieg zersplitterten
Internationalen
Musikgesell-
schaft
aufweisen,
so
zeigt
es schon durch seine Schriftwahl
an,
daB
es sich im
Unterschiede zu
jenen
an das Deutschtum vornehmlich wenden will." The editors
("Die Schriftleitung"),
"Zum
Geleit,"
Archivfiir
Musikwissenschaft
i
(1918-19):
2. For
a
history
of the
Biickeburg
institute,
see
Potter, German
Musicology
and
Society.
i8
A
survey
of the
listings
of works on music
published annually
in the
Jahrbuch
der
Musikbibliothek Peters reveals a
heightened
concentration on German music
history,
especially
in the
193os,
and the tables of contents of the
recognized scholarly journals
yield
even more
striking
statistics. The Archiv
fir Musikwissenschaft
ran
only
from
1918
to
1925,
but in those
years
at least half of its articles focused on German music
history.
Even more
noteworthy
is the
Zeitschriftfiir
Musikwissenschaft,
in which studies
on
Germany
tended to outnumber all others
by
at least
50 percent
from the
1920-21
volume
through
the
1932-33
volume.
'9
"Sie werden
begreifen,
dass man bei der
heutigen
wirtschaftlichen
Lage
das
Bestreben
hat,
die Vorteile
wahrzunehmen,
die sich
darbieten, um
wenigstens
einen
Teil der durch den
Krieg
verlorenen
Jahre
auszugleichen."
Blume to
Philosophische
Fakultit,
26
April 1923,
Universitaitsarchiv
Leipzig,
Phil. Fak. Promotionsakte
1350.
" Wilhelm Trittenhoff,
"Der Student der
Musikwissenschaften," Deutsche
Tonkiinstler-Zeitung 29 (1931): 107-8.
"2
In
response
to a
proposal
in the
Zeitschriftfir Musikwissenschaft
to form a career
placement organization
for
musicologists,
Hans
Engel cynically
remarked that it
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER
77
Those who had returned from the front or had come of
age
in the
shadow of the war felt
generally optimistic
about the "revolution"
of
1933
and could
easily
overlook some of the
negative aspects
of the
Nazi
party's message.
The Nazi
government's
immediate
steps
to
remove
Jews
and other "undesirables" from academic
posts
caused few
repercussions,
since anti-Semitic
policy
in
university hiring
was
already
so
firmly
established that these dismissals involved
only
a small
number of
Jewish
musicologists actually holding university posi-
tions." The
government's policy
of
advancing
the careers of the next
generation
(Nachwuchsfdrderung)
and the
encouragement
and some-
times coercion of older scholars to retire offered
hope
to
young
musicologists.
Moreover,
the creation of the
Propaganda Ministry
and
its
competitors (the
Amt
Rosenberg
and the German Workers'
Front)
hinted at the
prospect
of new
jobs beyond
the walls of the
university
for cultural
experts. Musicologists
themselves
responded
to these
developments
with a
flurry
of
suggestions
for
creating
new state-
supported,
nonacademic
jobs
for those with
musicological training.23
would make more sense to have an
organization
that would
discourage
the
study
of
musicology.
Kurt
Rasch,
"Musikwissenschaft und
Beruf,"
Zeitscbrift
fir
Musikwissen-
schaft
15
(1933): 67-69;
and Hans
Engel, "Miszellen,"
Zeitschriffifir Musikwissenschaft
15 (1933): 275-
22Pamela
M.
Potter,
"Die
Lage
der
jiidischen
Musikwissenschaftler an den
Universititen
der Weimarer
Zeit,"
in Musik in der
Emigration
1933-1945: Vorge-
schichte-
Vertreibung-Riickwirkung,
ed. Horst Weber
(Stuttgart: VerlagJ.
B.
Metzler,
1994), 56-68.
23 In
1935, Siegfried
Goslich
began
a
report
of the Deutscher Studentenbund with
a
quote
from Hider and
declared,
"Die
Durchdringung
unseres
gesamten
Volksleben
mit der nationalsozialistischen
Weltanschauung
hat in der
jungen
Generation der
Musikwissenschaft das
Gefiihl
der
Verpflichtung
zu einer
Auseinandersetzung
mit
den neuen
Gegebenheiten wachgerufen" ("the penetration
of the entire life of our
Volk with National Socialist
ideology
has awakened the
feeling
of
obligation
to come
to terms with the new situation in the
younger generation
of
musicologists");
he then
suggested
new careers in National Socialist
organizations
and in
dramaturgy,
journalism, radio,
and film
(Siegfried
Goslich,
"Studium und Beruf des
jungen
Musikwissenschaftlers,"
Die Musik
27
[19351]:
283, 285).
Alfred
Morgenroth (Propa-
ganda Ministry) responded by citing jobs
that his
organization
could
provide
for those
with
musicological training
and
endorsing
a state examination that would create other
career
opportunities (Richard Petzoldt,
"Heutige
Berufsziele der Musikwissen-
schaftler,"
Allgemeine Musikzeitung 63 [1935]: 467-68).
Karl Gustav Fellerer also
suggested
several
potential
careers for
musicologists,
with the
justification
that if
musicology
was to be "bound to the Volk"
(volksgebunden),
it must
apply
itself to
practical
areas and not leave them
open
to dilettantes. He
recommended the creation of the "Musikkonservator" to
preserve
musical treasures
on a
regional level;
an
expansion
of
teaching opportunities beyond
universities in
accordance with the new
system
of music
education;
jobs
in theater
(as
dramaturg,
producer,
or
director),
concert
agencies, radio,
the
recording industry, publishing,
and
instrument and music
sales;
and the
application
of
training
in
systematic
fields to radio
78
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
Because National Socialist leaders
generally
mistrusted intellectu-
als
and,
to the extent that
they
did
support
research,
gave priority
to
science and
technology,'4 musicology
still had to demonstrate its
usefulness to the
greater public good
and show interest in
ideologi-
cally
and
politically
relevant
subjects.1s
As in the
192os, musicologists
used
nonscholarly media-newspapers, magazines,
education
period-
icals,
music trade
journals, party publications-to
reach a wider
audience.
They
even launched new
journals,
such as Deutsche
Musikkultur and the
Hitler-Youth-sponsored
Musik in
Jugend
und
Volk,
with the
express purpose
of
making musicology
accessible to
lay
persons.26
Their
pre-I933 practice
of
writing
short
essays
for a wide
technology,
mechanical
music,
recording,
and instrument
building (Karl
Gustav
Fellerer,
"Praktische
Musikwissenschaft,"
Zeitschriff fiir
Musik
103 [1936]: 27-31;
idem,
"Entrumpelung
und
Musikwissenschaft,"
Die Musik
30 [1937]:
IOO-ioi;
and
idem,
"Historische und
systematische
Musikwissenschaft,"
Die Musik
31 [1937]:
340-43)-
24 Edward Yarnell
Hartshorne, Jr.,
The German Universities and National Socialism
(Cambridge:
Harvard
University
Press,
1937),
Io6-25.
2s Shortly
after
Hitler's assumption
of
power,
Fritz Bose called attention to the
racial
approach
in
musicology
in a Nazi
party organ
founded in
1931
and edited
by
Joseph
Goebbels
(Fritz Bose,
"Das Rassische in der
Musik,"
Unser
Wille
und
Weg 4
[1934]:
10-12).
2 Heinrich
Besseler,
as head of the
Denkmiiler
division of the Staatliches Institut
fiir deutsche
Musikforschung,
first
proposed
what was to become
Deutsche
Musikkul-
tur to fill the need for a
periodical
"which would
forge
a connection between
scholarship
and
[everyday]
life in National Socialist
Germany" ("eine
Musikzeitschrift,
die im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland die
Verbindung
von
Wissenschaft und Leben
herstellt")
and would serve as a
"musicologically
directed,
culturally-politically
active German music
journal,"
directed to
musicologists
and
music lovers
"disappointed
with the
present
low standards of music
periodicals" ("Es
handelt sich um eine
musikwissenschaftlich
gefiihrte, kulturpolitisch
aktive
deutsche
Musikzeitschrift,
deren Bezieherkreis sich zusammensetzt
i)
aus den deutschen
Fachgenossen, 2)
aus den im Beruf stehenden
'praktischen
Musikwissenschaftlern' als
nattirlichem
Bindeglied
zwischen
Forschung
und
Leben,
3)
aus den vom
gegen-
wirtigen
Tiefstand der Musikschriften
unbefriedigten Liebhabern").
It was to
provide
a forum for
musicologists
to reach out to musicians and amateurs on all
questions
of
the "musical
heritage"
and to take
part
in the tasks of the
present
"in the
spirit
of
scholarly responsibility" ("Die
deutsche Musikwissenschaft hat in dieser Zeitschrift
vor einem Forum von Musikern und Liebhabern
i)
alle
Fragen
zu
behandeln,
die
unser musikalisches Erbe
angehen,
und
2)
an den
groBen
Aufgaben
der
Gegenwart-
nicht des
Tages-im
Geist wissenschaftlicher
Verantwortung
mitzuarbeiten." Form
letter from Besseler to various
colleagues
dated
July 1935,
Archive of the
Staatliches
Institut
fiir
Musikforschung
PreuBischer
Kulturbesitz, Berlin).
Musik in
Jugend
und
Volk,
for a time under the
editorship
of
musicologist
Gotthold
Frotscher,
was
described as a
"music-political journal"
which included
"racial-musicological
studies"
and educational
writings
with the
goal
of
"deepening knowledge
as well as
practice"
("Rassenkundlich-musikwissenschaftliche
Einzelarbeiten und musikerzieherisches
Schrifttum dienten der
Vertiefung
der Erkenntnis wie
auch
der Praxis."
Wolfgang
Stumme,
"Musik in der
Hitler-Jugend,"
in Musik im
Volk,
ed.
Stumme, 27).
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER 79
readership
revealed the
discipline's ability
to rationalize current
political
and
ideological developments (such
as the
importance
of
racial
studies,
the definition of German
nationality through
music,
and
the
preservation
of folk
culture)
and called the attention of the
government
and the
public
to the field's
potential
enrichment of
Germany's
future.
In a Festschrift
honoring
Hitler's fiftieth
birthday
in
1939,
Friedrich Blume summarized the most
important accomplishments
of
musicology
in the new
state,
emphasizing
its service to the German
Volk and its
preservation
of the German musical
heritage:
German
musicology
has to
preserve
one of the noblest commodities of
German culture. Music has
always
been one of the liveliest and most
characteristic
expressions
of the German
spirit.
The German Volk has for
centuries erected for itself and for its
destiny
a
"victory
boulevard" of
great
monuments. Given this
fact,
the direction of
any
music research
that takes its
obligations
to the Volk and state
seriously
has become clear.
The
heritage
of German music dictates its duties. Even if earlier research
often went off in several futile directions and sacrificed a
living
bond with
the
ordinary
for a
pursuit
of the
extraordinary,
a National Socialist
musicology
can
only proceed
from the
living
core of German
music,
laying
the
periphery
around
it,
orienting
remote
problems
around this
center.27
This
statement,
more than
just lip
service to the occasion of Hitler's
birthday, encapsulated significant developments
in the recent
history
of the
discipline:
the earlier debates on the relevance of
musicology,
the efforts to
forge
links with the
public through
individual
publica-
tions and the creation of new
journals,
and the commitment to the
study
of German music. As the
party
and state
provided
new
outlets
for
them,
musicologists
would continue to branch out
beyond
the
academy
and,
especially during
the
war,
take
advantage
of a
variety
of
27
"Die deutsche Musikwissenschaft hat eines der edelsten Giiter der deutschen
Kultur zu
hiiten.
Von
je
ist die Musik eine der
lebendigsten
und
eigenartigsten
Prigungen
des deutschen Geistes
gewesen.
Das deutsche Volk hat sich und
seinem
Schicksal in der Musik seit
Jahrhunderten
eine
'Siegesallee' groBartigster
Denkmale
gesetzt.
Mit dieser Tatsache ist einer
Musikforschung,
die es mit ihren Pflichten
gegen
Volk und Staat ernst
nimmt,
die
Ausrichtung vorgezeichnet.
Das Erbe der
deutschen Musik diktiert
seinen
Auftrag.
Wenn eine
friihere
Forschung
oftmals in
unfruchtbarer
Zersplitterung
die
lebendige
Verbundenheit mit
dem
Artgegebenen
der
Jagd
nach
dem
AuBergewohnlichen
aufopferte,
so kann eine nationalsozialistiche
Musikwissenschaft nur von der
Lebensmitte
der deutschen Musik
ausgehen
und
um
sie
die weiteren
Ringe legen,
die entferntere Probleme
um diese Mitte ordnen."
Friedrich
Blume,
"Deutsche
Musikwissenschaft,"
in
Deutsche
Wissenschaften.
Arbeit
und
Aufgabe.
Dem
Fiibrer
und
Reichskanzler
zum
5o.
Geburtstag (Leipzig, 1939),
i6.
80 JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN
MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
unusual,
even
illegal,
tasks carried out in the name of
preserving
this
"noble
commodity,"
German music.
Government and
Party Opportunities for Musicologists, 193 7-45
Musicologists
showed their
willingness
to work for the
state,
and
the state
responded
with its
grandest gesture
of
support
for the field
through
the resurrection of the all but defunct
Fiirstliches
Institut
ffir
deutsche
Musikforschung
in
Biickeburg.
The Nazi education
minister
moved the institute to Berlin in
1935, adding
on the Berlin folk music
archive,
the music instrument
collection,
a number of
editing projects
(the largest
of which was the Denkmaler
deutscher Tonkunst,
restruc-
tured as Das Erbe deutscher
Musik)
and
periodicals
(Archiv
fiir
Musik-
forschung
and
Deutsche
Musikkultur),
and a new
department
for folk
music research. A number of other
government
and
party organiza-
tions created
opportunities
for
musicologists
to
apply
their skills in
less traditional
working
environments,
especially
when their research
showed
promise
of
supporting political
and
ideological
ends. As
early
as
1937, musicologists
started to
reap
the benefits of financial
support
for relevant research from
sponsors
such as the
SS-"Ahnenerbe,"
the
Propaganda Ministry,
and Boetticher's
employer,
the Amt
Rosenberg.
The SS-"Ahnenerbe" was the scientific branch of Heinrich
Himmler's massive
organization.
This branch
brought together
nat-
ural
sciences,
social
sciences,
and humanities in a collaborative effort
to achieve a
complete understanding
of the Germanic race.'8 For
musicologists
who could demonstrate an interest in
anything
con-
strued as "Germanic"
music,
the SS-"Ahnenerbe"
proved
a
particu-
larly generous
and
problem-free
source of research and
publication
subvention,
owing
to Himmler's
special privileges
as leader of the elite
"state within a state" and his
ability
to circumvent
government
bureaucracy.
On Himmler's direct
order,
the "Ahnenerbe"
adopted
and
published Joseph
Miiller-Blattau's
study
on
prehistoric
Germanic
traits found in folk music
(Germanisches
Erbe in deutscher
Tonkunst,
1938), copublished by
the Hitler Youth. Himmler even had a
special
interest in research into the Germanic influences in
Gregorian
chant'9
28 Michael H.
Kater, Das
"Ahnenerbe"
der SS
1935-1945:
Ein
Beitrag
zur Kultur-
politik
des
Dritten Reiches,
Studien zur
Zeitgeschichte herausgegeben
vom Institut
fiir
Zeitgeschichte (Stuttgart:
Deutsche
Verlags-Anstalt, 1974), 17-24, 47-53, 65, 72.
29
"Der Reichsfiihrer-SS
hat
ein
besonderes Interesse an den
Fragen
des
gregor-
ianischen
Chorals und das 'Ahnenerbe'
deshalb
beauftragt,
sich damit zu befassen. Ich
wiirde
aus diesem Grunde auch unsere Zusammenarbeit
zunichst
gerne
auf
diesem
Gebiet verwirklicht sehen." SS-"Ahnenerbe" to Erich
Schenk, 7 September 1942,
MUSICOLOGY UNDER HITLER 81
and entertained
proposals
to subsidize the
publication
of relevant
works
by
Karl Gustav Fellerer and Ewald
Jammers.30
The
Propaganda Ministry,
for its
part, supported only
those
musicological projects
that
promised
to
yield
some
practical
benefit.
Propaganda
Minister
Joseph
Goebbels
cosponsored
a
folk-song
an-
thology
edited
by
Miiller-Blattau
and
others,3'
not so much for its
scholarly
merit but for its use as a
songbook
for
party organizations
and schools. Goebbels
similarly
endorsed research in historical musi-
cology only
when it could serve
propagandistic
ends. Herbert
Gerigk,
for
example,
received
support
to write a
biography
of Sibelius in
1942
on the
strength
of its
potential
to
help
reinforce the "Nordic ties"
between
Germany
and
Finland.3'
The most ambitious
musicological
project
initiated
by
Goebbels's
ministry
was a collection of
essays
edited
by
Hans
Joachim Moser,
discussed
below,
that aimed to
demonstrate
Germany's long history
of musical
hegemony
in territo-
ries
recently occupied by
German
troops.
Alfred
Rosenberg's
office for the
ideological supervision
of the
Nazi
party
offered a wide
variety
of
options
to
apply musicological
expertise. Rosenberg,
chief National Socialist
ideologue
and author of
The
Myth of
the Twentieth
Century,
had founded the
Fighting League
for German Culture
(Kampfbund
fiir deutsche
Kultur)
in
1929
and
became a contender for control of all cultural administration when the
Nazis came to
power.
When
Rosenberg
lost out to Goebbels
(who
was
entrusted with the administration of cultural affairs in the form of the
Propaganda Ministry
and the Reich Chamber of
Culture),
Hitler
placated
him with the title of
Deputy
to the Fiihrer for the
Supervision
of the Total Intellectual and
Ideological Training
and Education of
the National Socialist German Workers
Party. Rosenberg's
office,
referred to as the Amt
Rosenberg
or the
Reichsiiberwachungsstelle,
served as a
watchdog organization scrutinizing
the
policies
of others.
His fierce
rivalry
with Goebbels never
waned,
and
although
he had
little
power
to direct cultural
affairs,
he used his
position
to observe
Goebbels's
every
move and strike at the
slightest
indications of
ideological impropriety.
BDC Schenk. See Pamela M.
Potter,
"Did
Himmler
Really
Like
Gregorian
Chant?
The SS and
Musicology,"
Modernism/Modernity
2, no.
3 (September 1995): 45-68.
30
"Ahnenerbe" to Widukind
Verlag, 4
March
1938,
"Ahnenerbe" to
Vieweg
Verlag, 24 August 1938,
"Betr.: Miiller-Blattau"
(no date),
and
Reichsgeschiftsfiihrer
to Wiist
("Ahnenerbe"), 24
March
1938,
BDC
Miiller-Blattau; Quellmalz
to Reichs-
sicherheitshauptamt,
I2
June
I943,
BA NS 21/220.
3' Hans Albrecht
(Staatliches Institut)
to
Kallmeyer Verlag, 7
October
1943,
BA
NS 21/220.
32 File memo by Gerigk, 21 February 1942, BA NS 15/99.
82
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
The Amt
Rosenberg
had its own music
department,
the Amt
Musik or
Hauptstelle
Musik,
headed
by musicologist
Herbert
Gerigk.
Best known for its
publication
of the Lexikon
derJuden
in der
Musik,
a
directory
of
Jews
active in
music,33
and for its takeover and transfor-
mation of the
periodical
Die Musik into a National Socialist mouth-
piece,34 Gerigk's
division enlisted the assistance of
many colleagues
in
musicology
to
carry
out both the
"supervisory"
and the "educational"
tasks ordained
by Rosenberg's
commission. For
instance,
Gerigk
called
upon
Rudolf
Gerber,
Wolfgang
Boetticher,
and Werner
Danckert to assess the
ideological conformity
of their
colleagues'
works.3s
From
1939
on,
these and other
scholars,
including
Fellerer,
Erich Schenk
(then
head of the
musicology department
at the
University
of
Vienna),
and Helmut
Osthoff,
became involved in
developing
the
musicology
division of the Hohe Schule der
Partei,36
an elite
university planned by
Hitler and
Rosenberg.37
Their first
planned undertaking
for the Hohe Schule was a
large-scale
music
reference work that would be
"newly compiled
in the sense of our
Weltanschauung"
and would "counteract" the
"dangerous
false
opin-
ions" contained in
existing scholarly
reference
works.38
33 Lexikon der
Juden
in der
Musik,
ed. Herbert
Gerigk
and
Theophil Stengel,
Ver6ffentlichungen
des Instituts der NSDAP zur
Erforschung
der
Judenfrage
2
(Berlin: Hahnefeld,
i940).
34Gerigk
to Schroth
(Reichsstudentenfiihrung), 30 September 1937,
BA NS
I5/59.
3s Gerigk
commissioned
musicologists
to evaluate the
political acceptability
of
musicological
works for the future
training
of National
Socialists,
and
they
submitted
their
reports
to the Amt
Schrifttumspflege
within the Amt
Rosenberg. Among
those
reports
were
Gerigk's
evaluation of works
by
Raabe,
Schering,
and
Schiedermair;
Boetticher's evaluations of two works
by Schering
and one
by
Zimmermann;
Hermann Killer's evaluation of
Schering;
Gerber's evaluation of
Valentin;
and
Danckert's evaluation of Wiora
(BA
NS
i5/101
includes
reports dating
from
1937
through 1944).
36
A
report
on the activities of the Amt Musik cites
Danckert, Gerber, Fellerer,
Schenk,
H.
Schole,
and Erich Schumann as
scholarly
consultants who assisted in the
planning
of the Hohe Schule
("Betrifft: Hauptstelle Musik-Aufgaben
und Arbeiten
laut Schreiben des Reichsleiters vom
14.5.1940,"
BA NS
I5/i89).
37 Reinhard
Bollmus,
"Zum
Projekt
einer nationalsozialistischen Alternativ-
Universitiit:
Alfred
Rosenbergs
'Hohe
Schule,'
"
in
Erziehung
und
Schulung
im Dritten
Reich.
Teil 2:
Hochschule,
Erwachsenbildung,
ed. Manfred Heinemann
(Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta,
1986), 125-52.
38
"Das
Ziel dieser Arbeiten
ist,
m6glichst
bald schon eines im Sinne
unserer
Weltanschauung
neu
gestalteten umfangreichen
Musiklexikons
zu
veroffentlichen,
das wiederum den
Ausgangspunkt
fiir
die kommende
enzykloptidistische
Zusammen-
fassung
des
Stoffgebiets
bilden soll. Die
Durchfiihrung
dieser Arbeiten ist
vordring-
lich,
weil in den
derzeitigen
wissenschaftlichen
Darstellungen
ebenso wie in den
fiir
Schulungszwecke
und im Unterricht
herangezogenen
Biichern
folgenschwere
Fehlmeinungen
enthalten
sind,
die durch unsere
Tiitigkeit ausgemerzt
werden
MUSICOLOGY UNDER HITLER
83
Other Amt
Rosenberg
tasks
lay
outside the
scholarly
realm
entirely.
Between
194o
and
1944,
Erich Schenk and Karl
Blessinger
assisted
Gerigk
in the ostracism of
Jews
from musical life
by providing
him with details of the
non-Aryan
status of individuals for inclusion in
the Lexikon
derJuden
in der Musik.
Gerigk approached
Schenk to attest
to the "racial affiliation" of
Jews
who had received their doctorates in
Vienna,39
and Schenk
complied thoroughly
and
promptly.40 Gerigk
thanked him for his
cooperation, adding
that "a careful
scrutiny
of the
names of Viennese doctorates would
probably bring
to
light many
more fat
Jews."4'
While
drafting
a review of the Lexikon for Die
Musik,
Blessinger
offered
the criticism that
although
a
comprehensive
list of
all
Jews
in music would be an
impossible
task,
nevertheless for
"practical
use" the omission of names from the Lexikon
implied Aryan
status. He offered his own small contribution toward
comprehensive-
ness
by adding
names of
Jews
he knew in
Munich.42
The activities of the Amt Musik went far
beyond
these short-term
and
largely
domestic
assignments,
and it attracted
musicologists
with
the
prospect
of
having
substantial influence in
policy-making
in the
future of the Reich.
Hitler's
promises
to rebuild
Germany
and the
realization of his doctrine of
Lebensraum,
the
acquisition
of
living
space
for the German nation
through
annexations and
military
conquests, inspired
scholars to see
limitless
career
possibilities
in the
future
expansion
of
Germany.
The tasks of resettlement and German-
ization on the new frontiers would
certainly open up
new
university
positions,
but
they
would also involve
developing large-scale programs
for
establishing
or
reforming
music
education,
concert
activity,
music
publishing,
and other branches of musical life.
Under the
auspices
of
Rosenberg's
wartime
operational staff,
the
Einsatzstab Reichsleiter
Rosenbergs,
and its
special
music task
force,
sollen."
"Betrifft:
Hauptstelle Musik-Aufgaben
und Arbeiten laut Schreiben des
Reichsleiters vom
I4.5.I940,"
BA NS
15/I89.
According
to the documents
available,
Gerigk
could
rely
on the
cooperation
of
Osthoff, Gerber, Fellerer, Danckert,
and
Schenk
(Gerigk
to
Osthoff,
11
August 1939,
and Osthoff to
Gerigk [no date],
BA NS
15/26; Gerigk
to
Gerber,
io
August 1939,
28
February 1940,
and 8
July 1940,
and
Gerber to
Gerigk, 3
March
1940
and
13
July
194o,
BA NS
15/25; Gerigk
to
Fellerer,
28
February 1940, 31 May
i940,
and
30 June
i94o,
BA NS
15/24; Gerigk
to
Danckert,
ii
August 1939, Gerigk
to
Verwaltungsamt,
Io
May 1940,
BA NS
15/24;
Gerigk
to
Schenk,
4 August 1939,
BA NS
15/26).
39 Hauptstelle
Musik to
Schenk, 21
March
1941,
BA NS
15/2
1.
40
Schenk
to
Gerigk, 31
March
1941,
BA NS
15/21.
4' "Eine
genaue Durchsicht der Namen der Wiener Promoventen
wiirde wahr-
scheinlich noch manchen fetten
Juden
zu
Tage
f6rdern."
Gerigk
to
Schenk,
28
December
1944,
BA NS
15/2
a.
42
Blessinger
to
Gerigk, 30 April 1940,
BA NS
15/21.
84
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
Sonderstab
Musik,
the Amt Musik involved
musicologists directly
in
preliminary policy-making
with
regard
to the
occupation.
The
Ein-
satzstab's
primary
mission was to seize valuable
property
in
occupied
territories with the intention of
supplying
the
library
of the Hohe
Schule,
state
libraries,
and museums. It allowed
Rosenberg
and the
German
government
to
defy
international law and seize
private
property
from
Jews
under
occupation,
since,
it was
argued, any
cease-fire
agreements
had not been reached with
Jewish
citizens.43 It
also functioned as a barometer for the
receptiveness
of
Aryans
under
occupation
to
Germany's
eventual domination. A
I942
communica-
tion from
Gerigk
to Boetticher
lays
out
specific
instructions for the
Sonderstab Musik
during
Boetticher's
trip
to the Baltic states
(see
Appendix A),
guidelines
that
applied
to most
assignments
in other
occupied regions
as well:
i. Determination of available music
manuscripts
and
prints
in
public
and
scholarly
libraries. Most
important
are those documents that are of
German
origin
and that indicate the
political significance
of the Eastern
regions.
The items must be
catalogued
in a card
index,
the most valuable
items are to be
photographed.
2.
According
to the
Fiihrer's orders,
you
must
immediately protect
from
destruction,
damage,
or
transport
all musical
documents,
including
musical
instruments,
taken from
Jewish possession.
You are advised to
work
together
with the
foreign
office of the SD
[Sicherheitsdienst].
Suitable material
will,
as in
prior
cases,
be
designated
for the Hohe
Schule.
3.
Medieval music documents in monasteries and other libraries which
are otherwise not
publicly
accessible are also to be
catalogued.
The value
of such collections that were
previously
unknown to German scholars
should be determined.
4.
The warehouses of individual
recording companies
are to be
investigated
and
thoroughly
searched for
enemy
and/or
Jewish
material.
A strict standard must be maintained in
selecting
these
recordings.
This
means that even those
recordings
in which
Jewish
artists
merely partic-
ipated
are also to be
catalogued.
Since,
according
to
experience,
record-
ings
are the most
easily susceptible
to
enemy
seizure,
you
are to lock
up
the material
following your
search.
5.
Radio stations are to be checked for their
inventory
of
printed
music
and
recordings.
The
processing
of these documents is to follow the
guidelines
in
4.
6. The files of concert
agencies
and
agents
are to be
thoroughly
examined. Most
important
here is to check all written
correspondence
between Germans and these
foreign agents.
43
Reinhard
Bollmus,
Das Amt
Rosenberg
und seine
Gegner.
Zum
Machtkampf
im
nationalsozialistischen
Herrschaftssystem,
Studien zur
Zeitgeschichte herausgegeben
vom
Institut
fiir
Zeitgeschichte (Stuttgart:
Deutsche
Verlags-Anstalt, 1970), 145-48.
MUSICOLOGY UNDER HITLER
85
7.
Several
Jews
who have come forth as musicians in that
region
are to
be recorded in a
bibliography,
since such documentation is
indispensable
for the
party's publication
Lexikon
derJuden
in der Musik. In this work
you
should also foster a
friendly
collaboration with the
foreign
office of the
SD.
Furthermore,
it would be
advantageous
to make close contact with
resident
Aryan composers
and
performing
artists. It is
important
to
determine the
present
and
past political
orientations of these
non-Jewish
musicians. In
appropriate
cases
you
should
try
to win over these artists for
the cultural tasks of the German Reich. In this
way
it will be
possible
to
create
optimal
conditions for cultural institutions and
scholarly organi-
zations to be founded in the future. You are to
provide
written
reports
on
the results of
your inquiries
and
particularly
on
your
collaboration with
the
appropriate departments
of the German Reich stationed
there.44
Besides the mere seizure of
materials,
the tasks of the Sonderstab
Musik extended to the assessment of the conditions in
occupied
territories in order to
plan
the future takeover of musical life. As
Gerigk
outlined in item
7
of this
assignment,
the mission
encompassed
investigating
activities of concert
agencies
with
special
attention to
their
foreign
contacts;
identifying practicing
Jewish
musicians and
composers;
and
evaluating
the
political reliability
of
non-Jewish
musicians with a view toward
encouraging
them to work for the
German cultural cause.
Although
these tasks
represented only
the first
steps
for
musicologists
to
gain
a foothold in the administration of the
expanded
Reich,
they promised
scholars concrete
input
in the control
of musical life and music
policy
in countries under
occupation,
experiences
which could have led to more substantial
assignments
after the war.
Boetticher
managed
to further his career with the exclusive
advantages
he
gained
from his
position
as
Gerigk's
assistant.45 The
Amt
Rosenberg published
his
dissertation,46
and his activities with the
Einsatzstab47
allowed
him to
complete
his Habilitation
by bringing
him to several
occupied
territories
during
the war and
enabling
him to
use libraries that were otherwise
inaccessible,
as
reported by Georg
Schiinemann
in the evaluation of his
Habilitationsschrift.
Schiinemann
wrote that "the war initiative led him on a mission from Minister
Rosenberg
to
Paris, Brussels, Warsaw, Cracow, Amsterdam,
and other
44Gerigk
to
Boetticher,
9 February 1942,
BA NS
15/24.
4s
Boetticher was
appointed
Referent in the
Hauptstelle
Musik in
February 1939
(Gerigk
to
Verwaltungsamt,
18
January
1939,
BA NS
15/24).
4 Georg Schiinemann,
"Gutachten
uiber
die Habilitationsschrift Dr.
Wolfgang
Boettichers,"
I8
March
1943,
UAB PA Boetticher.
47
Boetticher to
Philosophische
Fakultit, I February 1943, listing
his addresses
with the Einsatzstab
Rosenberg
in Amsterdam and
Brussels,
UAB PA Boetticher.
86
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
cities,
where he was
required
to assess the German musical treasures.
[Boetticher]
exploited
this rare
opportunity
for
scholarly study
in the
area of lute
music....
The
Habilitationsschrift
comes out of earlier
research which he
supplemented significantly
with wartime visits to
foreign libraries."48
He also used his time in
occupied
Paris to work on
a
study published
in
1944
in the Neues
Mozart-Jahrbuch
on a
newly
discovered Mozart
autograph
in the
Bibliotheque
Nationale,
and he
used his Vilna
sojourn
to conduct research and write about German
influence in Latvian folk
song.49
But Boetticher was not the
only musicologist working
for the
Sonderstab Musik.
Gerigk
also entrusted the
older,
more
established,
and
presumably
wiser scholars Rudolf Gerber
(professor
in
Giessen,
born
1899),
Karl Gustav Fellerer
(professor
in
Cologne,
born
1902),
and
Georg Schiinemann (professor
in
Berlin,
born
1884)
with Sonder-
stab
assignments.
In the fall
of
1942,
he sent Gerber and Fellerer on
a three-to-four-week Sonderstab mission to Paris to seize German
printed
music,50
and an
August 1941
list of the Sonderstab Musik's
expenses
indicates that Fellerer and
Schiinemann
had
previously
been
sent to Paris in March and
April
1941.s'
Boetticher assumed more
assignments
than
others,
traveling
to
Poland,
Belgium,
France,
Hol-
land,
and the Baltic
states,
and even
securing
release from
military
service to
carry
out these
tasks,s2
but as a
junior
scholar,
at least
48 "Der
Kriegseinsatz fiihrte
ihn im
Auftrag
von Minister
Rosenberg
nach Paris
und
Briissel,
Warschau und
Krakau,
Amsterdam u. in andere
Stadte,
in denen er
Feststellungen
iiber das deutsche
Musikgut
zu treffen hatte. Diese seltene
Gelegenheit
nutzte er zu wissenschaftlichen Studien iiber das Gebiet der Lautenmusik aus. ... Aus
friiheren
Materialsammlungen,
die im
Kriege
durch den Besuch auslandischer
Bibliotheken wesentlich
erginzt
wurden,
ist die Habilitationsschrift
hervorge-
gangen."
Schiinemann, "Gutachten," I8
March
1943,
UAB PA Boetticher.
49
ioetticher
to
Dekan,
29 February I944,
UAB PA Boetticher.
5so Gerigk
to Baumler
(Hohe
Schule
planning commission),
17 September
I942,
BA NS
15/24.
s'
"Sonderstab Musik
Abrechnung fiir
das
Reichspropagandaministerium,"
16
August 1941,
BA NS
15/99.
s5
BA NS
15/24.
Boetticher was sent to Warsaw in
1940
to
pack up
and
transport
material
already
seized for the Amt
Rosenberg,
to search the Warsaw branches of
Columbia Records and His Master's Voice for
"Jewish-undermined"
and "treason-
ous" material,
and to seize and
transport
such material for the Hohe Schule. When he
was called
up
for
military
service,
the Amt
Rosenberg requested
that he be
excused,
owing
to his
indispensability
for the Sonderstab Musik as demonstrated
by
his
excellent
musicological qualifications,
command of
foreign languages,
and
prior
work
in
Cracow, Warsaw,
Belgium,
France,
and Holland from
1940
to
i941.
He was
allowed to have a dual
assignment
with the Einsatzstab and the Waffen-SS and was
immediately
sent to the Baltic states with the
specific
instructions listed above
early
in
1942 (two certifications,
7
October
i940; Gerigk
to head of Einsatzstab task
forces,
9
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER 87
sixteen
years younger
than the others
named,
he had the freedom to
devote most of his time to his Amt Musik
responsibilities.
Musicologists'
Contributions to Lebensraum
Propaganda
While Boetticher and his
colleagues
went abroad to assess the
cultural and
political
climate,
musicologists
at home did their
part
to
educate the
public
with
musicological
rationalizations for German
foreign policy.
The doctrine of Lebensraum and its realization in
annexations, invasions,
and
military occupations gave musicologists
a
new avenue for
using
their
expertise
toward a
larger
cause. Contem-
porary
literature reveals a
ground
swell of
unprecedented
interest in
the music of
specific geographical regions
that coincides
exactly
with
Germany's military
advances. Those
musicologists
involved turned
their attention to
geographic
areas
currently
on the
political agenda
and contributed
generously
to the
popular press, offering
their
authoritative
explanations
for the musical
advantages
of German
expansion
into each
region.
It was the annexation of Austria in
1938
that first
inspired
music
historians to
help
validate
political developments
with historical
evidence of German
presence
in the musical life of
neighboring
territories. These earliest
musicological essays
to
support
Hitler's
foreign policy highlighted
the theme of
"estranged"
German
prov-
inces
(Austria,
the
Sudetenland,
and
Danzig) "returning
home,"
not
only
in a
political
but also in a musical
sense, since,
they
claimed,
the
music of these
regions
was and
always
had been German. The desire
for the cultural and
political unity
of
Germany
and Austria had existed
in some form
among
Austrian intellectuals ever since the
disintegra-
tion of Austria's Dual
Monarchy
in
I9I8.53
As
early
as
I930,
the
Viennese
musicologist
Robert Lach advocated the musical and
polit-
ical
unity
of
Germany
and Austria
by arguing
that the two countries
belonged together
as did
Bach, Handel, Schubert,
Haydn,
and
Mozart,
with Beethoven
serving
as a
"symbol
of the unification of the
August 1941;
Einsatzstab to Commander of
Waffen-SS,
29
November
1941;
Boet-
ticher to
Verwaltungsamt,
22
January 1942; Gerigk
to
Boetticher,
9 February 1942).
s3 Propaganda organizations promoting
the
Anschluss
arose in
Vienna
in the
I920s,
some with
prominent professors
at their helm. Alfred D.
Low,
The
Anschluss
Movement,
1931-1938,
and the Great Powers
(New
York: Columbia
University
Press,
1985), 14-20, 24-26, 35-36. My
thanks to Daniel Mattern for
referring
me to this
work.
88
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
German and Austrian souls."54 The realization of the Anschluss in
1938
fulfilled the wishes of
Lach,
who reiterated his sentiments in the
Allgemeine Musikzeitung
in
September
of that
year,55
and of several
German
colleagues. Joseph
Miiller-Blattau
highlighted
the
history
of
"Austria's share of the German musical
heritage"
in the
Hitler-Youth
journal
Musik in
Jugend
und Volk one month after the
Anschluss,
attempting
to demonstrate German-Austrian
spiritual unity
with an
analysis
of
Haydn's Deutschlandlied.s6
Moser celebrated the event in
several
publications, including
two issued
by
the
SS-"Ahnenerbe,"57
regarding
the Anschluss as the
political
realization of a musical
relationship stretching
back to the sixteenth
century,
when "the idea
of a Greater
Germany
had
already
found its musical
realization,
which
can serve as a model for us
today."s8
Rudolf Gerber used the
pages
of
an
interdisciplinary journal
to assess the musical
importance
of the
Anschluss,
and both he and Moser drew
anti-Semitic
observations into
their discussions. Gerber blamed
Mahler,
the "Czech
ghetto
Jew"
and
representative
of "international
Jewry,"
for
initiating
a
period
of
decline,
59 while Moser asserted that
strong
German-Austrian musical
54
Robert
Lach,
"Die
grof6deutsche
Kultureinheit,"
Die
Anschlufifrage
in ibrer
kulturellen,
politischen
und
wirtschaftlichen Bedeutung
als
europaisches
Problem
(Vienna:
Universitits-Verlags
Buchhandlung, 1930), 286-95;
and
idem,
"Die
gro6deutsche
Kultureinheit in der
Musik," Deutsche
Welt.
Monatshefte
des Vereins
fir
das
Deutschtum
im Ausland 8
(1931): 27-31.
ss
Robert
Lach,
"Das Osterreichertum in der
Musik,"
Allgemeine Musikzeitung 65
(1938): 529-31.
Other contributors to this literature
appearing
in
1938
and not
discussed here include Andreas
Liess,
"Das
deutsch-6sterreichische
Musikschaffen der
Gegenwart," Allgemeine Musikzeitung 65 (1938): 532;
H.
Strobel,
"Osterreichs
Beitrag
zur deutschen
Musik,"
Neues Musikblatt
(1938):
I;
and Hans
Joachim Therstappen,
"Die Musik im
grof6deutschen
Raum," Deutsche
Musikkultur
3 (1938-39): 425-28.
6 Joseph
Miiller-Blattau, "Vom
Anteil Osterreichs am Erbe deutscher
Musik,"
Musik in
Jugend
und Volk i
(1937-38):
218-26.
s7
One
of Moser's articles
appeared
in the SS-"Ahnenerbe"
periodical
Germanien
and was
reprinted
in a
special publication
dedicated to the
"homecoming"
of Austria
and the Sudetenland: Hans
Joachim Moser,
"Osterreichs Musik und
Musiker,"
Germanien
i
(1939):
i61-68,
reprinted
in
Deutsches
Land
kehrt heim:
Ostmark
und
Sudetenland als
germanischer
Volksboden,
ed.
J.
O.
Pla6mann and G.
Trathnigg,
Deutsches Ahnenerbe Series C:
Volkstiimliche
Schriften, vol.
3 (Berlin:
Ahnenerbe-
Stiftung, [1939]), 84-91.
He also authored "Das deutsche
weltliche
Chorlied Alt-
osterreichs,"
Die
Musikpflege 9
(I938):
143-48,
and "Dreiviertel
Jahrtausend
6ster-
reichischer
Musik,"
Velhagen
und
Klasings Monatshefte 52,
no. 2
(1937-38): 276-80.
s8s
,...
so dafB der
gro6deutsche
Gedanke schon einmal eine
gerade fiir
heut
wieder
beispielhafte
musikalische
Verwirklichung gefunden
hat."
Moser,
"Osterreichs
Musik und
Musiker,"
in
Deutsches
Land
kehrt heim,
ed. Pla6mann and
Trathnigg,
86.
s9
"Eine andere Generation bekam am Ende des
vergangenen Jahrhunderts
das
Heft in die
Hand,
deren
Wortfiihrer
nicht mehr Menschen der Ostmark
waren,
sondern das internationale
Judentum,
dessen erster
Hauptvertreter,
der tschechische
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER
89
bonds could never be
damaged by
Jews
such as
Mahler, Schreker,
and
Schoenberg,
because the Germanic racial
solidarity
of other
leading
figures
in Viennese musical life formed a bulwark
against
Jewish
encroachments.60
In
June 1938,
after Hitler had
begun
to exert
pressure
on
Czechoslovakia to cede its
German-populated provinces,
the
Zeitschrift fiir
Musik
produced
the first of two issues dedicated to
Sudeten-German
music,
opening
with Gustav
Becking's plea
to
enhance the
production
of German musical culture in this
region.6'
Once the area was annexed as a result of the Munich
agreement
in
September,
the
homecoming
theme resounded as
loudly
as it had in
the celebration of the
Anschluss.6'
Moser contributed to a
special
"Deutsches Sudetenland" issue of an SS-"Ahnenerbe"
journal
in
November
1938,63
and
shortly
after the Germans advanced on the
rest of Czechoslovakia in March
1939,
he
published
another testimo-
nial
welcoming
the musical achievements of both the
estranged
Germans and the
(albeit
"less
productive")
Czechs into the German
protectorate.
He relished the
opportunity
to undo
damage
caused
by
"boasting
armchair
politicians"
who insisted on the non-German
origins
of Sudeten-German
composers.64
Contributions to the second
issue of the
Zeitschriftfiir
Musik dedicated to Sudeten-German
music,
appearing
in
January 1939, similarly emphasized
the
German,
rather
than the
Bohemian,
lineage
of
eighteenth-century composers
born in
Ghetto-Jude
Gustav
Mahler, eine Ara des
aiuferen
und inneren Zerfalls
einleitete."
Rudolf
Gerber,
"Die Musik der
Ostmark,"
Zeitschriftfiir
deutsche
Geisteswissenschaft
2
(1939-40):
77-7.8
6o
Moser,
"Osterreichs Musik und
Musiker,"
in
Deutsches
Land
kebrt
heim,
ed.
PlaBmann
and
Trathnigg, 9o.
61
Gustav
Becking,
"Die
Lage
der sudetendeutsche
Musik,"
Zeitschrift fir
Musik
105 (1938): 574-76.
62
Additional
publications by musicologists appearing
in
1938
and not discussed
here include Gustav
Becking,
"Kleiner
Beitrag
zur musikalischen Kultur- und
Stammeskunde der
Sudetendeutschen,"
Ackermann aus
Bohmen
6
(1938): 457-62;
Karl
Blessinger,
"Die Musik im sudetendeutschen
Raum," Musik-Woche
6
(1938): 629;
Ernst
Biicken,
"Sudetendeutsche Musiker und die deutsche
Klassik," Rheinische
Blitter
15 (I938):
765;
and Guido
Waldmann,
"Volkslieder der
Sudetendeutschen," Volks-
deutsche
Forschung
2
(1938): 415-
63 Hans
Joachim Moser,
"Sudetendeutsche
Musik,"
Germanien 10
(1938): 361-68.
This article was also
reprinted
in
Deutsches
Land
kehrt heim,
ed. Plafmann and
Trathnigg, 128-35.
64
Hans
Joachim Moser,
"B6hmen-Maihren
in der deutschen
Musikgeschichte,"
Allgemeine Musikzeitung
66
(1939): 383-85-
90
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL
SOCIETY
the Sudeten
region,
in the
hopes
of
characterizing
the Classical
style
as a
purely
German
phenomenon
with no traces of Bohemian
influences.
s
After
Germany
invaded and
quickly
overran Poland in
September
1939,
Gotthold
Frotscher,
Georg
Schiinemann, and,
once
again,
Moser
pointed
out the music-historical ramifications of both the
"homecoming"
of the free
city
of
Danzig66
and the
longstanding
influence of German musicians in Poland. Moser's
January 1940
article on
Danzig's
musical
past rejoiced
in the
city's
return,
since
"Danzig,
in music-historical
terms,
has
always
been a core of Ger-
manness. And
may
it remain so
forevermore."67
One
particularly
sharp
attack on the
integrity
of a Polish music tradition invoked
Hugo
Riemann's name to discredit Polish musical
creativity,
since Riemann
had
allegedly
determined the
polonaise
to have been
imported
from
Spain
via
Germany.68
Studies in folk
song
also
attempted
to find
German musical dominance
through comparative
studies of German
65
Oskar Kaul, "Von alten sudetendeutschen
Komponisten," Zeitschrift fir
Musik
io6
(1939): 9-13;
and Karl Michael
Komma,
"Die Sudetendeutschen in der
'Mannheimer
Schule,'
"
13-16.
Komma's
article,
like his dissertation
(Johann
Zach
und die
tschechische
Musiker im
deutschen Umbruch
des
i8. Jahrhunderts,
Studien zur
Heidelberger
Musikwissenschaft
7 [Kassel: Birenreiter,
1938],
see
especially pp. 6-7),
frames Bohemian music
through
the nineteenth
century
as a
component
of German
music
history
and
relegates
the Czechs to the status of ineffectual
spectators.
Komma's
work attracted immediate attention
owing
to
political
circumstances in
1938,
and his
dissertation was considered for a
prize
endowed
by
the Reich Education
Ministry
in
1937.
His advisor
Heinrich Besseler,
identifying
himself as the
only party
member on
the selection
committee,
complained
to the
Ministry
that this work
by
a Sudeten-
German on a
politically provocative subject
had been overlooked
despite
its service to
the new direction of the
discipline
in the National Socialist
spirit ("Den
Preis
erhilt
nicht der
junge
Nationalsozialist,
der etwas
wagt
und neue
Wege
sucht,
sondern der
Mann mit
gutem
Sitzfleisch und methodisch
geschulter
Schlaue. Ich
zweifle,
ob das
der Absicht des Herrn Ministers war.... Bei der
gegenwirtigen
Zusammensetzung
dieses Gremiums
geniigt
es
offenbar nicht,
daB nur
ein
Parteigenosse,
der
zufdillig
dabei
ist,
fiir
seine Person die
geschilderte
Ansicht vertritt." Besseler to
Miederer,
13
April
I939,
BDC
Besseler).
66Gotthold
Frotscher,
"Stitten
deutscher Musikkultur:
Danzig,"
Deutsche
Musikkultur
4
(I939-40):
152-55; Georg
Schiinemann,
"Danziger
StraSenrufe,"
Die
Musik
32 (1940): 77-80;
and Hans
Joachim Moser,
"Aus
Danzigs
musikalischer
Vergangenheit,"
Germanien
(I940):
I8-23-
7
"Danzig,
die Stadt der
vertriumten Beischliige
in der
Jopengasse,
der Eichen-
dorff
eines seiner schbnsten Gedichte und Hans Pfitzner die bedeutenste
Vertonung
desselben
geweiht
hat,
Danzig
ist auch
musikgeschichtlich
allezeit
ein
Herzstiick
an
Deutschheit
gewesen.
Und
soil
es
auf
immerdar bleiben."
Moser,
"Aus
Danzigs
musikalischer
Vergangenheit," 23.
68
Kurt
Hennemeyer,
"Vom
deutschen Geist in der
polnischen Musik,"
Die Musik
31 (1939): 796.
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER 91
and Polish
practices.
69
Going beyond purely musicological musings,
both Moser and Frotscher used their
essays
to indicate a
willingness
to
serve as consultants on matters of music
policy
in the
occupied
East.
In the November
1939
issue of Deutsche
Musikkultur,
each
suggested
measures for
Germanizing
musical life in Poland and
incorporating
music education into Hitler's
proposed
resettlement of Germans
in
newly acquired
Polish territories.70
Germany's
advances into
Norway, Belgium,
Holland, Denmark,
and France in
194o
received some attention from
Moser,
folk-music
scholar Werner Danckert
(who published
his
findings
in the cultural
monthly
of the Nazi
party),
and later Karl Gustav
Fellerer,7'
although
these events
inspired
far less celebration than the
conquests
of
Austria,
Czechoslovakia,
and Poland. With the war in full force and a
growing
need to
rally support
for the
military
effort,
it seemed that
Germany's
allies and enemies should take
priority
as
subjects
for
propagandistic
literature.
Germany's
musical connections with
Italy
and
Japan (allied
with
Germany
since
September 1940
as a result of the
Tripartite Pact)
attracted attention from
1941
on,
although
the remote and
relatively
unknown musical culture of
Japan inspired
little
commentary beyond
reports
about cultural
exchanges
and the
prevalence
of German music
in
Japanese
concerts.7'
The
history
of Italian
music,
a more familiar
research
area,
could offer fertile
ground
for
suggesting
music-histor-
ical connections between
Germany
and
Italy.
But unlike the literature
which made claims for
Germany's long-standing
musical
superiority
69
Walter Wiora, "Die Molltonart im Volkslied der Deutschen in Polen und im
polnischen Volkslied,"
Die Musik
32 (I940): 158-62; idem,
"Das Fortleben altdeutsch-
er Volksweisen bei den Deutschen in Polen und im
polnischen Lied," Deutsche
Musikkultur
4
(1939-40):
182-89;
Gotthold
Frotscher,
"Volksbrauche und
Volks-
lieder der Deutschen in
Polen,"
Musik in
Jugend
und Volk 2
(0939): 399-415;
and
Guido
Waldmann,
"Das deutsche Volkslied im
polnischen
Staat der
Jahre
1919-
1939,"
Deutschtum im Ausland
22
(1939):
537-41.
70
Hans
Joachim Moser,
"Deutsche Musik im
polnischen Raum," Deutsche
Musikkultur
4
(I939-40): I55-57;
Frotscher,
"Stitten
deutscher Musikkultur: Dan-
zig," 152-55-
7' Hans
Joachim Moser,
"Musiklandschaft
Vlandern," Niederdeutsche Welt
I6
(1941): 71;
Werner
Danckert,
"Deutsches
Lehngut
im Lied der
skandinavischen
V61ker,"
Nationalsozialistische
Monatshefte 12
(i 94i):
575-96;
and
idem,
"Deutsches
Lehngut
im
norwegischen Volkslied," Deutsche
Monatshefte
in
Norwegen 3 (1942):
2. A
1943
article
by
Fellerer
provided
a
glimpse
of
nineteenth-century
Dutch music as an
outgrowth
of German Romanticism
(Karl
Gustav
Fellerer,
"Holland in der euro-
piischen
Musik des
19.
Jahrhunderts,"
Musik im
Kriege
I
[I943]:
49-50).
7' E.
Limmert,
"Von der Musik der
Japaner,"
Neues Musikblatt 21
(1942): 3;
Friedrich-Heinz
Beyer,
"Deutsche Musik in
Japan,"
Zeitschrififiir
Musik io8
(1940):
393-96. Georg
Schiinemann
attempted
to introduce the rudiments
ofJapanese
music
in his article
"Japanische Musik,"
Die Musik
33 (1941): 237-40.
92
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
in
occupied
and annexed
territories,
discussions of German and Italian
music had to reflect the
equal partnership
of the two allies. It would be
inappropriate
to
present Germany's
musical
heritage
as
superior
to
that of the
musically-and politically-potent
Italians.
Political circumstance
may
have demanded a
respectful
treatment
of Italian
music,
yet
the nationalistic desire to
argue Germany's
musical
superiority proved
difficult to
suppress.
Wartime
publications
on Italian music illustrate this
dilemma.73
In his
1944
book
Deutschland und Italien in
ihren
musikgeschichtlichen Beziehungen,
Hans
Engel
tried to
emphasize
the notion of mutual
respect (citing
Italians'
attraction to the German "Nordic
depth"
and
Germany's
attraction to
Italian
"euphony")
and even claimed to demonstrate racial affinities
that could
explain
similarities in the musical
styles
of those
dwelling
in
southern
Germany
and northern
Italy.74
But while
Engel politely
acknowledged
the
profound
influences of Italian music on German
composers throughout
the
centuries,
his
deep
resentment
occasionally
surfaced,7s especially
in
long digressions
on the decadence and
destructive eroticism of Italian
opera. According
to
Engel,
the
per-
73 Fellerer handled Italian music
history
somewhat
objectively (Karl
Gustav
Fellerer,
"Die
italienische
Oper," Vdlkische Musikerziehung
[I94I]:
153-56),
but in his
study
of German-Italian musical
exchange
in the late Renaissance and
Baroque,
he
extended his list of "Germans" to include
Dufay,
Ciconia, Tinctoris,
Ockeghem,
Obrecht, Willaert, Lasso,
and all the other
noteworthy
members of the "tribe of the
German Volk"
("ein
Stamm deutsches
Volkstums").
Karl Gustav
Fellerer,
"Deutsch-
italienische
Musikbeziehungen
im
6./I
7. Jahrhundert,"
Die Musik
33
(I94I):
125-26.
Hans
Engel presented
his
feelings
about Italian music in brief in "Italiens
Musikge-
schichte,"
Geistige
Arbeit:
Zeitung
aus der
wissenschaftlichen
Welt
9,
no. i i
(June 1942):
1-3,
and
at
length
in Deutschland und Italien in
ihren musikgeschichtlichen Beziehungen
(Regensburg:
Bosse,
I944).
74
Engel,
Deutschland und
Italien,
9-30.
To illustrate the
striking
similarities within
the middle
range
in
physical appearance, temperament,
and
aesthetics,
Engel
devised
a chart of skin
complexion, eye
color,
physiognomy, temperament,
and musical
style
of
leading composers stretching
from southern
Italy
to northeastern
Germany.
The
author conceded that more similarities
prevail among
German and Italian contem-
poraries
than
among compatriots
of different
eras,
potentially weakening
his assertion
of musical traits inherited
through
race over
generations,
but he held on to the notion
of an
eternal,
inexplicable capacity
to feel the music of one's own nation
(p. 17).
Apparently
he felt no further
explanation
was
necessary.
For a translated rendition of
this
chart,
see
Harvey
Sachs,
Music in Fascist
Italy (New
York: W. W.
Norton,
1987),
192-93.
75
For
example,
he states that in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries,
Italian
influences were either not
entirely
Italian in
origin-such
as the
madrigal,
which,
he
claims,
was
essentially developed by
the Netherlandish
composers (pp. 72-73),
and
monody,
for which one can find
early
German
examples
in the Chorlied
(p. ioi)-or
they
failed to
suppress
the "true German
endearing disposition" ("Trotz
des
italienischen Stiles
klingt
schon
ein
echt
deutsches,
liebenswertes
Gemiit durch,"
p.
90),
and "true German
feeling" ("trotz
aller
aiuBerlicher
Anlehnung
echt deutsches
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER 93
verse emasculation of the castrati
proved
disastrous for German
culture
("Our
feeling
for
healthy
art and
healthy
art
policy goes
against just
about
everything
we know about this Italian
opera
in
Germany!")76
until the German
public began
to see
through
the
"spiritual poverty"
of the
ever-popular
Italian
opera,
as revealed in
nineteenth-century
criticisms
by composers,
writers,
and
philoso-
phers.77
For
political
reasons,
Engel acknowledged
Italian
strengths
and rationalized these
good points
with dubious evidence of "racial
kinship"
with
Germans,
but he could not
dispel
the air of moral
superiority,
nor could he
compromise
his firm belief in German
cultural
purity.
When it came to
discussing Germany's
enemies,
musicologists
such as
Fellerer, Frotscher,
and
Blessinger
used their
knowledge
of
music
history
to
glean
evidence of cultural
depravity,
musical
degen-
eracy,
and racial
inferiority
in
England
and the United States.
England
attracted
substantially
more
attention,78
probably
because German
musicologists
had more
experience
with
English
music and its
history.
Nevertheless Frotscher found a
way
to launch an attack on "Ameri-
canism" as
primitive, degenerate,
and even
harmful,
and he
urged
its
eradication from German musical life.79 The
Soviet Union was a
more elusive
target
for
musicologists, owing
to its
complex political
and cultural
relationship
with
Germany.
After Hitler invaded the
territory
of his former
ally
in
1941,
however,
a wartime order
banning
the music of
enemy
nations
formally proscribed
the
performance
of
Russian
music,
even
though
it had been a
mainstay
of the German
concert
repertory. Musicologists simply
avoided the
subject.8,
Empfinden,
deutsches
Fiihlen,
deutsche
Stimmung," p. ioi),
which
persisted
"de-
spite"
Italian
stylistic
influences.
Engel,
Deutschland und Italien.
76 "Unserem
Gefiihl
fiir gesunde
Kunst und
gesunde Kunstpolitik widerspricht
zu
ziemlich
alles,
was wir von dieser
italienischen
Oper
in Deutschland wissen!"
Ibid.,
127.
77Ibid.,
2
0-34.
78
Karl Gustav
Fellerer,
"England
und die
Musik," Volkische
Musikerziehung 7
(1941): 186-90;
and Karl
Blessinger, "Englands
rassischer
Niedergang
im
Spiegel
seiner
Musik,"
Die Musik
32 (1939): 37-4I.
79
Gotthold
Frotscher,
"Amerikanismus in der
Musik,"
Musik in
Jugend
und Volk
6
(1943):
94-97-
o
One rather obscure
attempt
to deal with Soviet
music,
written
by
a nonmusi-
cologist
and
published
in an entertainment music
journal,
drew a
sharp
distinction
between the richness of Russia's musical
heritage
and the detrimental Soviet
policies
that stifled that
creativity.
Hans
Duffner,
"Gibt es eine
sowjetrussische
Musik?" Das
deutsche Podium
9, no.
28
(I94I):
I-2.
94
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
Lebensraum
Propaganda
as Career
Musicologists'
commitment to
publicizing
the Lebensraum doc-
trine not
only
attracted the attention of the authorities but also could
lead to
government appointments.
Hans
Joachim
Moser stands out as
probably
the most
prolific
and versatile contributor to Lebensraum
propaganda,
for he
produced
at least one article at almost
every stage
of German
military
action. One reason for his
productivity may
have
been his
precarious professional standing.
In
1933,
he was forced to
retire as director of the Staatliche Akademie fiir Kirchen- und
Schulmusik because of its
merger
with the Hochschule fiir
Musik,8'
an outcome of section 6 of the
April 1933
civil service act that allowed
for the retirement of individuals "for the
purpose
of
rationalizing
the
administration even if
they
are not
yet
unfit for service.""' The
Education
Ministry
also invoked this
clause,
stating
the
necessity
of
setting
aside funds for
junior faculty,
to effect his dismissal from the
University
of
Berlin,
where he had held a
part-time teaching position
since
1927.83
Thereafter,
Moser maintained a
complex relationship
with Nazi officials. At times
they suspected
him of
having
Jewish
ancestry84
and criticized his mild treatment of
Jews
in his
writings,8s
and in
1936 they
reduced his
pension by 40 percent
after
reviewing
complaints by
former students that dated back to
1930-31.86
From then
on,
Moser
appears
to have relied on his
journalistic
skills to
supplement
his
pension
and
provide
for his
large family.
He
became a
regular
contributor to the SS-"Ahnenerbe"
journal
Ger-
manien from
1938
to
1940, supplying
articles on the
history
of
military
music,
on folk
songs,
and on fundamental elements of German
music,
as well as the
timely essays
on the music
history
of
recently
annexed
and
occupied
lands discussed above. A substantial
correspondence
between Moser and
Joseph
Otto
Pla6mann,
editor of
Germanien,
documents Moser's skill and
impeccable timing
in
keeping up
with
Germany's military
advances. In
September 1938,
Pla6fmann
accepted
Moser's offer to write an article on Sudeten-German
music,
and
by
8
Moser to
Sandberger, 25 September
1933, Sandberger Papers.
82
Jeremy
Noakes and
Geoffrey Pridham, eds.,
Nazism: A
History
in Documents and
Eyewitness Accounts,
19z9-1945
(New
York:
Schocken,
I990), 1:225.
s3 PreuBischer
Minister
fiir
Wissenschaft,
Kunst und
Volksbildung
to
Moser,
4
June
1933,
UAB PA
Moser;
and to
Wolf,
same
date,
UAB PA Wolf.
84
Correspondence concerning
Moser's admission into the Reichsschrifttums-
kammer,
May 1939 through
December
1940,
BDC Moser
(RSK files).
85
File memo, 22
May 1940,
BDC Moser
("Ahnenerbe" files).
86
Correspondence, August 1934 through April 1936,
BDC Moser
(Staatliche
Akademie
files).
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER
95
October
1939
Moser had submitted his article on
Danzig, earning
Plai3mann's
admiration for his treatment of such a
timely subject.87
In
the
spring
of
1939,
Platimann
had
encouraged
Moser to write a series
of articles on the
history
of German
military songs.
In
1940,
however,
in the middle of this
series,
Germany's military gains rapidly
in-
creased,
and Moser
suggested
to
Platimann:
"Or would
you
rather have
in the meantime a more
politically topical essay
on the Flemish-Dutch-
German musical connection? Also one on the musical
culture-bridge
to
Scandinavia would
certainly
be feasible"
(emphases
are
Moser's).88
Moser
penned
these remarks on 2
May 1940, shortly
after the
occupation
of Denmark in
April
and five
days
before the offensive on
Belgium
and Holland.
Moser would have liked to continue this
mutually
beneficial
collaboration,
and he
attempted
to secure
permanent employment
from the
"Ahnenerbe";
but the secret
police
discovered
positive
representations
of
Jewish
composers
in the
1934
edition of his
Musiklexikon,
rendering
him an unfavorable
contributor.89
In
May
1940,
the "Ahnenerbe" ordered
Plafmann
to end Moser's collabora-
tion. Since Moser had
provided
so
many important
articles to
Germanien,
Plafmann
asked him to continue
contributing
even after
the "Ahnenerbe" had
officially
banned his
work,
suggesting
that he use
the
pseudonym
Heinz
Hagebruch.90
Despite
these
setbacks,
Moser's
participation
in the
propaganda
for Lebensraum and the war effort did not
escape
the notice of
higher
authorities,
and
permanent employment immediately
came his
way
in
the form of a
newly
created
position.
Heinz
Drewes,
head of the music
division in the
Propaganda Ministry,
established the Reichsstelle
fiir
Musikbearbeitungen
in
May 1940, appointing
Moser as
deputy
direc-
tor with virtual control over its
operation.
As described in an
essay by
Moser in the
Propaganda Ministry's publication Jahrbuch
der deutschen
Musik
1943
and in a
speech by
Drewes delivered to
journalists
in
Berlin,
the Reichsstelle's mission was to
replenish
the
repertory
of
87
Plafimann to Moser, 22
September
I938
and 21
October
1939,
BDC Moser
("Ahnenerbe" files).
88 "Oder wollen Sie dazwischen einen
politisch
aktuelleren
Aufsatz iiber
die
vliimisch-
niederldndiscb-deutschen Musikbeziehungen
haben? Auch einer
iiber
die musikalische
Kulturbriicke
zu Skandinavien
wire
durchaus
m6glich."
Moser to
Plaimann,
2
May
1940,
BDC Moser
("Ahnenerbe" files).
89
Plaimann to
Moser,
20
June 1939;
Moser to
Plaimann,
20 March
1940;
and
file
memo,
22
May 1940,
BDC Moser
("Ahnenerbe" files).
90
"Ahnenerbe"
secretary
to
Plaimann,
20
May
and 22
May 1940;
Plaimann to
Moser, 27 May
I940
and
29
June
1940;
file memo written
by
Plaimann,
I
June
1940,
BDC Moser
("Ahnenerbe" files).
96
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN
MUSICOLOGICAL
SOCIETY
opera
houses and concert halls.9' The
prohibition
of certain
Jewish
and
foreign
works,
combined with the increased number of "German"
musical establishments
resulting
from
military expansion,
had caused
the
supply
of
acceptable
works to
lag
behind the demand. The
Reichsstelle
planned
to commission new
works,
especially operettas,
and to rework old
compositions
to render them more
"appropriate."
By 1943
it had
already
commissioned the revision of
operettas
set
in
Poland;
the
setting
of the librettos was to be
changed
to German or
German-occupied
locations
(e.g.,
the
setting
of
Mill6cker's
Bettelstu-
dent was moved from Cracow to
Breslau,
and
Nedbal's Polenblut
was
renamed Erntebraut and set in
Bohemia).
Further
plans
included
reworkings
of Handel oratorios that had become "undesirable" be-
cause of their Old Testament
subjects92
and of Bach cantatas rendered
"intolerable"
(unleidlich) by
their Pietist texts.93 Drewes's
speech
also
outlined
plans
for a
scholarly
work:
Furthermore the Reichsstelle has
arranged
for the
editing
of a collabo-
rative work
suggested by
me that will soon
appear
from Max Hesse-
Verlag
and which summarizes the influence of German music on
neighboring
lands;
finally giving
honor to the
truth,
it will thus
pick
out
the facts and
present quite
a different
picture
of
European
music
history.94
The
scholarly
work in
question
was never
published,
but Moser's
papers, preserved
in the Staatsbibliothek in
Berlin,
include an item
that fits Drewes's
description:
an
uncatalogued
box
containing
a
large
9'
Moser,
"Von der
Tiitigkeit
der Reichsstelle
foir
Musikbearbeitungen," Jahrbuch
der
deutschen
Musik
.943,
ed.
Hellmuth
von Hase
(Leipzig: Breitkopf
und
Hirtel;
and
Berlin: Max Hesse
['9431), 78-82;
and Heinz
Drewes,
"Die Reichsstelle fiir Musik-
bearbeitungen," Allgemeine Musikzeitung 70 (1943):
2
5-27.
92
On
attempts
of Nazi
theologians
to eradicate the Old Testament from the
Christian
liturgy
and church
music,
see Doris L.
Bergen,
Twisted
Cross:
The German
Christian
Movement in the
Third Reich
(Chapel
Hill:
University
of North Carolina
Press,
forthcoming).
I am
grateful
to the author for
providing
me with
copies
of the
page proofs.
93
Moser,
"Von der
Titigkeit," 80,
82.
94 "Weiter wird fiir die Reichsstelle die Redaktion eines von mir
angeregten
Mehrminnerbuches
besorgt,
das
demnichst
im Max
[H]esse
Verlag
erscheinen wird
und den Einfluf der deutschen
[M]usik
auf die
Nachbarlinder
zusammenfassend
schildert;
es wird sich so-der Wahrheit endlich die Ehre
gebend--ein
vielfach
anderes Bild der
europiischen
Musikgeschichte
als
ehedem
herausschilen."
Drewes,
"Reichsstelle,"
26. Moser's
essay
must have been written before Drewes's
speech,
for
it fails to mention the
project
at
all,
referring only
to
plans
for "a whole series of
important,
more
musicological
works,"
on which he
planned
to
report
in a later
volume of the
Jahrbuch.
Moser,
"Von der
Taitigkeit,"
82.
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER 97
folder of
publication proofs
for
eight essays by
various
authors,
a
manuscript
introduction
by
Drewes,
and a
manuscript
overview
by
Moser. Moser wrote on the folder the title "Die deutsche Musik und
ihre Nachbarn" and the
phrase "unveriffentl[icht]
1943
Reichs-
stelle."95
In the
introduction,
Drewes
outlined
the
purpose
of the
work: to demonstrate
Germany's profound
influence on the musical
cultures of its
neighbors throughout
the centuries. The
essays, penned
by
Moser, Fellerer,
Engel,
and
others,
trace
centuries-long
ties
between German music and the music of those
neighboring
countries
either
occupied by
German
troops
or allied with
Germany
at the time
of the
writing. Bearing
titles such as "German Influences in
Magyar
Music,"
"German Music in the
French-Speaking Region,"
and "The
Exchange
of German and Italian
Music,"
the
essays attempt
to
highlight aspects
of the music-historical
relationships
of
Germany
to
its
neighbors
that
paralleled
the
political reality: Germany's
"influ-
ence" in
Hungary, "presence"
in
France,
and
"reciprocity"
with
Italy.96
The
arguments
in these
essays brought
the
technique
of musico-
logical justification
of
foreign policy
and
military expansion
to new
heights.
The
essays
are
generally
much
longer
and more
thoroughly
researched than most of the
published
articles discussed above. The
work as a whole also considers countries not
yet
examined in other
literature,
with
separate essays
on
France,
Belgium,
the
Netherlands,
Denmark,
Hungary,
and
Yugoslavia,
as well as shorter discussions of
Spain, Portugal,
and the Baltic states. This work also
surpasses
earlier
literature
by making
direct references to the current situation of
9s
"Die deutsche Musik und ihre
Nachbarn," [ed.
H.
J. Moser], unpublished,
in an
uncatalogued
box in the Moser
Papers. Although
the
poor quality
of the
paper
and the
abundance of
typographical
errors indicate that these were
proofs
for a
publication,
they
cannot,
as a
unit,
be traced to
any existing published
volume.
Only
two
subsequent publications,
Fellerer's
essay
"Holland in der
europiischen
Musik des
19.
Jahrhunderts"
and
Engel's
I944
book
Deutschland
und
Italien,
cited
above,
bear
any
resemblance to the material in this
unpublished
collection.
Engel's lengthy
contribu-
tion,
entitled "Deutsche und italienische Musik im
Austausch,"
is
incomplete
in this
version but uses much of the same material as the
I944
book.
96
The contributions were as follows: Heinz
Drewes,
"Zum Geleit"
(typescript);
HansJoachim Moser,
"Zusammenschau"
(typescript);
Karl Gustav
Fellerer,
"Deutsch-
Vlimische Musikbeziehungen" (proofs);
"Deutsche
Einfliisse
in der
magyarischen
Musik"
(proofs);
Karl Gustav
Fellerer,
"Holland und Deutschland in der Musik-
geschichte" (proofs);
Bernhard
Engelke,
"Deutsche und danische
Musikbeziehungen"
(proofs);
"Die deutsche Tonkunst in
Siidslawien"
(proofs);
Reinhold
Zimmermann,
"Deutsche Musik im franzosischen
Sprachbereich" (proofs);
Theodor
Veidl,
"Die
Musik im Bohmisch-Mahrischen Raum"
(proofs);
and Hans
Engel,
"Deutsche und
italienische Musik im Austausch"
(proofs, incomplete).
98
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
musical life under German
occupation, praising
the
efforts
of occu-
pying
forces to raise the standards of these otherwise
culturally
deprived regions.
With the
exception
of
Engel's characteristically
ambivalent treatment of
Italy,
the collection as a whole
proclaims
Germany's
musical
superiority
in the
strongest
terms,
embracing long
periods
of
history
and
covering
most of western and central
Europe.
Drewes's introduction
praised
the work for
examining
the musical
connections
among
nations,
especially
where
Germany
influenced
other musical cultures. Germans were
always respectful
of
indigenous
cultures,
and German
influence,
always
welcomed and never forced
upon
the host
country,
came to radiate over the centuries in the
"power
and warmth of our Volkstum."97 This theme would resurface
in some of the
essays
as a
metaphor
for the "welcome"
entry
of the
invading
German
troops. Taking up
some of Drewes's
themes,
Moser's overview traced the influence of German music in
foreign
lands that would not be covered in other
essays.
In his discussion on
Spain,
he drew attention to the
similarity
of
voice-crossing techniques
in the
organ compositions
of Paul
Hofhaimer
and his
younger Spanish
contemporary
Antonio
Cabez6n,
attributing
it either to an indirect
teacher-student
relationship
via a student of
Hofhaimer
who died in
Spain,
or to "a blood tie"
going
back to the
Visigoths
which then
manifested itself in the use of "related structural
principles."98
He
described the transformation of
England
from a
musically
rich
"export"
nation to an
impoverished "import"
nation,
with
Germany
serving
as the
largest supplier, especially during
the
"reign"
of Handel.
Contrary
to
popular
belief,
Handel never lost his German
identity,
and the
alleged English
influences on his works were more
likely
Handel's own influence on a musical
style
later identified as
English.
"Rule Britannia" and "God Save the
King,"
Moser
claimed,
were the
creations of two of Handel's
pupils.
In the nineteenth
century,
a desire
97"Die 'Geschichte der deutschen
Musik',
wie sie H.
J.
Moser seit
1920
dreibaindig,
seit
1938
einbindig
dargestellt
hat und nun auch als
'Musikleistung
der
deutschen
Stimme'
kulturgeographisch
bearbeitet,
galt
es als
gegeben
vorauszu-
setzen, um jetzt
ihre Aus- wie
Einstrahlungen
auf
dem
Beziehungssektor
zu
jedem
Nachbarvolk von den besten Kennern darstellen zu lassen. Dass dabei die Protuber-
anzen
zahlreicher
sind als die
Fremdeinbriiche,
liegt
im Wesen
jeder Sonne,
so hier
der
ein hellstes
Licht durch viele
Jahrhunderte
hinaussendenden Kraft- und
Wiirme-
quelle
unseres Volkstums."
Drewes, "Zum
Geleit."
98
,,...
ob da
(etwa
iiber Hofhaimers venezianischem
Schiiler Dioniso
Memmo,
der in
Spanien gestorben ist),
eine
Schiilerschaft
konstruierbar
ist,
oder ob nicht weit
eher eine
Blutsgemeinschaft
aus alten
westgotischen
Stamm zu verwandten Gestalt-
ungsprinzipien gefiihrt hat,
wird kaum zu entscheiden sein."
Moser,
"Zusammen-
schau,"
25.
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER 99
to be "Germanic"
prevailed
in
England:
Beethoven and
Goethe
enjoyed great popularity,
and the
presence
of German musicians
was
so
strong
that even
Jews
were
mistakenly
welcomed as Germans
(e.g.,
Joachim
and
Moscheles).
Moser criticized the modern
English public
for
exercising
no
independent judgment
or
understanding
of art
music
and
striving
to be fashionable and
"smart,"
and their musical culture
had become so
"strongly
influenced
by Negroes" ("stark
vernegert")
that it could
hardly
be considered
European anymore.99
The
essays
that were to follow Moser's introduction
place
occu-
pied
countries
roughly
into two
categories: (i)
those with "Germanic"
populations (parts
of
Belgium,
Holland,
and to some extent
Denmark)
and
(2)
those with non-Germanic
populations
that
attempted
to
pass
off a derivative of German music as their own native
product
(Hungary,
Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia,
and
France).
Fellerer's contri-
butions on Flanders and Holland both rest on the
assumption
that
these
regions
are
populated by
"Germanic
tribes."'"'
Fellerer
clearly
endorsed the current German
occupation
of both
regions
with
euphemistic
allusions to the recent
activity
of German
troops:
the
99 "Aber
unter den Musiknationen des Erdteils nimmt
England gleichwohl
seit
rund
300 Jahren
einen im
Verhiltnis
zu
seinen
vierzig
Millionen sehr
geringen Rang
ein-sein
Unterhaltungsmusikstil
wird zwar von den
'mondinen'
Verehrern seines
Smokingsitzes
fiir
besonders 'smart'
gehalten,
ist aber bereits so stark
vernegert
dass
er als
'europiisch'
kaum mehr
gerechnet
werden kann."
Ibid.,
37-
"oo
Medieval
Flanders,
in his
view,
was not
only "spiritually"
Germanic,
it also
stood as a "bulwark
against
the invasion of western
neighbors" (Fellerer,
"Deutsch-
Vlamische
Musikbeziehungen," 1-2).
Holland had an even closer
relationship
to
Germany, having
been a
part
of the "Reich"
(presumably
the
Holy
Roman
Empire)
throughout
the Middle
Ages,
and
having musically
"resisted" non-German influences
by adhering
to the
germanische Fassung
of
Gregorian
chant,
even into the
eighteenth
century (Fellerer,
"Holland und Deutschland in der
Musikgeschichte," 48, 50-52).
This "Germanic version" of chant
probably
refers to Peter
Wagner's
identification of
"Germanic dialect" in
chant,
which was discovered to have
spread
to Eastern
Europe
and Scandinavia in the Middle
Ages (see
Alexander
Blachly,
"Some Observations on
the 'Germanic' Plainchant
Tradition,"
Studies in Medieval Music:
Festschrift for
Ernest
H.
Sanders,
special
issue of Current
Musicology 45-47
[I1990]:
85-1
I7).
It was also a
manifestation of what Fellerer defined as basic "Germanic" musical
tendencies,
e.g.,
striving
toward clear distinctions between individual
pitches
and
showing
a
preference
for
syllabic
text
setting. By identifying
the
importance
of individual tones of a scale as
a feature of the "Germanic
feeling,"
Fellerer is
echoing
the
popular theory
of the time
that the roots of
tonality lay
in
early
forms of Germanic
expression
and stemmed from
an inherited musical taste. Fellerer had elaborated on these and other distinct
qualities
of Germanic chant in his
Deutsche
Gregorianik
im
Frankenreich
(Regensburg:
Bosse,
1941).
On the diatonic
implications
of the Germanic
dialect,
see
Jainos Mezei,
"Zur
Problematik des
'germanischen' Chordialekts,"
in Cantus
Planus:
Papers
Read at the
Third
Meeting,
Tihany, Hungary, 19-24 September 1988 (Budapest: Hungarian
Acad-
emy
of
Sciences,
I990), 57. My
thanks to
PeterJeffery
for
calling my
attention to this
and the
Blachly
citation.
I 00
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN
MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
increase in the
"reception"
of German music in Holland since
1940
was
"supported"
as consistent with
preserving
a "Germanic cultural
unit.",OI
Bernhard
Engelke's essay
on Danish music relied on the common
Nordic roots of Germanic and Danish tribes to
explain
the musical
ties between Denmark and
Germany. Engelke
noted a
striking
resemblance between Danish and German folk music and cited
Denmark's
long history
of
political instability
as the cause of its failure
to
develop
an
independent
art music tradition.
Occasionally
vulnera-
ble to French and Italian
"superficial
taste"
(Geschmdckerei),
Danish
musical life remained for most of its
history
in German hands. Scheibe
worked there for
many years,
the
Singspiel
flourished,'o2
the "Ger-
man-blooded" master I. P. Hartmann
inspired
a Nordic revival in the
nineteenth
century,
and the most
important
Danish
composer,
Niels
Gade,
exhibited in his
symphonies
an "intellectual" and "tribal
kinship"
with Schumann and
Brahms.'03
Hungary
falls into the second
category
of
"neighbor," namely
one
that lacked an
indigenous
musical culture and claimed German music
practiced
within its borders as its own native
product.
In the
anony-
mous
essay
on
Magyar
music,
the author maintained that true
Magyar
folk music
disappeared
with the influx of
Christianity,
and
Hungary
gratefully
"soaked
up" foreign, especially
German,
musical culture like
"dry
sand."'04 When
German cities arose in
Hungary,
the educated
public
showed an
unwavering preference
for the German
product
over
the
attempts
to revive an
indigenous
musical
art.'15
More
recently
"o' "So wird auch die
gesteigerte
Aufnahme deutscher Musik und deutscher
Opern
seit
I940
in
germanischer
Kultureinheit
gefordert."
Fellerer,
"Holland und
Deutschland in der
Musikgeschichte," 85.
2"'
Engelke, "Deutsche und
dinische
Musikbeziehungen," 91-103, 106-9, 124-
The author cites Claus Schall's
Chinafabrer
as an
especially popular
and "realistic"
example
of a Danish
Singspiel
which
displays
anti-Semitic elements.
0o3
Engelke, "Deutsche und
dinische Musikbeziehungen," 128-30.
o04 "Als
das christliche
K6nigreich Ungarn
durch
Fiden
der Politik mit den
Lindern
des
Abendlandes,
vor allem mit den deutschen Gebieten
enger
verbunden
wurde,
begann
die westliche Musik sich
iiberraschend
schnell
iiber
Ungarn
zu
ergieBen.
Wie trockener Sand
sog
das Land
gierig
die fremde Musik
ein."
"Deutsche
Einfliisse
in der
magyarischen
Musik,"
35.
o05
Ibid., 35, 37, 40-41.
In the nineteenth
century,
the
strong
desire to have a
national art led to the
development
of the
Verbunkos,
but this
was,
in the author's
opinion, nothing
more than a mixture of
Italian, Slavic, Viennese,
and German dance
styles
which were nevertheless
promulgated
as
indigenous
creations. The
attempts
to
transform the Verbunkos into art music revealed its German essence: the author claims
that Brahms could set the Verbunkos in his
Hungarian
Dances as well as
any Hungarian
composer could,
thus
yielding
solid
proof
of its German
origins.
The
midpoint
of the
MUSICOLOGY UNDER HITLER IOI
Hungary's
best musicians went to
Germany
to
study
and to
pursue
careers,
while at home ambitious
Jews
conspired
to dominate the
musical
scene.Io6
The Czechs
(not
to be confused with the Germans/Bohemians
concentrated in the
Sudetenland)
also
allegedly
lacked
any indigenous
musical tradition. Theodor Veidl's
essay
"Die
Musik
im
B6hmisch-
Mdihrischen
Raum" admitted
difficulty
in
distinguishing
between
Czechs and Germans
living
side
by
side,
but nevertheless he
managed
to detect
strong
German influences and minimal Czech influences in
the dominant musical
practices.
The
polka
bore a
striking
resem-
blance to the older
Rheinliinder,
and other
typically
"Czech" dances
proved
to have Bavarian
origins.
Even
Smetana,
the hero of Czech
national
music,
used
Haydn's "Kaiser hymn"
in the first and last
movements of his
Triumph Symphony,
and one could
classify
The
Bartered Bride as a
great
achievement in German
Spieloper.'?7
Bohe-
mian music
history belonged unequivocally
to German music
history;
on the other hand the
Czechs,
a
small, ambitious
people,
served as
catalysts
for Panslavism but
possessed
neither
originality
nor a native
musical
style..o8
The unnamed author of the
essay
on
Yugoslavia
("Die
deutsche
Tonkunst in
Siidslawien")
claimed that a
heavy
German influence on
art music and music education
persisted
from the tenth
century
to the
present,
even when this German influence emanated from
Jews.
The
author also strove to dismiss the claims of
Yugoslavian
scholars that
Haydn,
Mozart,
and Beethoven borrowed motives from Croatian
melodies.'`9
Further
promoting
the theme of host countries "wel-
coming"
German
"influence,"
the author noted that a
"strong prolif-
eration of German concert
activity"
since the
occupation by
German
troops
in
i941
was
"winning
over
many grateful
friends of German
music."
"o
nineteenth
century
saw a brief
flowering
of
Hungarian
romantic art music with
Liszt,
but this was cut short
by
the
"victory"
of Richard
Wagner
over a weak and vulnerable
Hungarian
musical tradition.
x06
Ibid., 45-46.
107 Theodor
Veidl, "Die Musik im
B6hmisch-MAhrischen Raum,"
319, 320-21,
332, 337-41. According
to
Veidl,
the
alleged
Slavic
melody
of the
opening
chorus was
reminiscent of the theme in the rondo of Mozart's A-minor sonata.
"o8
Veidl, "Die
Musik im B6hmisch-MAhrischen Raum," 346-47.
,09 "Die deutsche Tonkunst in
Siidslawien,"
131-34, 141-52, 155-I67a.
o. "Eine starke Ausweitung deutscher Konzerttitigkeit ergab sich mit der 1941
erforderlichen
Besetzung
des
ehemaligen Jugoslawien,
besonders des serbischen
Raumes. Im
Gefolge
des deutschen Soldaten schritt auch der deutsche Kiinstler und
102
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
Arguably
the most ruthless attack in this collection comes forth in
Reinhold Zimmermann's "Deutsche Musik im
franz6sischen
Sprach-
bereich."
Choosing
the title "German Music in the
French-Speaking
Area" rather than "German Music in
France,"
Zimmermann focused
his
study
on areas in France that had
allegedly
been cut off from their
Germanic
origins.
These
essentially
Germanic
regions notably pro-
duced most of the
greatest
"so-called French"
composers
of
early
music:
Ldonin
and
Perotin,
Philippe
de
Vitry,
and the Franco-Flemish
masters of the
Renaissance,
all of whom
possessed
in their blood a
particular
"Germanic"
way
of
approaching composition.
Later
"French"
composers
were either
foreigners
or natives of these Ger-
manic
regions: Lully,
Viotti,
and Cherubini
(Italy);
Gr&try (Liege);
Gossec
(Hainault); Monsigny
and Lesueur
(West Flanders);
and
M6hul
(Southern Ardennes).
Rameau was a follower of the Italian
Lully,
Berlioz was
"three-quarters
German,"
and Cesar Franck was
Belgian."'
Questioning
the
very
existence of a "French
music,"
Zimmermann
blamed
Jews
for France's musical
poverty.
He attributed the lack of a
definitive French musical
style
to extensive racial
mixing
in the
thirteenth
century
and the eradication of the "bearer of
culture,"
the
Nordic race
(Franks,
Visigoths,
Alemannics, etc.).
This racial
mixing
allowed
Jews
to assume a
leading
role in
defining
the "Frenchness" of
such
composers
as the
"slippery
eel" Saint-Saens. Given the lack of
substance and
depth resulting
from racial
dilution,
one could under-
stand how the richness of
Germany's
musical
heritage
could be so
welcome and so influential in France."' Zimmermann
questioned
the
French
origins
of the
keyboard
suite,
claiming
that its actual creator
was
Froberger,
and he
designated
French
opera
as the domain of the
Jews,
graphically recounting
how "the
poison
of
Judaism"
spread
into
all the
"pores
and arteries" of the French
population ("in
allen Poren
und Adern des franz6sischen Volksleibes
eindringenden
Gift des
Judentums")."3
Closing
with a
pernicious
if somewhat
euphemistic
commentary
on the fate of French
Jewry,
he described how the
hat seither eine
Fiille
von
Veranstaltungen
bewirkt,
die der deutschen Tonkunst viele
dankbare Freunde
zufiihrten." Ibid., I67a.
..
Zimmermann,
"Deutsche Musik im
franz6sischen
Sprachbereich," 169-71,
177,
182.
,.2
Ibid.,
171-75.
Zimmerman showed an
early
interest in the
"Jewish question"
in
music,
having published
an article "Das Wesen der
jiidischen
Musik" in
I925
in the
nationalistic
periodical Deutschlands
Erneuerung.
"13
Zimmermann,
"Deutsche Musik im franzosischen
Sprachbereich," 184,
222-
24, 231, 239.
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER
I03
German
occupation
of France in
1940 "aggressively
held back"
the
spread
of the
"Jewish
musical
spirit," giving way
to a
thriving
cultivation of German music. "4
Although
the
genesis
of "Die deutsche Musik und ihre Nachbarn"
can be
pieced together
from
only
a handful of
sources,
the
work
nevertheless reveals a
musicologist's
desire to demonstrate his
quali-
fications for and interest in
taking
on more
important
cultural and
political
tasks. The earliest documented discussion of
plans
for "Die
deutsche Musik und ihre
Nachbarn,"
a draft of a letter dated 21 March
1941,
reveals
far-reaching
ambitions to
apply musicological expertise
to the Germanization of the East
(see
Appendix B).
The
document,
addressed from "Leiter M"
("Director M," i.e.,
head of the Music
Division of the
Propaganda Ministry,
Heinz
Drewes)
to "the
Minis-
ter"
(Goebbels),
with minor corrections in Moser's
hand,
outlines the
purpose
for
undertaking
the unnamed
project
that would become
"Die deutsche Musik und ihre Nachbarn." The letter
emphasizes
the
need for "musical-cultural reforestation" of the German
East,
a
goal
which could not be attained
merely through
financial means but rather
by securing
a
scholarly
foundation of
musicological
research on the
historical evidence of German influence in these
regions.
The author
(Drewes
and/or
Moser)
expresses disappointment
about the lack of
German
musicological activity
in the
East,
attributing
the situation in
part
to the influence of Viennese
musicology,
which had been in
"Jewish
hands"
(Hanslick
and
Adler)
for half a
century.
The letter then
includes some evidence of German musical
hegemony dating
as far
back as the thirteenth
century
and
suggests
a number of historical
topics focusing
on German musical influence in
Hungary,
Poland,
Czechoslovakia,
and the Baltic countries.
The concerns of the author went well
beyond
the
publication
of
historical
essays,
however. The letter
goes
on to
emphasize
the need
for the
study
"in order that out of this
cultural-geographic picture
of
music
history
it will be
possible
to
develop
the
cultural-political
tasks
and
possibilities
for the
present
and the future in these vast
regions
that are once
again
entrusted to
us.""5
It is clear that the author had
14
"Die
Besetzung
Frankreichs durch die deutsche
Truppen 1940
dimmte die
weitere
Ausbreitung jiidischen
Musikgeistes kriftig
ein.
Dafiir
hat eine
verstirkte
Pflege
deutscher Musik
planmissig eingesetzt." Ibid.,
239.
"
s
"Leiter M"
(Drewes,
with corrections
by Moser)
to "Herrn Minister"
(Goeb-
bels),
21 March
1941,
Moser
Papers.
This
letter,
dated 2 March
1941,
is one of
only
three extant letters written
prior
to
I945
in the
catalogued portions
of the Moser
papers.
There is one other dated
1941
and one from
i932,
followed
by
letters from
1946
on.
104
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN
MUSICOLOGICAL
SOCIETY
practical, far-reaching political applications
in mind for which this
project
would
lay
the
groundwork;
he
foresaw, moreover,
an
oppor-
tunity
for scholars to assume an influential role in the
building
of
German musical life in the
expanded
Reich.
Such were
musicologists'
motivations for
launching
the
project.
The fact that Goebbels would
support
such a
large-scale scholarly
undertaking suggests
that
he, too,
saw
special
merit in
it,
and the
project's political
relevance
inspired
others to follow suit. A memo
from
Gerigk
dated
February 1942
refers to "a
large, comprehensive
presentation
of
European
music
history,"
financed
by
the
Propaganda
Ministry,
the
"goal"
of which would be "to demonstrate German
influence in all
European
lands in a faultless scientific manner.""'6
Drewes had asked
Gerigk
to contribute a
chapter
on the Baltic states
and mentioned that Moser would write substantial
portions
of the
work,
but
Gerigk
declined because he believed that a lack of
prior
research would render such a
project unmanageable.
The
suggestion
apparently
alerted
Gerigk
that such an
approach
to
European
music
history
was in
vogue,
for three months later he invited Rudolf Gerber
to
join
him in
exploiting
this interest in German musical influence
with a
trip
to France. Under
Rosenberg's sponsorship,
the two
traveled to Paris in late October
1942, allegedly
to
investigate
"the
influence of German musicians on the musical culture of France.""7
The research
trip
was deemed
kriegswichtig,
that
is,
worthy
of contin-
uation
during
the
war,
because the material
they
were
viewing--
unique prints
of works
by
Germans from
1750
to
I83O--would
not be
accessible under normal
peacetime
circumstances."`8
"6"Am I8.2.1942 hatte ich eine
lingere
Unterredung
mit dem Leiter des
Reichspropagandaministeriums,
Dr. Drewes. Im Verlaufe der
Unterredung
erzahlte
er,
dass unter seiner
Leitung
und finanziert aus
Mitteln
des
Propagandaministeriums
eine umfassende
grosse Darstellung
der
europaischen Musikgeschichte
vorbereitet
wird....
Das Ziel der
Musikgeschichte soil
sein,
den deutschen Einfluss in allen
europaischen
Ldndern wissenschaftlich einwandfrei
darzulegen."
File memo
by
Gerigk,
21
February 1942,
BA NS
15/99.
"7
"Prof. Dr.
Gerber,
Giessen war von Ende Oktober bis
Anfang
November im
Auftrage
der
Hohen
Schule in
Paris,
um dort Materialarbeiten ftir eine
gr6ssere
Untersuchung
iiber
den Einfluss deutscher Musiker auf die Musikkultur Frankreichs
durchzufiihren."
Gerigk
to
Hohe
Schule
planning
office, 16
December
1942,
BA NS
15/25
I1
8
"Die
Durchftihrung
dieser Arbeit ist
kriegswichtig,
weil wir an die fur unsere
Arbeit erforderlichen Bibliotheksbestande in normalen Zeiten sicher nicht heran-
kommen. Die uns interessierenden Werke waren
ja
auch
bezeichnenderweise
simtlich
nicht
katalogisiert
und
infolgedessen
fiir die
Forschung
bisher
praktisch
nicht vorhanden."
Gerigk
to
Gerber,
8
May 1942,
BA NS
15/25.
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER 105
Conclusions
A broad examination of
musicology
under Hitler
suggests
that
musicologists
found
pragmatic
reasons to work for the Nazi
regime
that
ranged
from career advancement and financial
gain
even to the
desire to have access to rare
musicological
resources. As Hitler came
to
power
with an
agenda
of economic and structural
reforms,
artists
and intellectuals frustrated with the Weimar
Republic's
inertia wel-
comed the Nazis'
blueprints
for cultural revitalization."9 Musicolo-
gists
had
already
shown an inclination in
nonscholarly
literature to
prove
their
potential
usefulness to
society,
and
they
continued to
pursue
this aim after
1933, responding favorably
to the
regime's
invitation for those with a
sympathetic
world view to branch out
beyond
the
academy.
Since one of
Hitler's
main
objectives
was to
renew national
pride,
and since full rehabilitation of German
identity
would have to draw on the rich
history
of German
music,
musicolo-
gists
were in an
optimal position finally
to
prove
the value of their
profession
to the Volk and to
gain
influence with a new
regime.
Nevertheless,
the
diligence
and zeal evident from
published
writ-
ings
and
unpublished correspondence implies
that more than ambi-
tion
alone motivated their
actions,
especially
as the war
progressed.
The
prospect
of
firmly establishing
German music as the
predominant
music of
Europe may
have
provided
the most
important
intersection
of beliefs between German
musicologists
and Nazi
policy-makers.
The
centrality
of music to German
Volk-identity
and the belief in
German musical
superiority
were
by
no means Nazi
inventions;
even
in
J.
S. Bach's
time,
one can find statements
attesting
to
Germany's
musical
strength,2o
and Forkel's
I802 biography
of Bach exclaimed
that "this
man,
the
greatest
musical
poet
and the
greatest
musical
orator that ever
existed,
and
probably
ever will
exist,
was a German.
"9
Alan E.
Steinweis, Art,
Ideology,
and Economics in Nazi
Germany (Chapel
Hill:
University
of North Carolina
Press,
1993).
o
Scheibe asserted in a
language surprisingly
similar to Hans
Engel's
that "the
so-called Italian music as we now know it in the works of our
greatest
German
composers"
could even be of German
origin ("Und
wer weis
nicht,
dai die
sogenannte
italienische
Musik,
so wie wir sie itzo in den Werken unseren
gro6ten
deutschen
Componisten erblicken,
selbst deutscher Abkunft
ist;
und daf sie also
niemals das Ansehen wiirde
erlanget haben,
in welchem sie sich itzo
befindet").
Johann
Adolph Scheibe, Critischer
Musicus
(Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1745; reprint,
Hildesheim:
Georg
Olms
Verlag,
I970], i5th
issue
[17 September
I737],
I48).
106
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN
MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
Let his
country
be
proud
of
him;
let it be
proud,
but at the same
time,
worthy
of
him!""'
Throughout
most of the nineteenth
century,
the notion of Ger-
man musical
superiority
was
important
in
developing
a sense of
German nationhood."' Nationalist convictions had become so
deeply
ingrained by
the end of the
century
that some music historians tended
to frame the
history
of Western music as an
uninterrupted process
leading
to German
hegemony."3 Hugo
Riemann,
in an otherwise
balanced
treatment,
devoted
many pages
to the
eighteenth
and
nineteenth
centuries,
designated
as the
age
of the
"great
German
masters,"
and admitted almost
apologetically
that
he, too,
lived in an
age
still dominated
by
the
memory
of Beethoven.'24
After Riemann's death in
1919, postwar
nationalism
pervaded
general surveys
of music
history
to the extent that some authors not
only
focused more attention on
Germany
than
any
other
country
but
also tried to find traces of
special
German talents
throughout history.
Alfred
Einstein,
in his
popular
short
survey,
went back to the earliest
historical evidence to isolate a
particular
German musical
spirit
that
withstood
periods
of
foreign
domination,
only
to
express
itself
freely
in
Bach,
in
Haydn's "great
deeds of the German
spirit" ("GroBtaten
des deutschen
Geistes"),
and in Weber's
"purest expression
of the
German essence"
("eine
Seite deutschen Wesens am reinsten
ausge-
prdigt").'2s
Einstein, too,
was and continued to be a German musicol-
"'
Quoted
in Celia
Applegate,
"What is German Music? Reflections on the Role
of Art in the Creation of a
Nation,"
German Studies Review:
Special
Issue,
German
Identity (Winter 1992):
28.
'.
Ibid.,
21-32;
and Sanna
Pedersen,
"On the Task of the Music Historian: The
Myth
of the
Symphony
after
Beethoven,"
Repercussions
2
(1993): 5-30.
123
E.g.,
Karl
Storck, Geschichte
der Musik
(Stuttgart:
Muthsche
Verlagshandlung,
I904).
124
"Da0 wir die Kunst Beethovens noch nicht hinter uns
haben,
sondern noch
mitten in der
Epoche leben,
deren
HJhepunkt
sie
bildet,
dariiber
kann sich
wohl
eine
ernste historische
Betrachtung
nicht
tiuschen." Hugo
Riemann,
Das Zeitalter der
Renaissance,
2d
ed., vol. 2,
pt.
i of
Handbuch
der
Musikgeschichte (Leipzig: Breitkopf
und
Hirtel,
1920), 15-
x25 Alfred Einstein,
Geschichte der Musik
(Leipzig:
B. G.
Teubner,
1922), 62, 79,
94-95.
Einstein further identifies
polyphony
as "der Keim nordischen
Musikempfin-
dens"
(p. 9)
and reiterates that "die Freude am harmonischen
Zusammenklang gehort
zur
volkischen
Eigenart
der Nordminner"
(p. 14). Accounting
for the
apparent
lull in
German musical
production during
the sixteenth
century,
he maintains that Germans
pursued quality
in their music
making
"durch den reinen Ton der
Melodik,
das
Streben nach
organischer Erfindung
und instrumentaler
Klangfiille,
die
Abneigung
gegen
blofe
Satzspiele
um ihrer selbst willen"
(p.
21
).
Other
surveys
with a
heavy
concentration on German music
history
include
Joseph Miiller-Blattau,
Einfiihrung
in
die
Musikgeschichte (Berlin:
Vieweg, [1932]),
and
Hans Joachim Moser,
Lehrbuch
der
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER 107
ogist
with nationalist
convictions,
even after
colleagues
in the
1930s
severed ties with him and
stripped
him of his duties in an
attempt
to
convince him that a
Jew
could never be a German.,26
Germany's
musical
potency proved
invincible in the survival of
musical institutions
through
the First World War and
subsequent
periods
of economic
instability.
Moser
proudly reported
in
1928
that
Germany
had
managed
to maintain
approximately fifty opera
houses
and
"perhaps 150
orchestras of rank"
through
the vicissitudes of war
and
inflation,
a clear indication of music's
position among
the nation's
priorities.27 Racial explanations of German musical talent had also
predated
Hitler,
and those
musicologists
who chose to
engage,
even
skeptically,
in racial studies after
1933
directed their interests toward
proving
German
superiority
rather than
"Jewish
inferiority."'I8 By
1938,
much of the enthusiastic
language
in
musicological
Lebensraum
writings represented
more than
just conformity
to
popular jingoistic
rhetoric;
rather it revealed a belief that German music was one of the
nation's most valuable
assets,
a conviction which would find
sympathy
with authorities
praising
music as "the most German of the arts."
The defeat of
Germany
in the Second World War forced German
scholars in
1945
to
purge
their field of overt
nationalism,
of
pseudo-
scientific
methodologies,
and above all of
any
traces of racist senti-
ment. The revelations of the horrors of
genocide
made it
especially
crucial to
qualify
or eradicate
any methodologies
or research interests
that
might imply sympathy
with Nazi
ideology.
Yet certain elements
of Germanocentrism were so
firmly
established in
musicology
that
they
not
only
survived the "denazification" of the
discipline
but also
migrated
to the United States with the victims of National
Socialism,
becoming
an essential
part
of our own intellectual
history. Refugees
arrived to find not
only
room for
growth
in American
musicology,
but
also a concert life
supportive
of
European
and
particularly
German art
music of the
eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries.
Emigre
musicolo-
Musikgeschichte (Berlin: Hesse,
1936),
the latter intended to
replace
Riemann's
Handbuch
as a
comprehensive
overview for
musicology
students.
16
See Potter, "Die Lage der jiidischen
Musikwissenschaftler,"
and "From
Jewish
Exile in
Germany
to German Scholar in America: Alfred Einstein's
Emigration,"
in
The Musical
Migration from Germany
and
Austria
to the United
States,
ed. Reinhold
Brinkmann and
Christoph Wolff
(Cambridge:
Harvard
University
Press,
forthcom-
ing).
127 , s. .
so kann man daraus
ablesen,
was die Musik im
geistigen
Haushalt der
Nation bedeutet." Hans
Joachim Moser,
Geschichte der
deutschen Musik,
2d ed.
(Stuttgart:
Cotta,
1928), 3:467.
12
The
application
of racial studies is discussed in
chapter
6 of
Potter,
German
Musicology
and
Society.
108
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
gists
like
Einstein,
Geiringer,
and
Schrade,
whose research intersected
with the concert
repertory,
could continue to contribute to a Ger-
manocentric
concept
of music
history
that still
persists
in such basic
venues as
textbooks,
particularly
in their
coverage
of the last two
centuries.
While American
musicology
is
by
no means a direct descendant of
the
musicological
manifestations of Nazi
ideology,
the two do share
common roots in the German intellectual tradition that
gave
rise to
the
discipline
of
musicology.
German
musicology
came to America via
a
very
different
route,
but even victims of National Socialism had no
reason to abandon their German
identity,
which
they
chose to
distinguish
from the
barbaric,
so-called Germanism
they
had left
behind."9
They,
too,
had internalized a belief in German musical
superiority
at a time when German
identity
needed to be
shaped
and
reinforced,
and
they inevitably passed
that
ideology
on to their
students in the
process
of
disseminating
their
knowledge
and meth-
odologies.
It is
logical
that German nationalism should have had a
strong
tradition in German
musicology,
not the least because the
discipline
itself was born in an
atmosphere
of
campaigning
for
unification and
promoting
the idea of a German nation that
persisted
to the end of the Second World War. But American
musicologists
today
do not work in the
political
climate in which these ideas were
shaped.
American
scholarship
benefited from the influx of
refugee
scholars and musicians and owes a
great
debt to German
methodolog-
ical
foundations,
but Germanocentric elements have lost the relevance
they possessed
in the
political
climate of
Germany
in the nineteenth
and
early
twentieth centuries.
The
impetus
to
preserve
the German musical
legacy
does
not,
on
its
own,
explain
the full
range
of motivations behind the
writings
and
actions discussed here and leaves
many disturbing questions
unan-
swered.
First,
how could
musicologists
collaborate with an anti-
intellectual
regime
so focused on
indoctrinating
an entire nation? In
attempting
to answer this
question
it is
important
to
distinguish
between the
early years
of the Nazi
regime
and the
period leading up
to and
including
the war. From
1937
on,
as
musicologists
wrote
Lebensraum
propaganda
and took orders from
Rosenberg,
Goebbels,
and
Himmler,
Goebbels was in the midst of a
campaign
to
downplay
the Nazis' anti-intellectual
program.
He
gave high priority
to book
production throughout
the war and
promoted scholarly
works on
"9 See
Potter,
"From
Jewish
Exile in
Germany
to German Scholar in America."
MUSICOLOGY
UNDER
HITLER
109
war-related
subjects
well into
I944.13'
Simultaneously,
German
pub-
lic
opinion generally gravitated
toward an
ever-growing
wartime
enthusiasm,
such that even after severe
military
setbacks crowds could
respond
to Goebbels's call for total war with a
resounding
"Ja!"
Hitler
reached the
height
of his
popularity
with
Germany's
swift overrun of
the
west,
as the
country
looked ahead to a
European
continent under
their domination.'3' He even won a renewed vote of confidence after
successfully thwarting
an assassination
attempt
in
July
of
I944.
Meanwhile Goebbels used all resources available to him to sustain
optimism long
after it should have
collapsed, encouraging
extensive
looting
in
occupied
territories in order to
guarantee
a
higher
standard
of
living
in
Germany
than in all other war-torn countries in Eu-
rope.'32
Second,
how could
musicologists ignore
the wholesale eradication
of
Jewish
colleagues?
When
the Deutsche
Musikgesellschaft
voted to
terminate Alfred Einstein's
seventeen-year
tenure as editor of the
Zeitschrift fir Musikwissenschaft
in order to maximize its chances of
receiving support
from the new
government, only
one
prominent
scholar, Johannes Wolf,
protested
Einstein's dismissal and withdrew
from the board of
directors.133
These
leading representatives
of
German
musicology,
while not
completely
indifferent,
evidently
re-
garded
the
potential
benefits of collaboration as far
outweighing
the
loss of one valued
colleague.
Studies of German
popular opinion
show
that
they
were not alone: intellectuals in
general
saw the
expulsion
of
Jews
as an
opportunity
for advancement.
Moreover,
the German
population
at
large
remained
passive
as acts of terror
against
the
Jews
went on around
them,
opposing anti-Jewish
policy only
when it
130
Robert
Herzstein,
The War that Hitler Won: The Most
Infamous Propaganda
Campaign
in
History
(New
York:
Putnam,
I978), I87-94.
13' Gerhard
Weinberg,
A World at Arms: A Global
History of
World War II
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press,
1994), 170-205.
132
Gordon
Craig, Germany 1866-1945 (New
York: Oxford
University
Press,
1980), 758-62;
Herzstein,
The War That Hitler
Won, 391-400;
and
Weinberg,
A
World At
Arms,
782-83.
'33
"Was Sie
gefiirchtet
haben und was ich in meiner
Naivitiit fiir
unm6glich
gehalten habe,
ist
gekommen:
man
verlangt
Ihre
Abberufung
als Schriftleiter der
Zeitschrift. Der Vorstand hat sich vor
einigen Tagen
mit der
Frage
beschiftigen
miissen
und ist zu dem
Ergebnis gelangt,
daB es
unm6glich
ist,
gegen
die
Zeitstr6m-
ungen anzurennen,
zumal das Unternehmen vom Staat Subvention
verlangen
muf3."
Wolf to
Einstein,
25 June
1933,
folder
1038,
Alfred Einstein
Memorabilia,
Coll. No.
I,
Music
Library, University
of California at
Berkeley.
In the same
letter,
Wolf
announced that he was
resigning
from his seat on the executive board. One other
member of the
DMG,
Annelise
Landau,
also withdrew from the
society
out of
solidarity
with Einstein
(Landau
to
Breitkopf
und
Hiirtel,
28
August 1938,
folder
58 1).
I I0
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
threatened to turn
Jews
into
martyrs
or to incite anti-German
repercussions
abroad.'34
The national
pogrom
in
1938
known as
Kristallnacht
prompted
initial
outrage,
with the educated
bourgeoisie
condemning
it as an
affront
to German
Kultur,'35
but in the course of
the
war,
the
majority
of Germans felt
increasingly
indifferent to the
fate of the
Jews,
allowing
Goebbels to continue to focus his war
propaganda against Jews
and
Bolshevists.'36
The
postwar
silence on the
subject
of
musicology
under
Hitler
caused later
generations
to distance themselves from the
writings
and
activities of their
predecessors,
and the initial
tendency
to
pass
judgment
on individuals hindered a critical examination of the manner
in which
musicologists
in Nazi
Germany
chose to relate their
scholarship
to other
aspects
of their lives. In the
spring
of
1983,
a brief
notice in
I9th-Century
Music summarized the events of the North
Carolina conference and its
consequences, closing
with the
comment,
"As of this
writing,
the final results on the
affaire
Boetticher are
probably
not
yet
in."'37
Perhaps
such matters are best left
unresolved;
for
any
resolution that seeks to
pass judgment
on select individuals
and their actions risks further
isolating
this
problematic chapter
in the
history
of the
discipline.
A contextual
investigation
of
musicology
in the
Third
Reich,
beyond highlighting
the links between German and Amer-
ican
scholarship,
should
provide insights
into the motivations of those
working
under Hitler and remind scholars of the often
unexpected
ramifications of their work and the not so obvious links between
scholarship
and
politics.
University
of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
134 David
Bankier,
The Germans and the Final Solution: Public
Opinion
under Nazism
(Oxford
and
Cambridge,
Mass.:
Blackwell,
1992), 69-75-
135 Ibid., 87-88.
136
Herzstein,
The War That Hitler
Won,
388-89.
'37 9th-Century
Music 6
(1982-83): 278-
MUSICOLOGY UNDER HITLER I I I
APPENDIX A
9.2.1942
Oranienburgerstr. 79
Einsatzstab der Dienststellen
des Reichsleiter
Rosenberg
Sonderstab
Musik
An den
Reichsstellenleiter
Pg.
Dr.
Wolfgang
Boetticher
Berlin-Charlottenburg
Bismarckstr. I
Dr. Gk/Lu
VereinbarungsgemdiB
reisen Sie am 8. Februar
1942
im
Auftrage
des Sonderstabes
Musik als wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter in die baltischen Staaten. Sie haben den
Auftrag,
die informatorischen Arbeiten der
Pgg.
Dr. Killer und Dr. Sachse weiter zu
fiihren
und einen
vorliiufigen
Abschluss der
Fahndungen
zu erreichen. Zu den
vordringlichen Aufgaben
rechnen:
i.
Feststellung
der in
6ffentlichen
und wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken vorhan-
denen Musikhandschriften und Musikdrucken. Es kommt
hauptsichlich
auf
solche
Dokumente
an,
die deutscher Herkunft sind und die
politische Bedeutung
des
Ostraumes
zeigen.
Die
Stiicke miissen
in einer Kartothek erfasst
werden,
die
wertvollsten Dokumente sind
fotografisch
festzuhalten.
2. Laut Fiihrerbefehl haben Sie alle musikalischen Dokumente einschliesslich
Musikinstrumente aus
jiidischem
Privatbesitz sofort vor der
Vernichtung,
Beschid-
igung,
oder
Verschleppung
sicherzustellen. Eine Zusammenarbeit mit den Aussen-
stellen des SD ist
zweckmissig.
Geeignetes
Material
wird,
wie in
bisherigen
Faillen der
Hohen Schule
zugefiihrt.
3.
Die mittelalterlichen Musikdokumente sind
auch
in
Klostern
und anderen
Bibliotheken zu
erfassen,
die sonst nicht
allgemein
zugainglich
sind. Es wird
gerade
auf solche
Sammlungen,
die bisher der deutschen Wissenschaft nicht bekannt werden
konnten,
Wert
gelegt.
4.
Die
Lager
einzelner
Schallplattenfirmen
sind zu ermitteln und
auf
feindliches
bzw.
jiidisches
Material
durchzukiimmen.
Bei der Auswahl dieser Platten ist
durchweg
ein
strenger Ma[f]stab anzulegen.
Das
bedeutet,
dass auch solche
Platten,
bei denen
jiidische
Kiinstler
nur zu einem Teil
mitgewirkt
haben,
unbedingt
auch
zu erfassen
sind. Da
erfahrungsgemAss Schallplatten[
]fremden
Zugriffen
am leichtesten aus-
gegetzt
sind,
hat sofort nach der
Durchsuchung
eine
Versiegelung
der BestAnde zu
erfolgen.
5.
Die Rundfunksender sind
auf
ihren Noten- und Plattenbestand zu
iiberpriifen.
Bei der
Bearbeitung
dieser Dokumente ist wie unter
4.
zu verfahren.
6. Die Akten der Konzertdirektionen und
Agenturen
sind
genau
durchzusehen.
Es kommt
hier
besonders die
Uberpriifung
des deutschen Schriftverkehrs mit diesen
auslAndischen
Agenturen
in Betracht.
7.
SAmtliche
Juden,
die als Musiker im
dortigen
Raum
hervorgetreten
sind,
sind
bibliographisch genau
aufzunehmen,
da
diese
Unterlagen
des
parteiamtlichen
Lex-
ikons der
Juden
in der Musik
dringend
erforderlich sind. Auch
hier
diirfte sich die
kameradschaftliche Zusammanarbeit mit den Aufenstellen des SD
bewihren.
Dar-
iiberhinaus
ist
auch
eine
Fiihlungnahme
mit den
dortigen
arischen
Komponisten
und
nachschaffenden
Kiinstlern wiinschenswert.
Es
geht darum, die
augenblickliche
und
friihere politische Einstellung
dieser
nichtjiidischen
Musiker festzustellen. In
ge-
11 2
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN
MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
eigneten
Fillen soill
der Versuch
gemacht
werden, diese Kiinstler fiir
die
Kulturauf-
gaben
des Deutschen Reiches zu
gewinnen.
Es
k6nnen
auf
diesem
Wege
die
Voraussetzungen fiir
Kulturinstitute und kunstwissenschaftliche
Vereinigungen ge-
schaffen werden,
die
kiinftig
zu
griinden
sind.
UJber
den
Umfang
der
Ermittlungen
und insbesondere iiber
Ihre
Zusammenarbeit mit den
dortigen
verantwortlichen
Dienststellen des Reiches haben Sie
schriftliche
Meldung
zu erstatten.
Heil Hitler!
(Dr. Gerigk)
Leiter des Amtes Musik
zugleich
Leiter des Sonderstabes Musik
APPENDIX B
Leiter M
Berlin,
den 21.
Mirz
1941
An
den Herrn Minister
Betr.
musikkulturelle
Ostfragen
Unter dem Eindruck der Posener Reise
m6chte
ich dem Herrn Minister
folgendes
unterbreiten. Die musikkulturelle
Neuaufforstung
der deutschen
Ostge-
biete kann nicht nur
aus
einer Summe finanzieller Einzelhilfen
bestehen,
sondern
bedarf vor allem
auch
einer
einheitlichen
geistigen Ausrichtung,
die
auf
gesicherten
musikgeschichtlichen Grundlagen
ruht. Leider haben die
ffir
die wissenschaftliche
Untermauerung
dieser
Belange
zustindigen
Zentralbehorden hierfiir
seitJahrzehnetn
nichts
Wesentliches
getan;
ein
kleiner
musikwissenschaftlicher
Lehrstuhl an der
Universitit K6nigsberg,
dessen Doktorarbeiten sich auf die
Erforschung ostpreuB-
ischer
Kunstvergangenheit
beschranken
mu8te,
war
ungefihr
der
einzige positive
Faktor--die Erforschung
des
mittleren
Ostraumes
lag
in
polnischer
Hand,
das
betr.
Ordinariat
der Wiener Universitat befand sich seit einem halben
Jahrhundert
in
jiidischer
Hand
(Ed. Hanslick,
Guido
Adler)
und wirkte mehr als
Einbruchsstelle,
denn als Abwehrbastion
gegeniiber
dem Galiziertum. Hier tut eine
grundlegend
zusammenfassende
Darstellung
not,
die z.B.
fiir
das
13. Jahrhundert
die
Musikpflege
des deutschen Ordens und die deutsche
Volksliedwanderung
aus
Innerdeutschland
nach
Oberungarn
und
Siebenbiirgen verfolgt. Fiir
die Zeit
um
1500-1525
steht eine
miachtige
Ostfront deutscher Tonmeister
aufgebaut:
in
K6nigsberg
unter
Herzog
Albrecht die
Augsburger Briider Kugelmann
als Vertreter der Schule
Ludwig Senfls,
in Krakau am
polnischen Konigshof
als
Seitenstiick
zu Veit StoB der Meister Heinrich
Finck,
nach ihm Arnold v. Bruck und Ulrich
Britel,
in Ofen
(Budapest)
der
Schlesier
Thomas
Stoltzer,
der
hier
die ersten Luthertexte
komponierte
und sie nach
Konigs-
berg
sandte, schlief3lich
in
Kronstadt
die
Komponisten
Anr. Ostermaier
und Valentin
Greff. Hinter dieser vordersten Ostfront erhebt sich eine zweite durch die
reiche,
rein
deutsche
Musikpflege
in
Danzig,
Breslau, Wien,
Niederungarn [,]
dahinter eine dritte in
Stettin,
Frankfurt
a.O.,
Torgau, Prag,
Graz,
Klagenfurt.
Es
gilt,
ffir
das
I7./i8.
Jahrhundert
den
gewaltigen
Einstrom deutschen
Musikgutes
in den
baltischen,
polnischen,
bohmisch-mahrischen
und
ungarischen
Raum einmal
zusammenhangend
in seiner vollen
Eindringlichkeit darzustellen, um dann aus diesem
kulturgeograph-
ischen
Musikgeschichtsbild
die
kulturpolitischen Aufgaben
und
Moglichkeiten fiir
Gegenwart
und Zukunft in diesen
weiten, uns wieder anvertrauten Gebieten zu
entwickeln.
MUSICOLOGY UNDER
HITLER I
13
Ich habe
kiirzlich
aus Anlaf des bevorstehenden
ioo. Geburtstages
von Dvorak eine
Darstellung
der
betr.
Verhsiltnisse
im
b6hmischen
Raum
angeregt,
der Herr
Minister
hat
zugestimmt
-
hiermit
m6chte
ich
eine
Erweiterung
auf
den
ganzen
Osten in
Vorschlag bringen.
Ich bitte um
Einverstindnis.
Heil Hitler!
ABSTRACT
Recognizing musicology's
demonstrated
potential
to contribute to its
ideological
aims,
the Nazi
government
took immediate
steps
to centralize
music
scholarship
and,
along
with the
SS,
to subsidize relevant research
projects.
Alfred
Rosenberg's ideological watchdog organization
recruited
musicologists
for a
variety
of
tasks,
including
the
plundering
of musical
treasures in
occupied
territories and the assessment of the
receptivity
of
occupied populations
to
Germany's
eventual takeover of cultural life. Mean-
while,
many
scholars contributed to the
press
with music historical
justifica-
tions for all of
Germany's
current
military
and
diplomatic
actions. Born in an
era
preoccupied
with the creation of the German
nation-state,
musicology
had embraced a Germanocentric
focus,
dating
back to
Forkel,
that the Nazi
propaganda
machine
fully exploited.
This nationalism also infiltrated Amer-
ican
musicology
with the arrival of German
6migr6
scholars.