Recording and playing in Germany 1933-1945

[PJPJ]

How did one get to make records (or sing at Bayreuth) in Germany after 1933 without being a Nazi? This question or one similar arose in another thread so I thought I'd give what for me is an interesting example.

The British bass, (though he and his parents moved to South Africa in 1920) Frederick Dalrymple (1908-1988) got backing in 1930 to study in Dresden where he made something of a name for himself as a singer. He married the German singer, Ellen Winter, and they had a daughter, the charming Evelyn (b. 1939).

Dalrymple doesn't trip off the tongue easily in German, so he changed his name to Dalberg. When war broke out he was still working in Germany, and, unwilling to leave his wife and baby behind, he made the decision to continue singing in Berlin, Bayreuth and elsewhere, and managed to keep his head down and survive the war without being arrested. At the war's end he became principal bass at the Munich State Opera (I am not aware of his needing any de-nazification) and in 1951 first bass at Covent Garden.

He appears on several opera sets recorded in the 1950s, for example, Meisteringer/Karajan/1951, Ring/Kempe/1957

I think it's an extraordinary tale of survival.

PS In my ignorance and nearly forty years ago I had assumed the Dalbergs were Jewish. Fortunately, others didn't.

[Barbirollians]

I think the last three words of that post make it clear why we should steer clear of this . For some reason I find them offensive. The question surely is how could he have stayed there through the 1930s ? Germans had little choice .

[PJPJ]

I recall reading an anecdote from John Culshaw about Erich Kleiber who, visiting the Decca offices, objected to his photograph hanging between Clemens Krauss and Karl Böhm. "You're not having my picture between those two old Nazis!", he shouted, and the pictures had to be rearranged! I doubt that the niceties of party membership always counted for much.

An interesting story. Erich Kleiber is on record being pretty scathing about those who stayed on and continued to work in Germany, those like Clemens Krauss.

During Krauss's de-nazification hearings there were depositions from Ida and Mary Louise Cook whom Krauss and his wife helped in smuggling Jews out of Germany, actions Krauss took which put him in considerable danger. Did he join the Nazi Party?

I was in a situation a long time ago where I had to make my mind up whether to stay in the country in which I was born, or whether to go, due to the political situation. I was free to choose, and, for example, didn't have a wife and baby whom I would have had to abandon as they would not have been allowed to accompany me. My decision was difficult enough without that.

[Barbirollians]

One has to suspect his upbringing in South Africa may have had something to with why he did not feel compelled to leave.

[verismissimo]

I'm particularly conscious of the issue you raise, PJPJ, when I listen to any of the 66 CDs in the Michael Raucheisen lieder set, all recorded in Berlin (on early audio tape) in the latter part of the war.

It seems that the accompanist Raucheisen himself was a party member, which will have given him access to the finest German-speaking singers of the period who stayedon in Germany during the war. There are at least two dozen of them, most building substantial international careers after hostilities ended.

The question in my own mind is: to what extent did they have to be "trusties" in order to continue performing, broadcasting and recording during the war?

They include: Peter Anders, Erna Berger, Anton Dermota, Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender, Karl Erb, Josef Greindl, Elisabeth Hongen, Hans Hotter, Margarete Klose, Frida Leider, Emmi Leisner, Tiana Lemnitz, Walther Ludwig, Maria Muller, Hans-Heinz Nissen, Julius Patzak, Elisabeth Rethberg, Helge Roswaenge, Heinrich Schlusnus and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

[aeolium]

Whenever this subject comes up I sense that there is too easy a readiness for armchair moralists to condemn actions without giving a proper acknowledgement to the appalling difficulties of the situations of those trying to survive in a totalitarian state. It should be remembered that the rule of law had been completely replaced by subservience to the state, that every instrument of control was in the hands of that state and deployed for ideological purposes. Resistance was virtually impossible without risking imprisonment or death, persecution of family and confiscation of property. The non-Jewish artists who remained in Germany were faced with the alternative of compromising with the state or (if they could) going abroad without any certainty of a future in their profession or for their families. And while it might be a salve for their conscience, it wouldn't remotely assist those remaining behind in more menial jobs who were unable to leave. Was it a plausible argument that they could at least provide an oasis of humanism, of civilisation in a climate of destructive barbarism - rather as poetry and music could serve as beacons of truth in the Soviet Union among all the propaganda?

Here is Furtwängler's argument:

"I am no better than others, although I did attempt to remain loyal to my basic inclination which motivated me: the love for my homeland and my people, a physical and spiritual concept, and the feeling of responsibility toward the prevention of injustice. Only here could I struggle for the soul of the German people. Outside, people can only protest; anyone can do that."

I have never lived under a totalitarian regime and hopefully never will. In this matter, my instinct is to paraphrase that Biblical text: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

[PJPJ]

Thank you, v'mo and aeolium. Collaboration with the regime, actively supporting the regime, encouraging the regime, or surviving despite the regime. Lumping all these musicians together under the description "worked under the Nazis = Nazi" seems to me to be a possibly less than one dimensional view. I confess I did miss the thread in which this topic was raised last and was given to understand it was closed in some acrimony. I have PMed barbirollians twice asking for clarification why he feels offended but have had no reply.


But, on to the final part of what I wanted to say, and without fear of censorship........

Here are some more situations regarding musicians which I understand some may feel uncomfortable about. If there are errors of fact, do let me know. Reference in the Dvorak thread made Ansermet, Karajan and their wartime activities and, more importantly, views, contrast with their post-war careers.

Both Ansermet (who was Swiss) and Karajan had at different times that superb violinist Michel Schwalbé as leader of their orchestras. Karajan also had Michel Glotz as his favourite producer for many years. Both Michels had family members murdered by the Nazis, Schwalbé especially lucky to have survived.

Karajan's first fairy godfather was Walter Legge, who was Jewish, and who married Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, who wasn't, and is considered by some to be as much the devil incarnate as Karajan. And when Karajan was signed by DGG, it was Elsa Schiller, another concentration camp survivor, who was in charge there.

She had started off immediately after the war working for Berlin RIAS, and one of her first appointments was Ferenc Fricsay. He was a "stayer", in Szeged in Hungary, half-Jewish on his mother's side I am led to believe, but certainly in trouble with the authorities for continuing to give jobs to Jewish musicians up till 1944, at which point he and his family had to go into hiding. After joining DG, she was involved in giving contracts to other German and Austrian conductors also mentioned in the BaL thread as Nazis or Nazis-but-didn't-join-the-party.

And Karajan, the stayer. The so-called double Nazi marries a quarter-Jewish woman in 1942. Much later, his friendship with Alexis Weissenberg, whose childhood and youth as a Jew, must have been unimaginably terrible seems extraordinary after all the anti-K jibes. Some read motives into these actions without a shred of evidence.

And other stayers; I mentioned Frederick Dalberg. It seems already that being unwilling to abandon wife and new-born baby to unknown danger is not seen as an excuse which holds water. Should have gone, I hear.

Those who need not have gone to Germany at all before and during the war include, conductors: Ansermet, mentioned earlier, Ataulfo Argenta, Paul van Kempen who was roundly castigated by the Dutch public after the war for his activities, and other musicians who got a little too close to the Nazis, to put it mildly, like Cortot.

And then there was Beecham. How did these people conduct and make records in Germany after 1933 and not be Nazis, I heard some of you cry. By some definitions, then, Beecham was a Nazi. Now, of course, that's preposterous, isn't it. The story of the 1936 trip, the LPO and BASF tape is well-documented. By that time, Furtwangler had managed to get his secretary, Berte Geissmar, who was Jewish, out of Germany in 1935, and in 1936 she became Beecham's secretary. They had to compromise with the Germans by agreeing not to play Mendelssohn's Scottish. And, in 1937-8, Sir Thomas recorded The Magic Flute in Berlin, as he had a contract to do so, I understand. And when it suits us, we say the musicianship over-rides the political mistakes, to put it mildly. And when it doesn't suit us, it's the other way around.

Whatever all these people did or did not do, I am unaware of any of them becoming, in 1945, holocaust-deniers. For an example of that, we have an Englishman.

[mathias broucek]

I have a lot of sympathy with the "you can't imagine how difficult it was" argument. And history looks much tidier from this end of the lense than it no doubt did at the time.

However the example of Erich Kleiber stands as a significant rebuke to established, internationally known artists who could, like him, have taken a stand and chose not to. I'm sure there are many cases of mitigating circumstances (sick, elderly parents etc) but it's stunning how few others took his approach.

BTW there's some fascinating Erich Kleiber material from his S American travels. Appalling sound, but it's rather moving to hear him give the St John Passion in Argentina in 1938 and amongst lots of Wagner there's a stunning Immolation Scene with Flagstad on Pearl.

[aeolium]

However the example of Erich Kleiber stands as a significant rebuke to established, internationally known artists who could, like him, have taken a stand and chose not to. I'm sure there are many cases of mitigating circumstances (sick, elderly parents etc) but it's stunning how few others took his approach.

Well, Kleiber resigned from the Berlin Opera and later La Scala before moving to Argentina but conducted in Germany until 1935. Did his resignation and departure significantly concern the Nazi regime - probably not as his resistance to political interference would have been a constant irritant? But the point is surely that it is impossible not to be tainted by the actions of a totalitarian regime - as the novels of Koestler and Orwell show, it is the nature of such a regime to enter into every area of private and public life in a way that compels choices between obedience/compromise/resistance/flight. Is flight necessarily the correct 'moral' choice here, as it is to an extent an abdication of responsibility to one's compatriots, leaving the field open for the evil men? And this was the point that Furtwängler was trying to make in the earlier quote: he felt an obligation to his countrymen which would be shirked by fleeing.

I don't think it's surprising that so few non-Jewish artists left Nazi Germany. Compare the situation in Stalin's Soviet Union - how many artists left there despite an equally unpleasant and brutal regime? The difficulty of being uprooted from a language and culture that had become like a second skin was apparent in the sense of loss and nostalgic recollection of the enforced German emigrés, as is shown in Daniel Snowman's excellent book The Hitler Emigrés.

[Barbirollians]

There is surely a great deal of difference between German artists who did not leave Germany (other than those who actively supported the regime ) and those who deliberately chose to go and live and work there like the example in the first post .

[PJPJ]

There is surely a great deal of difference between German artists who did not leave Germany (other than those who actively supported the regime ) and those who deliberately chose to go and live and work there like the example in the first post .

You are, of course, entitled to an opinion, but please back it up with reasons in the context of the Dalbergs.

[PJPJ]

....But the point is surely that it is impossible not to be tainted by the actions of a totalitarian regime - as the novels of Koestler and Orwell show, it is the nature of such a regime to enter into every area of private and public life in a way that compels choices between obedience/compromise/resistance/flight. Is flight necessarily the correct 'moral' choice here, as it is to an extent an abdication of responsibility to one's compatriots, leaving the field open for the evil men?.

Indeed. It is too easy to sit in comfort in Pinner or Purley and make self-righteous and ill-informed judgements about the actions of people of whose circumstances you have no understanding whatsoever, and of people who were unable to predict the future. I think I've now said all I want on the matter.