Dohnányi, Ernö von

[Lat-Literal]

Has anyone had any additional thoughts about the issues raised in this thread since the programme about tyrants on BBC4? I am currently revisiting Hungarian music - the country is not blessed with dozens of good composers - and this Dohnanyi thing is giving me some grief. For much of his work is very charming even if on occasions it is dense and disparate, overly long or even kitch. The Sextet is full of surprises and I also like the First Symphony, the Harp Concertino, the American Rhapsody and parts of the First Piano Concerto.

All apart from the Sextet where the invention in an admittedly mainly conservative composer doesn't suggest kowtowing were written either long before or long after the Nazis. In fact, of the 68 in total, just four - Cantus Vitae, Suite en Valse, Symphony No 2 and Six Pieces for Piano - were written during WW2 and only an additional two - Symphonic Minutes and Sextet - were completed between 1933 and 1938. With perhaps Orff's Carmina Burana as a point of comparison or contrast, what can we learn of any subtext in Cantus Vitae?

I am not sure.

What do you think from the following description?

"In the year 1941, he completed his symphonic cantata, Cantus Vitae. The text comes from the 1861 dramatic poem, "Az ember tragediaja" written by Imre Madach. Originally, this epic drama relayed the complete history of mankind from birth to end times in a deeply pessimistic way, akin to ideologies presented in Goethe’s Faust. Its central focus is the struggle between the first man Adam, his wife, Lucifer and the Lord. While Madach intended for the moral to be fatalistic and dark, Dohnanyi, in accordance with his nature, rejected this outlook. Instead, he adopted the ideas from their gloomy origin and gave them a life of light.

While Dohnanyi agreed with Madach that one encounters tribulations throughout life, he chose to view them as necessities with potential for betterment rather than disasters. This work Cantus vitae, or “Song of Life,” is a symphonic cantata in five parts, depicting that endings are new beginnings and not ends in of themselves. One of the chants of the third part, “Funeralia” begins: The cradle and the coffin are all one; What ends today, begins tomorrow, Always hungry, always full. Lo, the evening bell has sounded; Let those whom morning calls to a new life, Begin the great work anew". The crux of the work is Dohnanyi’s personal evaluation of the meaning of life that is sung by the off-stage “Chorus mysticus:” - "Family pride and sense of ownership, These are the moving forces of the world. Life without struggle and without love, Has no value".

Well, I suppose the Nazis believed that they were a family of sorts but we also know the role that Erno's relatives played in the resistance movement - indeed it could hardly have been any greater as befitted those who allegedly came from backgrounds which were in sync with Weimar values. Furthermore, the Americans had few problems with his past.

This is a very good composer rather than a great one, much as is true with Lajtha who I have also been listening to lately. You will hardly find a mention of Lajtha on this forum and that, I think, is a pity. A victim of Communism, he has only comparatively recently enjoyed a resurgence courtesy of Naxos and Marco Polo. If anything, Dohnanyi who never fell quite so spectacularly into obscurity is finding his moderate ongoing popularity on the wane. Stylistically, there are differences between the two. As has been mentioned, Dohnanyi leaned towards the Austrian-German school. Lajtha was especially highly regarded in France. Each, though, was prolific - the latter produced nine symphonies; neither was as heavily influenced by the Hungarian folk traditions as Bartok or Kodaly; and both have been criticised for being derivative in a rather sporadic way - for Dohnanyi read Brahms, Strauss, and possibly Wagner and Dvorak, as well as in his later years Afro-American influence whereas with Lajtha it's Debussy, Vaughan Williams and Nielsen and latterly the avant-garde.

Perhaps, even if Dohnanyi is a less unequivocally sympathetic figure, it is time for a proper re-evaluation of both so that it isn't always Bartok and Kodaly for Hungary and barely anyone else? We are not quite in Panufnik territory here - wrong country, wrong generation, not as individual - but another way of describing what is set out in the paragraph above is an attractive, inventive blend which I do think strongly is often in these composers, albeit somewhat counter-intuitively. And they were hugely important in their own times.

[richardfinegold]

Has anyone had any additional thoughts about the issues raised in this thread since the programme about tyrants on BBC4? I am currently revisiting Hungarian music - the country is not blessed with dozens of good composers - and this Dohnanyi thing is giving me some grief. For much of his work is very charming even if on occasions it is dense and disparate, overly long or even kitch. The Sextet is full of surprises and I also like the First Symphony, the Harp Concertino, the American Rhapsody and parts of the First Piano Concerto.

All apart from the Sextet where the invention in an admittedly mainly conservative composer doesn't suggest kowtowing were written either long before or long after the Nazis. In fact, of the 68 in total, just four - Cantus Vitae, Suite en Valse, Symphony No 2 and Six Pieces for Piano - were written during WW2 and only an additional two - Symphonic Minutes and Sextet - were completed between 1933 and 1938. With perhaps Orff's Carmina Burana as a point of comparison or contrast, what can we learn of any subtext in Cantus Vitae?

I am not sure.

What do you think from the following description?

"In the year 1941, he completed his symphonic cantata, Cantus Vitae. The text comes from the 1861 dramatic poem, "Az ember tragediaja" written by Imre Madach. Originally, this epic drama relayed the complete history of mankind from birth to end times in a deeply pessimistic way, akin to ideologies presented in Goethe’s Faust. Its central focus is the struggle between the first man Adam, his wife, Lucifer and the Lord. While Madach intended for the moral to be fatalistic and dark, Dohnanyi, in accordance with his nature, rejected this outlook. Instead, he adopted the ideas from their gloomy origin and gave them a life of light.

While Dohnanyi agreed with Madach that one encounters tribulations throughout life, he chose to view them as necessities with potential for betterment rather than disasters. This work Cantus vitae, or “Song of Life,” is a symphonic cantata in five parts, depicting that endings are new beginnings and not ends in of themselves. One of the chants of the third part, “Funeralia” begins: The cradle and the coffin are all one; What ends today, begins tomorrow, Always hungry, always full. Lo, the evening bell has sounded; Let those whom morning calls to a new life, Begin the great work anew". The crux of the work is Dohnanyi’s personal evaluation of the meaning of life that is sung by the off-stage “Chorus mysticus:” - "Family pride and sense of ownership, These are the moving forces of the world. Life without struggle and without love, Has no value".

Well, I suppose the Nazis believed that they were a family of sorts but we also know the role that Erno's relatives played in the resistance movement - indeed it could hardly have been any greater as befitted those who allegedly came from backgrounds which were in sync with Weimar values. Furthermore, the Americans had few problems with his past.

This is a very good composer rather than a great one, much as is true with Lajtha who I have also been listening to lately. You will hardly find a mention of Lajtha on this forum and that, I think, is a pity. A victim of Communism, he has only comparatively recently enjoyed a resurgence courtesy of Naxos and Marco Polo. If anything, Dohnanyi who never fell quite so spectacularly into obscurity is finding his moderate ongoing popularity on the wane. Stylistically, there are differences between the two. As has been mentioned, Dohnanyi leaned towards the Austrian-German school. Lajtha was especially highly regarded in France. Each, though, was prolific - the latter produced nine symphonies; neither was as heavily influenced by the Hungarian folk traditions as Bartok or Kodaly; and both have been criticised for being derivative in a rather sporadic way - for Dohnanyi read Brahms, Strauss, and possibly Wagner and Dvorak, as well as in his later years Afro-American influence whereas with Lajtha it's Debussy, Vaughan Williams and Nielsen and latterly the avant-garde.

Perhaps, even if Dohnanyi is a less unequivocally sympathetic figure, it is time for a proper re-evaluation of both so that it isn't always Bartok and Kodaly for Hungary and barely anyone else? We are not quite in Panufnik territory here - wrong country, wrong generation, not as individual - but another way of describing what is set out in the paragraph above is an attractive, inventive blend which I do think strongly is often in these composers, albeit somewhat counter-intuitively. And they were hugely important in their own times.

I am not sure that I have much to add, LL, to what I previously wrote, but this is timely for me indeed, as I am listening to Howard Shelly play the Nursery Rhyme Variations as I scanned the Forum contents. I will offer a few comments on some of the points you raise.
1) His nephew was very active in the plots to kill Hitler. That doesn't mean that Ernst was. I currently am reading Richard J. Evans
book The Third Reich in History and Memory. This is essentially a collection of essays in the guise of book reviews. Evans points out that with respect to the career diplomats who served under Hitler, after the war most of them pointed to their association with the diplomats who had been active in the resistance, and tried to state that since they were in meetings, etc with them, they supported the agenda of the resistance. Evans sites countless sources to prove that most of the career diplomats making these claims were enthusiastic supporters of all aspects of Nazi Germany, including the Final Solution.
Certainly Ernst played the relation to his brave nephew as a trump card after the War. That alone is not prima facie evidence that Ernst was a committed resistance member. When I read up on Ernst at the time of the creation of this thread, all that I could conclude was that while he wasn't a fire breathing National Socialist, he had some sympathy with some of their aims and to some extent collaborated with them. That would not make him unique in war time or postwar Germany.
Secondly, the fact that Ernst enjoyed some renown in the States post war doesn't exculpate him either. Werner von Braun among others found life pretty congenial here after the war. America was ready to sweep all those corpses under the rug and enlist the Germans help in fighting the new enemy, the USSR and a lot of Nazis and fellow travelers were able to peddle their skills here and take advantage of that climate.
In the final analysis, EvD may not have been a spotless antifascist such as Toscanini, but rather more of a hapless opportunist a la Shostakovich or Prokofiev. They tried to live out their lives under totalitarianism, occasionally bending to the ways of the state in view of maintaining some Artistic Independence and integrity, and finding themselves running afoul of the changing and dangerous currents that assailed them.
I don't know what the real story was, but I find it difficult to believe that the Composer of the Nursery Rhyme Variations could have been a very bad man, and I leave it at that.

[Stanfordian]

I am not sure that I have much to add, LL, to what I previously wrote, but this is timely for me indeed, as I am listening to Howard Shelly play the Nursery Rhyme Variations as I scanned the Forum contents. I will offer a few comments on some of the points you raise.
1) His nephew was very active in the plots to kill Hitler. That doesn't mean that Ernst was. I currently am reading Richard J. Evans
book The Third Reich in History and Memory. This is essentially a collection of essays in the guise of book reviews. Evans points out that with respect to the career diplomats who served under Hitler, after the war most of them pointed to their association with the diplomats who had been active in the resistance, and tried to state that since they were in meetings, etc with them, they supported the agenda of the resistance. Evans sites countless sources to prove that most of the career diplomats making these claims were enthusiastic supporters of all aspects of Nazi Germany, including the Final Solution.
Certainly Ernst played the relation to his brave nephew as a trump card after the War. That alone is not prima facie evidence that Ernst was a committed resistance member. When I read up on Ernst at the time of the creation of this thread, all that I could conclude was that while he wasn't a fire breathing National Socialist, he had some sympathy with some of their aims and to some extent collaborated with them. That would not make him unique in war time or postwar Germany.
Secondly, the fact that Ernst enjoyed some renown in the States post war doesn't exculpate him either. Werner von Braun among others found life pretty congenial here after the war. America was ready to sweep all those corpses under the rug and enlist the Germans help in fighting the new enemy, the USSR and a lot of Nazis and fellow travelers were able to peddle their skills here and take advantage of that climate.
In the final analysis, EvD may not have been a spotless antifascist such as Toscanini, but rather more of a hapless opportunist a la Shostakovich or Prokofiev. They tried to live out their lives under totalitarianism, occasionally bending to the ways of the state in view of maintaining some Artistic Independence and integrity, and finding themselves running afoul of the changing and dangerous currents that assailed them.
I don't know what the real story was, but I find it difficult to believe that the Composer of the Nursery Rhyme Variations could have been a very bad man, and I leave it at that.

Hiya richardfinegold,

I enjoyed reading both your post and Lat-Literal's.

The biography 'Ernst von Dohnányi - A Song of Life' (Indiana University Press 2002) by his widow Ilona von Dohnányi is extremely enlightening and explains how being "falsely accused" of being a Nazi collaborator blighted his career.

I can strong recommend the recent album 'Being Earnest' comprising of Dohnányi's Sextet and Piano Quintet No. 2 on the Solo Musica label. One of the finest chamber music CDs I have heard for some time:

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2016/Dec/Dohnanyi_sextet_SM250.htm

[richardfinegold]

Hiya richardfinegold,

I enjoyed reading both your post and Lat-Literal's.

The biography 'Ernst von Dohnányi - A Song of Life' (Indiana University Press 2002) by his widow Ilona von Dohnányi is extremely enlightening and explains how being "falsely accused" of being a Nazi collaborator blighted his career.

I can strong recommend the recent album 'Being Earnest' comprising of Dohnányi's Sextet and Piano Quintet No. 2 on the Solo Musica label. One of the finest chamber music CDs I have heard for some time:

http://www.musicweb-international.co...xtet_SM250.htm

Sure Stan
Of course, one must allow for the possibility that his widow might have her own agenda.

[Stanfordian]

Sure Stan
Of course, one must allow for the possibility that his widow might have her own agenda.

Yes, and as you will no doubt notice that's why I put the term from the book "falsely accused" in quotation marks. Nevertheless Mrs Dohnányi puts forward a strong case, however, we will probably never know the true situation. It's impossible to put oneself in the position of others, such as Dohnányi, who lived in an occupied country during wartime.

[Lat-Literal]

Thank you to both of you for your considered contributions.

Appreciated - but I don't know what to think now.

I've temporarily flown off to Rumania, Bulgaria and Poland.

[Lat-Literal]

OK. I am leaning towards Stan's outlook as I prefer to do so for musical reasons. Additionally, if he was the subject of an unjustifiable witch hunt, further questions merely reinforce it. There is also the broader context of immediate family. What makes this so difficult is the highly significant role that the Dohnanyis played in the resistance. There is absolutely no sense of neutrality in everything one reads about them in the past. I think that does matter when, for example, we know that the "charming" current deputy leader of AfD is not merely nobility but descended from nobility with a hotline to Hitler. And in subsequent generations of Dohnanyis, you will find human rights lawyers and Social Democrat politicians.

Still, when one looks again into what happened with the composer, there are plenty of what at best might be termed doubts. Only additional facts could address them. It might be possible for you Stan and Richard to answer some of the following points on the basis of your extensive reading. I am tempted to think "if only this were Bartok" for while Bartok is undoubtedly the superior composer and he should tick most of the boxes on my list, I have a bit of a blank spot in regard to him not that it pleases me. I do like Dohnanyi's music.

1. We need to know about the nature of the composer's relationship with his son, Hans. The latter was removed from a Gestapo cell and taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in July 1944 where, because he was considered to be one of the instigators of the plot to kill Hitler, his treatment was especially severe. Ernst's move to Austria occurred just four months later and during that interrogation before Hans was hanged at the concentration camp in April 1945. Is there any information about the emotional impact of that?

2. Next, we need to know the circumstances in which he moved from Europe to Argentina in 1948. Were composers under scrutiny then? We are told that the new Hungarian government spread rumours about Dohnanyi who was from a noble background. Clearly this was also the time of the Nuremberg trials. Who might have testified against him? Hans had initially worked to Franz Gürtner, Hitler's German Minister of Justice. That was how he was in a position to collect documents against the regime. Gürtner had died in 1941 but he had been appointed by the older Franz von Pappen who was alive. Pappen was charged with conspiring to start WW2 and found not guilty but the German government had him re-arrested and charged him with other offences. In 1947 Papen was judged to be a "major offender" and sentenced to eight years imprisonment yet by 1948 he was forgiven for his crimes and he was released in January 1949. So did he say anything against Ernst given he would not have liked any of the Dohnanyis? Could he have done in the future?

3. There are questions about where the composer went to in Argentina. Peron wanted senior officers in the Nazi regime. They did go to other South American countries. Many, though, lived in Bariloche, an Alpine-style town by the Argentine Andes. It was for some years virtually a Nazi enclave. Dohnanyi didn't live there. He was head of the piano department of the faculty of music at the University of Tucuman. Tucuman, a small but densely populated region to the north, was also where Adolf Eichmann settled in 1950 although he had a landing permit for Argentina and false identification two years earlier. Eichmann had, of course, been notoriously active in Hungary following the German invasion.

4. Also, there is the second of the composer's three marriages. Before World War I broke out, Dohnányi met and fell in love with a German actress Elza Galafrés, who was married to the Polish Jewish violinist Bronisław Huberman. They could not marry, since their respective spouses refused to divorce them, but despite this they had a son, Matthew, in January 1917. Both later gained the divorces they sought, and were married in June 1919. Dohnányi also adopted Johannes, her son by Huberman. It might be helpful to know more. For in 1929 Huberman first visited Palestine and developed his vision of establishing classical music in the Promised Land. In 1933, during the Nazis' rise to power, Huberman declined invitations from Wilhelm Furtwängler to return to preach a "musical peace", but wrote instead an open letter to German intellectuals inviting them to remember their essential values. In 1936 he founded the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, subsequently renamed the Israel Philharmonic. So did he have a personal axe to grind until his death in June 1947?

5. Hungarian is a unique language. The name "Dohnanyi" may well be classically Hungarian in structure or it might not be. Can anyone advise? Intriguingly, it is not very far removed from the name "Dohany". It is in Dohany Street, Budapest that one can find the Dohany Street Synagogue which is the second largest in the world. From the early 1930s it also housed the Hungarian Jewish Museum. On 23 June 1941, that is, before taken over as a base for German Radio and used as a stable, it had been the location of a performance of Händel’s Judas Maccabeus. The conductor was László Weiner, and the solo singers Pál Fehér, Dezső Ernster, Zsuzsa Pogány, Vera Rózsa etc. What might any link between the two names have implied about the composer's early family origins? Actually, not necessarily the obvious. For "Dohany", meaning tobacco or, in slang, money, is from Turkish-Arabic.

[richardfinegold]

OK. I am leaning towards Stan's outlook as I prefer to do so for musical reasons. Additionally, if he was the subject of an unjustifiable witch hunt, further questions merely reinforce it. There is also the broader context of immediate family. What makes this so difficult is the highly significant role that the Dohnanyis played in the resistance. There is absolutely no sense of neutrality with them in everything one reads about them in the past. I think that does matter when, for example, we know that the current deputy leader of AfD is not merely nobility but descended from nobility with a hotline to Hitler. And in subsequent generations of Dohnanyis, you will find human rights lawyers and Social Democrat politicians.

Still, when one looks again into what happened with the composer, there are plenty of what at best might be termed doubts. Only additional facts could address them. It might be possible for you Stan and Richard to answer some of the following points on the basis of your extensive reading. I am tempted to think "if only this were Bartok" for while Bartok is undoubtedly the superior composer and he should tick most of the boxes on my list, I have a bit of a blank spot in regard to him not that it pleases me. I do like Dohnanyi's music.

1. We need to know about the nature of the composer's relationship with his son, Hans. The latter was removed from a Gestapo cell and taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in July 1944 where, because he was considered to be one of the instigators of the plot to kill Hitler, his treatment was especially severe. Ernst's move to Austria occurred just four months later and during that interrogation before Hans was hanged at the concentration camp in April 1945. Is there any information about the emotional impact of that?

2. Next, we need to know the circumstances in which he moved from Europe to Argentina in 1948. Were composers under scrutiny then? We are told that the new Hungarian government spread rumours about Dohnanyi who was from a noble background. Clearly this was also the time of the Nuremberg trials. Who might have testified against him? Hans had initially worked to Franz Gürtner, Hitler's German Minister of Justice. That was how he was in a position to collect documents against the regime. Gürtner had died in 1941 but he had been appointed by the older Franz von Pappen who was alive. Pappen was charged with conspiring to start WW2 and found not guilty but the German government had him re-arrested and charged him with other offences. In 1947 Papen was judged to be a "major offender" and sentenced to eight years imprisonment yet by 1948 he was forgiven for his crimes and he was released in January 1949. So did he say anything against Ernst given he would not have liked any of the Dohnanyis? Could he have done in the future?

3. There are questions about where the composer went to in Argentina. Peron wanted senior officers in the Nazi regime. They did go to other South American countries. Many, though, lived in Bariloche, an Alpine-style town by the Argentine Andes. It was for some years virtually a Nazi enclave. Dohnanyi didn't live there. He was head of the piano department of the faculty of music at the University of Tucuman. Tucuman, a small but densely populated region to the north, was also where Adolf Eichmann settled in 1950 although he had a landing permit for Argentina and false identification two years earlier. Eichmann had, of course, been notoriously active in Hungary following the German invasion.

4. Also, there is the second of the composer's three marriages. Before World War I broke out, Dohnányi met and fell in love with a German actress Elza Galafrés, who was married to the Polish Jewish violinist Bronisław Huberman. They could not marry, since their respective spouses refused to divorce them, but despite this they had a son, Matthew, in January 1917. Both later gained the divorces they sought, and were married in June 1919. Dohnányi also adopted Johannes, her son by Huberman. It might be helpful to know more. For in 1929 Huberman first visited Palestine and developed his vision of establishing classical music in the Promised Land. In 1933, during the Nazis' rise to power, Huberman declined invitations from Wilhelm Furtwängler to return to preach a "musical peace", but wrote instead an open letter to German intellectuals inviting them to remember their essential values. In 1936 he founded the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, subsequently renamed the Israel Philharmonic. So did he have a personal axe to grind until his death in June 1947?

5. Hungarian is a unique language. The name "Dohnanyi" may well be classically Hungarian in structure or it might not be. Can anyone advise? Intriguingly, it is not very far removed from the name "Dohany". It is in Dohany Street, Budapest that one can find the Dohany Street Synagogue which is the second largest in the world. From the early 1930s it also housed the Hungarian Jewish Museum. On 23 June 1941, that is, before taken over as a base for German Radio and used as a stable, it had been the location of a performance of Händel’s Judas Maccabeus. The conductor was László Weiner, and the solo singers Pál Fehér, Dezső Ernster, Zsuzsa Pogány, Vera Rózsa etc. What might any link between the two names have implied about the composer's early family origins? Actually, not necessarily the obvious. For "Dohany", meaning tobacco or, in slang, money, is from Turkish-Arabic.

I am not exactly sure of the nature of your struggle, L2. Are you trying to figure out if EvD was Anti-Semitic? An Active Nazi? A secret Nazi Resister who then was unfairly labeled a Nazi after the War?
Also-you imply that Stan and I are on different ‘sides’ of one of these questions. I wasn’t perceiving that; I thought that we were exploring some opinions.
Also I think I have to correct you about his ‘son’ as a Resister, as I am pretty sure that it was his nephew that involved in the various plots to kill Hitler.
I can only reiterate what I said before. I think EvD had some points of common interest with the Fascist Regimes of Hungary and Germany and worked with them to an extent. There is no evidence that he was actively involved in the murderous aspects of the Third Reich, nor any that he was a member of the Resistance.
Many Germans—including Jews—moved to Argentina before, during, and after the War. They were not all Eichmanns evading prosecution.
EvD, Furtwangler, and many musicians who collaborated with the regime did have to face the consequences of dealing with colleagues that opposed it after the war. This no doubt led to unsubstantiated allegations being comixed with truthful ones and people with grudges for other reasons having a chance to tar with a very wide brush.
In the end I think he was a wonderful composer who was less than perfect as a human being but far from being the worst of our species

[Lat-Literal]

I am not exactly sure of the nature of your struggle, L2. Are you trying to figure out if EvD was Anti-Semitic? An Active Nazi? A secret Nazi Resister who then was unfairly labeled a Nazi after the War?
Also-you imply that Stan and I are on different ‘sides’ of one of these questions. I wasn’t perceiving that; I thought that we were exploring some opinions.
Also I think I have to correct you about his ‘son’ as a Resister, as I am pretty sure that it was his nephew that involved in the various plots to kill Hitler.
I can only reiterate what I said before. I think EvD had some points of common interest with the Fascist Regimes of Hungary and Germany and worked with them to an extent. There is no evidence that he was actively involved in the murderous aspects of the Third Reich, nor any that he was a member of the Resistance.
Many Germans—including Jews—moved to Argentina before, during, and after the War. They were not all Eichmanns evading prosecution.
EvD, Furtwangler, and many musicians who collaborated with the regime did have to face the consequences of dealing with colleagues that opposed it after the war. This no doubt led to unsubstantiated allegations being comixed with truthful ones and people with grudges for other reasons having a chance to tar with a very wide brush.
In the end I think he was a wonderful composer who was less than perfect as a human being but far from being the worst of our species

Thank you for your comments Richard.

Now I am confused.

Hans was his son. He was born in 1902, the son of Erno and his then wife, the pianist Elisabeth Kunwald. He was friends with the Bonhoeffers, active in the resistance as outlined, and condemned to death by an SS drumhead court in 1945. Klaus von Dohnányi, born in 1928, is a German Social Democrat politician, the son of Hans and a nephew of Dietrich.

I don't believe that Erno was a secret resister although that is possible, nor do I think he was guilty of Nazi atrocities. I agree with what was said earlier. That he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He probably did hold out against the sacking of Jewish musicians for as long as he could do. He may have even saved Jewish lives. But he was in a senior position in music and he had been for quite some time. Not young, I think he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Speak out and lose the posts he had along with prestige or try to get by in the circumstances. No one knew that what was happening then wouldn't be the entire future. My instinct is that he had values but he was not instinctively a huge champion of the Jewish people for various reasons in his background. And I do feel that he may have sufficiently hoodwinked the so-called authorities into thinking he was on their side and thus helped by them as well as admittedly by American troops to escape under allied occupation. Once out, he could safely be considered with the conclusion he was safe.

[Stanfordian]

I am not exactly sure of the nature of your struggle, L2. Are you trying to figure out if EvD was Anti-Semitic? An Active Nazi? A secret Nazi Resister who then was unfairly labeled a Nazi after the War?
Also-you imply that Stan and I are on different ‘sides’ of one of these questions. I wasn’t perceiving that; I thought that we were exploring some opinions.
Also I think I have to correct you about his ‘son’ as a Resister, as I am pretty sure that it was his nephew that involved in the various plots to kill Hitler.
I can only reiterate what I said before. I think EvD had some points of common interest with the Fascist Regimes of Hungary and Germany and worked with them to an extent. There is no evidence that he was actively involved in the murderous aspects of the Third Reich, nor any that he was a member of the Resistance.
Many Germans—including Jews—moved to Argentina before, during, and after the War. They were not all Eichmanns evading prosecution.
EvD, Furtwangler, and many musicians who collaborated with the regime did have to face the consequences of dealing with colleagues that opposed it after the war. This no doubt led to unsubstantiated allegations being comixed with truthful ones and people with grudges for other reasons having a chance to tar with a very wide brush.
In the end I think he was a wonderful composer who was less than perfect as a human being but far from being the worst of our species

Dohnanyi wrote some beautiful music that I rarely encounter in live performance and in my view consequently it doesn't have the wide circulation that it's quality it deserves. It's perplexing how matters work out for example Richard Strauss worked for the Nazi's who used him as a figurehead and his international popularity has not suffered in the slightest.

[Lat-Literal]

Dohnanyi wrote some beautiful music that I rarely encounter in live performance and in my view consequently it doesn't have the wide circulation that it's quality it deserves. It's perplexing how matters work out for example Richard Strauss worked for the Nazi's who used him as a figurehead and his international popularity has not suffered in the slightest.

Yes - I agree.

Actually I have now bought Dohnanyi's Symphony No 1.

That, though, is as far as I am going.

There is still no Strauss in my collection.

(Any of them......although the unrelated others are a different matter; 1,2,3 - 1,2,3 etc)

[richardfinegold]

I was mistaken, Hans was Ernö son. I think I was mislead by a historical novel featuring Hans in which he is feferred to as the Nephew of the Composer. In this novel, the 2 men were estranged from each other.
You don’t ’ Have any Richard Strauss music on your shelves? Pity. Strauss moral legacy is also a bit of a mixed bag. I think that he came to regret some decisions that he made. It is awful to be in the clutches of a totalitarian dictatorship that can hurt you and your loved ones with impunity