THE BERLIN HOCHSCHULE COMPOSERS DURING THE TWILIGHT YEARS OF THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC AND THE ADVENT OF THE THIRD REICH
Suzanne Moulton-Gertig, Associate Professor
Author's Note: This article was originally delivered as a paper at a meeting of the American Musicological Society in Tucson, AZ in 1996.
During the Weimar Republic, the flagship of Prussian music educational institutions and Germany's premier conservatory was the Berlin Akademische Hochschule für Musik. The roots of the Hochschule go back further than its official founding in 1869. The idea of a Hochschule in Berlin actually had its genesis in the 1830's and was the brainchild of Friedrich Wilhelm IV.1 It was his vision to establish this music academy, installing Felix Mendelssohn as its director. However, there were a number of administrative problems which delayed the project. As a result, the Hochschule had to wait for about thirty years and then was founded as part of the older Prussian Academy of Art which had its naissance in the earliest years of the nineteenth century. The Berlin Hochschule's first director was the famous violinist Joseph Joachim. Under his leadership, the institution quickly grew to become known as one of the finest music schools in Germany with a faculty of outstanding musicians and music scholars.2 During the Weimar Republic years, the Hochschule, along with other institutions of its type, was supported by the Prussian Ministry of Culture. Democratic Socialist and music expert Leo Kestenberg was appointed to head the Music, Art and Theater Division of the Ministry. Kestenburg had a very clear vision of and aggressive approach to music pedagogical reform for the time, and as a result the Hochschule continued to prosper and gain recognition even though everyone did not agree with Kestenburg's vision.
Vital to the development of the Hochschule was the era from 1920 to 1933, those years of the Weimar Republic to the Advent of the Third Reich under the directorships of Franz Schreker and Georg Schünemann. If growing by "leaps and bounds" could be considered a flattering phrase to describe the Hochschule's development under this administration, then it would be an appropriate description. In addition to being the director, Schreker also served on the composition faculty. He built a composition class in the first year partially comprised of students who followed him from his former post at the Vienna Music Academy, and whose names would become very familiar to future generations of musicians, like Ernst Krenek and Jascha Horenstein.3 Moreover, Schreker and musicologist Schünemann developed other divisions of the Hochschule, expanding the faculty and course offerings to include radio broadcasting, film music production, and recording engineering. An academic faculty roster from 1927 shows sixty-nine members in eleven divisions.4 The first three names on the Composition Department list (Friedrich Koch, Robert Kahn, and Paul Juon) were already on the faculty at the time of Franz Schreker's appointment as director in 1920. Although works of Robert Kahn and Friedrich Koch can be still be found in library collections throughout the world, they were quickly forgotten after the composers' deaths, despite their immediate success and popularity during the composers' lifetimes.
By all appearances, Robert Kahn was a composer who managed to ride out the political tide, for he retired before the National Socialist changes of the 1930s. Because of his Aryan status and old-line German attitude, Kahn was not persecuted by the Third Reich. His name still appeared as a member of the music department of the Academy during the time of the termination of some faculty appointments in 1933.
Some months prior to Franz Schreker's directorial appointment in 1920, Friedrich Koch replaced Humperdinck at the Hochschule as the head of the theory and composition class. Upon Schreker's arrival at the Hochschule, he was shocked by the incompetence of Koch's composition students. Concerning this issue, Schreker wrote in a letter to Frankfurter Zeitung critic Paul Bekker:
Friedrich Koch died in January of 1927, six years before the Nazi assumption of power.
The last of the three, Paul Juon, left Germany for Switzerland in 1934 because of health problems and lived until 1940. He was not immune to the scrutiny by the Nazi Ministry of the Interior. Like all the rest of the faculty at the Hochschule, Juon had to fill out documents declaring his racial descent, as Aryan status had become a prerequisite condition for the right to teach at the Hochschule.6 Juon was considered musically "progressive" for his time; he had already begun to show some neoclassic tendencies. His background was checked back a number of generations to verify his Aryan claims. In July of 1933, Juon along with other labeled musical "progressives" like Tiessen, Trapp, and Hindemith were proclaimed Aryan and allowed to keep their positions at the Hochschule.7 Juon's compositions are widely available in libraries even in this country, but he is remembered mostly for his translations of other composers' writings, notably Arensky's and Tchaikovsky's Harmony Books, and Modest Tchaikovsky's 1903 biography of his brother.
Despite all the progress the Hochschule made after Schreker's appointment in 1920, it did receive great criticism from conservatives. They complained of "cacophony emanating from school's composition classes, the unfocused research in electronic technology, and the experimental programs of the music-pedagogical seminars,8 proclaiming them by-products of the Social Democrats' cultural politics. Conservatives persisted in their condemnation of the school by criticizing the religion and nationality of the faculty and student body, proclaiming it "rife with 'Jewish-internationalist' tendencies."9
Led by inspirational political figures like Stressemen during the 1920s, Germans had mustered a certain amount of hope for better economic and political times. Regardless, the unrealized dreams of a cultural identity, a national identity, and employment security left Germans, including German musicians, uncertain of their futures. From the outset, Nazi control of music in 1933 seemed to promise a plan to guarantee the survival of German art and culture, helping tremendously to ameliorate musicians' unemployment problems. It was a comprehensive plan to be realized by means of a sweeping political ideology. Hard financial times and political unrest had brought out the worst in everyone, including musicians. At both the Berlin and Munich Hochschules, friction broke out between highly nationalistic composers and other faculty. Earlier, in 1928, Alfred Rosenberg founded a Nazi organization called the Kampfbund für deutscher Kultur (Fighting League for German Culture). One of the Kampfbund's prime targets was the divisional head of the Ministry of Education, Leo Kestenberg. Other principal targets were the administrators of the Berlin Hochschule Franz Schreker and his assistant Georg Schünemann. Either because of their religious affiliations or their politics, the right wing charged them with attempting Jewish-Marxist control of Germany's educational institutions, its press, and its culture.10
Twelve years Paul Juon's junior, Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek (1860-1945) survived until just after the conclusion of World War II. Although Austrian by birth, Reznicek spent the lion's share of his creative life in Berlin. He was elected to the Berlin Academy of Arts in 1919, and in a contract issued by Leo Kestenberg and signed 23 Oct. 1920, was appointed to the Hochschule in 1920 as Professor of Orchestration and Composition.11
One of Reznicek's closest friends was Richard Strauss who, particularly with the political events of the first half of the century in Germany and his world-wide reputation as one of Germany's finest composers, was a beneficial person to have looking after Reznicek's interests. In 1933, without his knowledge or consent, Strauss was tapped by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels to be president of the "corporate" profession of German composers that was part of the Reich Music Chamber. As head of this composers' organization, Strauss was aided by a so-called Führrat (Leadership Council) of composers. It was their pure intention to deal with the problems facing the profession. It included some distinguished German musicians including Berlin Hochschule composers Hindemith and Reznicek. At their initial meeting, whose proceedings were reported in Germany's Zeitschrift für Musik, Strauss declared that the National Socialists had recognized the legal status of their corporate organization, and further announced the State acknowledged that "creative artists are in need of the backing of law and corporate organization."12 Despite the seeming support for their art, composers were later to learn that the Reich Music Chamber was not something within their control, but merely another vessel of the State, imposing rigid rules for artistic conformity. Moreover, they were to discover that "the press reported all organizational developments, that membership in the chamber was compulsory for composers, and that all composers who wished to publish their work in Germany had to apply to Strauss for membership in writing."13
From all the correspondence, official and otherwise, Reznicek was an eccentric, yet affable individual who was well liked by everyone. Descending from both old-line European aristocracy and Prussian military roots, Reznicek's personality traits and outlook on life often bore the marks of a gracious, albeit privileged attitude toward work and art. It resulted in a very laizzez faire attitude toward that which transpired around him, including an unfortunate tendency to let others worry about policy which did not interest or effect him directly. Due to his aristocratic family roots, Reznicek avoided employment for wages, graciously accepting money from wealthy friends, admirers, and patronal organizations with the assumption that there were no strings attached in this subsidy of his art. As a matter of aristocratic pride, he took no salary from the Hochschule; his contract states that he was not a civil servant.14 As late as 1942, special funds existed for composers who could demonstrate economic hardship and were judged politically reliable. Even ex-Schönberg student Anton Webern received money.15 Goebbels gave away money in awards in hope that the recipients would reward the Third Reich with appropriate new German compositions. In 1942, composers Graener, Pfitzner, and Strauss received 6,000 Reich Marks each. Thirteen composers including Reznicek received 4,000 Reich Marks.16 In this case, Reznicek graciously accepted the Nazi's money, but wrote nothing for them.
Reznicek remained on the Hochschule faculty through 1926. According to his daughter, Felicitas, he grew tired of teaching, for he found his students by and large untalented. No longer finding the position personally rewarding, he invented a health problem.17 A short typed letter dated 1 Oct. 1926 requesting a release from his contract appears in Reznicek's personnel file in the Hochschule Archives. Present also in the file is a reply from Schreker of his acceptance "with great sadness" of Reznicek's request. Schreker continues,
Reznicek lived close to the Hochschule, and after his retirement visited the school frequently, or at least until he neglected to use the customary salutation of "Heil Hitler" in his correspondence with the administration who followed Schreker.19 He died impoverished, just after the end of the war in 1945.
One of the younger of the Hochschule composers, Heinz Tiessen, was born in 1887 and lived until 1971. Tiessen was a committed advocate of new music, becoming a member of the November Gruppe of composers and artists who organized concerts and exhibitions of what was avant-garde at the time in Berlin. In 1918, he was one of the founders of the contemporary music group Melos whose concerts sought contemporary appeal, programming anything from moderate to the radical new music of Europe and America. For eleven years Tiessen was the director of the Youth Choir (Jungen Chor) at the University of Berlin. Outwardly this appeared benign enough, but the choir proved threatening to some National Socialists for it was firmly established around a politically-based work-song movement called Arbeitersänger. Because of his conducting activities and compositions for that organization, he was censured by the Nazis in 1933.20 Unlike a number of Jewish composers who chose to emigrate with the advent of the Third Reich, some German composers who displayed radical tendencies in their music or their associations like Tiessen, Max Butting and Paul Hindemith, having secured good positions or regular performances of their works during the Weimar Republic, chose to remain in Germany and attempt (unsuccessfully in Hindemith's case) to ride out the political storm created by the new regime.21 Youthful errors in political sentiment, idealism, and Aryan racial status were arguments offered by Berlin Academy Secretary Alexander Amersdorffer to retain Tiessen on the Hochschule faculty.22 As a result, Tiessen continued to teach at the Hochschule and for a period wrote no music. After war's end, he composed a small number of works. Although he lived until 1971, his last published composition was completed in 1962. Somewhat of a footnote in music history, Tiessen does claim two distinctions. He was one of the first composers to write film music (1922). As a result of his ardent love of nature, Tiessen developed a musical mannerism present in some of his scores with which his name became associated: the use of musical bird calls.
Undoubtedly, the most famous of the Hochschule composers today is Paul Hindemith. In 1927, he joined the previously mentioned colleagues at the Hochschule, a position which gave him the opportunity to exert a strong influence over a whole generation of young composers. Hindemith's conflicts with the Third Reich are very complicated. Sentiment toward Hindemith and his music seems almost capricious at times when reading various monographic accounts, the composer's own letters, and both press and journal literature about him. Some of his more youthful works written during the early years of the Weimar Republic were thrown up as examples of degenerate creation. In 1933, however, the Nazi's fear of losing the services of Germany's most prestigious Aryan musicians prompted critic Walter Berten to write an extremely favorable article about Hindemith in the Zeitschrift für Musik, a publication which to date had attacked Hindemith's music on numerous occasions. Walter Berten proffered evidence of Hindemith's 'German outlook' in musical composition after his appointment to Berlin,
Later in November of that same year, Hindemith was further honored when Richard Strauss nominated him to the inner council of the Composers' Section of the Reich Music Chamber.24 Concurrently Hindemith was collaborating with Wilhelm Furtwängler in the production of his opera Mathis der Maler. In November of 1934, Furtwängler wrote the infamous article, "The Hindemith Case" for the Deutsche Allegemeine Zeitung. The article's purpose of defending Hindemith's right to make occasional artistic mistakes and underscoring his achievements as composer and teacher had an unanticipated disastrous consequence. Feuding factions, pro- and anti-Hindemith were united particularly by Furtwängler's poor choice of words at the conclusion of the article which were interpreted as an attack on Nazi cultural policy. In the wake of Nazi indignation, Furtwängler resigned as musical director of the Berlin State Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra, and Mathis was shelved for performance in Berlin.25 No longer defending Hindemith against attacks by a separate wing of the Nazi party headed by Alfred Rosenberg, Propaganda Minister Goebbels identified and denigrated Hindemith at the first anniversary of the founding of the Reich Music Chamber. Without mentioning Hindemith by name, but describing inaccurately the bathtub scene in the composer's opera Neues vom Tage, Goebbels proclaimed,
Eventually Hindemith applied for and received a leave of absence from the Hochschule and went off to Lenzkirch in the Black Forest to orchestrate Mathis, which at the time was complete in piano score.
Hindemith's letters to friends do not talk of resistance to the National Socialists, but of his attempt to establish a working relationship with them in order to gain acceptance of his works. In a letter to Hindemith dated 5 April 1933, Willy Strecker of the publishing firm B. Schott cautioned Hindemith that Jewish teachers had been dismissed from their positions at the Hochschule. He warned him that Hindemith himself was being condemned as "cultural bolshevist" by the Mainz branch of Rosenberg's Kampfbund für deutscher Kultur.27
In a letter of 15 April 1933 Hindemith tells Strecker not to worry too much about the musical future; nothing has happened to him, and he is getting along well with the higher ups in the Kampfbund. He continues,
Later in the same correspondence he says,
However, part of what really bothered the Nazis about Hindemith concerned his personal life. Hindemith had chosen to marry a Jewish woman, which was illegal, pursuant to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. In addition, he was continually assailed both for his work in the past with Bertold Brecht, with whose collaboration earned Hindemith charges of cultural bolshevism (in Lehrstuck), and for work with other Jewish cultural figures of the Weimar Republic. Unlike Tiessen, Hindemith did not withdraw from composing temporarily in order to avoid attention from being placed on himself, but continued to write, tried to publish, and to perform his works in Germany. At any given time, Hindemith could be found acceptable by the greater Nazi circle. In defending Hindemith, critics could point to Hindemith's reverence for the baroque, or his "seeing the light" in his later utilization of folksong and chorale, providing a model for other German contemporaries like Paul Höffer and Ernst Pepping who were to be on the Hochschule faculty later.
As a result of what was a virtual seesawing of support versus condemnation, Hindemith eventually left Germany, emigrating first to America, then to Switzerland in the later years of his life.
Perhaps the most tragic victim of the changes at the Berlin Hochschule wrought by the National Socialists was Franz Schreker. The right wing of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur had complained of Jewish-Marxist control of cultural institutions, education, and the press since the late nineteen twenties. They continued to attack the Ministry of Education's head Leo Kestenberg, Franz Schreker himself, and Schreker's assistant Georg Schünemann until their considerable efforts brought forth bitter fruits in 1933. Two incidents in 1932 acted as important catalysts in Schreker's demise. In February of 1932, Hochschule member Gustav Havemann raised a violent objection to Jewish violin teacher Carl Flesh's appointment of his former Jewish student Stefan Frenkel to act as his substitute for the spring semester. Using widespread unemployment as his excuse, Havemann and others denounced the presence of Jews and foreigners on the faculty and in the student body. This culminated in a contentious faculty meeting where Havemann accused Schreker of taking sides with the Jewish faculty. Schreker insisted that he took no side and further claimed Flesh's right to choose whomever he wished as his substitute. He further admitted that he supported the Jewish faculty's rights in all faculty affairs.30 Havemann complained to the Ministry of Education. In October of 1932, Schreker's last opera (Der Schmied von Gent) was staged in Berlin. In light of heavy Nazi demonstrations against his opera plus the political attacks at school, Schreker resigned as director of the Hochschule and took over a master class in composition at the Prussian Academy for the Arts. His assistant Georg Schünemann replaced him, but shortly afterward was also relieved of his post and was followed by Fritz Stein.
In January of 1933 Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany. Three months later on 7 April the Law for the Re-establishment of the Professional Civil Service was enacted which was devastating to those labeled non Aryan, communist, or untrustworthy by the State. The termination of these individuals' employment was exacted by a wave of "purges" throughout Germany. Since leading musicians from all over Germany belonged to the Prussian Academy of the Arts, Nazi purges there were crippling to music throughout the country. Earlier, on 13 March, the music section of the Academy met. Under discussion was the question of revoking the Academy membership of Jews and those who were loyal to the officials of the former Weimar Republic. The following day, Schreker wrote to Academy President Max von Schillings in desperation. He outlined "the accomplishments of his career, the contractual obligations he had to the Prussian State, his differences with Kestenberg, his Catholic upbringing, and the likelihood that his was father was Jewish."31 On 18 March there was another meeting of the Academy's music division. Both Schreker and Arnold Schönberg were there. After the meeting, both composers met with Schillings and Academy Secretary Alexander Amersdorffer and were told that they would probably lose their jobs. Because of prior contractual agreements, Schillings mentioned the possibility of early retirement or transfer to other teaching positions in or outside of Berlin. Schillings also advised them to write letters that he could use to intercede with the Ministry on their behalf. Schreker then wrote a second letter to Schillings describing the considerable security he forfeited in leaving his Vienna post for Berlin, his fear of financial ruin should he be denied his teaching career, and a narrative about his considerable contributions to German music.32
He tried again to distance himself from Kestenberg. He said,
In fairness to Schreker, it should be mentioned that it is true he did not always agree with Kestenberg's policies and actions. Moreover, from part of an article taken from the Allgemeine Musikerzeitung in March of 1933 that used the following quotation from the Lexikon der Juden in der Musik, it is clear just how deep a hatred the Nazis felt for Leo Kestenburg and why Schreker would want to distance himself from him:
Minutes of meetings of the general membership and the Senate of the Academy in Berlin underscore the gravity of Schreker's position. On 16 June 1933 the Music Division met to discuss the retention of non Aryans in the Academy and in the teaching posts in the German Hochschules. In attendance at the meeting was Academy Secretary Amersdorffer, some Senate, and some general members, including the now familiar names of Juon, Kahn, Reznicek, Tiessen, and present director of the Hochschule, Fritz Stein. The discussion made little difference, for the larger body of the Prussian Academy of the Arts had met previously and despite Schreker's letter to Schillings and Secretary Amersdorffer's attempt to intercede for Schreker with Minister Rust, Rust authorized the termination of Schreker's teaching appointment in writing on 17 May 1933.35
Schreker did not live to realize any plans for emigration. As early as 1932, he had been corresponding with friends about possible positions in America, particularly with the University of Chicago, but they were not to be realized, partly due to the problems caused by the Depression in the US. In the shock of his dismissal from the Academy, Schreker suffered a severe heart attack, from which he never recovered. At his death he was two days short of his fifty-sixth birthday.
In most cases a symbiotic relationship does not exist between the creative process and institutionalization, unless one points to earlier twentieth-century radicalism in music as an example of such a juxtaposition. However, forcing the juxtaposition and playing on racial hatred caused the eventual emigration of Hindemith, and the denial of a livelihood and untimely death of Schreker. Herein lay the recipe for Germany's loss of two of its finest twentieth-century composers.
It could be argued that those composers and musicians who remained in Germany riding out the persecution of their colleagues while not subscribing wholeheartedly to National Socialist beliefs, were also as the victims of Nazi totalitarianism. In a sense these musicians were victims, but they were also accomplices by their silence and their submission. In desperation to save their professions, they found it expedient to go along with, or attempt to justify a claim in some way to the ideals of the National Socialists. Today, with the distance of time, it is simple to judge or blame them. At any given time depending on where one lives, there are threats to artistic freedom and intellectual expression. What one individual finds beautiful, or what he does or says to express what he values, can be unfairly or unduly denigrated by others in a position of authority. Vigilance against such threats can be thoughts for these times also, less we fall prey to collapsing assumptions of peace and acceptance. In closing, we might do well to remember Voltaire who said a lot about history including, "history never repeats itself....man always does."
END NOTES
1Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dicitonary of Music andMusicians (London: MacMillan, 1980), s.v. "Berlin," by Heinz Becker and Richard D. Green.
2Ibid.
3Irmgard Wirth, ed., Berlin: Gestalt und Geist (Berlin: Stapp, 1964), vol. 3 Hochshule für Musik by Siegfried Borris, 20.
4Ibid, 47.
5Christopher Hailey, Franz Schrecker, 1878-1934: A Cultural Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, ©1993), 122.
6Michael Meyer, The Politics of Music in the Third Reich, American University Studies, Series IX History, vol. 49 (New York: Peter Lang, ©1993), 45.
7Ibid, 46.
8Hailey, 264.
9Ibid.
10Meyer, 12.
11Contract No. 2813.1 dated 23 Oct. 1920, Archives of the Staatlich Akademische Hochschule für Musik, Berlin.
12Fritz Stege, "Die erste Arbeitstagung der Reichmusikkammer," Zeitschrift für Musik, March 1934, 290.
13Meyer, 107-108.
14Contract no. 2813.1
15Meyer, 282.
16Fred K. Preiberg, Musik im NS-Staat (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1983), 167.
17Felicitas von Reznicek and Gordon Wright, Correspondence 1969-1993 (Reznicek Archives, Indian, Alaska).
18Franz Schreker, Berlin, to Emil N. von Reznicek, Berlin, 16 Jan. 1926. Typed letter, Archives of the Staatliche Akademische Hochschule für Musik, Berlin.
19Reznicek's last correspondence with the Hochschule is dated 27 Oct. 1941. In all his correspondence with the school, Reznicek avoids using the salutation "Heil Hitler" despite director Fritz Stein's use of it in his correspondence with Reznicek in letters dated 13 June 1940 and 29 Oct. 1941. Archives of the Staatliche Akademische Hochschule für Musik, Berlin.
20Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: MacMillan, 1980), s.v. "Tiessen, Heinz," by Charlotte Erwin.
21Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (New York: St. Martin's Press, ©1994), 250.
22Meyer, 46.
23Walter Berten, "Paul Hindemith und die deutsche Musik," Zfm June 1933, 538-43; quoted in Levi, 108.
24Levi, 109.
25Ibid, 112-13.
26James E. Paulding, "Mathis der Maler - The Politics of Music," Hindemith Jahrbuch (1976), 108-9; quoted in Levi, 114.
27Paul Hindemith, Selected Letters of Paul Hindemith, p. 69. In June of 1934, this group was reorganized into the National Socialist Kulturgemeinde which launched a prolonged and insidious propaganda campaign against Hindemith.
28Ibid.
29Ibid.
30Hailey, 273.
31Ibid, 286.
32Ibid.
33Franz Schreker, Letter to Max von Schillings, 20 March 1933, quoted in Hailey, 286-87.
34Theo Stengle and Hergert Gerigk, eds., Lexikon der Juden in der Musik (Berlin, 1943), s.v. "Kestenberg, Leo:; quoted in Meyer, 267.
35Meyer, 46.
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