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Wagner in the "Cult of Art in Nazi Germany"
David B. Dennis
Loyola University Chicago,
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© David B. Dennis 2013
Richard Wagner in the “Cult of Art” of Nazi Germany
A Paper for the Wagner Worldwide 2013 Conference
University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
January 30-February 2, 2013
David B. Dennis
Professor of History
Loyola University Chicago
In his book on aesthetics and Nazi politics, translated in 2004 as The Cult of
Art in Nazi Germany, Eric Michaud, Director of Studies at the École des Hautes
Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, wrote that National Socialist attention to
the arts was intended “to present the broken [German] Volk with an image of its
‘eternal Geist’ and to hold up to it a mirror capable of restoring to it the strength
to love itself.” 1 I came upon this, among other ideas of Michaud, when preparing
the conceptual framework for my own book, Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations
of Western Culture, just released by Cambridge University Press. Considering
his book last year, I found a number of Michaud’s concepts very intriguing, but
only made general references to them in my Introduction and Conclusion. The
gist of these ideas will be familiar to readers of George Mosse, whom Michaud
should have cited more vigorously. However, I found that Michaud put some of
the key concepts of the History of Nazi Culture more strongly than I have read
elsewhere, and also that they seemed to resonate with much of the material I
uncovered in my research.
Above all, Michaud insisted that Nazi cultural politics was not just a matter
of “propagandizing” the party platform in cultural terms. Instead, he insisted
that it was a central component of the National Socialist world view, with an
active, not merely reflective, role in the life and actions of the Nazi party and
regime. As Michaud put it, we cannot “account for this phenomenon by simply
resorting to the term propaganda” and assuming that Nazism was just “making
art serve its political ends.”2 To see what Mosse termed “Nazi culture” as mere
propaganda is an underestimation of its seminal function in the workings of
National Socialism. In Michaud’s words, again, through Nazi representations of
Cultural History– “the Geist, the internal or spiritual Reich, was phenomenalized
. . . Hitler was convinced that German art contained the power that . . . could
save the sick Germans. In answer to party militants who [questioned] the need
to ‘sacrifice so much to art,’. . . he retorted confidently that what had to be
achieved was no less than the ‘strengthening of the protective moral armor of
the nation.”’ 3 Thus did references to the History of Western Humanities — as
constructed according to a fairly longstanding “Germanic” point of view — have
an formative function in the Nazi program. Through them, the Volk would,
as Michaud wrote, “fabricate its own ideal image . . . that would constitute
the model and guide capable of propelling it toward its own salvation. Neither
1 Michaud,
The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 35-36.
The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 35.
3 Michaud, The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 35-36.
2 Michaud,
1
the state, said Hitler, nor propaganda, said Goebbels, were goals: they were . . .
means [to a broader end]. Nor was art ever a goal in itself. The ultimate goal
was not [even] the production of the Reich as a work of art, but the formation
of a people comprised of new men.” 4 Cultural history, then — perceived in
these politicized terms — was a literal remedy for the symptoms of German
decline that Nazis feared. Having set forth these ideas, along with many others,
Michaud’s book was generally well received. But it was criticized somewhat for
a lack of grounding in primary source research.5 While I found his examples to
be fresh and well-chosen, I will not quibble with these assessments. Instead, I
would like to take this opportunity to compare some of his basic points with
the detailed information my book has revealed about Nazi cultural politics as
manifested in the arts coverage of the main Nazi newspaper, the Völkischer
Beobachter. Thus, this presentation constitutes a brief synthesis of his analysis
and some of the material that appears in my book. Let me provide a quick
overview of Inhumanities. My new book analyzes how the primary propaganda
outlet of the Nazi party presented the History of Western Culture according to
themes of the National Socialist “world view.” Based on analysis of every major
article the Völkischer Beobachter published about art, literature, and music,
this research demonstrates how Nazi Germany attempted to appropriate not
only the “Other Germany” of “Poets and Thinkers,” but the History of Western
Humanities as a whole. Nazi leaders viewed their movement as the culmination
of “Western Civilization,” or Kultur, and my book leads readers through their
cultural self-justification.
As this “blurb” indicates, moving from my early work on music reception, I
have traced in Inhumanites Nazi interpretations of other genres as well. But for
the purposes of this paper, I will again concentrate on examples drawn from
the newspaper’s invocations of the “serious” music tradition, particularly its
references to Richard Wagner. This focus on Nazi Musikpolitik remains fully
legitimate, because music reception was absolutely central to the History of
Kultur as promulgated in the Nazi newspaper. [Statistics in footnote.]6 In the
cultural coverage of the newspaper, it is statistically as well as conceptually
clear that the German music tradition was the cultural legacy that the Nazi
4 Michaud,
The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 140.
instance, James van Dyke wrote in the Journal of Modern History that “this is an
intriguing book that will undoubtedly fascinate many who are interested in theories about
images and their potential power. But readers who want historical accounts of the roles of art
and artists in the legitimation and implementation of National Socialist policies. . . have to
look elsewhere” [James van Dyke, “Review of The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany,” Journal of
Modern History 78, no. 2 (2006): 526]. Similarly, Benjamin Martin wrote for H-Soz-u-Kult
that “Michaud’s contribution to this project is likely not to satisfy many historians. . . For
instance, his effort to contextualize Nazi ideas, while erudite and stimulating, remains somewhat
impressionistic” [Benjamin G. Martin, “Sammelrez: Art in Nazi Germany,” H-Soz-u-Kult
(August, 2006)].
6 I will let a some statistics from my findings stand as verification of the centrality of music
reception in Nazi culture. First, of the 1600 articles I gathered and studied, more than 1000
were dedicated to the subject of music and its composers. Secondly: overall, an average of 40
articles per year were devoted to “classical” music issues, while only an average of about 14
each year dealt with the “masters” of the other arts altogether.
5 For
2
cultural operatives most wanted to claim as “theirs.” Throughout the pages of
the Völkischer Beobachter, music was unquestionably deemed, as Pamela Potter
— along with others — has demonstrated, “The Most German of Arts” — and,
moreover, that Richard Wagner in particular was identified as the “Most German
of All Germans.” All this said, let me now outline a few of Michaud’s more specific
points about Nazi culture before then turning to an assessment of how material
from the Völkischer Beobachter coverage of composers, spotlighting Wagner,
validates his positions. As we have already seen, a primary point that Michaud
made was that Nazi cultural politicians strove to increase German self-confidence
by constructing an idealized self-image based on the supposed German place in
Western cultural traditions. Or, in his words, “to make the genius of the race
visible to that race [and thereby] restore its faith in itself by making it conscious
of its historic mission.”7 A second major concept Michaud posited was that of the
“Führer as Artist.” Michaud identified Hitler’s public persona as a culmination
of the Romantic exaltation of the artist as spiritual leader. In his words: “Hitler
presented himself not only as a ‘man of the people’ and a soldier with frontline
experience, but also and above all as a man whose artistic experience constituted
the best guarantee of his ability to mediate the Volk Spirit and turn it in to
the ‘perfect Third Reich.”’ 8 Clearly also, Michaud contended, the construction
of the Ideal simultaneously constituted the construction of the Other, with all
that this opposition implied. Again, in his words: “the appearance of Hitler
always entailed, as its corollary, the progressive disappearance of all enemies who
were rejected by the Volk Community.” 9 Returning to the supposedly positive
implications of these cultural-political constructs, Michaud then contended that
Nazi insistence that followers revere past creative leaders was much more about
the present and future of the German-becoming-Nazi nation, than the past.
As Michaud wrote, “The task of each work of art [or interpretation thereof]
was not [just] to represent, but . . . to prepare for the realization of the ideal
Reich.”10 Finally, as the last chapter of my book traces, the culmination of
“Nazi culture” was — with catastrophic consequences — the Second World War
itself. Michaud too identified the ultimately military implications of the Nazi
mobilization of culture for party and national purposes: “When it became a
matter of ‘defending the . . . community,” Goebbels conflated “the struggle
of the soldier, that of the worker, and that of ‘the creator of culture.”’ Art,
he pontificated, “is not a distraction for times of peace; rather, it too is a
spiritual and trenchant weapon for war.” 11 Again, I do not feel that Michaud
presented these points without sufficient evidence. However, it will be a useful
exercise to assess these points with reference to some of the materials that I
have just presented in Inhumanities. Today, for obvious reasons, I have elected
to concentrate on material — along with a few comparative examples — from
Völkischer Beobachter reception of Richard Wagner, as representative of these
7 Michaud,
The
The
9 Michaud, The
10 Michaud, The
11 Michaud, The
8 Michaud,
Cult
Cult
Cult
Cult
Cult
of
of
of
of
of
Art
Art
Art
Art
Art
in
in
in
in
in
Nazi
Nazi
Nazi
Nazi
Nazi
Germany,
Germany,
Germany,
Germany,
Germany,
3
74.
29.
41.
98.
197.
concepts as a whole.
Regarding the first of these themes, and indeed Michaud’s pivotal point —
that Nazi cultural politics intended to increase German self-confidence via
interpretations of the German place in Western cultural tradition —it is clear
that this truly was the message of virtually every Völkischer Beobachter article
covered in my research. All of the paper’s cultural-historical commemorations
contributed to this effort to bolster faith in the creative Volk community. This
was indeed their main function. And this is powerfully evident in the newspaper’s
relentless insistence on, and never-ending celebration of, the perceived notion
that all the great composers of the Western music tradition were “German” —
or alternatively, “Germanic,” “Aryan,” or “Nordic.”
In its music reception, for instance, the Völkischer Beobachter worked intensively
to appropriate Bach into “Germanic,” and therefore National Socialist culture.
In Bach’s personality, the paper argued, were combined the “best hereditary
powers of a healthy species” and therefore his art constituted a “culmination of
racial development.”12
For the editors of the Völkischer Beobachter, an immediate concern regarding
the case of Mozart was to evaluate his “blood heritage.”13 According to the
paper, despite his wide travels Mozart “preserved the German inheritance of his
birth — pure and unadulterated.” Thus it was “a German” who raised Italian
opera to its perfect, ideal state and then “brought it to his own people.”14
Perhaps most intensively, the NSDAP injected race issues into its Beethoven
reception.15 Indeed, dictates of racial anthropology nearly nullified the composer’s value as a party hero. Portraits and observations of Beethoven by his
contemporaries reveal that he had few of the physical characteristics associated
12 “Bach-Abend des Kampfbundes für Deutsche Kultur,” Völkischer Beobachter, 17 November
1933.
13 Uwe Lars Nobbe, “Mozarts Bluterbe,” Völkischer Beobachter, 19 October 1941. On Nazi
interpretations of Mozart, see also Dennis, “Honor Your German Masters: The Use and Abuse
of ‘Classical’ Composers in Nazi Propaganda” and Erik Levi, Mozart and the Nazis: How the
Third Reich Abused a Cultural Icon (Yale University Press, 2010).
14 Eduard A. Mayr, “Vom Genius der Musik: Rhythmus und Harmonie in Freiheit des
Geistes,” Völkischer Beobachter, 27 January 1931.
15 For more on Beethoven reception, see Dennis, Beethoven in German Politics; and David
B. Dennis, “Beethoven At Large: Reception in Literature, the Arts, Philosophy, and Politics”
in Glenn Stanley, ed., Cambridge Companion to Beethoven (Cambridge University Press, May
2000) 292-305.
4
with Aryan stereotypes.16 Noticing this, a handful of pseudoscientists concluded
that Beethoven was of impure blood.17 To counter notions that the composer
might have been of mixed racial stock, the Völkischer Beobachter vouched for
his purity in articles produced to cleanse Beethoven of supposed physical flaws.
In the end, according to the paper, the forceful energy of his music proved
the “world-wide validity of the spiritual work and the soulful nobility that the
greatest sons of the German nation were capable of.” 18
Surprisingly, efforts to ensure that a cultural figure was of certifiably pure
German origins were even necessary in the case of Richard Wagner. Given that,
as Joseph Goebbels put it, Wagner ranked in Nazi culture as the “most German
of all Germans,” it was of particular importance that the Völkischer Beobachter
put aside doubts about his heritage. So the newspaper took on this issue very
directly. From time to time, the paper related, the “old swindle kept arising,”
that “one of the greatest German geniuses of all, Richard Wagner, had Jewish
blood in his veins.” These claims were based on rumors that Wagner’s mother
had been the lover of Ludwig Geyer (whom she married after her first husband
died) at the time when the composer was conceived. The Völkischer Beobachter
strove to “overcome this filth and break through these lies once and for all” with
a two-pronged argument: first by demonstrating that relations between Geyer
and Wagner’s mother were innocent until they married — and that Richard
was born before this happened; then by insisting that, in any case, Geyer was
not Jewish. As the paper had it, it was absolutely certain, “according to the
portraits that we have,” that Geyer had a “completely German head without
the slightest indication of alien blood.”19 So, like the “whole house of lies built
up by Jewish wiles,” this “mendacious construction would ultimately fall apart
— to the shame and disgrace of Judah.”20
Returning to Michaud: in his words, “a declared aim to turn German art into a
promise of German happiness . . . became a rallying cry for all the nationalists of
16 See Alessandra Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking (New
York: Rizzoli, 1987) for detailed discussion of the iconography of Beethoven reception in the
visual arts.
17 Hans F. K. Günther, Rasse und Stil (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1926), 30; Ludwig Ferdinand
Clauß, Rasse und Seele (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1926), 60. See further discussion of these
sources in Heribert Schröder, Beethoven im Dritten Reich: Eine Materialsammlung in Helmet
Loos, ed., Beethoven und die Nachwelt: Materialien zur Wirkungsgeschichte Beethovens (Bonn:
Beethovenhaus, 1986), 205.
18 Hans Buchner, “Zum Beethoven-Jubilaeum,” Völkischer Beobachter, 9 December 1920.
19 Josef Stolzing, “Der alte Schwindel von Richard Wagners Blutbeimischung,” Völkischer
Beobachter, 12 December 1929. For my own assessments of some of the mass of literature on
the issues of Wagner and Nazism, see David B. Dennis, “Review Essay on Recent Literature
about Music and German Politics,” German Studies Review (October 1997) 429-432; David
B. Dennis, “Crying ‘Wolf’? A Review Essay on Recent Wagner Literature,” German Studies
Review (February 2001) 145-158; and David B. Dennis, “The Most German of all German
Operas: Die Meistersinger Through the Lens of the Third Reich” in Nicholas Vazsonyi, ed.
Wagner’s Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation (University of Rochester Press,
2003) 98-119.
20 F. v. Leoprechting, “Richard Wagner: Das Judentum in der Musik,” Völkischer Beobachter,
14 November 1920.
5
both the Second and the Third Reich. Hitler could not fail to win their support
when he wrote . . . in Mein Kampf : ‘How many people are aware of the infinite
number of separate memories of the greatness of our natural Fatherland in all
the fields of cultural and artistic life?”’21 It is clear that Völkischer Beobachter
coverage of the Western music tradition, including Richard Wagner, insisted
that this was indeed the greatest field of German cultural prowess. Theme 2:
Michaud’s second major theme, the concept of the Fuhrer Artist, ultimately leads
to an even more immediate association between creators, especially Wagner,
and Nazi leadership. As he put it, “the fact that the Führer . . . was also
called the artist of all artists . . . placed him immediately at the heart of the
Western tradition that assigned to art that most decisive of functions . . . .”22
In the case of music reception in the Völkischer Beobachter, the correlate to
Michaud’s assertions about Hitler as Führer-Artist is the paper’s constant
insistence that great creators, including writers, artists, and composers, were
simultaneously political — each, in their own way, Artist-Führer. Indeed, my
research shows that Nazi propagandists rigorously promoted the view that the
primary creative impulse in most cases was as much political — especially
patriotic and nationalistic — as artistic.23 .
For example, even the liturgical music of Bach was less important to the
Völkischer Beobachter as an expression of faith than as a national symbol. People
had often referred to Bach’s work as “the musical incarnation of Protestantism,”
the paper argued, but it achieved much more outside the mere context of music,
managing to represent the “musical component of the culture of Friederich II’s
Prussian state.”24
Mozart too, according to the Völkischer Beobachter, was strongly driven by
nationalistic impulse. Mozart’s “patriotic mission” it insisted, was to “replace
Italian fashion with a “genuinely German” opera tradition.25
21 Michaud,
The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 29.
The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 175.
23 Once again, this emphasis on art for state’s or party’s sake had earlier roots in German
cultural discourse: “The artistic and the political had fused German nationalism. Having
defined itself as truly-creative; the artistic became political. Artistic creativity for the German
nationalist movement was not merely an expression of man’s inner nature, but helped also to
give form to the shapeless mass through symbols and public festivals. . . . Politics and life must
penetrate each other, and this means that all forms of life become politicized. Literature, art,
architecture, and even our environment are seen as symbolic of political attitudes” (Mosse,
Nationalization of the Masses, 15, 215). More recently, Huener and Nicosia have written that
“Hitler and his followers came to understand German Culture and the role of the arts primarily
in political terms. Specifically, they believed that it was the responsibility of the party and the
state to rescue” ( Huener and Nicosia, The Arts in Nazi Germany, 2).
24 Buchner, “Joh. Sebastian Bach.”
25 Grunsky, “Mozart der Deutsche: Zu seinem 150. Todestag.”
22 Michaud,
6
Some selective political biography was necessary in the case of Beethoven, for
the composer’s inconsistent politics remained problematic for the Party. Though
he could, with some reservations, be counted as a member of the German race,
Beethoven had exhibited some enthusiasm about the French Revolution and the
rise of Napoleon. The paper therefore countered that although Beethoven had
been exposed to French revolutionary ideals, he was “always a Rhinelander at
heart.”26
But of all the creators that the Völkischer Beobachter extolled as politically
motivated, Richard Wagner was its ideal. Given the composer’s engagement
with nineteenth-century German political culture, this was not a stretch. Still, it
is remarkable how intensively the Völkischer Beobachter emphasized Wagner’s
political writings — as much or even more so than they concentrated on his
musical productivity. As the paper put it, the writings were “essential, not
marginal” to understanding the composer: “as an . . . extension of his artistic
works, they testified [to the] sureness of his political perception and political
will.”27 Of course, what Völkischer Beobachter writers found most resonant
with the National Socialist outlook were the volkish components of Wagner’s
politics. In their view, the composer was the “pathfinder of the German resurrection,” since he “directed the Volk back to the roots of its nature found
in Germanic mythology.”28 Under the title, “Richard Wagner’s Battle for the
Volkish Ideal,” the paper held that the composer felt himself “ever strengthened
by his German-Germanic thoughts, and constantly sought to realize this spirit.”
Besides Treitschke, de Lagarde, and Wolzogen, who were “more comprehensively
volkish” than most, it was Wagner who “fought hardest for the volkish idea with
pen and word.” Nazis admired the “prophetic foresight” of Wagner who “saw
through the true spirit of the revolutionaries of 1848-49 with bitter disappointment” and, anticipating future developments, “turned away from liberal efforts
without hope.” Therefore, all of his writings were the “worthiest weapons for the
final battle that approached.”29 His ideas were so similar to those of National
Socialism, said the paper, that “in the speeches of young Germany” — that is,
Hitler’s above all — it “seemed like one was hearing Richard Wagner speaking
to the Volk.” This was a sign that in the “Third Reich of Richard Wagner,” the
“Führer principle of genius would prevail more than ever.”30
Thus did the music-historical material that appeared in the Völkischer Beobachter
resound with the Führer-Artist/Artist-Führer theme that Michaud identified
throughout Nazi cultural politics: at a time “when the world came to be deserted
by the certainty of salvation,”31 Nazi Kulturpolitik would “render visible the
protector god who would make it possible for the body of the German race to
26 Ludwig
27 Erich
Schiedermair, “Beethoven und die Politik,” Völkischer Beobachter, 26 March 1927.
Valentin, “Richard Wagner und seine Zeit,” Völkischer Beobachter, 31 March 1937.
28
29 Wagner,
30 Walter
Judaism in Music.
Lange, “Bayreuth - ein sinnvoller Wahlspruch,” Völkischer Beobachter, 16 June
1934.
31 Michaud, The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 179.
7
live eternally.”32 Hitler was the primary manifestation of this creative leader, but
he came, according to this view, at the head of a long line of notable predecessors
including the likes of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and especially Richard Wagner.
Theme 3:
This leads to Michaud’s point about the simultaneous construction of the “opponent” in contrast to the Germanic ideal posited in Nazi culture. In his terms,
“correlatively, Nazism deployed . . . violence . . . against all those who were likely
to place in doubt that the lost object could be resurrected in the race and in
art. . . . National Socialist terror was thus employed against all those who, in
reality as well as in Nazi imaginary representations, opposed its [world view]
. . . .” 33 Ultimately, according to Michaud, it was this cultural thrust that led to
the policies of extermination.34 Thus did Michaud intensify the notion, which
George Mosse originally postulated, that even anti-Semitism was predicated on
cultural criticism. Art versions of these arguments toward eliminationist policies
were not just added on subsequently as a tool to provide cultural historical
justification for them. Kultur was the key and determinate factor in identifying
the Other, based on Hitler’s clearly stated standards of judgment: do you make
it, imitate it, or destroy it? According to the Völkischer Beobachter, especially
Heinrich Heine, but also the composers Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, Mahler, and
Schoenberg supposedly did the latter two things, so they and their “kind” had
to be eradicated.
In treating this point as manifested in music-historical terms throughout the
pages of the Völkischer Beobachter, it is necessary to address the place of Richard
Wagner’s anti-Semitism in the paper’s rhetoric. From its earliest days, its cultural
coverage emphasized Wagner’s treatment of the “Jewish issue.” As early as 1920,
the paper presented extracts from Wagner’s Judaism in Music, which the paper
subsequently relied upon more so than anything else the composer produced.35
According to the paper. Judaism in Music was “more relevant than ever before,
seeming as if it had been written yesterday, not a half-century ago” — the only
difference being that in the meantime, “everything that Wagner prophesied had
32 Michaud,
The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, [page #?]
The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 175.
34 “Whatever the physical criteria for their elimination may have been,” he wrote, “Jews,
Gypsies, ‘degenerates,’ and homosexuals were shut away and exterminated for the same reasons
as were the strictly political opponents of Nazism: because of what [they] might say that was
. . . [unfamiliar and disturbing] to Nazism” (Michaud, The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 24-25).
35 For the full text, see Richard Wagner, Judaism in Music and Other Essays, William
Ashton Ellis, ed. (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1995).
33 Michaud,
8
become true...”36 Above all, it added, Wagner found — like the Nazi leadership
— “the main cause of the decline of humanity in the deterioration of the blood,
in the ‘decay of race’ — i.e., in the mixing of noble races with lower ones.” It
was because he sensed these things that Wagner was a “German prophet.”37
Therefore, the Völkischer Beobachter continued, Wagner was for Nazis more
than an “ingenious creator of phenomenal works of art”: he gave them “beautiful
words for their difficult path out of the harsh present to a better and purer
future.”38 In his opinion, which the paper shared, “the only hope for liberation
from the demon of decay was through the application of brutal force.”39 Thus
did the Völkischer Beobachter invoke Wagner’s writings as early as 1923 in order
to raise decisive notions of eliminationist anti-Semitism.
Close investigation, moreover, reveals that while not every one of his operas
was appropriated in anti-Semitic terms, (Lohengrin and Die Meistersinger von
Nürnberg were often invoked in the paper, but as celebrations of Germanness, not
attacks on Jews—however much Beckmesser may appear to be stereotyped) the
smoking gun proving that Nazis brandished Wagner’s works in their anti-Jewish
plot is found in Völkischer Beobachter reception of the Ring of the Nibelungen.
Some of the strongest statements about anti-Semitic stereotypes in Wagner’s
music dramas were contained in a 1923 article on “The World War in the Ring
of the Nibelungen.”
Dramatically and musically, according to the paper, Wagner “anticipated the
tragedies of the World War by depicting the fight for power symbolized in the
ring.” In Alberich, Wagner embodied the “dark spirit of Jewish Mammonism,
whose ghastliest form confronts us in the capitalism of the industrial age,”—the
epitome of “loveless and coldhearted business interests.” It was in this form that
“Mammonism came to rule the whole world,” the paper held, “clearly marked by
the characteristics of the atrocious mixed-bloods whom the Master gave voice
through Hagen.” The racial mixing implied here was of particular concern to the
paper: “What caused the fall of the Roman empire? The racial mush brought
about by its global politics.” And “Aryan-Germanic humanity” was “threatened
with the same end—because the World War not only cost the German race more
than three million of its strongest men,” but also “introduced many thousand
colored soldiers into Europe, resulting in the infection and deterioration of
the blood of European humanity to a shocking, unprecedented extent.” With
“infallible certainty,” then, Wagner prefigured in Hagen the “dreadful catastrophe
that [haunted] European humanity in general and the German Volk in particular.”
Indeed, this was the background to “the heart-breaking tragedy” of the last
offensive in 1918, as the Götterdämmerung exploded over [Wilhelm II and
Germany].” Ultimately, the paper contended, “we must not overlook the fact
that this battle for world control was a struggle over . . . blood,” that is, race—
36 Hans Buchner, “Richard Wagner und das Judentum in der Musik,” Völkischer Beobachter,
19 April 1922.
37 Seeliger, “Der deutsche Seher.”
38 “Der Dichter und Politiker.”
39 “Richard Wagner über ‘Das Judentum in der Musik’.”
9
“exactly as in the Tetrology.”
Moving beyond the war itself, the paper later insisted that one finds in the
relationship between Siegfried and Mime a “reflection of our times.” The “ugly
dwarf, an embodiment of the haggling Jew who wants to rise higher and higher
like all the Eastern Jews crossing over the German borders, is Siegfried’s foster
parent.” Significantly, though, he doesn’t raise the hero out of love: he does so
only to arrange that Siegfried kill the dragon Fafner to capture the Ring and
the hoard for him. When this is done, Mime “will cut off his head.” Here, in
Stolzing’s opinion, Wagner signified the fact that “the Jew must exploit the
powerful labor forces of the Nordic race to his own advantages.” But while Mime
speculates thus, his “son” forges his own sword of victory with which he will slay
the dragon, and since “the only one who can forge this sword of victory is he
who knows no fear, Siegfried is the embodiment of National Socialism, which
alone possesses the courage to break the chains of slavery around the German
people.” Like Siegfried, National Socialism is “forging the army of liberation!”
But the “parties of Alberich and Mime, Hunding and Hagen—that is, Jewry
and Jew-bastard hangers on—are throwing themselves with everything they’ve
got against the victory march of National Socialism.” 40 In this vain, the paper
made further links between Wagner’s Ring cycle and Weimar era Germany via
apocalyptic attacks on “modern operas” (Zeitopern), especially Ernst Krenek’s
Jonny spielt auf of 1927). “Western civilization is going down while striking
up Jonny [sic].” As an antidote, an affirmation of Wagner’s idealism was more
urgent than ever, and that meant “making a clear distinction between a dark blue
tones of the Walhalla motif and the cacophonous howling of the saxophone that
would be more appropriate for accompanying lewd dances around the golden calf.”
The “barbarization process that we are experiencing—the campaign that the
impure has launched against culture under the mantle of a clinking and clanking
pseudo-civilization—is all Alberich’s work.” “If you don’t take this seriously,”
the paper warned, “you’re going to go down in the fall with them: now is the
time to recognize and fight the enemy; fight with word and deed against the fate
that is approaching.” According to this volkish millenarian view, “as this world
falls apart” those who have renounced love for gold—the Alberichs, Mimes, and
Hagens—will “disappear in the flood rolling in” and “only pure men and women,
free of Alberich’s Curse, will be able to rebuild it.” So, fellow Germans must
“purify themselves” and “band together in a new brotherhood of the Grail.” This,
the paper preached, “is what Wagner tells us” in his Ring Cycle.41
Within the Völkischer Beobachter, editors and contributors including significant
German musicologists, historians, literary scholars, and composers advanced the
40 Josef Stolzing, “Der Weltkrieg im Ring des Niebelungen,” Völkischer Beobachter, 7 August
1923-8 August 1923.
41 “Richard Wagner und wir,” Völkischer Beobachter, 23 August 1928.
10
notion of Wagner as a prophet who communicated explicit anti-Semitic warnings
in his writings. For the most part, they concentrated on his non-musical sources,
especially Judaism in Music. However, as regards the music itself, it was in the
Ring Tetrology that National Socialist Wagnerians perceived the Meister’s voice
as harmonizing most perfectly with that of the Führer. These examples, as well
as others drawn from non-musicians (no other major composer was so directly
implicated as Wagner in Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda) confirm that Völkischer
Beobachter cultural criticism formulated the image of the racial enemy through
music-historical references, in keeping with Michaud’s assertions. Ultimately,
however, these hideously negative quotes do return conceptually to what was
fundamentally “positive” about National Socialist Kulturpolitik, that is, (again
Michaud) “leading every [German] individual back to the natural reflex of love
for his or her own racial type” and directing them toward a redemptive future.42
Theme 4:
Above all, Michaud postulated that National Socialist invocations of past creative
leaders were intended as symbolic indications of what the New Germany would
become, not just validations of present Nazi policies and ideas with references
to the past. As he put it, “the awakening into the myth was . . . generally
conceived as an awakening to the present — . . . a recapitulation of the past
directed toward the future. As Baldur von Schirach declared, ‘The perfect artists
Michelangelo and Rembrandt, and Beethoven and Goethe, do not represent an
appeal to return to the past, but show us the future that is ours and to which
we belong.”’43 This last line says it very succinctly: the Völkischer Beobachter
cultural section was clearly designed for the same reasons. Throughout the paper
’s music coverage, we can find examples of direct associations of composers and
their works with the Nazi party and its plans for the future.
The Völkischer Beobachter insisted, for instance, that Bach ’s music had renewed
relevance in the context of twentieth-century German political development. As
a symbol of Prussia “struggling and conquering in the spirit of Luther, as well
as an emergent volkish Germany,” Bach’s art had “prophesied the fate of the
Fatherland in its present, most severe volkish struggle.” By performing such
works, present-day musicians could provide the energy necessary to “reconstruct
the nation in the spirit of Bach and his time.”44
Nazi cultural operatives likewise considered Mozart ’s music a powerful tool for
the party and state on the rise. Writers for the paper insisted that it constituted
a “political symbol and source of hope”: just as in the acts of a great politician
or military leader, “expression of volkish fate” in the works of Mozart was what
42 Michaud,
The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 156-157
The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 101. 106.
44 Hans Buchner, “Musikrundschau,” Völkischer Beobachter, 19 October 1923.
43 Michaud,
11
made them “invaluable to Nazis and their time.”45
Party interpretations of Beethoven also revealed an effort to associate the
composer and his music with the very identity of the Nazi movement itself.
Alfred Rosenberg reminded all Germans that “Whoever had a notion of what
sort of nature operated in their movement knew that an impulse similar to that
which Beethoven embodied in the highest degree lived in all of them”: the “desire
to storm over the ruins of a crumbling world, the hope for the will to reshape the
world, the strong sense of joy that comes from overcoming passionate sorrow.”
When Nazis triumphed in Germany and throughout Europe, Rosenberg implied,
they would recognize that Beethoven had passed on to them the ability and the
will of German creation.”46
But the most famous and often repeated version of this point in Völkischer
Beobachter music reception was reference to the Wach auf! chorus of Wagner’s
Mastersinger. Michaud argues specifically that “this injunction to Germany,
which urged it to awaken, was thus primarily an [call] to remember its past and
to construct its future on the ideal model of that past.” 47 Most conveniently
for the Nazis, then, the 50th anniversary of Wagner’s death coincided with their
accession to power in 1933. In that year, the Party promoted direct associations
between Wagner with the new regime in many ways. Ceremonies for the Day
of Potsdam in May, for example, peaked in a performance of Die Meistersinger
at Berlin’s Staatsoper. Having attended a torchlight parade along Unter den
Linden, Hitler and the rest of his government arrived for the third act of the
opera.48 The Völkischer Beobachter covered this event rhapsodically. Whoever
witnessed how the Volk of Nürnberg “instinctively turned toward the Führer,”
sitting in the royal seats, and then how the eternally beautiful Wach auf Chorus
emerged from the choir “to touch each and every heart,” knew that “the moment
of Germany’s transformation had arrived.” At the end, warm words of thanks
rose from troubled hearts toward “the savior who sat above, following the opera
with a unique light in his . . . .”49
Another important linkage of Wagner’s music with the development of Nazi
cultural policy occurred at the September 1933 inaugural ceremony of the Reich
Culture Chamber in the Berlin Philharmonic. Immediately after Goebbels’ inaugural speech, the Wach auf chorus sounded again. The Völkischer Beobachter
described the moment as a “hopeful awakening” with, “as Dr. Goebbels so perfectly put it, ‘’music for marching into the shining future of German culture.”’50
But the event at which Hitler himself most publicly expressed his personal
engagement with Wagner occurred during the second year of the Third Reich.
45 Buchner,
“Zum Münchner Mozartfest.”
Rosenberg, “Beethoven,” Völkischer Beobachter, 26 March 1927.
47 Alfred Rosenberg, “Beethoven,” Völkischer Beobachter, 26 March 1927. Michaud, The
Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 86.
48 “Der Festablauf am 21. März,” Völkischer Beobachter, 21 March 1933.
46 Alfred
49
50 “Die Reichs-Kultur-Kammer eröffnet: Der Führer bei der Feier in der Berliner Philharmonie.”
12
On March 6, 1934, Hitler dedicated a monument to Wagner in Leipzig, sanctifying
it as a “testament of solemn promises to live up to the wish and will of the
master, to continue maintaining his everlasting works in ever-lively beauty, and
to draw coming generations of our Volk into the miraculous world of this mighty
tone poet.” Given that he was evidently invoking the poet and Meistersinger
Hans Sachs on this occasion, it should come as no surprise that the foundation
stone bore the words: “Honor your German Masters,”51 in reference not only to
Wagner, but to the future of newly Nazified German culture as a whole.
While highlighting the Nazi obsession with Wagner’s Meistersinger exhortation,
Michaud made it clear that this was indeed not a retrogressive feature in Nazi
culture, but a forward looking call for future action. In his words, again opening
with a citation from von Schirach, “As Baldur von Schirach said, ‘In Germany,
there is nothing more alive than our dead.’ The immense effort of realization
that was sweeping a whole people toward its ideal Third Reich was certainly
quite the reverse of the work of mourning. It was the work of [reminiscence] that
asserted itself as faith in one’s own power to reawaken the lost object”52 — that
is, to “produce the New Man,” 53 very closely identified with the Wagnerian
ideal as perceived by Hitler himself.
Ultimately, however, this process of national renewal involved going to war.
From a popular perspective, given the horrible outcomes of Nazi geopolitical and
military policy, it is natural to assume that the Second World War itself was
the primary “goal” of the Nazi regime. But Michaud helps us to remember that
the war itself was not the goal. It was a means to an end. And that end was, in
his view, this realization of the New Man according to the image of Germany
as the Kulturnation formulated, in part, by the Völkischer Beobachter cultural
section. As Michaud phrased it, warfare was identified with the “‘realization of
the Idea,’ so that in the Nazi world view it had the same function as all its other
‘battles.’ Like the ‘battle for art,’ ‘the battle on the birth front,’ and the ‘battle
for production,’ it was part and parcel of ‘the battle for life’ that was to lead to
the realization of the essence of the German people. . . [O]ver and above all its
tumults, the war was primarily intended to restore the calm and radiant vision
of the eternal Reich that lay as a dream in the heart of the Volk spirit.” 54
There is no doubt that Nazi propagandists enlisted the whole of the Western
cultural tradition, as perceived in National Socialist terms, to serve in the
belligerent phase of their cause. Just when German armies invaded Poland,
51 “Der Führer legt den Grundstein
Beobachter, 7 March 1934.
52 Michaud, The Cult of Art in Nazi
53 Michaud, The Cult of Art in Nazi
54 Michaud, The Cult of Art in Nazi
zum Nationaldenkmal Richard Wagners,” Völkischer
Germany, 173.
Germany, 180.
Germany, 206-7.
13
Joseph Goebbels proclaimed that Nazis had “never reserved art for peacetime
alone. . . .” To the contrary, “we have always held the position that it is precisely
in such a moment” that the muses “need to deploy their powers.” Under Hitler’s
leadership, the Nazis had placed this “spiritual weapon into the hand of our Volk”
to wield as the “German nation was lining up to battle for its very existence.”.55
One of the best wartime opportunities for cultural politicians of the Third
Reich to exploit Mozart, for example, came with the 150th anniversary of the
composer’s death in 1941. The paper’s coverage made it clear that Mozart should
be celebrated not only as a musician, but also as a reminder that Germany,
“then fighting a battle for Europe, had to take up a leading and organizing role
in the cultural world.” In the “great struggle for the preservation of Europe
and for the preservation of European culture,” this day would “strengthen the
resolve for battle, since Mozart reminded them of the values of life and culture
for which they were fighting.”56
Similarly, Beethoven appeared throughout Völkischer Beobachter propaganda
as a “fighter of great willpower.”57 For example, in April 1942, just after
Hitler personally assumed direct command of forces in the East, Goebbels
arranged a special celebration of “the leader’s” birthday. Its culmination was a
performance of the Ninth Symphony and in his accompanying speech, featured
in the Völkischer Beobachter, Goebbels dictated what he expected listeners to
draw from the event: “When . . . [Beethoven ’s] hymn resounds over all distant
countries where German regiments stand guard, then we want everyone, whether
man, woman, child, soldier, farmer, worker, or civil servant, to be equally aware
of the seriousness of the hour and to experience the tremendous happiness of
being able to witness and take part in this, the greatest historical epoch of our
Volk.58
55 Joseph Goebbels, “Das Kulturleben im Kriege,” Rede zur Jahrestagung der Reichskulturkammer und der NS-Gemeinschaft “Kraft durch Freude” November 27, 1939, in Goebbels,
Die Zeit ohne Beispiel: Reden und Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1939/40/41 (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Franz Eher Nachf., 1944) 219-223.
56 “Gauleiter Dr. Scheel bei den Salzburger Mozart-Feiern,” Völkischer Beobachter, 7
December 1941.
57 Ludwig Schiedermair, “Beethoven und das ‘Schicksal’,” Völkischer Beobachter, 21 October
1925.
58 “In Dankbarkeit und Treue: Ansprache von Reichsminister Dr. Goebbels in der Feierstunde
der NSDAP am Vorabend des Geburtstages Adolf Hitlers,” Völkischer Beobachter, 20 April
1942.
14
However, as it had done in service of so much of its cultural coverage, to exemplify
the alignment between artistic creation and the Nazi war effort, the paper placed
its strongest emphasis on Richard Wagner. Again, I will just present a minimum
from the manifold examples of wartime Wagner reception that appeared in the
Völkischer Beobachter. In the summer of 1941, just eight days after German
forces invaded the Soviet Union, the paper made direct associations between
his music dramas and the new front. According to the Völkischer Beobachter,
his Twilight of the Gods, the last of the Ring Cycle, could be interpreted as
presaging the positive outcome of the Barbarossa campaign: “the stormy tempo
and powerful events of the conflict were bringing the German Volk closer than
ever to recognition of the deepest meanings of the Ring — of the connections
between great art and the Volkish war of liberation.” In the Ring Cycle, Wagner
“shaped the inevitable historical progression of an old, rotten world toward
self-immolation into a gigantic cultural symbol: the fall of the Walhalla gods
wasn’t a catastrophe, but a great process of purification — relieving the world
of enormous guilt.”59
Still, the most extreme and infamous use of Wagner culture for the propagandistic
aims of Nazi Germany at war was the series of wartime festivals at Bayreuth.
Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Völkischer Beobachter related, once said that
the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth was “a battle sign — a standard — around which
those who remained true would gather, armed for war,” and this “prophecy”
was being realized at the wartime festivals.60 Feature articles on the Green Hill
as wartime bastion appeared in the paper throughout the conflict. In one, for
example, placed on the front page directly beneath photos of fighting at the
Eastern front, the Völkischer Beobachter published an extended statement about
the significance of continuing cultural life, especially the Bayreuth Festival, as
the war raged on. It was clear that only with the “dramatic progress of most
recent German history under Adolf Hitler, and only with the war, that they had
. . . once again developed a “sense for Siegfried, a sense for Wotan, a sense for
Richard Wagner ’s magical world — only then had they become real Germans.”
When out of the “uncanny quiet of the great space,” in which you couldn’t even
hear a pin drop, the “redeeming sounds rose up the pillars and the walls fell away
in a sensation of dreaming, it seemed like Germans had been standing there for
a thousand years as a race that — like Siegfried — knew no fear because they
wielded Nothung, the sword they forged themselves on the anvil of world envy
and the darkest enmity.” To provide soldiers and workers with this “unforgettable
pleasure” was an achievement that could only have occurred in “Adolf Hitler’s
Reich.” From this spectacle the Führer guests at the Festival “learned to know
Greater Germany: the Germany that not only fought for its existence and its
global validity with weapons, but which, as in earlier centuries and millennia,
was called forth to spread its cultural heritage across borders and stand as a
59 Heinrich
60 Herzog,
Stahl, “Die neue Götterdämmerung,” Völkischer Beobachter, 1 July 1941.
“Von Bayreuth nach Salzburg.”
15
model for other peoples.”61
Knowing of the utter devastation it wrought, we reject the National Socialist
promotion of the war as leading to a future of German cultural advancement.62
Still, we must recognize that Nazi propaganda did not present the war as an
end in itself, but as a means toward re-establishing Germany as Kulturnation —
revived in the aesthetic forms suggested by the Völkischer Beobachter cultural
section, among other propaganda sources.63 In this endeavor, they failed. The
final result was instead the reduction of their country to a state of ruin far more
hideous than those Albert Speer had projected in plans for the structures he and
his master imagined64 — not after thousands of years, but after just twelve years
of terror and six years of carnage. Ultimately, the culmination of “Nazi culture,”
was the war itself — indeed, this was its hollow “masterpiece.” But Michaud’s
arguments, combined with the evidence compiled from the Völkischer Beobachter
cultural section—in particular its treatment of the Western music tradition
and especially its invocations of Richard Wagner and his works—help us to
understand better what impelled these destructive forces: the ironic realization
is that, however distorted, they were originally conceived in “creative” terms.
61 “Schau
vom Festspielhügel,” Völkischer Beobachter, 23 July 1941.
Saul Friedländer’s powerful words, “The important thing is the constant identification
of Nazism and death; not real death in its everyday horror and tragic banality, but a ritualized,
stylized, and aestheticized death, a death that wills itself the carrier of horror, decrepitude, and
monstrosity, but which ultimately and definitely appears as a poisonous apotheosis.” Nazism,
he continued, was a force that “ended in nothing, after having accumulated an extraordinary
power, unleashed a war without parallel, committed crimes heretofore beyond imagination—
a force that hacked the world to pieces in order to founder in nothingness” (Friedländer,
Reflections of Nazism, 43, 58).
63 “War was not an end in itself; for National Socialism, war remained, in the same way as
propaganda, art, and politics, ‘a means to an end.’ Warfare was far more directly identified
with the process that led to the ‘realization of the Idea,’ so that in the Nazi Weltanschauung
it had the same function as all its other ‘battles.’ Like the ‘battle for art,’ ‘the battle on the
birth front,’ and the ‘battle for production,’ it was part and parcel of ‘the battle for life’ that
was to lead to the realization of the essence of the German people” (Michaud, The Cult of Art
in Nazi Germany, 206-7).
64 Michaud reproduces Speer’s explanation of the “theory of ruin value” as follows: “‘By
using special materials and by applying certain principles of statics, we should be able to build
structures that even in a state of decay, after hundreds or (such were our reckonings) thousands
of years, would more or less resemble Roman models. To illustrate my ideas I had a romantic
drawing prepared. It showed what the reviewing stand on the Zeppelin Field would look like
after generations of neglect, overgrown with ivy, its columns fallen, the walls crumbling here
and there, but the outlines were still clearly recognizable.’ Delighted by the ‘luminous logic’
of this sketch, Hitler ordered that in the future the Reich’s most important buildings should
be constructed according to the ‘law of ruins.’ Speer had hit the bull’s eye by responding ‘to
the Führer’s desire’ in this way and, on his behalf, anticipating the moment when ‘men fell
silent.’ That moment would come long after the movements of the community’s fighters had
been frozen and immobilized in stone, and when history would at last recognize them as a
people of artists and founders of culture who had constructed their own monument” (Michaud,
The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 212).
62 In
16
17