I find it hard to accept that becoming the figurehead of Nazi music was the only choice available to wealthy and world famous Richard Strauss to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law, Alice, in 1933.
In March 1933 Joseph Goebbels warned/threatened the Berlin Philharmonic that there would be violence in the concert hall if Jewish maestro Brun…
I find it hard to accept that becoming the figurehead of Nazi music was the only choice available to wealthy and world famous Richard Strauss to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law, Alice, in 1933.
In March 1933 Joseph Goebbels warned/threatened the Berlin Philharmonic that there would be violence in the concert hall if Jewish maestro Bruno Walter was allowed to conduct. Walter withdrew. Embarrassingly, the authorities struggled to find a replacement. Who would want to benefit from, and tacitly endorse, such blunt antisemitism? Even Wilhelm Furtwangler rejected it. Richard Strauss stepped in.
When Strauss was fired as Reichsmusikkammer president in 1935 over his correspondence with Zweig he started to realise what he'd gotten into and who he was dealing with. From this point, he was motivated by protecting his family and his options had narrowed. He was able to use his connections to keep Alice and his grandchildren under house arrest and out of the camps, but not Alice's Jewish family. They were murdered in Theresienstadt.
In the early 30s the Nazis wanted to increase government funding for musicians and to restore works of the Wagnerian German tradition (such as those of Richard Strauss) to centrality in the repertoire. Richard Strauss was very much in favour of both, and in fact brought this up in his 1948 denazification tribunal (he was cleared).
I think he was so dazzled by those lights that he failed to see where the train was going.
Thank you for your reply. Re: "I think he was so dazzled by those lights that he failed to see where the train was going." Well, that says it all, doesn't it? He didn't see where the train was going. And neither did plenty of other people, because it wasn't, in fact, obvious at the time. I mean, take a look at the way that black Americans were treated at the time. Pretty appalling, wouldn't you say? And that did not, in fact, lead to gas chambers. And as you yourself say:
"When Strauss was fired as Reichsmusikkammer president in 1935 over his correspondence with Zweig he started to realise what he'd gotten into and who he was dealing with. From this point, he was motivated by protecting his family and his options had narrowed. He was able to use his connections to keep Alice and his grandchildren under house arrest and out of the camps, but not Alice's Jewish family. They were murdered in Theresienstadt."
There you have it. And 1935 is actually pretty early to start realizing where the whole thing was going (it was before Kristallnacht, after all).
I find it hard to accept that becoming the figurehead of Nazi music was the only choice available to wealthy and world famous Richard Strauss to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law, Alice, in 1933.
In March 1933 Joseph Goebbels warned/threatened the Berlin Philharmonic that there would be violence in the concert hall if Jewish maestro Bruno Walter was allowed to conduct. Walter withdrew. Embarrassingly, the authorities struggled to find a replacement. Who would want to benefit from, and tacitly endorse, such blunt antisemitism? Even Wilhelm Furtwangler rejected it. Richard Strauss stepped in.
When Strauss was fired as Reichsmusikkammer president in 1935 over his correspondence with Zweig he started to realise what he'd gotten into and who he was dealing with. From this point, he was motivated by protecting his family and his options had narrowed. He was able to use his connections to keep Alice and his grandchildren under house arrest and out of the camps, but not Alice's Jewish family. They were murdered in Theresienstadt.
In the early 30s the Nazis wanted to increase government funding for musicians and to restore works of the Wagnerian German tradition (such as those of Richard Strauss) to centrality in the repertoire. Richard Strauss was very much in favour of both, and in fact brought this up in his 1948 denazification tribunal (he was cleared).
I think he was so dazzled by those lights that he failed to see where the train was going.
Thank you for your reply. Re: "I think he was so dazzled by those lights that he failed to see where the train was going." Well, that says it all, doesn't it? He didn't see where the train was going. And neither did plenty of other people, because it wasn't, in fact, obvious at the time. I mean, take a look at the way that black Americans were treated at the time. Pretty appalling, wouldn't you say? And that did not, in fact, lead to gas chambers. And as you yourself say:
"When Strauss was fired as Reichsmusikkammer president in 1935 over his correspondence with Zweig he started to realise what he'd gotten into and who he was dealing with. From this point, he was motivated by protecting his family and his options had narrowed. He was able to use his connections to keep Alice and his grandchildren under house arrest and out of the camps, but not Alice's Jewish family. They were murdered in Theresienstadt."
There you have it. And 1935 is actually pretty early to start realizing where the whole thing was going (it was before Kristallnacht, after all).
I think we best hear Strauss' own feelings about all this in his "Metamorphosen".