Reichsmusikkammer
Encyclopedia
The Reichsmusikkammer was a Nazi
institution. It promoted "good German music" which was composed by Aryans
and seen as consistent with Nazi ideals, while suppressing other, "degenerate" music
, which included atonal music
, jazz
, and music by Jewish composers. The Institute was founded in 1933 by Joseph Goebbels
and the Reichskulturkammer
(State Bureau of Culture), and it operated until the fall of the Third Reich in 1945.
, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms and the like — was to legitimize the claimed world supremacy of Germany culturally. These composers and their music were re-interpreted ideologically to extol German virtues and cultural identity.
Music and composers who did not fall into the RMK's definition of "good German music" were deprecated and then banned. The Institute proscribed various great composers of the past, including the Jewish-by-birth composers Mahler, Mendelssohn
, and Schoenberg
, and also Debussy, who had married a Jew. The music of politically dissident composers such as Alban Berg
was also banned. And composers whose music had ever been considered sexually suggestive or savage, such as Hindemith
, Stravinsky
and the like, were denounced as "degenerate" and banned.
Jazz and swing music were seen as degenerate and proscribed. Jazz was called Negermusik
("Negro Music"); and swing music was associated with various Jewish bandleaders and composers such as Artie Shaw
and Benny Goodman
. Also proscribed were Jewish Tin Pan Alley
composers like Irving Berlin
and George Gershwin
.
The Reichsmusikkammer also functioned as a musicians' guild
, with composers, performers, conductors, teachers, and instrument manufacturers being obliged to join in order to pursue or continue a career in music. Membership could be denied on grounds of race or politics. Dozens of composers, songwriters, lyricists, and musicians were ruined or forced into exile because for one reason or another (often political or racial) they did not adhere to or comply with the RMK's standards. The career, for instance, of popular operetta composer Leon Jessel
was destroyed by the Institute when it promoted boycotts of his music and finally banned it.
and other high-level Nazis in the Reichskulturkammer
(Reich Culture Institute) basically controlled the RMK, titular presidents and vice-presidents were appointed; in the beginning, this was largely for the sake of the Music Institute's public relations and prestige.
President
Because of his international fame, Richard Strauss
, although privately a critic of the Nazi Reich, was installed as president of the Reichsmusikkammer in November 1933. Strauss's motivations in accepting the post were largely to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and Jewish grandchildren, and to preserve and conduct the music of banned composers like Mahler, Debussy, and Mendelssohn. He was dismissed from the post in June 1935, when a letter to his Jewish librettist Stefan Zweig
, critical of Nazi racial profiling, was intercepted by the Gestapo.
Peter Raabe
was appointed president after Strauss's dismissal. For much of his tenure as president, Raabe was not the sole leader regarding musical culture in the Reich: In 1936 Goebbels appointed Heinz Drewes, then general music director of Altenburg
, to head a department of music in the Propaganda Ministry, resulting in confused and tangled roles. Raabe tried to resign in 1938, but his resignation was not accepted, and he served until the end of the Reich in 1945.
Vice-president
Renowned conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler
was appointed vice-president of the Institute in 1933. However, he refused to adhere to the ban on Hindemith's Mathis der Maler
, and resigned in 1934 condemning anti-Semitism.
Paul Graener
was appointed vice-president upon Furtwängler's resignation. He resigned in 1941.
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
institution. It promoted "good German music" which was composed by Aryans
Aryan race
The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or...
and seen as consistent with Nazi ideals, while suppressing other, "degenerate" music
Degenerate music
Degenerate music was a label applied in the 1930s by the Nazi government in Germany to certain forms of music that it considered to be harmful or decadent. The Nazi government's concern for degenerate music was a part of its larger and more well-known campaign against degenerate art...
, which included atonal music
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, and music by Jewish composers. The Institute was founded in 1933 by Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
and the Reichskulturkammer
Reichskulturkammer
The Reichskulturkammer was an institution of Nazi Germany. It was established by law on 22 September 1933 in the course of the Gleichschaltung process at the instigation of Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels as a professional organization of all German creative artists...
(State Bureau of Culture), and it operated until the fall of the Third Reich in 1945.
Functions
One of the Institute's primary goals — that of extolling and promoting "good German music", specifically that of Beethoven, Wagner, BachBạch
Bạch is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as Bai in Chinese and Baek, in Korean.Bach is the anglicized variation of the surname Bạch.-Notable people with the surname Bạch:* Bạch Liêu...
, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms and the like — was to legitimize the claimed world supremacy of Germany culturally. These composers and their music were re-interpreted ideologically to extol German virtues and cultural identity.
Music and composers who did not fall into the RMK's definition of "good German music" were deprecated and then banned. The Institute proscribed various great composers of the past, including the Jewish-by-birth composers Mahler, Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
, and Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, and also Debussy, who had married a Jew. The music of politically dissident composers such as Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
was also banned. And composers whose music had ever been considered sexually suggestive or savage, such as Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
, Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
and the like, were denounced as "degenerate" and banned.
Jazz and swing music were seen as degenerate and proscribed. Jazz was called Negermusik
Negermusik
Negermusik was a pejorative term used by the Nazi's during Third Reich Germany to signify musical styles and performances by African-Americans that were of the Jazz and Swing music genres. They viewed these musical styles in a racist fashion as inferior works belonging to an "inferior race" and...
("Negro Music"); and swing music was associated with various Jewish bandleaders and composers such as Artie Shaw
Artie Shaw
Arthur Jacob Arshawsky , better known as Artie Shaw, was an American jazz clarinetist, composer, and bandleader. He was also the author of both fiction and non-fiction writings....
and Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
. Also proscribed were Jewish Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century...
composers like Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
and George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
.
The Reichsmusikkammer also functioned as a musicians' guild
Guild
A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...
, with composers, performers, conductors, teachers, and instrument manufacturers being obliged to join in order to pursue or continue a career in music. Membership could be denied on grounds of race or politics. Dozens of composers, songwriters, lyricists, and musicians were ruined or forced into exile because for one reason or another (often political or racial) they did not adhere to or comply with the RMK's standards. The career, for instance, of popular operetta composer Leon Jessel
Leon Jessel
Leon Jessel, or Léon Jessel was a German composer of operettas and light classical music pieces. Today he is best known internationally as the composer of the popular jaunty march "The Parade of the Tin Soldiers," also known as "The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers." Jessel was a prolific composer...
was destroyed by the Institute when it promoted boycotts of his music and finally banned it.
Personnel
Although Joseph GoebbelsJoseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
and other high-level Nazis in the Reichskulturkammer
Reichskulturkammer
The Reichskulturkammer was an institution of Nazi Germany. It was established by law on 22 September 1933 in the course of the Gleichschaltung process at the instigation of Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels as a professional organization of all German creative artists...
(Reich Culture Institute) basically controlled the RMK, titular presidents and vice-presidents were appointed; in the beginning, this was largely for the sake of the Music Institute's public relations and prestige.
President
Because of his international fame, Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
, although privately a critic of the Nazi Reich, was installed as president of the Reichsmusikkammer in November 1933. Strauss's motivations in accepting the post were largely to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and Jewish grandchildren, and to preserve and conduct the music of banned composers like Mahler, Debussy, and Mendelssohn. He was dismissed from the post in June 1935, when a letter to his Jewish librettist Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
, critical of Nazi racial profiling, was intercepted by the Gestapo.
Peter Raabe
Peter Raabe
Peter Raabe was a German composer and conductor. Graduated in the Higher Musical School in Berlin and in the universities of Munich and Jena. In 1894-98 Raabe worked in Königsberg and Zwickau. In 1899-1903 he worked in the Dutch Opera-House . In 1907-20 Raabe was the 1st Court Conductor in Weimar...
was appointed president after Strauss's dismissal. For much of his tenure as president, Raabe was not the sole leader regarding musical culture in the Reich: In 1936 Goebbels appointed Heinz Drewes, then general music director of Altenburg
Altenburg
Altenburg is a town in the German federal state of Thuringia, 45 km south of Leipzig. It is the capital of the Altenburger Land district.-Geography:...
, to head a department of music in the Propaganda Ministry, resulting in confused and tangled roles. Raabe tried to resign in 1938, but his resignation was not accepted, and he served until the end of the Reich in 1945.
Vice-president
Renowned conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained...
was appointed vice-president of the Institute in 1933. However, he refused to adhere to the ban on Hindemith's Mathis der Maler
Mathis der Maler (opera)
Mathis der Maler is an opera by Paul Hindemith. The libretto is also by the composer.The opera's genesis lay in Hindemith's interest in the Protestant Reformation...
, and resigned in 1934 condemning anti-Semitism.
Paul Graener
Paul Graener
Paul Graener was a German composer and conductor.-Biography:Graener was born in Berlin and orphaned as a young child. A boy soprano, he taught himself composition and in 1896 moved to London, where he gave private lessons and served briefly as conductor at the Haymarket Theatre...
was appointed vice-president upon Furtwängler's resignation. He resigned in 1941.
External links
- "Degenerate" Music in Nazi Germany
- "Degenerate" Music at Guide to the Holocaust