Weimar and Banned Music

German Music

Course 1 · Chapter 6 · Weimar Cabaret & the Banned Music

The years between 1919 and 1933 were among the most inventive in German music, with cabaret, jazz, film music and new forms of opera and concert music all flourishing in Berlin and other cities. After 1933 the Nazi regime tried to control all of it, driving out many musicians, banning works and staging an exhibition of "degenerate music" in 1938. This chapter describes both periods and what happened to the people involved. It is a chapter about how culture was used and suppressed, and how Germany later confronted that, not about glorifying any of it. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Weimar Music

Cabaret and song

Berlin cabarets mixed satire, politics and popular song. Kurt Tucholsky and others wrote texts, and singers such as Claire Waldoff performed them (check names). Marlene Dietrich's career began in this world (check).

Weill and Brecht

Kurt Weill's music for Bertolt Brecht's Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera, 1928) mixed jazz-influenced tunes with sharp social comment, and was an enormous hit, with songs such as "Mack the Knife" (check).

Jazz and new sounds

American jazz reached German cities in the 1920s, and composers such as Hindemith, Weill and Krenek used its rhythms and instruments in concert works and operas (check the examples). Critics on the right condemned it as foreign.

  • New music. Paul Hindemith, then Arnold Schoenberg's circle in Berlin (Schoenberg was Austrian-born; check), explored new approaches to harmony and form. Concert audiences were often divided.
  • Technology. Radio and recordings spread music more widely than before, and German firms were leaders in gramophone records and in early film sound (check).
  • The political climate. The Weimar Republic was unstable, with economic crisis and fierce cultural arguments that set modernists against conservatives (check).

After 1933

Measure (check each)What it did
The Reichsmusikkammer (1933)A state body that licensed musicians. Those who could not prove "Aryan" descent, or who were politically unwelcome, were excluded from public work.
DismissalsJewish and politically opposed conductors, performers, teachers and critics lost their posts at orchestras, opera houses and conservatories.
Banned musicWorks by Jewish composers, including Mendelssohn, and by modernists were removed from programmes; jazz was suppressed or tolerated only in altered forms (check how far).
Promoted musicMusic from the "German" canon, folk song and marches were encouraged, and Wagner and Beethoven were used for state occasions (Chapters 3 and 5).
The 1938 exhibition"Entartete Musik" (degenerate music), staged in Düsseldorf during the Reichsmusiktage, attacked jazz, atonal music and music by Jewish composers (check the date and the place).
Exile and loss Many musicians left, among them Weill, Schoenberg, Klemperer and Bruno Walter, and many ended in the United States or Britain (check the destinations). Others were imprisoned or killed. At the Theresienstadt camp, composers such as Viktor Ullmann and Pavel Haas wrote music in captivity (check), and some were later murdered. These facts are well documented, though the details of individual lives need careful sources.

After 1945

  • Return and absence. Some exiles returned, but many did not, and German musical life lost a generation of its people (check how far).
  • Rediscovery. From the 1980s and 1990s recordings and performances revived banned and forgotten composers, including those from Theresienstadt, in projects such as the "Entartete Musik" recording series (check).
  • Confronting the past. Debates continue over musicians who stayed and prospered under the regime, and over what orchestras and institutions should say about their own history (check examples).
  • New beginnings. The Darmstadt summer courses, begun in 1946, became a centre for post-war avant-garde music (check).
A British comparison Britain received many of the exiled musicians, among them members of the Amadeus Quartet and Glyndebourne's founding team (check the examples). Their arrival shaped British musical life after 1933, which is a reminder that the loss to Germany was a gain elsewhere.
Check the details This chapter covers persecution and murder. The facts are from general knowledge and must be checked against reliable histories and survivor records before being relied on or repeated, especially names, dates, places and numbers.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain why The Threepenny Opera is a good example of Weimar culture, naming two features of the work and two of its setting.

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Exercise 2

List four ways the Nazi regime controlled music after 1933 and say which musicians or kinds of music each affected.

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Exercise 3

Describe two ways the banned and forgotten music has been recovered since 1945, and say why the work of recovery is still going on.

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Quick Reference

  • Weimar: cabaret, Weill and Brecht (1928), jazz influence, new music (check)
  • 1933 onward: the Reichsmusikkammer, dismissals, bans, the 1938 exhibition (check)
  • Exile: Weill, Schoenberg, Klemperer, Walter; Theresienstadt composers (check)
  • Recovery: revival projects from the 1980s and 1990s; Darmstadt from 1946 (check)
  • The caution: verify names, dates and numbers in every case