Moderator
Group: Moderators
Joined: 27-April 06
Posts: 3,586
Member Number: 776
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by SSC
Guns? Wasn't he PRO nazi? :x
|
no, he wasn't.
quote from a Wiki bio:
There is much controversy surrounding Strauss's role in Germany after the Nazi Party came to power. Some say that he was constantly apolitical, and never cooperated with the Nazis completely. Others point out that he was an official of the Third Reich. Several noted musicians disapproved of his conduct while the Nazis were in power, among them the conductor Arturo Toscanini, who famously said, "To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again."[2]
In November 1933, without consultation with Strauss, Joseph Goebbels appointed him to the post of president of the Reichsmusikkammer, the State Music Bureau. Strauss decided to keep his post but to remain apolitical, a decision which has been criticized as naïve, but perhaps the most sensible one considering the circumstances. While in this position he composed the Olympische Hymne for the 1936 Olympics, and also befriended some high-ranking Nazis. Evidently his intent was to protect his daughter-in-law Alice, who was Jewish, from persecution. In 1935, Strauss was forced to resign his position as Reichsmusikkammer president, after refusing to remove from the playbill for Die schweigsame Frau the name of the Jewish librettist, his friend Stefan Zweig. He had written Zweig a supportive letter, insulting to the Nazis, which was intercepted by the Gestapo. By the time he conducted the Olympische Hymne at the Berlin Olympic Stadium in 1936, he was no longer president of the Reichsmusikkammer.
His decision to produce Friedenstag in 1938, a one-act opera set in a besieged fortress during the Thirty Years' War – essentially a hymn to peace and a thinly veiled criticism of the Third Reich – during a time when an entire nation was preparing for war, has been seen as extraordinarily brave. With its contrasts between freedom and enslavement, war and peace, light and dark, this work has been considered more related to Fidelio than to any of Strauss's other recent operas. Production ceased shortly after the outbreak of war in 1939.
When his daughter-in-law Alice was placed under house arrest in Garmisch in 1938, Strauss used his connections in Berlin, for example the Berlin Intendant Heinz Tietjen, to secure her safety; in addition, there are also suggestions that he attempted to use his official position to protect other Jewish friends and colleagues. Unfortunately Strauss left no specific records or commentary regarding his feeling about Nazi anti-Semitism, so most of the reconstruction of his motivations during the period are conjectural. While most of his actions during the 1930s were midway between outright collaboration and dissidence, it was only in his music that the dissident streak was, in retrospect, more obvious, such as in the pacifist drama Friedenstag.
In 1942, Strauss moved with his family back to Vienna, where Alice and her children could be protected by Baldur von Schirach, the Gauleiter of Vienna. Unfortunately, even Strauss was unable to protect his Jewish relatives completely; in early 1944, while Strauss was away, Alice and the composer's son were abducted by the Gestapo and imprisoned for two nights. Only Strauss's personal intervention at this point was able to save them, and he was able to take the two of them back to Garmisch, where they remained, under house arrest, until the end of the war.
__________________
"Those that know, do;
Those that understand, teach."
-Aristotle-
"toute audace engendrée par l'ignorance cesse d'être une audace et devient une maladresse"
-Debussy-
In musical criticism, when issues of craft and technical consideration are set aside, what remains is more subjective. However, until technical issues are dealt with, the subjective portion bears considerably less weight.
|