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Is music removed from politics? To what ends, beneficent or malevolent, can music and musicians be put? In short, when human rights are grossly abused and politics turned to fascist demagoguery, can art and artists be innocent? These questions and their implications are explored in Michael Kater's broad survey of musicians and the music they composed and performed during the Third Reich. Great and small--from Valentin Grimm, a struggling clarinetist, to Richard Strauss, renowned composer--are examined by Kater, sometimes in intimate detail, and the lives and decisions of Nazi Germany's professional musicians are laid out before the reader. Kater tackles the issue of whether the Nazi regime, because it held music in crassly utilitarian regard, acted on musicians in such a way as to consolidate or atomize the profession. Kater's examination of the value of music for the regime and the degree to which the regime attained a positive propaganda and palliative effect through the manner in which it manipulated its musicians, and by extension, German music, is of importance for understanding culture in totalitarian systems. This work, with its emphasis on the social and political nature of music and the political attitude of musicians during the Nazi regime, will be the first of its kind. It will be of interest to scholars and general readers eager to understand Nazi Germany, to music lovers, and to anyone interested in the interchange of music and politics, culture and ideology.
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THE TWISTED MUSE OTHER B O O K S B Y M I C H A E L H . K A T E R Das "Ahnenerbe" der SS, 1935-1945: Em Beitrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten Reiches (1974) Studentenschaft und Rechtsradikalismus in Deutschland, 1918—1933: Eine sozialgeschichtlicbe Studie zur Bildungskrise in der Weimarer Republik (1975) The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders, 1919-1945 (1983) Doctors Under Hitler (1989) Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (1992) THE TWISTED MUSE Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich Michael H. Kater New York Oxford OXFORD U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS 1997 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1997 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kater, Michael H., 1937The twisted muse: musicians and their music in the Third Reich / Michael H. Kater. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-19-509620-7 1. Music—Germany—20th century—History and criticism. 2. National socialism and music. 3. Music and state—Germany—20th century. I. Title. ML275.5.K38 1996 780'.943'09043—dc20 96-6339 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper FOR BARBARA, who has shared much of the reading and knows most of the thoughts expressed in this book from endless conversations over the years, especially since she has contributed several important ideas of her own This page intentionally left blank Preface The themes of this study have only rarely been reflected in the existing literature. This book was written against the backdrop of four earlier ones that purported t