Degenerate music

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Exhibition brochure (1938)
Exhibition part of the reconstructed exhibition, photo from 2007
Düsseldorf Art Palace (picture from 1902)

During the Nazi era, the term degenerate music (analogous to degenerate art ) primarily referred to musical modernity, which did not correspond to the ideology of the National Socialists. The Nazis in the German Reich saw himself not only as a political but also a cultural movement that consciously with the cultural pluralism of the Weimar Republic collapsed.

Modern composers were denigrated, ostracized and politically persecuted as so-called representatives of degenerate music or " Negro music " , including " non-Aryan " artists such as Arnold Schönberg , Ernst Krenek , Kurt Weill , Hanns Eisler , Franz Schreker , Erwin Schulhoff and Ernst Toch , but also “Aryan” composers like Anton Webern , Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky . The works of deceased artists like Alban Berg were also affected.

exhibition

Accompanying the Reichsmusiktage in May 1938 in Düsseldorf - at whose cultural policy rally Richard Strauss conducted his Festive Prelude (1913) - Hans Severus Ziegler organized the exhibition “Degenerate Music” based on the Munich exhibition “Degenerate Art” from 1937, in which he polemicized against jazz , new music and Jewish artists and composers and demanded their removal from German musical life. The propaganda show could be seen in the Kunstpalast, which opened in 1928 . The exhibition was then shown in Weimar , Munich and Vienna . Ludwig (Lucky) Tersch designed a caricature of a black jazz saxophonist wearing a Star of David for advertising purposes . This motif also carried the inflammatory brochure accompanying the exhibition with the inscription Degenerate Music - A settlement by State Councilor Dr. HS Ziegler .

Fifty years later, Albrecht Dümling and Peter Girth reconstructed the exhibition; the opening took place on January 16, 1988 in the Düsseldorf Tonhalle . The reconstructed exhibition has been shown worldwide since then (US version 1991, Spanish version 2007, new German version 2007 under the title “The Suspicious Saxophone”). In addition to the exhibition catalog, the audio documentation “Degenerate Music”, consisting of 4 CDs, was also published.

See also

literature

  • Hans Severus Ziegler : Degenerate Music - An account of State Councilor Dr. HS Ziegler . Völkischer Verlag, Düsseldorf undated [1938], 32 p. With ill. (Brochure accompanying the exhibition) archive.org
  • Theophil Stengel (Ed.): Lexicon of Jews in Music : With e. Title index jew. Works. Together in the order d. Reichsleitg d. NSDAP. due to official, party official checked documents , in connection with Herbert Gerigk . Berlin: Hahnefeld Verlag, 1943 (series title: publications of the institute of the NSDAP for researching the Jewish question , Frankfurt am Main; Volume 2).
  • The "Third Reich" and music , for the exhibition of the same name in Neuhardenberg Castle. Berlin: Nicolai, 2006 ISBN 3-89479-331-7 . Original French version (Musée de la Musique, 2004): Translated from the texts from the German. Bernard Banoun, ISBN 2-213-62135-7 .
  • Bente-Helene van Lambalgen, Emanuel Overbeeke, Leo Samama: Degenerate Music: verboden muziek onder het nazi-bewind. Amsterdam University Press, 2004, ISBN 90-5356-715-1 .
  • Amaury du Closel : Choked voices. “Degenerate Music” in the Third Reich. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-205-78292-6 .
  • Albrecht Dümling, Peter Girth (Ed.): Degenerate Music. Documentation and commentary on the 1938 exhibition in Düsseldorf . 1./2. Edition. the small publishing house, Düsseldorf 1988; 3rd revised and expanded edition 1993, ISBN 3-924166-29-3 .
  • Albrecht Dümling: A true witch's sabbath. The exhibition “Degenerate Music” in conflict. In: Hellmut Th. Seemann, Thorsten Valk (Hrsg.): Overtone stories. Music culture in Weimar. Classic Foundation Weimar. Yearbook 2011. Göttingen 2011, pp. 189–206. ISBN 978-3-8353-0876-3 .
  • Elise Petit, Bruno Giner: Degenerate Music. Les Musiques interdites sous le IIIe Reich . Bleu Nuit éditeur, Paris 2015, ISBN 978-2-35884-047-7 .
  • Lutz Felbick : The “high cultural property of German music” and the “degenerate” - on the problem of the concept of the cultural orchestra . In: Zeitschrift für Kulturmanagement , 2/2015, pp. 85–115.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Website for the commented reconstruction of the exhibition "Degenerate Music"
  2. ↑ Pool music production, also with booklets in English