Hans Schnoor

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Hans Schnoor (born October 4, 1893 in Neumünster , † January 15, 1976 in Bielefeld ) was a German musicologist , journalist and music critic . In the late 1950s he attracted media attention with his sledding of Arnold Schönberg's survivor from Warsaw .

Live and act

Career

Hans Schnoor was the son of a teacher. After studying musicology in Leipzig with Hugo Riemann and Karl Straube and obtaining a doctorate as a Dr. phil. at Arnold Schering , Schnoor was initially music editor at the Leipziger Free Press . From January 1922 he was head of the feature pages and music editor of the Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten before he switched to the Leipziger Tageblatt as editor . In 1926 Schnoor returned to Dresden and was music editor of the Dresdner Anzeiger until 1945 and also a lecturer at the Dresden University of Music . During this time he got to know Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner personally.

In addition to his work as a music editor, Schnoor has been an author of musicological books since 1919. In 1926, for example, he published music of the Germanic peoples in the XIX. and XX. Century .

time of the nationalsocialism

Schnoor had been a member of the NSDAP since May 1, 1932 (membership number 1,131,053). After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he also belonged to the German Labor Front and the National Socialist People's Welfare and wrote music reviews in line with the National Socialist ideology. In April 1933, as chairman of the Dresden branch of the Kampfbund for German Culture , he invited various music critics to a conference with lectures on opera in the Third Reich .

In the new edition of his concert leader oratorios and secular choral works , he wrote in 1939: “The new spiritual Germany with its moving thoughts: people and leaders, homeland, blood and soil, race, myth, heroic story, ethos of work, community of all creative people the old metaphysical longing for the artistic idealization of his highest visual assets ” .

The fact that Schnoor was not only a staunch National Socialist, but also an ardent anti-Semite is exemplified by a review of the new edition of the Riemann Music Dictionary by the National Socialist Joseph Müller-Blattau , which Schnoor did not go far enough:

“How strongly Riemann's views have been bent over with Jewish fixity since 1919, the year of his death, was shown by Einstein's new editions in innumerable articles. in many cases the lexicon resembled a Jewish stamp of fame. Now that the last possible separation between non-Jewish and Jewish in the areas of cultural, intellectual and scientific life had been carried out in Adolf Hitler's empire, one could have expected a correspondingly radical turning away from the editing practice of Einstein in the new Riemann. But what happened? The whole of Judaism, which has established itself in our culture in the last few decades, has been given extensive appreciation. [...] That's how a Herr Adolf Aber stands as a 'DJ' German Jew (!) Read in the new Riemann. This 'German' Jew, a former Leipzig critic, now a major London trader in music, is listed with all of his 'merits', although even the Jewish musicological guild of the system era had already noticed the patheticness of his publications, for example his 'Handbuch der Musikliteratur'; although this nasty scientific impostor by Alfred Heuss was morally destroyed long before 1933 and was only kept by a stubborn newspaper publisher for reasons of 'prestige'. "

He wrote for the Nazi magazine Musik im Kriege .

post war period

After the Second World War , Schnoor stayed in the Soviet Zone until 1948 and was able to publish a book there for the 400th anniversary of the Saxon State Orchestra Dresden . In 1949 he moved to Bielefeld, where he became a music critic for the Westfalenblatt . According to Fred K. Prieberg , Schnoor continued to write reviews “with an anti-Semitic undertone and the vocabulary of Nazi journalism from yesteryear.” The same could be said about several musicological books aimed at a broad audience, most of which Schnoor published with C. Bertelsmann Verlag . In his reference work Oper, Operetta Konzert , first published in 1955, Schnoor wrote about the Jewish composer Giacomo Meyerbeer that classical ideals of music and art were essentially alien to him and that he understood music primarily as business. In doing so, he took up anti-Semitic resentments with which Richard Wagner had encountered Meyerbeer and other Jewish composers.

Schönberg scandal in 1956

As a critic, Schnoor sparked a media scandal in June 1956 after he panned Arnold Schönberg's Holocaust melodrama A Survivor from Warsaw in the Westfalenblatt when he announced the following words: “That disgusting piece that must come across as a mockery to every decent German. In order to make the most of the challenging indecency, the conductor of this program, Hermann Scherchen (who else?) Placed Beethoven's music to Goethe's Egmont next to the hateful song of Schönberg. How long should it go on like this? "

A few days later Schnoor took part as co-speaker for Winfried Zillig at a conference of the Evangelical Academy for Radio and Television in Arnoldshain in the Taunus, at which the establishment of a cultural program on radio (“third program”) was on the agenda. In his lecture on “Platz der Neue Musik”, Zillig presented the work of his teacher Schönberg and at the end quoted from the article by his co-referee. Zillig refused a discussion with Schnoor and left the room. When confronted, Schnoor made a half-hearted statement. Just two days later, a four-column article by Walter Dirks appeared in the FAZ about the conference, “Report on a shard court”, which dealt exclusively with the Schnoor case. Dirks brought another quote in the article from Schnoor's column “Wir und der Funk” from October 29, 1955, where Schnoor denounced the alleged tyranny of the re-emigrants in the German broadcasting houses and concluded: “It will soon be ready you can talk more openly and precisely about all of these things. There will be an uprising - not of the masses, but of the best. ”When Schnoor rejected New Music, Dirks accused Schnoor of“ anti-Semitic nationalism ”and National Socialist ideas, coupled with the question of whether the law was not being violated.

After Theodor W. Adorno also got involved in the debate, further details became known. Schnoor, for example, described Adorno in several reviews as the cause of the “Frankfurt poisoning” of the WDR and named him with his discarded name “Wiesengrund”.

After the musicologist Fred K. Prieberg accused him of "National Socialist music criticism" in a polemical program on SWF Baden-Baden , Schnoor, supported by his publisher Hermann Stumpf, filed a private lawsuit. This lawsuit was dismissed in the first instance on the grounds that Schnoor had to put up with "that his gross attacks are replied to in the same way." Schnoor's complaint in the next instance was again rejected. In the court ruling, Prieberg was granted the right to freedom of expression under Section 193 of the Criminal Code and the assertion in Prieberg's Südwestfunk broadcast that Schnoor's style was reminiscent of the expression of the “ Black Corps ” was confirmed as a factual statement.

In 1958 Schnoor retired as an editor, but continued to write works on music history. In early 1962 he published the partially autobiographical book Harmonie und Chaos. Contemporary music , in which he made no secret of his aversion to new music and, among other things, condemned Stravinsky , but instead highlighted Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner as the most important composers of the 20th century. He described the Schönberg scandal of 1956 as a “wave of libelous actions” against himself.

Publications (selection)

Fonts

  • 1919 The Buxheim organ book, a contribution to the history of the German organ in the 15th century
  • 1926 Music of the Germanic peoples in the XIX. and XX. Century , Ferdinand Hirt publishing house, Breslau
  • 1932 guide through the concert hall. Vocal music. Volume 2, oratorios and secular choral works 5th edition, Breitkopf & Härtel Leipzig
  • 1937 Barnabás von Géczy. Ascent e. Art. Rhapsody in 10 movements , drawings by Hugo Lange, Güntz-Verlag Dresden
  • 1942 Weber at the world theater. A Freischützbuch , Deutscher Literatur-Verlag Dresden
  • 1948 Dresden, four hundred years of German music culture. For the anniversary of the Staatskapelle and the history of the Dresden Opera , Dresdener Verlagsgesellschaft
  • 1951 sounds and shapes. A guide to lively music for concert fans and radio listeners , Schneekluth Darmstadt
  • 1953 History of Music , Bertelsmann Gütersloh
  • 1953 Weber. Shape u. Creation , Verlag der Kunst Dresden
  • 1955 opera, operetta, concert. A practical reference book for theater and concert-goers, for radio listeners and record lovers
  • 1960 world of music. An introduction to music studies , Bertelsmann, Gütersloh
  • 1962 harmony and chaos. Contemporary music , Lehmann-Verlag Munich
  • 1968 The hour of the Rosenkavalier. 300 years of Dresden Opera , Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich
  • 1969 Wiedenbrück district. Music and theater without their own roof , Westphalian Music Archive Hagen
  • 1975 History of Music , 1st revised paperback edition, Deutscher Literaturverlag Melchert, Hamburg

Arrangements

  • 1943 Carl Maria von Weber: Peter Schmoll, Singspiel in 2 Acts . New text by Hans Hasse, musical arrangement by Hans Schnoor

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Schnoor: Harmonie und Chaos , p. 40, p. 48, p. 99-100.
  2. ↑ Hans Schnoor: Harmonie und Chaos , pp. 50–52.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee: Kulturlexikon , p. 537 and Fred K. Prieberg: Handbuch , p. 6269
  4. ^ Fred K. Prieberg: Music in the Nazi State . Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag 1982, p. 167.
  5. ↑ Quoted from Joseph Wulf : Music in the Third Reich. A documentation . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-548-33032-0 , p. 275; as an abbreviated quote also from Ernst Klee: Kulturlexikon , p. 537.
  6. ↑ Hans Schnoor: Embarrassing Ehrenrettung des “Riemann” - “German” Jews in the new music dictionary , in: Dresdener Anzeiger , March 14, 1939, reprint in: Melos , 23rd year, 1956, September issue, pp. 264–265
  7. ^ Quote from Fred K. Prieberg: Music in the Nazi State . Fischer Paperback, 1982, p. 22.
  8. ^ Hans Schnoor: opera, operetta, concert . Gütersloh 1964, p. 302
  9. ↑ Monika Boll: Nachtprogramm , p. 215, quotation from the Westfalenblatt from June 16, 1956 .
  10. ↑ The report was also reprinted in the July / August issue of the music magazine Melos , 23rd year, 1956: Report on a shard court, pp. 233–234, to which Schnoor wrote a counter-statement in the September issue (p. 263), which was replicated by Dirks with the text Shards Court No. 2 (p. 264–265)
  11. ^ Quote from Monika Boll: Night program , p. 215.
  12. ↑ Monika Boll: Night program , p. 215.
  13. ↑ Monika Boll: Nachtprogramm , pp. 218–219: “only apostrophized with his Jewish name”.
  14. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg: Musik im NS-Staat , p. 22. Prieberg does not call himself by name, but describes himself as “an employee of the Südwestfunk”.
  15. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg: Music in the Nazi State , p. 22 and notes on p. 413.
  16. ↑ Monika Boll: Night program , p. 219
  17. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbuch , p. 6269.
  18. ↑ Josef Müller-Marein: Music has nothing to do with politics . In: Die Zeit , No. 4/1962. Review.
  19. ↑ Hans Schnoor: Harmonie und Chaos , pp. 235–241, quotation p. 240.
  20. ^ Publication according to Monika Boll: Nachtprogramm , p. 214 as early as 1953.
personal data
SURNAME Schnoor, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musicologist, journalist and music critic
DATE OF BIRTH October 4, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Neumunster
DATE OF DEATH 15th January 1976
Place of death Bielefeld