Cultural orchestra

General service regulations (ADO.) For the musicians of the German cultural orchestras from July 22, 1939

The term cultural orchestra is a central concept in German cultural policy. The definition of the term made in 1938 is still valid today:

"Cultural orchestras are those orchestra companies that regularly provide opera service or play concerts with music that is to be considered serious."

From the outset, financial and trade union interests were closely related to the use of the term “cultural orchestra”. The orchestra union Deutsche Orchestervereinigung (DOV), which has existed since 1952, was founded on the basis of the 1938 collective bargaining system and has incorporated essential basic elements from 1938 into the new collective agreement for musicians in cultural orchestras . The supply institution of the German cultural orchestras also uses this term and refers in its statutes to the tariff system of 1938. German cultural policy, musicology and the specialist press use this term to characterize the entire German orchestral landscape.

Concept history

In the Weimar Republic , the struggle for new aesthetic positions between new music , youth music movement , jazz and Hanns Eisler's drafts of a proletarian musical culture triggered violent counter - reactions from German nationally minded "culture preservers". In addition, after the offense that was felt after the lost World War, a special kind of remedy was found with the thesis of the “world recognition of German music”. In this conflict between the German and the supposedly "anti-German" musical culture, Hans Pfitzner was particularly committed. He faced determined opponents in Hermann Scherchen and the magazine Melos .

In the spirit of Pfitzner, the Kampfbund for German Culture was founded. Member was among others Alfred Heuss , the editor of the magazine for music . This “Kampfbund” was related to the establishment of the Reichsmusikkammer , because the special committee founded in 1932 within the Kampfbund / Fachgruppe Musik and led by the musicologist Friedrich Mahling worked on the concept of such a chamber. The main initiators were the violinist Gustav Havemann , Friedrich Mahling and the later manager of the Reichsmusikkammer, the Kapellmeister Heinz Ihlert . By autumn 1933, this National Socialist cartel was joined by the Reich Association of German Orchestra and Orchestra Musicians . Robert Hernried, committed member of the Reichsverband and editor of the association magazine Das Orchester , used the ideological battle term “cultural orchestra” in a larger article in the magazine for music . The Reich Association, which campaigned for German national interests, had already mentioned the term “cultural orchestra” four years earlier in connection with financial claims.

The Aachen General Music Director Peter Raabe was very close to both Pfitzner and the Reich Association. Raabe placed great hopes in Adolf Hitler , in whom he saw a supporter of his cultural and political interests and from whom he hoped an end to the concert crisis. When there were initial considerations in 1934 to appoint Raabe as President of the Reichsmusikkammer, the latter set his conditions, because, according to his ideas, the administrations would have to be " obliged to keep the orchestra in unabated strength and with reasonable pay". The Aachen GMD repeated these demands several times in his speeches and made it unmistakably clear that he would only take office on the condition that this "extremely urgent defense against danger" be started immediately. Otherwise there is a risk of “extraordinary damage to German music” and the rebuilding of German musical culture, which he should be entrusted with as future President, would not be feasible.

A few months later, the term “great cultural orchestras in Germany” appeared for the first time in the Nazi files and led to the draft of a “Reich tariff regulation for all cultural orchestras in Germany”, which was available by 1935 at the latest. This ordinance came into force on March 30, 1938 as the tariff system for German cultural orchestras . Here it says: “The German cultural orchestras have the special task of keeping the high cultural assets of German music alive among the people.” Characteristic of Raabe's concept of Nazi culture are striking, very literal “black and white drawings”: On the one hand, see he the “serious and holy” works of white and clean German music. In contrast, he positions “ Negro music ”, which is denied any cultural quality or the “seriousness” favored by Germans. Such German-national and pseudo-religious theses that already existed in the Weimar Republic about the superiority of German music over other musical cultures are no longer tenable.

literature

• 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. on-line

Individual evidence

1. ↑ No other cultural project invests as much tax money as the German cultural orchestra. A critical review of this globally unique cultural-political philosophy has not yet taken place on a fundamental level. Cf. Gerald Mertens, “American Relations”, in: Das Orchester 37 (03/1999), p. 5 and Jan V. Matejcek, “The future is a challenge? On the situation of Canadian and North American orchestras ”, in: Das Orchester 40 (11/1992), pp. 1314–1316.
2. ↑ The collective bargaining agreement for the German cultural orchestras of March 30, 1938 and the current versions of the collective agreement for musicians in cultural orchestras from 1971/72 .
3. ↑ The term “cultural orchestra” originated on the background of a German-national or National Socialist concept of culture.
4. ^ Hermann Voss: The collective bargaining rights of the members of the German cultural orchestras, Kulturorchestertarifordnung (TO.K) together with changes taking into account the collective agreements of October 6, 1956 and September 21 , 1957, Mainz 1957; Gerald Mertens, “30 Years TVK”, in: Das Orchester 49 (2001), pp. 17-20. further information see Homepage of the German Orchestra Association
5. ^ Statutes of the pension fund for the German cultural orchestras
6. ↑ The following online articles as examples: Article in the magazine NMZ // Article by WDR3 on the subject of the cultural orchestra ( Memento from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) // Landesmusikrat Schleswig-Holstein ( Memento from the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. // Diploma thesis on cultural policy on the subject of the cultural orchestra ( Memento of the original from March 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. // Informationsdienst Wissenschaft eV // Landesmusikrat Rheinland-Pfalz Musikpflege 4.1. Cultural orchestra ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , see Arnold Jacobshagen, Structural change in the orchestra landscape: the cultural orchestras in reunified Germany, Cologne 2000.   
7. ^ Andrea Therese Thelen-Frölich: The institution concert between 1919 and 1945 using the example of the city of Düsseldorf , Kassel 2000, pp. 24–64.
8. ↑ Hans Pfitzner: The new aesthetics of musical impotence. A symptom of putrefaction? , Munich 1920; see. the short reply by Hermann Scherchen in: Melos 1 (1920), p. 20.
9. ↑ As of November 1923 (issue 17), this magazine had the subtitle “Kampfblatt für deutsche Musik und Musikpflege”.
10. ↑ Robert Hernried: “Frontal attack against the cultural orchestra and planned theater economy through emergency ordinance”, in: Zeitschrift für Musik 98 (1931), pp. 863–866. Before this larger article was published, the Reich Association, which had relatively few members, was barely noticed by the public.
11. ↑ Die Musik 20 (1927), p. 236. The editor of the association magazine Das Orchester , Robert Hernried, who was active from April 1, 1926 , introduced the term “cultural orchestra” with his article Orchestral concerns in: Deutsches Musikjahrbuch (1926), p. 64-72; see. Robert Hernried: Orchestra concerns . In: Das Orchester 3 [1926], No. 19, p. 232.
12. ↑ For Raabe, Pfitzner was one of the “most controversial champions of Germanism” in a “time of the worst cultural degeneration” (Raabe to Goebbels, April 15, 1939, cf. Nina Okrassa, Peter Raabe - conductor, music writer and president of the Reich Chamber of Music (1872–1945 ), Cologne 2004, p. 328.)
13. ↑ Peter Raabe: "Adolf Hitler's cultural will and the concert system", (October 1933), in: Peter Raabe, Kulturwille im deutscher Musikleben, cultural-political speeches and essays - 2nd volume, Regensburg 1936, page 10f.
14. ^ Peter Raabe: From the new building of German musical culture. (February 16, 1934), in: Peter Raabe: The music in the third Reich cultural political speeches and essays , Regensburg 1935, p. 35. This speech was first published in: Zeitschrift für Musik 101 (1934), p. 256–273 ; also in: Culture, Economy, Law and the Future of German Musical Life , ed. from the press office of the Reichsmusikkammer, Berlin 1934, pp. 204–240.
15. ↑ Heinz Ihlert: The Reichsmusikkammer. Goals, achievements and organization , Berlin 1935, pp. 23 and 26.
16. ^ Reichsarbeitsblatt 1938, VI, p. 597, tariff register no. 2329/1.