Peter Raabe

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Peter Raabe (born November 27, 1872 in Frankfurt (Oder) , † April 12, 1945 in Weimar ) was a German conductor and musicologist . In the time of National Socialism he pursued cultural policy.

Life

Raabe's parents were a painter and a piano teacher. Raabe studied at the Berlin Conservatory with Woldemar Bargiel . As Kapellmeister he went to Königsberg i. Pr. , Zwickau , Wuppertal-Elberfeld , Amsterdam and Munich , where he conducted the folk symphony concerts of the Kaimorchester from October 7, 1903 to March 21, 1906. In 1907 he took over the leadership of the Weimar court orchestra . In this position he earned numerous services as a conductor until the end of his tenure in 1920. From 1920 to 1934 he was general music director of the Aachen Symphony Orchestra . From 1924 to 1934 he was honorary professor at RWTH Aachen University .

Raabe's repertoire included works of the Viennese classic and romantic music as well as much contemporary music. He was equally committed to modern and conservative composers, although the latter were much closer to him. He promoted particularly intensively among his contemporaries Hugo Kaun and Richard Wetz .

His son Felix Raabe , with whom he worked closely, was also general music director in Aachen from 1946 to 1953.

Musicological work

Peter Raabe was also active in the field of music research. His main occupation was the work of Franz Liszt , which he systematically examined as custodian of the Weimar Liszt Museum from 1910. In 1916 he was at the University of Jena with a dissertation The history of the first orchestral works of Franz Liszt Dr. phil. PhD. In 1931 a two-volume monograph on Liszt's life and work was published, which also contains the first comprehensive Liszt catalog of works and is Raabe's major musicological work.

Cultural politician under National Socialism

Professional ban for the Berlin musician Dr. Werner Liebenthal, signed by Dr. Peter Raabe, August 9, 1935

Raabe was a German national conservative and welcomed the National Socialist music policy . He was against “Negro music” and the modern music of Alban Berg and Arnold Schönberg. There are also anti-Semitic statements from him, as can be seen in the following statement from 1940:

“The decline of the operetta ... promoted the tendency to shamelessness in such a way that it also made people who otherwise had a conscience in artistic matters insensitive to the abuse of the masterpieces of operetta art and manipulations that only had the purpose to make concessions to the rotten taste of the time, disfigured and thus earned huge sums of money. The decisive influence ... lay with the Jews. "

Raabe had argued for a new music policy long before 1933 and wanted to introduce a music chamber. As early as 1934 he was a member of the administrative committee and the presidential council of the Reichsmusikkammer, the Führer's council of the Reich Association of Mixed Choirs of Germany , presidential advisory board of the Kameradschaft der deutschen Künstler eV and trustee of the donation “Künstlerdank” of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . He also became a member of the Board of Trustees of the Goebbels Foundation for cultural workers . In 1934 Raabe made it unmistakably clear on several occasions that the “new building of German musical culture” was only possible if the orchestral musicians had a particularly secure existence. Just a few months after these demands became known, concrete steps were taken to establish a collectively secured symphonic monoculture, which has remained a reality throughout Germany as a so-called cultural orchestra system for all larger municipalities. In 1935 he became chairman of the Reichsmusikkammer after Richard Strauss resigned as president in 1935. Raabe led the RMK until 1945. At the request of May 21, 1937, Raabe was admitted to the NSDAP retrospectively to May 1, 1937 (party number 3,934,040).

As President of the Reich Chamber of Music, Raabe ensured that representatives of modern music and above all the “non-Aryan” musicians were either not accepted into the RMK in the first place or were dismissed. This meant an existence-threatening professional ban for the musicians concerned, because membership in the RMK was a prerequisite for working as an artist. In total, more than 3000 professional bans signed by Raabe are known, as well as the one that was imposed on Carl Stenzel (whose wife was Jewish) on April 15, 1937:

"According to § 10 of the implementing ordinance for the Reich Chamber of Culture Act of November 1, 1933, I reject your application for admission submitted to me for a final decision, as you do not have the qualifications required by the Reich Chamber of Culture legislation in the sense of National Socialist governance. With this decision you lose the right to continue practicing your profession with immediate effect. "

Raabe was one of the most important representatives of National Socialist music policy. His opponent in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was Heinz Drewes , with whom he struggled for competencies. His engagement at Nazi party rallies was characteristic . For example, at the cultural conference of the Nazi party rally in 1935 (the party congress of freedom ) in the presence of Hitler and all Nazi superiors, he conducted Beethoven's Egmont overture to introduce the speeches by Rosenberg and Hitler. Hitler then gave a speech on art politics, in which he characterized art as the herald of the sublime and beautiful and the bearer of the natural and healthy . This was followed by a settlement with the cultural criminals of the democratic era such as Dadaists , Cubists and the representatives of the New Objectivity . At the same time, Hitler incited against the through and through capitalist contaminated and accordingly acting Judaism , which was never in possession of its own art . Raabe then conducted Beethoven's Fifth Symphony .

From June 5 to 7, 1937, the installation of a bust of Bruckner in the Walhalla was used as an occasion for holding a Bruckner festival. This was celebrated as a state act. On June 6th Raabe unveiled the bust of the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner, wrapped in a swastika flag, and Hitler laid a laurel wreath. The Munich Philharmonic played ; the Regensburger Domspatzen sang the Bruckner motet " Locus iste " under DKM Theobald Schrems . During the festival program on the next day, a Bruckner Medal was awarded to Goebbels, Raabe and the Munich Philharmonic. Raabe gave the lecture. According to Okrassa, the purpose of the propaganda event was to consolidate the cultural facade of the Nazi state. Raabe appeared very often as a speaker and proclaimed the basic lines of National Socialist music policy.

On the occasion of the 1938 Reichsmusiktage in Düsseldorf , Raabe refused to take part in this event and offered to resign on May 8th because he considered Hans Severus Ziegler , the organizer of the accompanying exhibition Degenerate Music , to be an incompetent "layman". In Raabe's place, Paul Graener gave the opening speech at the Reichsmusiktage. Raabe also refused to give a speech at the opening of the “Degenerate Music” exhibition in Weimar, which was presented together with the “Degenerate Art” traveling exhibition . Both went unnoticed by the public because the newspapers of the Third Reich did not report on them.

In an article in the magazine Die Musik from March 1941 under the title What the Reichsmusikkammer is not, he once again justified the National Socialist cultural policy, which Fred K. Prieberg commented as follows: “No presentation of the Reichsmusikkammer was that clear before as an instrument of political control and discipline. "

“(…) National Socialism's demand for totality implies that the organization of all art must also fit seamlessly into the overall politics of the Reich. There can be no art policy in the National Socialist state that contradicts general policy. The line of great politics must not be crossed by other lines emanating from art. Taking care of it and watching over it is one of the most important tasks of the Reich Chamber of Music. Your focus must be on keeping the music clean. What turns out to be hostile to the state can not be tolerated, no matter how much talent it shows. "

In the last years of his life, Raabe withdrew to Weimar more often . There he was buried in the historical cemetery in 1945 .

In the Soviet occupation zone , Raabe's writings Die Musik im Third Reich (1935) and Kulturwille im Deutschen Musikleben (1936) were placed on the list of literature to be segregated.

Honors

Fonts

  • The genesis of Liszt's first orchestral works , 1916
  • Franz Liszt , 2 volumes, 1931
  • On the new building of German musical culture (speech of February 16, 1934). - In: Press office of the Reichsmusikkammer (ed.), Culture, economy, law and the future of German musical life . Berlin: Parrhysius, 204–240.
  • The music in the third Reich. Speeches and essays on cultural policy , 1936
  • German champion. Speeches by Peter Raabe , 1937
  • Paths to Weber , 1942
  • Ways to Liszt , 1943
  • Paths to Bruckner , 1944

estate

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945. CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 5365.
  2. ↑ Richard Schaal: Raabe, Peter. In: The music in history and present, vol. 10. Bärenreiter-Verlag 1986, p. 1834, CD-ROM edition p. 61270.
  3. ↑ Raabe was initially taken with the Aachen performance of Bergs Wozzeck in 1938, but in 1938 he revoked this view: “Atonality was a sickness of time to which very talented artists temporarily fell victim” (Okrassa 2004, p. 101,308).
  4. ^ Joseph Wulf: Music in the Third Reich: A Documentation. Frankfurt 1989, p. 289.
  5. ^ A b Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945. CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 5366.
  6. ^ A b Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 470.
  7. ^ Lutz Felbick : The "high cultural assets of German music" and the "degenerate" - on the problem of the concept of the cultural orchestra. In: Zeitschrift für Kulturmanagement , 2/2015, pp. 29–59.
  8. ^ Nina Okrassa: Peter Raabe. Conductor, music writer and President of the Reich Chamber of Music (1872–1945). Böhlau Verlag, 2004, p. 273.
  9. ↑ s. Nina Okrassa: Peter Raabe. Conductor, music writer and President of the Reich Chamber of Music (1872–1945). Böhlau Verlag, 2004, p. 375ff.
  10. ^ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945. CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 5389.
  11. ^ Quote from Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 5398.
  12. ^ Quotation from Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945. CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 5398, source: Die Musik XXXIII / 6, March 1941, p. 189 f.
  13. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-r.html
  14. ↑ a b c d Reichs Handbuch 1931
  15. ↑ GoogleBooks
personal data
SURNAME Raabe, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conductor, music writer and Nazi cultural politician
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt (Oder)
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1945
Place of death Weimar