Silent voices

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Silent Voices - The Expulsion of the “Jews” from the Opera 1933 to 1945 is an exhibition project by the historian Hannes Heer , the music critic Jürgen Kesting and the designer Peter Schmidt . The exhibition has been commemorating the victims of Nazi racial policy in German and Austrian opera houses since 2006 . It consists of a supraregional part and a local part. The supraregional part tells the fate of 44 prominent composers, conductors, directors and singers who fell victim to the racist music policy of National Socialism . In the local section, the story of the expulsion from the respective opera house is reconstructed.

In Richard-Wagner-Park Bayreuth: Silent voices. The Bayreuth Festival and the Jews 1876–1945

After stations in Hamburg ( State Opera and Axel Springer Gallery), Berlin ( State Opera Unter den Linden and Centrum Judaicum ) and Stuttgart ( Württemberg State Opera and House of History Baden-Württemberg ), the exhibition was also shown in Darmstadt at the State Theater, in the Hessian State Archives and in shown by the Heinrich Emanuel Merck School . Between May 15 and July 10, 2011 the exhibition was on view in Dresden in the Semperoper . From June to October 2012 part of the exhibition in Bayreuth was on view in the town hall. The part of the exhibition that was set up at the same time in the park at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth has remained there.

The supraregional part

In the larger, national part of the exhibition, 44 biographies of prominent persecuted people are presented, including the composers Arnold Schönberg , Kurt Weill , Viktor Ullmann , the conductors Fritz Busch , Otto Klemperer , Bruno Walter , the singers Gitta Alpár , Vera Schwarz , Delia Reinhardt , Lydia Kindermann , Richard Tauber , Joseph Schmidt , Friedrich Schorr and Emanuel List . Four “listening towers” ​​with music samples from the artists provide sounds for an overview of contemporary history.

It also looks back to the time after 1945. Because at this point in time it was not Gustav Hartung and Carl Ebert , Joseph Rosenstock and Otto Klemperer , but German cultural policy offered Gustaf Gründgens and Gustav Rudolf Sellner , Karl Böhm and Herbert von Karajan the chance for renewed careers.

Local projects

In Hamburg, Berlin and Stuttgart, the proportion of workers dismissed, driven into exile or deported to concentration camps is around five percent. In Darmstadt it was more than 15 percent of the employees, plus there are eleven cases that are currently unresolved.

Hamburg

When Sabine Kalter , a darling of the Hamburg opera audience, started her first great aria as Lady Macbeth, SA rioters in brown shirts began to riot. The audience, however, drowned out the disturbers - there were ovations for the singer, who had been brought here in 1915 and made a name for herself as a Wagner and Strauss interpreter.

Besides her, another 24 members of the Hamburg State Opera were persecuted here because of their Jewish descent. Seven soloists, three band masters, six choristers, two musicians, four theater doctors, a dramaturge, a director and the director of the workshops were affected.

Stuttgart

The exhibition in Stuttgart reconstructed the politically motivated dismissals of general manager Albert Kehm and administrative director Otto Paul as well as the racially motivated expulsion of director Harry Stangenberg and the baritone Hermann Weil , of Ernestine Färber-Strasser , Hermann Horner and Reinhold Fritz , the choir members Max Heinemann, Leon Aschil, Elsa Reder and Erna Both and the choir dancer Suse Rosen . The fate of the orchestra musician Julius Brauer, the répétiteur Fritz Rothschild and the persecuted actors Eva Heymann, Ernst Waldow and Fritz Wisten are also examined.

At the same time, the fate of musicians such as Paul Hindemith , Ernst Krenek or Lotte Lehmann , who were expelled due to their political or artistic stance or who decided to go into exile , or were able to do so at all, is also highlighted .

Darmstadt

In Darmstadt, the exhibition in 2009 showed how the Nazis “cleaned up” the Darmstadt State Theater in their own way. The intentdant, thirty musicians, dramaturges, actors, stage designers, prompts and 29 employees of the technical staff were the victims of an "adjustment committee". At the opening of the exhibition, Darmstadt's Lord Mayor Walter Hoffmann spoke of an “unprecedented wave of purges” and traced it back to the “big names” who determined the stage program in Darmstadt in the 1920s and early 1930s. There were protests by National Socialists and violent disturbances, press campaigns and debates in the state parliament, in which the German national parties increasingly refused to approve the theater budget. On March 12, 1933, an SA troop blocked the entrances to the Small House from the theater performance of Ferdinand Bruckner's drama Die Marquise von O. The first victims of the new rulers were the conductor Hermann Adler and their hated director Gustav Hartung : the theater director, declared intolerable, resigned on March 14, 1933 and had to flee to Switzerland .

Bayreuth

The Bayreuth version was divided into two parts: one part could be seen in the New Town Hall, the second part entitled Silent Voices. The Bayreuth Festival and the Jews 1876–1945 is set up in Richard Wagner Park on the Green Hill below the Festival Hall . It commemorates the singers and musicians of the orchestra and members of the festival choir who took part in Bayreuth and were later banned from performing for various reasons - mostly because of their Jewish origins. The exhibitions opened on July 22, 2012. The part of the exhibition in the town hall could be seen until October 14, 2012, the part on the Green Hill will remain permanent.

Didactics of the exhibition

The exhibition is also aimed at schoolchildren from the 11th grade, especially schoolchildren who are studying history or music. There is the possibility of an exhibition tour by trained staff. To prepare for visiting the exhibition, teaching materials can be downloaded from the web as PDF files. In addition, information and references are available on the subject of swing youth .

literature

  • Accompanying catalogs
    • Silent voices. Berlin. 124 pages. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2008. ISBN 978-3-938690-98-7
    • Silent voices. The fight for the Württemberg State Theater. Berlin 2008. ISBN 978-3-940938-14-5
    • Silent voices. The fight for the Hessian State Theater Darmstadt. 144 pages. Berlin 2009. ISBN 978-3-940938-54-1 .
    • Hannes Heer; Jürgen Kesting; Peter Schmidt: Silent voices. The expulsion of the “Jews” and “politically intolerable” from the Dresden theaters 1933 to 1945. Metropol, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86331-032-5
    • Hannes Heer; Sven Fritz; Heike Brummer; Jutta Zwilling: Silent voices. The expulsion of the “Jews” and “politically intolerable” from the Hessian theaters 1933 to 1945. Metropol, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86331-013-4
    • Hannes Heer; Jürgen Kesting; Peter Schmidt: Silent voices. The Bayreuth Festival and the "Jews" 1876 to 1945. An exhibition. Bayreuth Festival Park and Exhibition Hall New Town Hall Bayreuth, July 22 to October 14, 2012. Metropol, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86331-087-5
  • Karl-Josef Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singer lexicon . Fourth, expanded and updated edition, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-598-11598-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Silent voices permanently in Bayreuth In: Nordbayerischer Kurier of July 21, 2015, p. 11
  2. ↑ Impressions on www.verstummtestimmen.de
  3. ↑ "Silent Voices" - The Bayreuth Festival and the 'Jews' 1876 to 1945 ( Memento from February 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive )