Tag Archives: Degenerate music

Playing music for Mengele and the SS.

Gustav Mahler is one of the most famous classical music composers and conductors of all time. Yet, his music was considered as degenerate by the Nazi regime, and was therefore banned in Germany and all the occupies territories. It was not because Mahler was a bad composer but because he was Jewish.

However the Nazis had no issues being musically entertained by Mahler’s niece, Alma Rosé. In fact Alma was selected to play in and conduct the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz.

The orchestra was formed in April 1943 by SS-Oberaufseherin Maria Mandel, supervisor of the women’s camp in Auschwitz, and SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Franz Hössler, the women’s camp commandant. The Nazis wanted a propaganda tool for visitors and camp newsreels and a tool to boost camp morale.

Rosé’s arrival at the camp’s railway siding was in bitter contrast to her previous engagements in nearby Krakow, Poland, just a 45-minute drive away. She had appeared there at least twice – as a violinist appearing with her former husband, the Czech violin virtuoso Váša Příhoda, and in 1935 as a conductor of her celebrated women’s orchestra, the elegant Wiener Walzermädeln which she founded and led throughout Europe.

The orchestra had 20 members by June 1943; by 1944 it had 42–47 musicians Its primary role was to play (often for hours on end in all weather conditions) at the gate of the women’s camp when the work gangs left and returned. They might also play during “selection” and in the infirmary.

They would rehearse for up to ten hours a day to play music regarded as helpful in the daily running of the camp. They also held a concert every Sunday for the SS.

For the orchestra’s concerts the women wore blue pleated skirts, white blouses and lavender-coloured kerchief head coverings.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was a cellist in the orchestra and she recalled in her memoirs, and in a documentary called “We want the light” the orchestra being told to play Schumann’s Träumerei for Josef Mengele.

According to one report of a concert in the bath-house, a number of SS women were joking and interrupting the performance in which Alma Rosé was playing a solo. She stopped and angrily said: ‘Like that, I cannot play.’ Silence followed; she then played, and no one disciplined her.

Alma Rosé was even able to convince the Nazis to spare her musicians from selections for the gas chambers. When mandolin player Rachela Zelmanowicz was in the infirmary with typhus,which would be a death sentence for any other prisoner,Josef Mengele was prepared to send her to the gas chambers. “What’s with this one?” he asked during his rounds. “She’s from the orchestra.”

Mengele continued on his way without any further discussion. As a member of Rosé’s orchestra, Zelmanowicz was untouchable even by him. Her life was spared.

Alma Rosé died suddenly on 5 April 1944, possibly from food poisoning, after a birthday celebration for a kapo

On 1 November 1944, the Jewish members of the women’s orchestra were evacuated by cattle car to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where there was neither orchestra nor special privileges.Three members, Charlotte “Lola” Croner, Julie Stroumsa and Else, died there.

sources

https://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/death-camps/auschwitz/camp-orchestras/

https://www.facinghistory.org/music-memory-and-resistance-during-holocaust/birkenau-womens-camp-orchestra

https://www.thestrad.com/alma-rose-the-violinist-who-brought-music-to-auschwitz/341.article

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074r0r

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The Jazz Standard the Nazis could not destroy.

I was reminded of this song while I was watching “the Man in the Castle”. So many musicians were murdered during the Holocaust Musicians like the talented composer Gideon Klein

The youngest Jewish composer murdered during the Holocaust, Gideon Klein was only 26 when he was murdered in the Fürstengrube sub-camp near Auschwitz. His oeuvre fuses Jewish themes with modern composition techniques. In 1940, he was offered a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London. This could have saved his life, but he was not allowed to travel from Prague.

Sources

https://www.dw.com/en/jewish-composers-who-died-during-the-holocaust-but-whose-music-lives-on/g-43567006

https://dirkdeklein.net/2018/07/19/captain-macheath-the-story-behind-mack-the-knife/

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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Django’s Lucky Escape

Django

The title of this blog is not referring to a Western film, it is referring to an extraordinary event during World War II.

Django Reinhard is one of my favourite guitarists it is actually because of him (and Jim Croce) I picked up a guitar myself. Although I am an admirer of his music and even more his style of playing I didn’t know too much about Django during WWII. I had always assumed he had escaped Europe on time.

It was only after watching a documentary on BBC 4 called Tunes for Tyrants, presented by Suzy Klein, I discovered that Django not only survived the war but he also thrived.

You may think “What is so extraordinary about that?” Django was a Belgian-born Roma-French jazz guitarist. Three words in the last line was what makes it extraordinary, Roma Jazz Guitarist.

Romas were persecuted in Nazi-occupied Europe, and about one million Roma-Gypsies perished in extermination camps or as a result of forced labour.

Jazz was considered degenerate music in the Third Reich.

degenerate

However, Jazz was allowed in Paris because Hitler did not care about the “spiritual well-being” of the French. Django had lived in the UK before the war but had returned to Paris when the war broke out in 1939, leaving his wife behind and eventually divorcing her.

In 1943, Reinhardt married Sophie Ziegler in Salbris, and they had a son, Babik Reinhardt.

Because Django and his family were Roma, he tried to escape Nazi-occupied France, His first attempt failed he and his family were caught, but lady luck smiled on them for a Luftwaffe officer Dietrich Schulz-Köhn, who was an ardent Jazz fan and knew Django and his music, allowed Django and his family return to Paris. If Köhn would not have done that the Reinhard family would have surely ended up in a concentration camp.

Django remained nervous though for he knew there was always a chance that he’d still be arrested someday and be sent away. Although he did attempt to flee France again, he was sent back to the Swiss border.

He remained in Paris and his music was enjoyed by the Parisians but also by the Nazis. Django managed to make quite a bit of money during those years. One of his songs, “Nuages,” did  become an unofficial anthem in Paris to signify hope for liberation.

He did change his musical direction somewhat though because Jazz although allowed in Paris was still considered degenerate music, and the laisse-faire attitude the Nazis in Paris had toward it could change any minute. He attempted to  He tried to write a Mass for the Gypsies and a symphony.

Django guitar

I would recommend watching the three-part documentary series ‘Tunes for Tyrants’ on BBC 4. It gives a great overview of the musical history during the world war 2 era and the years before it.

Ending this blog withe th aforementioned “Nuages.”

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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The song the Nazis loved, but then hated it.

edeleweiss

They say that music soothes the savage beast. quite often this is true, but it can also have an equal opposite effect and sometimes it can be both.

The song ‘Adolf Hitler’s Lieblingsblume ist die Schlichte Edelweiss'(Adolf Hitlers favorite flower is the simple Edelweiss) ,composed in 1933 by Otto Rathke, with lyrics by Emil Gustav Adolf Stadthagen and made popular by the German Opera Tenor Harry Steier, was one of Germany’s favourite songs.

However by 1939 it ended up on the list of songs which were banned in the third reich. It suddenly was branded degenerate music along with music from Jewish composers and Jazz music.

list

The reason why it fell out of favor was because it was seen as kitsch and it was also perceived as a satire on Hitler. It took them 6 years to figure that out.

Below is  a part of the English translation.

“High on steep cliff walls blooms a rare kind of flower,
to which the Kanzler quietly turns his thoughts.
A queen of the Alps this is his heart’s joy.
Adolf Hitlers favorite flower is the simple Edelweiss.

Take this song through all the districts,
plant it forth from mouth to mouth,
take a piece of the German soul around the whole world.
Plant it in hearts for the leader to praise and cherish.
Adolf Hitlers favorite flower is the simple Edelweiss”

Both composer and performer had died in 1936.

Now here is the real irony of this song, although it was banned by the Nazis, Some Neo Nazis are now endorsing it, another indication that aside from having some mental issues, they also know nothing about the history of the man they so adore.

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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