Discussion of Its
Nazi Past
(Sent
to various lists May 8, 2000)
I would like to comment on
one of the articles about the Vienna
Philharmonic's Mauthausen
Concert, "Music At Nazi Death Camp Ignites
Protest" [_New York Times_ (May 6, 2000)] since it
contains false
information. The author, Roger Cohen, one of America's
best foreign
correspondents, asserts that
the Vienna Philharmonic has been open about
its Nazi Past:
"But Clemens Hellsberg,
the Philharmonic's president, who has done much to
throw belated light on the
orchestra's dark years under Hitler's Reich, has
defended the concert as a
sign of hope for a new millennium and an
educational
gesture."
This is not true, and quite
misleading. Neither the orchestra nor
Hellsberg has done much to
reveal the orchestra's Nazi past. In
fact, they
have been rather quiet about
it.
Hellsberg outlined the basic
facts of the period in a book length history
of the orchestra entitled _A
Democracy of Kings_ [_Demokratie der Koenige_
( Mainz, 1992)], which he
wrote for the Philharmonic's 150th
Jubilee in
1992. It is a large, glossy, very expensive book
published only in German
and little known outside of
a dedicated circle of Philharmonic fans in
Austria. It did little or nothing to bring attention
to the orchestra's
Nazi past. The book is almost entirely unknown in the
english-speaking
world, and is little known
even in Germany.
Hellsberg's brief summation
of the orchestra's Nazi collaboration is
relatively open by the
standards of Austrian society, but it often has a
rationalizing tone. After the war, for example, the Philharmonic
took a
pay cut to provide a pension
and chauffeur for composer, Hans Pfitzner, one
of the most virulent
anti-Semitic spokesmen of the Third Reich's music
world who, among other
things, advised the regime on racial cleansing.
Hellsberg's book describes
the Philharmonic's support of Pfitzner as a
humane act and a
"milestone" in the orchestra's history.
As recently as December 1999
the Philharmonic's website was still
substantiating the
orchestra's claim to cultural authenticity by quoting a
highly racist book entitled
"Inheritance and Mission" by
Wilhelm Jerger, a
SS Lieutenent who was
chairman of the orchestra from 1938 to 1945.
Jerger's book includes
tables of the orchestra's father to son genealogies
with asterisks by the names
of all non-Aryans. Jerger's comments
were only
removed from the website
after I placed a notice about them on the Internet
on December 31, 1999. (For details see my post to the IAWM list
posted on
December 31, 1999 at:)
http://www.acu.edu/academics/music/archive/iawm.9912/0056.html
In reality, the facts
about the orchestra's Nazi past became
known to the
international community only
through protests against the orchestra
organized by the
International Alliance for Women In Music.
I prepared
information about the
orchestra's collaboration and lax post-war
de-nazification, which
Monique Buzzarte put on her "ZAPVPO" website. Due
to the publicity generated
by the protest, Buzzarte's website received over
ten thousand hits by the
1997 Carnegie Hall protests. I also put
the
information on numerous
Internet discussion lists which brought it to the
attention of thousands of
professional musicians and many journalists.
This work led to important
articles in the media about the orchestra's Nazi
collaboration and lax
post-war de-Nazification. The most
important
articles were written by Jan
Herman, who was at the _LA Times and is now at
MSNBC. He is continues to write about the orchestra's
dark history, and is
still the ONLY journalist to
correlate the orchestra's past with its
current exclusion of women
and people of color.
Now the Phiharmonic is being
scrutinized even more closely due to the
IAWM's efforts and Haider's
rise to power in Austria.
The New York Times credits
Hellsberg and the Vienna Philharmonic with an
openness about its Nazi past
it has never had, not even in recent weeks.
It is a past difficult for
them to openly address since they continue to
discretely exclude women and
people of color.
William Osborne
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