If you can find a copy, Leon Uris’ “Armageddon” is worth readingf. A novel of the American occupation of Germany just after WW II, Uris does a superb job of peeling back the entrenched layers of Nazism in the German soul and psyche. The majority of the references are solidly factual. He really goes after the German people’s adoration of Wagner..
Wagner is dead.
Hitler is dead.
I like Wagner, I like Israel and I hate Hitler.
It’s only music, make up your own back story if you wish.
I’ve always been of the opinion that you should separate the politial opinions of old composers and actors and authors from their works. At certain times in history, certain ideas held sway. I bet if you interviewed pretty much any composer or artist from the 14th Century about their views on the equality of Christians and Jews, or Whites and Blacks, you’d get opinions that would be considered flat out racist and anti-Semetic today. They might even be more extreme than the KKK (as in, “all Jews should be killed”). The issue with Wagner is that he was born in an age when those views could be broadly publicized. And he happened to be a Hitler favorite. The fact that he was a Nazi favorite is not his fault. I’m not Jewish so I don’t have a vote in the matter but my opinion is that any religious or ethnic or racial groups should play any music or put on any play or read any book no matter what the political opinions of the creator were.
I like Wagner!
I’ve always been of the opinion that you should separate the politial opinions of old composers and actors and authors from their works. At certain times in history, certain ideas held sway. I bet if you interviewed pretty much any composer or artist from the 14th Century about their views on the equality of Christians and Jews, or Whites and Blacks, you’d get opinions that would be considered flat out racist and anti-Semetic today. They might even be more extreme than the KKK (as in, “all Jews should be killed”). The issue with Wagner is that he was born in an age when those views could be broadly publicized. And he happened to be a Hitler favorite. The fact that he was a Nazi favorite is not his fault. I’m not Jewish so I don’t have a vote in the matter but my opinion is that any religious or ethnic or racial groups should play any music or put on any play or read any book no matter what the political opinions of the creator were.
Are Volkswagens not sold in Israel?
“but he did more than anyone else to mold the culture in which Nazism flourished”
Thats debateable. Scads of books published by all manner of
academics and cranks seem to have done more of that than
Wagners music which merely reflects the 19th emerging
German nationalism and interest in the old mythology.
Is everything that Hitler liked a mold of anti semitic
culture? Sounds like a stretch to me.
They should ban Wagner then have a huge rally where they burn books written by Germans. What a GREAT idea!
ML/NJ
Ping.
Banning Wagner is just as stupid as the Nazis ban on Offenbach, Mahler, Arnold Schönberg, and Mendelssohn.
Wagner died in 1883.
She’s sweet on Wagner,
I think she’d die for Beethoven.
She loves the way Puccini lays down a tune
and Verdi’s always creepin’ from her room.
-ELO Rockaria
“Is Israel Right to Unofficially Ban Wagner?”
No. You severly limit your enjoyment by erecting PC barriers to acceptable art. Not that enjoyment is the most important thing, but we’re talking about high art here. And even if you hate the dissonance and near atonality or consider him pretentious, overwrought, and unlistenable, you have to admit we’re not talking about pornography, gansta rap, or piss christ here.
Also, it would be one thing if Wagner were a writer or painter, but music is the most closely “absolute” artform, into which it is difficult if not impossible to inject explicit political messages. he wrote his own librettos, I realize, and his operas involve words, plots, and actions which can convey pretty clear messages. But leaving aside whether or not the operas are anti-semetic, no one really pays attention. It’s about the music, and his music is not anti-semitic.
Without Wagner’s “flight of Valkyries” the Air Cav scene with Robert Duvall in “Apocalypse Now” would not have been classic. Supposedly the music scared the NVA
It is not an essay ... it is a polemic. The author has facts wrong and chooses to ignore facts he finds inconvenient. For instance, he totally omits the fact that one of the reasons Wagner's music is not played in public in Israel is that it was played in the concentration camps and causes enormous mental distress to holocaust survivors who were saturated with Wagner's music under those circumstances. With time that reason will, in the course of human events, eventually become moot. Far from "sneaking Wagner into a public concert in Israel", when Barenboim played Wagner in Israel, he had first submitted (and had approved by officials of the Jerusalem Festival) a program with a concert performance of Act One of Wagner's opera "Die Walkure"; he withdrew the program and substituted Schumann and Stravinsky. As an encore to the program (originally scheduled to be a Wagner program) he announced would play music of Wagner and invited those for whom Wagner's music had painful associations to leave the hall so they would not be exposed to it - noting that there were many people who did not have such a problem and, in a democracy, were entitled to hear the music if they wished.
The author hideously distorts the facts of the infamous "Hitler Birthday" performance of Beeethoven's 9th Symphony - for one thing, it occurred in 1942 (not 1944). From all reports, Furtwangler was tricked by Goebbels into performing and was furious. I own a copy of the broadcast of the performance and I have no doubt that is true, for the performance is conducted with a fury totally absent from any other Furtwangler performance of the piece that survives (including one given only the month before). The 4th movement "Ode to Joy", while tremendously exciting, comes across as a headlong gallop into the gates of hell rather than anything "joyful". Also, the Mozart opera that Beethoven thought was immoral was Cosi fan Tutte, not Don Giovanni. (Beethoven incorporated music from Don Giovanni into his "Diabelli Variations".)
The author's bias is evident - such as when he credits Wagner for writing the theme music for the Third Reich. Wagner died before there was even a thought of a third reich - the second reich was less than 25% over when Wagner died!
Unfortunately, the only thing compelling about the essay is the demonstration of the low standards exhibited in modern journalism. That's my opinion ... you are, of course, welcome to judge for yourself.
My British SiL served in the RAF during the London Blitz.
She won’t allow Wagner either.
I like Wagner. Besides without him we wouldn’t have had Dolly Parton. And what sort of world would that be.
I don’t believe in banning music. I also didn’t know that Tchaikovsky was an especially notable antisemite. Then again, he was an odd fellow and a homosexual who married a nymphomaniac.