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Adolf Hitler used to listen to Jewish and Russian musicians

19K views 70 replies 34 participants last post by  MoonlightSonata 
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#1 ·
From The Times - August 7, 2007

Adolf Hitler, the most notorious champion of Richard Wagner and “racially pure” German music, banished Jewish and Russian musicians from the concert halls of the Third Reich — but apparently listened secretly to their work.

New light has been shed on the Nazi leader’s musical tastes by the discovery of what are said to be a hundred of his gramophone records found in the attic of a former Soviet intelligence officer, Lev Besymenski.

“There were classical recordings, performed by the best orchestras of Europe and Germany with the best soloists of the age,” Mr Besymenski said in a document explaining how the records came into his possession.

The 86-year-old, who helped to interrogate captured Nazi generals, died this summer. The document and the record collection have now been made available to Der Spiegel magazine.

“I was astonished that Russian musicians were among the collection,” Mr Besymenski wrote. Hitler dismissed Russians as ‘Untermenschen’, sub-humans, and was contemptuous of their contribution to world culture. Yet the records included works by Tchaikovsky, Borodin and Rachmaninov — scratched from frequent playing and all clearly labelled ‘Föhrerhauptquartier’, the Föhrer’s headquarters.”

The Soviet intelligence officer had found them in Hitler’s Chancellery in Berlin in May 1945, still packed in crates. Hitler’s staff were counting on an evacuation to the Nazi leader’s Alpine hideaway on the Obersalzberg and it was known that he could only relax with his music.

Mr Besymenski, then a captain in military intelligence, kept quiet about the records during his lifetime for fear that he would be accused of looting.

The most astonishing fact about the records — essentially Hitler’s “Best of . . .” collections — is the presence of Jewish performers. Among the recordings is a Tchaikovsky concerto performed by the virtuoso Polish Jewish violinist Bronislaw Huberman. Hitler would have been aware, while listening to Huberman’s playing, that he had founded the Palestine Orchestra in 1936 (which went on to be the foundation of today’s Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) and that he was living in enforced exile. The Austrian Jewish pianist Artur Schnabel, whose mother was killed by the Nazis, also had his work included in Hitler’s personal collection. It is not known which records in the collection were listened to most frequently, nor have they been formally catalogued.

“I’m not terribly surprised by Hitler’s record choices,” said James Kennaway, of Stanford University. “Nazi music policy was pretty incoherent. Stravinsky was played in the Third Reich because he was known to have right-wing views, Bartok because Hungary was a German ally.” Dr Kennaway, a leading musicologist who specialises in the Nazi period, added: “The only real point of consistency in Nazi policy was antiSemitism, so the Schnabel and Huberman recordings do stand out.”

Hitler had spelt out his view of Jewish culture in Mein Kampf. “There was never a Jewish art and there is none today,” he wrote, adding that the “two queens of the arts, architecture and music, gained nothing original from the Jews”.

Roger Moorhouse, a historian and the author of Killing Hitler, said that the record collection, if authentic, suggested a contradiction between the Föhrer’s aesthetic and political values. He said: “It is interesting that being Russian or Jewish did not disqualify a musician from a place in Hitler’s record collection. There was probably a separation in his world view between the political and the artistic.”
 
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#2 ·
What an interesting find.

I had heard some time ago that Hitler had secretly admired Jewish music and musicians.

I must say, I very much like the works of Jewish composers. My dad did too. It's always so nationalistic, don't you think?

We Maltese are no Hitler fans of course, having endured the heaviest of his bombing during WW2.
 
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#8 ·
Well, to me, this-

It was him who turned this unemployment situation - and the fortunes of Germany generally - around. So let's keep him in perspective!
made it sound like you were defending him. What perspective is necessary here? What does it change about how we should view him?

All I meant was that if the article is true, it wouldn't be out of character with what we already know about him.

I don't know what you're on about smelling soaps, and if I'm reading something that is not there, forgive me; hard to live on this planet for any length of time without picking up a bit about what kind of a person he was.
 
#10 ·
Please, no more politics.

Everyone should keep in mind, what terrible murders, genocids and terror acts happened in history...
But this is not the place to argue about it. So please calm down. One should not point at others but "clean at first in front of the own door", as a German proverb says.

Daniel
 
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#14 ·
Very interesting, there are some who say that his father was of Jewish decent. He might have heard it as a child?

One thing i HAVE to ask because it always troubles me. Why does everyone bring up the dropping of the atomic bomb as the example of an American caused atrocity? The firebombing of Tokyo, by the number, was worse. The firebombing of Tokyo destroyed 16 square miles while the bombing of Hiroshima destroyed 1.6 square miles upon blast and 4.5 square miles by resulting fires. In Tokyo the numbers ranged from 80,000 to 110,000 deaths by a single day of bombing. While in Hiroshima the death toll ranged from 65,000 to 75,000. And though the dropping of the atomic bombs ushered in the age of nuclear warfare it was going to happen anyways, it was only a matter of time.

I know the argument sounds very meaningless but i always wonder why people always reference the atomic bomb and never bring up the bombing of Tokyo.

But i agree on the fact the allies set up the circumstance for Hitler to take total power over Germany. Us westerners have a tendency to demonize an enemy that we basically gave power to. (Not trying to defend Hitler, the man deserves all the negative world perception he has.)

But back to the point that article is absolutely fascinating. I would really like to know if there were any recordings of Jewish performers playing Wagner. You would think that a Jewish performer playing "pure" music would be the utmost disgrace for the fuhrer.
 
#18 · (Edited)
One thing i HAVE to ask because it always troubles me. Why does everyone bring up the dropping of the atomic bomb as the example of an American caused atrocity? The firebombing of Tokyo, by the number, was worse.
Besides of the fact that one nuclear bomb has much more potential to destroy as anyone could ever imagine of bombs before, you should really add in Hiroshima to those 80.000 victims around 200.000 victims of the aftereffects and 100.000 hurt - and the moral aspect as an initial use of atomic weapon.

Daniel
 
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#16 · (Edited)
However, if there is any philosopher, here, on the forum, it might be interesting to consider how art (like Classical Music) is universal, and far above human nature and ethnical issues.

As I’m not one (a philosopher), and speak English too badly to discuss it myself (in fact, there are very few English or American People here, in Orion!:D ), I’ll be delighted by such an explanation…
 
#17 ·
Even people in Orion like classical music and appreciate art created on Earth. Isn't that proof enough that it is Universal. :D Although, we Earthlings would like to experience Orionic art, too! :D
 
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#20 ·
Although, we Earthlings would like to experience Orionic art, too! :D
If I told you all the works which have been composed by Orionic People, and which are believed to be composed by earthling composers,… ... ... :D
… but I think that you are not ready to hear that, yet ... :D :D :D

the old sword is something marvelous….because, one of the objects in Orion's sword isn't a star at all: it's a nebula, a cloud of gas and dust that's like a giant fluorescent bulb. Hot young stars inside the nebula pump energy into its gas, causing the gas to glow …
 
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#23 ·
I beg your pardon if I'm talking about something else (in fact, Hitler's tastes don't interest me very much…), but you can now discover the sky with Google Earth. I tried it. It's amazing!

In addition to browsing the Earth, Google Earth allows you to view heavenly objects, including stars, constellations, galaxies, planets and the Earth's moon. To view these objects, click View > Switch to Sky or click Sky button. In Sky, the Earth is hidden and the 3D viewer presents a view of the sky.
You can also search heavenly objects by their name...
 
#24 ·
Yes, it's nice, but I prefer something like Cartes du Ciel or Stellarium. But if I want to roam around the universe, then nothing can beat Celestia. (At least, none in the free and/or open source category.)
 
#25 ·
One has to keep in mind that many of the great composers and performers during the time of the war and this horrible period were Jewish though. If one wanted to listen to great music, the Jewish were a difficult folk to avoid. Many composers and performers were even kept alive and were able to stay out of concentration camps for a while by doing performances.(e.g. performers:the Comedian Harmonists)

And of course, a lot of Jewish people escaped and came to the US during this period. If you research it, a lot of our orchestra and theatre started during this time, started by the Jewish community that had the musical knowledge straight from Europe. - At that time, it was the orchestra and theatre scene, that obviously changed with the times and became the Hollywood scene we know today, where a lot of Jewish can now be seen in films. Just take a list of actors, you will see that they are predominately Jewish. This is the reason for this. If Hitler did not want to listen to classical music produced by the Jewish, it would be as if there was a society in America today that said they did not want to have anything to do with the Jewish people, God forbid, they would have to refrain from watching Hollywood films.
 
#33 · (Edited)
Telegraph: […] "She is the only Nazi left in Germany," wrote the writer Heinrich Mann after the war.
It was Klaus Mann (Thomas Mann's son), not Heinrich Mann (Thomas's brother), who had interviewed Winifred for an article in "Stars and Stripes". I can't find the exact quote right now but it was to the effect that Winifred was the only person he had found in Germany who admitted to having been a National Socialist, and that he noted with what seems like a tiny grain of respect.

Telegraph: In a 1975 interview [Irving adds: "with David Irving" (!)] she said: "If Hitler were to come in the door today, I would be as happy and glad to see him and have him here as I always was."

Irving: AS readers of my book Hitler's War know, I interviewed Winifred Wagner several times for that work [...] Ironic too that The Sunday Telegraph does not reveal who conducted that 1975 interview with Winifred!
The Winifred quote on Hitler is taken from Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's 1975 interview film "Winifred Wagner und die Geschichte des Hauses Wahnfried 1914-1975". It made a lot of waves at the time. It seems strange that Irving doesn't know (or has forgotten, or chosen to forget) both the film and the response that the quote had had in the media. (Not the only thing strange about notorious Mr. Irving's memories, of course.)
 
#28 ·
Interesting article, but again whether or not they were Hitler's records will always be in question.

Maybe he also spent time listening to those records to help him decide which records needed to go onto the burning pile or maybe he used them to point out what bad music was in his eyes. He may have played them for friends just to point out how a Jewish Violinist "destroyed" the music in his eyes, and then played them a proper German Violinist who brought the music to life.

We'll never know for certain and I'm sure many people honestly don't care one way or the other.
 
#29 ·
Interesting article, but again whether or not they were Hitler's records will always be in question.

Maybe he also spent time listening to those records to help him decide which records needed to go onto the burning pile or maybe he used them to point out what bad music was in his eyes. He may have played them for friends just to point out how a Jewish Violinist "destroyed" the music in his eyes, and then played them a proper German Violinist who brought the music to life.

We'll never know for certain and I'm sure many people honestly don't care one way or the other.
This is certainly true, all it goes to show is that the man was a hypocrite, which is unsurprising.

His hatred of the jews and anti-semitism could have sprung out of envy (as it may well have done with Wagner), at their relative success at business and of the talents of some jewish artists and musicians. I don't see the logic but then Adolf was a very hateful man.
 
#37 ·
On and off, mostly for health reasons, aparently.

I've sometimes wondered whether his professed musical tastes were sincere, or whether he just thought that Wagner and Bruckner made for good propaganda.
 
#41 ·
It seems to be fasionable nowadays to bring down dead geniuses (I mean real geniuses who have given something great and beautiful to mankind) from their pedestals, to concentrate on their moral flaws, to say there are no "greatest" composers, writers etc. And yet there is this strange obsession with a dead dictator. Why the heck would one care, what music Hitler used to listen to?
 
#47 ·
I had prepared a couple of answers, most in regard to some (I believe) factual inaccuracies, and one trying to acknowledge the study of history as a necessary (not sufficient) tool in the advancement of humanity.

I've deleted them all. This is not the place, and not the time.

Maybe
, we can largely agree (it's the time of year) on this:
  • There is interaction between the arts and dictatorship.
  • Even dictators seek justification - if they can't find it in democratic legitimation or in divine right, they may look for it in art.
  • Free arts are one of the first casualties in establishing a dictatorship.
  • Arts show the hypocrisy of a dictatorship: Dictators need the arts to keep morals up, yet with the creative spirits oppressed, there's not enough resource to do the job. So even dictators will go to surprising lengths supporting some artists for the sake of their utilizable creative output, even when the established ideological considerations would have them discarded.
 
#50 · (Edited)
I had prepared a couple of answers, most in regard to some (I believe) factual inaccuracies, and one trying to acknowledge the study of history as a necessary (not sufficient) tool in the advancement of humanity.

I've deleted them all. This is not the place, and not the time.
Correct. This is not the place to discuss anything but Hitler's taste in music or the arts. Any off-topic political discussion will be deleted, but of course you are free to discuss the history of the Third Reich in social groups.
 
#48 ·
The trash surrounding Hitler (criminal thugs and boors) pretended to have a fondness for these things as a way of ingratiating themselves to him, but seem to have have been more at home in beer-halls singing variously bawdy and sentimental ballads.

Hitler (insane) does seem to have had some sort of genuine feeling for a range of fine arts - although it would be naive to assume that he responded to them (or saw/heard them) in the same way as people blessedly free of his psychopathy.

We can barely capture the subjective response to art in others with whom we are intimate, let alone a response in a head so f***d up as AH's. Therefore I don't believe an analysis of Hitler's taste tells us much of anything because we can never hope (fear?) to understand what form that taste took.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that the empathy we naturally feel for someone who shares our taste is wasted on the likes of Hitler (and Stalin and Pol Pot and Mao…).
 
#53 · (Edited)
The other was Beethoven, who was a casual anti-Semite (but did pleasant business, for the most part, with Schlesinger and possibly other Jewish publishers). Don't have a clue about Bruckner.

I'm going by a remark by Beethoven, whose payment was less than he expected due to something relating to the exchange rate, of having been the victim of "a Jewish trick."
 
#54 ·
Don't have a clue about Bruckner.
Some have called him anti-Semitic, but he seems simply to have been insensitive at times rather than racist. He thought very highly of Mahler as a student.

http://www.abruckner.com/Data/artic...cknermah/ward_brucknermahleranti-semitism.pdf

Perhaps take that article with a grain of salt, because it comes from a Bruckner fan site, but La Grange's Mahler biography made no mention that I recall of Bruckner "disparaging Mahler's Jewishness".
 
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