Driven into Paradise: The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United States - Couverture rigide

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0520214137 ISBN 13 : 9780520214132

Editeur : University of California Press, 1999

Synopsis

The forced migration of artists and scholars from Nazi Germany is a compelling and often wrenching story. The story is twofold, of impoverishment for the countries the musicians left behind and enrichment for the United States. The latter is the focus of this eminent collection, which approaches the subject from diverse perspectives, including documentary-style newspaper accounts and an exploration of Walt Whitman's poetry in the work of Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill.

The flood of musical migration from Germany and Austria from 1933 to 1944 had a lasting impact. Hundreds of musicians and musicologists came to the United States and remained here, and the shaping power of their talents is incalculable. Several essays provide firsthand insights into aspects of American cultural history to which these émigrés made essential contributions as conductors, professors, and composers; other essays tell of the traumatic experience of being exiled and the difficulties of finding one's way in a foreign country. While the migration infused the U.S. with a distinctly European musical awareness, at the same time the status and authority of its participants tended to intervene in the development of a genuinely American cultural voice. The story of the unprecedented migration that resulted from Nazism has many dimensions, and Driven Into Paradise illuminates them in deeply human terms.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Reinhold Brinkmann is Professor of Music at Harvard University and has written extensively on Schoenberg, Brahms, and Wagner. Christoph Wolff is Professor of Music at Harvard University and is the author of Mozart's Requiem (California, 1993), among other works.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

"This is a long overdue and brilliant contribution to our understanding of the intellectual migration from Europe. The essays in this volume illuminate in new ways the experiences of musicians and scholars who fled Europe."—Leon Botstein, Music Director, American Symphony Orchestra

"With a sweep and coherence very rare in essay collections, this volume immediately takes its place as one of the most important publications on twentieth-century music. The range of source materials is dazzling: anecdotes, letters, memoirs, interviews, newspaper articles, musical scores, films, and archival documents. Handled with deft scholarship, they add up to a balanced yet deeply moving account of how figures of exile experienced and transformed American culture."—Walter Frisch, author of The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg

À propos de la deuxième de couverture

"This is a long overdue and brilliant contribution to our understanding of the intellectual migration from Europe. The essays in this volume illuminate in new ways the experiences of musicians and scholars who fled Europe."—Leon Botstein, Music Director, American Symphony Orchestra

"With a sweep and coherence very rare in essay collections, this volume immediately takes its place as one of the most important publications on twentieth-century music. The range of source materials is dazzling: anecdotes, letters, memoirs, interviews, newspaper articles, musical scores, films, and archival documents. Handled with deft scholarship, they add up to a balanced yet deeply moving account of how figures of exile experienced and transformed American culture."—Walter Frisch, author of The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

Driven into Paradise: The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United States

By Reinhold Brinkmann and Christoph Wolff, editors

University of California Press

Copyright 1999 Reinhold Brinkmann and Christoph Wolff, editors
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520214137
Reading a Letter
Reinhold Brinkmann

Dear friend: I am happy that you could escape hell. To be sure, after that anything is a kingdom of heavenhowever little it looks like that. How much I would like to tell you that I could do something for you, in the sense in which you request. But unfortunately, to my knowledge there is, for the time being, no such opportunity. At least I do not know of any. It has become rather difficult to procure positions. There are so many gifted people here, though few of your reputation and ability.

Let me tell you of my experiences and give you some advice: (1) be patient; (2) take anything that, in whatever way, will earn you a living; (3) and above all, never lose heart, because (4) you will find something, even if it takes one or two years or longer. It was no different for me, and I myselfwho am accustomed to changing life circumstanceshave acted according to these principles. I find that for us, who have achieved the highest in the highest positions, no labor would be degrading. I myself, who would rather teach "finishers," now have to teach beginners. But I passionately love teaching, and so I can by now feel quite satisfied with my situation.

If you can survive for a year without income, I am certain you would be able to enter the movie studios also. But whether one should wish that for oneself is questionable. Be assured that I will think of you if I hear of something. For this reason, it would be good to hear from you more oftenlet alone that I shall of course enjoy it. But then, everything has become so dismal!

At any rate, I am happy to have heard from you now and to know that you are taken care of, at least for the moment. From my heart I wish that it will soon be something permanent, something that matches your ability and reputation.1

Arnold Schoenberg wrote this remarkable letter on 26 February 1940 to Adolf Rebner, the renowned Austrian violinist, former Frankfurt concertmaster, and first violin of the Rebner Quartet. Rebner was in fact facing his second life-threatening expulsion from home and work. Already in 1934

he had been forced to leave Frankfurt; now the Nazis, after the 1938 Anschlu, also controlled his native Austria, and he had departed Vienna for Cincinnati in 1939. In a letter written on 25 February 1940, Rebner asked Schoenberg for advice and help in his new country.2 Schoenberg's answer aims to be encouraging, but it remains ambivalent. By citing the basic confrontation of heaven and hell, Schoenberg alludes to the mixed experience met by those emigrants who escaped Nazi Germany and safely reached the United States.3 His confession of a difficult, problematic state of mind likewise casts a shadow over the tone of optimism he wants to convey.

Not only is this a moving text, in tone as well as content, but it is also an important historical document. The letter sheds light on central aspects of the forced migration of artists and scholars from Nazi Germany, addressing both the often traumatic experience of being exiled and the difficult task of finding one's feet as an immigrant in a foreign country. And in this sense the letter indirectly circumscribes the field of memories and scholarship explored by this collection of essays. The title of our volume, Driven into Paradise, taken from Schoenberg's 1934 speech on the Jewish situation,4 certainly mirrors the dichotomy of heaven and hell that his letter uses to characterize both the act of expulsion and the subsequent status of the immigrant.

Schoenberg's advice is directed at a professional musician shortly after his arrival in a foreign country. More specific artistic problems remain untouched, for the moment at least. Thus the letter does not reveal Schoenberg's own creative dilemmas, nor does it reflect specifically on the situation of a European classical composer facing a new social and cultural environment. As a result, the possible aesthetic as well as compositional consequences of this cultural reconfiguration are not mentioned.5 Nor is the intricate issue of a mutual artistic exchange between a genuinely American musical culture and the traditional European heritage, as embodied in the figure of the composing immigrant, touched on, not even in passing.6 What matters at this point are questions of the first hour: survival and the securing of a life.

Perspectives: Exiles and Immigrants

I am very happy that you could escape hell. The first sentence of the letter brings to mind the fact that at the center of the historical event which we so neutrally designate the "musical migration" is the Holocaustits prehistory (the persecution before the exile commenced),7 its actual beginning in 1933 (the year of the Machtbernahme, the rise to power of the National Socialists), and its enduring presence throughout the early 1940s, including the time of the Rebner-Schoenberg correspondence. Indeed, as both historical reality and personal memory, the Holocaust is the measure for any

historical judgment about German fascism and its consequences. In it lies the background for racial, political, and artistic persecution, and thus for the exile.8

The conviction that any scholarly activity in this area must first argue politically justifies a critique of the early phase of Exilforschung .9 Despite some claims to the contrary, such critical assessment should not be directed at the area of source studies. Finding the sources (endangered personal estates, institutional documents, "oral history" interviews),10 securing them, and making them available was an immediate duty and needs to continue even today. Instead it was the interpretive perspective of the early research that was problematic. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the historical events were completely subsumed under the almost neutral concept of "emigration." The scholarly debate of the 1960s and 1970s concerning the terms "emigration" and "exile" was not just a methodological or academic quarrel; rather, the arguments were informed by clearly divergent political positions. In 1973 Peter Laemmle defined emigration as "the event of involuntary expatriation" and exile as "the state of banishment."11 In later scholarship, however, the term "emigration" does not suggest expulsion so much as "voluntary migration" (though it remains questionable whether in regard to Nazi Germany any migration could be considered strictly "voluntary"), whereas the entire process of the forced expatriation is designated by the term "exile." "Exile," then, is multivalent, covering the act of expulsion, the process both of leave-taking and of arrival in the new land, and the status of the immigrant. As early as 1980 Claudia Maurer Zenck convincingly argued for this distinction with regard to exiled musicians; more recently it has been emphasized by the editors of the volume Musik im Exil .12

This new concept of "exile," however, has its problematic aspects too. The understanding of the immigrant as being in exile was propagated primarily by prominent immigrants from the political left. Bertolt Brecht's "On the Name Emigrants," a set of powerfully articulated verses from 1937 that are clearly informed by personal concerns, expresses this concept in an exemplary manner:

I always found the name false they gave us: Emigrants.
That means those who leave their country. But we
Did not leave, of our own free will
Choosing another land. Nor did we enter
Into a land, to stay there, if possible forever.
Merely, we fled. We were driven out, banned.
Not a home, but an exile, shall the land be that took us in.13

The imperative of this last line is based on hope, indicating both the strong feeling of a national identity that remains unchanged and the politically

motivated will to resist displacement and return home. Moreover, both seem paired with a secret contempt for "the land that took us in," resulting in the feeling of permanent "exile": the immigrant is a foreigner in a country that is strange to him; or, to use a terminological pun: the immigrant willfully remains an emigrant. This disturbing message is voiced even more strongly in Brecht's poem "On Thinking about Hell":

On thinking about Hell, I gather
My brother Shelley found it was a place
Much like the city of London. I
Who live in Los Angeles and not in London
Find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be
Still more like Los Angeles.14

Obviously, this is not Schoenberg's view of Los Angeles, and many others of his fellow refugees would not agree with Brecht's statement. Such subjective differences in artists' own evaluations of their immigrant status in fact reflect fundamental differences among the various arts, differences inherent both in the nature of the artistic "material" being tapped and in the social structures that sustain the individual arts. For poets and authors, for actors, for journalists, the medium of professional expression, language, is nationally defined. Such artists are therefore not easily uprooted and moved to a new country with a different language. In addition, the social network of institutions that support the literary culture in the homelandnewspapers, journals, publishers, distributors, critics, book clubs, libraries, theaters, academies, prizescannot be transposed to, or rebuilt in, the new country. Absent, too, is the corresponding readership or audience. Thus, with the exception of a few international authors, writers who were successful even in translation (Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Franz Werfel, for example), almost inevitably a strong feeling arose of being artistically without resonance and professionally isolated. This experience contributed fundamentally to the negative definition of immigration as exile. For musicians, however, and for performing artists in particular, the task of relocation, and of professional reestablishment in a new country, was much easier.15 Many of them had already performed in the United States; they were well known and were themselves familiar with the country, its social and professional conditions, and its cultural institutions; the more prominent among them already had American agents, even audiences. For these privileged immigrants, the transition was less problematic and the chances were good to get a permanent job, often at the level of their European positions.

For specific groups, of courseand the ordinary musician belongs here: the violinist in the back row of the orchestra, for example, or the second horn player from the town bandthe situation was more uncertain, especially given institutional and organizational differences between Germany

and the United States. Nevertheless, music itself, as a seemingly "universal language"or better: Western music as a common language for members of the Western musical culturedoes not require "translation"; thus, the active integration of the immigrant musician, of whatever caliber, into the professional life of classical music in the United States wasin generaleasier than for writers, actors, and others dependent on the written or spoken word. And that shaped the immigrants' view of their new country decisively. Scholars of the musical exile must therefore be very careful not to succumb to the influence of studies of the literary exile, where the problems and conclusions are in many ways different.

The second phase of exile studies, beginning in the mid-1970s, suffered from the uncritical readiness of scholars to study and generalize from personal experiences of the exile, such as Brecht's.16 The positive aspects that many emigrants assigned, or tried to assign, to their new status were ridiculed, as was the fact that many of them never intended to remigrate, but instead learned to accept their new country as the second, the "other," if not the only, homeland. For quite a number of refugees, the old homeland, Germany, had compromised itself forever.17 In Schoenberg's letter, for example, the new citizen's overall-positive view of his new homeland is manifest.18 The judgments of Brecht and Schoenberg, indeed, seem almost opposed. While Brecht calls Los Angeles his "hell," for Schoenberg that characterization goes to Nazi Germany, and the new country is not just "heaven" butemphatically poeticein Himmelreich (kingdom of heaven) orplainly religious"Paradise" (as in the speech mentioned above).

Damaged Psyche: "Es Ist Ja Alles So Traurig Worden!"

The overall positive attitude toward the country of immigration is based on a strong feeling of gratitude. And Schoenberg's willful insistence on the positiveit is a Himmelreich even if it does not look like one!can be understood as an effort to resist self-doubt and force the process of integration. In general, such an attitude has implications for the cultural activities of the immigrant, and for political engagement in particular: there is an unquestioned desire to support the new country and fight the old one and its fascist regime. In Schoenberg's case this includes loyalty to the United States as a prospective and then actual citizen as well as support for the cause of Jewry and, in a broader pro-Jewish, antifascist sense, for the foundation of the state of Israel; but it also concerns his work, specifically the late political compositions: the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte (1942) and, most important, A Survivor from Warsaw with its antifascist eschatology (1947).

Calling on his own experience, Theodor W. Adorno noted an enormous psychic strain resulting from exile: "Every intellectual in emigration is, without exception, mutilated, and does well to acknowledge it to himself, if he

wishes to avoid being cruelly apprised of it behind the tightly-closed doors of his self-esteem."19 This is apparent with Schoenberg as well. The encouraging, constructive words "never lose heart . . . you will find something" are immediately taken back: But then, everything has become so dismal! The overall assessment of the situation remains ambivalent. Certainly, the factor of time may bring some comfortI can by now feel quite satisfied with my situation but that is by no means an enthusiastic reassurance.

Thus, with the end of the letter, we again face the psychic repercussions of exile and the immigrant's ability to endure themthe term "immigrant" now being used to denote the refugee who has accepted his new citizenship. Yes, the letter assures: you will find something; yes, the letter confirms: I feel satisfied with my situation . But just as it began by noting the persistence of "hell," the letter ends on a melancholy note: Es ist ja alles so traurig worden! sounding much like a line from Heine. In its second paragraph, too, we find a reflection on the many changing life circumstances experienced even before the Nazis seized power.20 And indeed, particularly for Jewish citizens, the dis-integration of life began in many cases very early, with the "exile before the exiling," and continued through the various stages of flight from the Nazis.

The complicated mixture of the refugee's negative and positive self-diagnosis is encountered almost paradigmatically in Ernst Krenek's American diaries.21 In powerful words, these diaries describe how the experience of the violent expulsion resulted in a life of "constant angst for catastrophes."22 They also register the repression of this angst, this existential fear, and show how the image of the enemy Hitler becomes demonized; in this sense they display, writes the diaries' editor, the "tying of the individual situation with the political events, in order to understand the former through the latter and thus find a kind of solution for them."23 As Krenek puts it, "My basic attitude is fear, deadly fear, with brief intermittent spells of fearful hope." Under such psychic conditions, the quasi-normal professional uncertainty about the renewal of his appointment at Vassar College develops into a crisis of fundamental self-doubt:

Terribly, almost unbearably depressed. I am so completely terrorized by the insecurity of my future that I am in a state of real despair. I think this has little to do with the objective status of my affairs, which, by the way, may be pretty bad. I feel with growing apprehension how much of a stranger I am in this world, somehow on probation, just tolerated at times on some artificial assumptions of usefulness just the same. But in point of fact, I have the terrible feeling that all the "right" people agree definitely that I am not good at anything they care for.24

The arrogance that members of the old middle European nations displayed toward the much younger culture of the United States, a nation they per-

ceived as lacking in tradition, often lead to an exaggerated sense of artistic self-esteem.25 At the same time, because the anxiety of losing their identity was stronger for artists for whom an intact self represented a secured tradition, these immigrants experienced a distinct feeling of self-isolation.26 The central problem was to keep a balance between the preservation of an artistic identity based on the European tradition and the necessary adaptation to the new cultural and professional situation in America. It is interesting to observe that Krenek sought already early on to find, "instinctively and purposefully, a modus vivendi with America."27 He deliberately chose not to join one of the circles of immigrants, wanting instead to become an accepted member of the American scene. As far as Krenek's composing is concerned, both the turn to tradition, that is, the reflection on history as a basis for his work, and the adoption of the twelve-tone method as a means to guarantee aesthetic unity can be understood as responses to this status of the immigrant. History and order are relied on to banish the catastrophic anxieties and artistic self-doubts that the diaries reveal with such intensity.

Acculturation

Besides the traumatic experience of the expulsion itself, the problems connected with social and professional integration led to reactions of ambivalence as well. Schoenberg's letter names these problems in a simple manner: It has become rather difficult to procure positions. There are so many gifted people here. The statement alludes to professional conditions in the United States and the economic difficulties of the 1930s depression: the unstable level of unemployment, among musicians in particular; protectionist measures instituted by the unions, resulting in quotas; and the restrictive policy of issuing visasan additional hurdle faced by immigrants.

A fair approach to these problems of integration needs to start with a quantitative analysis of the immigration, in our case with the number of immigrant musicians (in the most general sense) who entered the labor market and their professional specializations. Unfortunately, no statistically secure numbers exist for the migration to the United States during the period in question; a general discussion must therefore suffice.28 Despite preexisting sympathy for the refugees, their reception into American society, and American cultural life in particular, was problematic. Nevertheless, as a response to the intensification of persecutions in Nazi Germany, culminating in the infamous Reichskristallnacht of 1938, one discerns a growing philanthropic readiness on the part of the American people to support the immigrants. Indeed, it seems that the private willingness of Americans generally to welcome and integrate the refugees was greater than the official governmental policy.29 Private agencies were immensely supportive, of scholars in particular.30 In spite of prevailing economic problems, then, there was

in the United States a basic "readiness of the preexisting situation," as Herbert Strauss put it, to provide opportunities, especially for musicians, whether artists, scholars, or educators. And this situation was in many cases met by a readiness, on the part of the immigrants, to accept and adjust to conditions in the new country.

But there was another side to this as well. Differentiation in degree of acculturation was inevitable, deriving primarily from such subjective factors as age, family status, political orientation, cultural expectations, ideological prejudices regarding the country of origin, life experiences and self-reflections, and psychological flexibility. Schoenberg's letter prepares for exactly this and advises his newly arrived colleague to: (1) be patient; (2) take anything that, in whatever way, will earn you a living . This includes not only the acceptance of lesser work in one's field but also a possible change in occupationa necessary step for many immigrants.

The admonition to exercise restraint and modesty needs no clarification. Although Rebner is a man of unqualified professional excellenceThere are so many gifted people here, though few of your reputation and ability there is, Schoenberg warns him, no place for European arrogance. On the contrary, the European elite are expected not to be afraid of workany kind of work: I find that for us, who have achieved the highest excellence in the highest positions, no labor would be degrading. I myself, who would rather teach "finishers," now have to teach beginners. But I passionately love teaching, and so I can by now feel quite satisfied .

Obviously, this reminder to accept the situation as given reflects Schoenberg's own experience with immigrant colleagues arriving from Europe. The feeling of superiority of the "cultivated" Old World relative to the only just "civilized" New World was, as Krenek remarked, widespread among immigrants, especially in the realm of culture. Werner Vordtriede tells the rather primitive anecdote of a refugee who, after many years in the United States, returned to Europe; asked by a friend about renting a piano in New York, the man answered: "You want to rent a piano there? In New York you will not be able to rent pianos. One does not have pianos there."31 Though more refined, Theodor W. Adorno's first reaction to his new country, as reported in "Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America," is similar. When he learned that the building that housed the Princeton Radio Project in Newark, New Jersey, was a former factory hall, he said, "I was very much taken by the lack of embarrassment about the choice of a site that would scarcely have been conceivable by the lights of the European academic community." Adorno begins his essay with another report on a confrontation with cultural superficiality: "I still remember the shock that a housemaid, an emigrant like ourselves, gave me during our first days in New York when she, the daughter of a so-called good home, explained: 'People in my town used to go to the symphony, now they go to Radio City.'

In no way did I want to be like her." Indeed, for Adorno the essential distinction between the American and the European intellectual lay in the difference between the "expert technician" and the gebildeter Mensch the person of learning and culture.32 It is well known that Schoenberg, too, cultivated such cultural biases. His letter of 13 May 1935 to an old friend in Vienna, David Joseph Bach (who later escaped the Nazis and settled in London), is a telling example: "One must never tell the truth, not even if I wanted to warn someone of a danger. Here in the partly (the greater part) still Wild West, one sees warnings like one I saw written on a house: 'If you want to shoot, do it now, otherwise you won't ever shoot again!' . . . Here everything wants to be praised . . . here, where everything is all wrong, there is uncertainty and fear of exposure which can endure only praise." Characteristically, however, the letter continues with an immediate rationalization of this deeply felt Old World conviction: "But I won't fall into European mistakes and merely grouse. . . . I have really found very many people whom I like."33

Extremes: "Americanization" and "Aggressive Defense"

The scope of reactions to the immigrant status is broad. On the one side is the consciously complete integration into the new environment, or, expressed with a somewhat negative European accent, "Americanization." The paradigm of an artist who embraced immigration without reservation as absolutely positive and who integrated himself, both artistically and personally, thoroughly into his new homeland and its culture (so much so that even the term "immigrant" seems no longer applicable) is Kurt Weillnot just by chance, a musician. Probably this easy integration explains why the so-called American Weill is greeted by postwar German musicologists and writers on music with almost hostile skepticism.34 The old European cultural arrogance and a general anti-Americanism go hand in hand.

At the other end of the spectrum stands, as a similarly paradigmatic case, Paul Hindemith.35 Although Hindemith was an enormously successful and influential composer and teacher of composition in the United States, his missionary convictions as an artist as well as his personal temperament led him to engage in rather aggressive verbal attacks and actions. His reaction to the spectacular artistic and political success of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony, no. 7, in 1942 is highly characteristic. Hindemith attacked, with rather vulgar aesthetic verdicts, that work, which has the German siege of Leningrad as its symphonic plot. As is well known, a microfilm of the score was smuggled out of the beleaguered city and reached the United States, where the declared antifascist Arturo Toscanini premiered and broad-cast the symphony nationwide. The German immigrant Hindemith felt it

necessary to compose against this antifascist symphonic manifestation in order to demonstrate "what music and what composition in fact are [i.e., should be]." For Hindemith, in short, the concrete political dimension of Shostakovich's symphony did not matter; rather, his own abstract didactic cycle of fugues and interludes la J. S. Bach, Ludus Tonalis , was conceived as a "moral conquest" over an artistic outcry about the possible military conquest of Leningrad by the German army.36 Even if, as a work of art, the Leningrad Symphony might legitimately be considered an "embasement of musical values," as Richard Taruskin asserts, Hindemith's lack of political sensibility is surprising.37 His reaction can only be explained (though not justified) in historical terms. In other words, as an artistic demonstration of his fundamental belief in the superiority of German musical culture, Ludus Tonalis came at a crucial point in his life: with the United States having entered the war with Nazi Germany, the cultural climate was about to change decisively, understandably turning against anything German.38 Professional-political anxiety mixed with basic aesthetic and ethical convictions about the true art of music thus apparently caused the German immigrant to lose his orientation and lash out in an aggressive act of self-defense.39

Current Trends

Martin Jay has commented on the various stages of Exilforschung in general, taking into account the differently motivated approaches both in the two German states, together with their political implications, and on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.40 Following Ernst Loewy, Jay sees a change in attitude and direction since the merger of the two Germanys, leading to a reconsideration of the dominant political interpretation of the "migr legacy."41 For the editors of Musik im Exil , the trend Jay observes may be an example of depoliticized Exilforschung and thus suspect.42 But the new stage of scholarship does not necessarily neglect a political orientation. Although the political aspect may not always be accented in recent studies, one can perceive it as aufgehoben in the Hegelian sense, as an integral part of the subject matter itself.

Most important, there exists a new international collaboration in the exploration of the musical emigration. This can be observed in the cooperation between American and German/Austrian as well as French scholars on issues of exile studiesin joint publications, in efforts to secure sources, in the organization of symposia.43 This combining of interests and approaches by scholars from various countries and of different political persuasions should introduce a broader, more open, dialogical atmosphere and better understanding of the perspectives and problems on both sides of the Atlantic. Undoubtedly, the continuing importance of exile studies is also sup-

ported by recent scholarly interest in the Holocaust and by a new emphasis in research on the history of Nazi Germanyon fascism and anti-Semitism in general, and on the role of the arts in particular. What was exceptional a decade ago, when the commendable reconstruction of the infamous "Degenerate Art" exhibit was undertaken in Europe and the United States, seems to be a sign of normalcy today: the 1997 Los Angeles art exhibit "Exiles and migrs: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler" subsequently traveled to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Indeed, not only was the forced migration of artists and intellectuals from Nazi Germany to various places all over the world a phenomenon with international ramifications but its historical importance and lasting impact as well as its moral dimensions can only be fully understood from an international perspective.

"Returning Home?"

The suspicion of depoliticization was in a sense confirmed a few years ago with the appearance of a German guidebook on the Los Angeles migr colony, one in a series of illustrated tours of such places as Goethe's Weimar, the Pierre Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, and the literary haunts of the Cte d'Azur.44 This commercialization of the exilewith maps, walking tours, bus excursions, and so forthcan certainly be perceived in terms of depoliticization, but it also testifies to the fact that the German Bildungs-brger has finally accepted emigration, as well as the decision not to remigrate, as an honorable action. The migrs are no longer perceivedas was the case in the bitter debates directly following World War II, at least in West Germanyas "deserters" and thus questionable as to moral virtue. Works born of and reflecting the exile (in particular, the American immigration) are now considered part of the canonic German repertory, in all the arts equally. For that reason, I prefer to call the current reassessment not depoliticization, but historical normalization.

Still, we need to be careful. "Normalization" should by no means imply losing a sense for the historically and morally extraordinary dimension of the expulsion from Nazi Germany: as stated above, this forced migration was part of, or for non-Jewish exiles, parallel to, that subhumanly unique event, the HolocaustSchoenberg's "hell." And the presence of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute housing the composer's archive on the campus of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, for several decades made the expatriation and immigration visible, serving as a memorial to that historical event. In 1998, however, the ASI, as it was internationally known, ceased to exit, and the archives were moved to Vienna. Indeed, a Viennese journal announced the move with the headline "Schnberg kehrt heim!""Schoenberg returns home!" For the migr, though, home once

become "hell" could therefore never be "heaven" againif, for a Viennese Jew, it ever had been. With the passage of time, then, and with witnesses no longer alive, there is the danger of forgetting. And in the case of the Viennese headline, the suspicion may be allowed that the unreflected intention was to make us forget, to erase the exile from the map of the migr's life, to bring about a late, posthumous reconciliation between him and his native country through a connection with the great tradition of Viennese music from Haydn and Mozart through Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms to Mahler. It is our, the historians', duty to insist that it was in fact the perversion of this tradition and its sublime ethics that shaped the migr's life and art. For the forced migration in the shadow of the Holocaust, the line to be remembered and to be engraved in people's memory forever is Es ist ja alles so traurig worden!

Continues...

Excerpted from Driven into Paradise: The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United States by Reinhold Brinkmann and Christoph Wolff, editors Copyright 1999 by Reinhold Brinkmann and Christoph Wolff, editors. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of California Press
• Date d'édition: 1999
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0520214137
• ISBN 13: 9780520214132
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 373
• Éditeur: Brinkmann Reinhold, Wolff Christoph
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Wiley-VCH GmbH; product_safety@wiley.com; ; Boschstrasse 12; Weinheim; 69469; Allemagne