"Honor your German masters": The use and abuse of "classical" composers in Nazi propaganda

"HONOR YOUR GERMAN MASTERS": 1

THE USE AND ABUSE OF "CLASSICAL " COMPOSERS IN NAZI PROPAGANDA

Recent scholarship on Nazi music policy pays little attention to the main party newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter, or comparable Nazi publications for the general public. Most work concentrates on publications Nazis targeted at expert audiences, in this case music scholars. To think our histories of Nazi music politics are complete without comprehensive analysis of the party daily is premature. Perusing articles and images that described every phase of Hitler's rise to power and the world war from the perspective of committed party members, one learns what Nazi propagandists wanted average party members and Germans in general, not just top-level officials and scholars, to think-even about music. Therein, we see how propagandists placed a Nazi "spin" on music history, musicology, and composers' biographies. Using heretofore untranslated materials, I have detailed the terms by which Nazi propagandists incorporated the tradition of eighteenth-century German music into their system of cultural symbolism. Specifically, this article surveys the Volkischer Beobachter's reception of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart. Above all, National Socialist reception exaggerated the proto-Romantic components of eighteenth-century music. In their view, everything led to the "Iron Romanticism" they conceived as the cultural basis for uniting the volkish community and girding it for battle against enemies both internal and external. Implicitly, this outlook constituted a rejection of the ideals of the Enlightenment, but it was nonetheless communicated in terms designed to use the music greats of the period for National Socialist propaganda.

In recent years, much work has been done on the connections between music and politics in modern Germany. Particularly in the area of National Socialist culture, historians and musicologists have been investigating how music practices were associated with party and state propaganda. However, hampered partly by what some term a "conspiracy of silence" among persons who contributed to the Musikpolitik of the Third Reich and remained influential thereafter, it has taken intensive effort to determine just which music makers, administrators, and experts collaborated with Nazi authorities. To set this record straight, scholars have hitherto concentrated on histories of National Socialist cultural institutions and biographies of German musicians during the period.2

Work on the institutional background of Nazi music politics should be understood as a first step toward answering what I consider the central question pertaining to this field, as Michael Kater posed it, "What function did music have in a dictatorship that aimed at dominating the masses and then going to war?"3 To answer this, we must press our investigation beyond determining who was responsible for Nazi music policy to learn how specific composers and their compositions were incorporated into the National Socialist world view.

In my book on Beethoven in German political culture, I traced the history of the reception given that composer by activists from 1870 to 1989.4 To describe the process by which he was "nazified," I paid particular attention to how the Volkischer Beobachter promoted him. By reading interpretations of Beethoven in the principal Nazi newspaper, I learned not just that party propagandists considered his music an important part of their program but I also learned why they considered it so and how they made it part of their campaign. Still, surveying recent literature on Nazi music policy, I notice a relatively low number of references to the Volkischer Beobachter and comparable Nazi publications for the general public; most work concentrates on publications targeted at expert audiences, in this case music scholars. To think our histories of Nazi Musikpolitik are complete without comprehensive analysis of the party daily is premature. Perusing articles and images that described every phase of Hitler's rise to power and the world war from the perspective of committed party members, one learns from this resource what Nazi propagandists wanted average party members and Germans in general, not just top-level officials and scholars, to think-even about music.

To insert more of these materials into our coverage of National Socialist music policy, I have examined every page of the Volkischer Beobachter from January 1920 through April 1945 in search of each major article it published on "serious" music.5 Based on these articles, one can survey the terms in which the Volkischer Beobachter discussed every famous composer in the European music tradition, highlighting the ways in which it related them to Nazi ideology and policies. To be sure, much writing about music in the Volkischer Beobachter was free of explicitly political content; many innocuous concert reviews appeared in its pages. In the sections I have given prominence, however, we see how propagandists could place a Nazi "spin" on music history, musicology, and composers' biographies in Weimar and then Nazi Germany. The conceptual pattern of this process was consistent: the composer was first demonstrated to have been of legitimate German racial stock and defended against suggestions to the contrary; the biography of each was assessed for signs of general Deutschtum (Germanness) or even better, Volkstumlichkeit (folksiness); specific anecdotes were presented to demonstrate the artist's patriotism, militarism, anti-Semitism, Francophobia, Anglophobia, or "support" of other Nazi principles; the music of each was assessed for its Deutschtum or Volkstumlichkeit, and above all, its inspirational power; finally, the Volkischer Beobachter reported on specific uses to which a composer's works were put in National Socialist pageantry. No German composer was immune to these procedures of propagandistic exploitation in the party paper.6

Statistics derived from this research indicate some general trends of Nazi Musikpolitik. Ranked by the number of major articles devoted to each, the Volkischer Beobachter's "top eleven" list of composers would run as follows: Wagner (243), Beethoven (116), Mozart (107), Bruckner (47), Bach (43), Schubert (35), Brahms (23), Handel (22), Weber (20), Liszt (16), and Haydn (15). The most obvious theme these numbers convey is that Wagner received by far the most attention from the Volkischer Beobachter. This does not, in my opinion, reduce the significance of Beethoven in German political culture as a whole, for - as I have demonstrated elsewhere7 - he and his music were incorporated into the culture of every major group across the political spectrum. However, that Wagner was the central composer in the Nazi Weltanschauung is incontestable. Scholars have long written about the place of Wagner and his operas in Nazi ideology, working from records of Hitler's personal fascination and the resulting "nazification" of Bayreuth.8 Reception in the party newspaper confirms Wagner's enormous impact on National Socialism; virtually no major area of Nazi policy - cultural, social, economic, military, or racist - was addressed in the Volkischer Beobachter without some accompanying reference to Wagner's views on the matter.9

Besides Wagner's large profile, a second theme evident in the statistics above is the amount of attention given "Romantic" composers in the Volkischer Beobachter. Setting Beethoven aside for the moment (as a "transitional" figure in the shift from classicism to romanticism in music), six of the "leading" co30, no. 2 (Winter 2002): p. 273-295mposers in the list (Wagner, Bruckner, Schubert, Brahms, Weber, and Liszt) can be generally associated with the Romantic or Late-Romantic phases of music history, with four (Mozart, Bach, Handel, and Haydn) from the eighteenth century. This imbalance validates general assumptions about Nazi culture as having constituted, in large part, a Wagner-inspired neo-romanticism. That historians of National Socialist music politics have highlighted Nazi references to Wagner and other Romantic composers as models for an "Iron Romanticism" intended to fortify the Third Reich is fully justified. However, we should not overlook the fact that, as George L. Mosse articulated in his path-breaking work on volkish nationalism as a secular religion, "the classical tradition and romanticism did not merely confront each other within the rising spirit of national consciousness: [t]hey combined into a loose synthesis, or indeed coexistence, which was to determine the way Germans expressed their national spirit and its worship."10 Here, Mosse was addressing "classicism" as manifested in monuments and festivals originally designed for the "new politics" of the French Revolution. These cannot, of course, be correlated with so-called 11 classical" compositions of eighteenth-century music, but his statement does remind us not to underestimate the importance of pre-romantic music in Nazi culture. In order to explore this "loose synthesis, or indeed co-existence," therefore, I will present my findings about the Volkischer Beobachter reception of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart, under the general rubric of the exploitation of German "classical" culture by the Nazis.

It comes as no surprise that the Volkischer Beobachter worked intensively to incorporate Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and his music into National Socialist culture. Marking the anniversary of Bach's death in 1923, the Nazi newspaper referred to this composer as the "greatest German musician" of all: "Back arose as if to say: you Germans must have a great master."11 Deemed the "starting point of our great musical development," Bach was the first master of the canon whom members of the Nazi Gemeinschaft were expected to honor.12 "When we ask ourselves who raised German music to superior repute-who furnished it with universal value," readers were told, "the answer comes with the sound of his illustrious name: Johann Sebastian Bach."13 In the eyes of National Socialists, moreover, Bach's achievements also had repercussions beyond Germanic lands: "The aura of his being has spread out over all nations." In him, "The 'German' became an incontrovertible reality"-- as a "protean conqueror of souls."14

Every aspect of his work, the Volkischer Beobachter held, emerged out of "Germanic sensibility and perception." "Nordic" polyphony achieved its "greatest heights under the tutelage of Bach."15 But it was not Bach's technical achievements that National Socialists emphasized, for virtuosity alone was not the ground for volkish greatness: "Neither Bach, master of fugue, nor Bach, master of the art of calculated phrases," but Bach as a "conqueror of souls""this Bach," the Nazi paper claimed, "stands guard over the Reich of music."16 Above all, Bach expressed the "volkish feeling for life." 17

Fundamental to National Socialist implementation of Bach was the desire to transform him into a national hero, and this involved playing down his religious significance: "People have often referred to his work as the musical incarnation of Protestantism. In this way, it came to represent the musical component of the culture of Friedrich the Great's Prussian state. But it achieved much more outside the musical context. It provided the best proof in all Western musical history for the [possibility of] overcoming of artistic cosmopolitanism through the creed of nationalism."18 Referring to Bach's cantatas, the Nazi paper asserted that while they are "essentially liturgical," it would be a mistake to assume that their effect is "relevant only to church services." According to this appropriation of Bach's work for the secular religion of Nazism, the "tremendous impact of the cantatas is felt deeply," whether they are performed as part of Protestant liturgy or not. 19

In a related point, the Volkischer Beobachter held that the Bach revival of the mid-nineteenth century was above all a nationalistic phenomenon. "The German Wars of Liberation, and the victorious emergence of a volkish view of life," brought about a "conscious aesthetic return" to Bach: "nationalist that he was, the effort to revive the works of a master so clearly German was natural during the era of the Karlsbad decrees."20 It was certainly not Mendelssohn's involvement with the Bach revival that interested Nazi cultural politicians. Instead, they highlighted the Bach interpretation of their preferred nineteenthcentury master, Richard Wagner, which prefigured many of their favorite themes. "If you want to grasp the wonderful originality, force, and significance of the German spirit in an incomparably eloquent image," Wagner wrote and the Volkischer Beobachter reprinted, "you should look long and hard on the otherwise almost inexplicably puzzling phenomenon of the musical Wundermann, J. S. Bach." His story alone constitutes a history of the "innermost life of the German spirit" during a "dreadful century in which the German Volk was completely extinguished." Out of nowhere, there appeared this "German head," though "hidden under a ridiculous French wig." It took almost a century to save his work from oblivion-and even then, "only in superficial terms, as a supposedly 'perfect' symbol of his era: dry, stiff, pedantic-like wigs and pigtails represented in musical notes." But now, Wagner closed, one finally sees what a "world of inconceivable greatness" Bach formulated: "I can do no more than direct your attention to these creations, because it is impossible to convey through any sort of comparative analysis their richness, their sublimity, and their universal significance."21

I italicize the emotional approach to Bach's work suggested in Wagner's last sentence because it functioned as a cornerstone of music aesthetics through the National Socialist revolution and the resultant Third Reich.22 Equally significant, according to the Volkischer Beobachter, was the racial link between Bach, his art, and the German Volk of the twentieth century; they called it the "blood unity" (Blutsgebundenheit) between them. "This blood unity," Volkischer Beobachter commentary ran, "is a special characteristic of Bach's personality, which combines the best hereditary powers of a healthy species and therefore appears as a culmination of racial development. The feeling that his music wakes in us is the resonance of Nordic-Germanic soulfullness."23

Moreover, said the Volkischer Beobachter, Bach's music had relevance in the context of modern political development. "The fighting spirit and high religious idealism of the choral cantatas" could rekindle "the national strength of that time when Friederich the Second stood in the field against a world of enemies."24 As a symbol of "Prussia struggling and conquering in the spirit of Luther," Bach's art "prophesied about our fatherland in its present, most severe volkish struggle."25 Though directed away from traditional religious belief and toward the leadership of their own party, Nazis highlighted the powerful sense of faith conveyed in Bach's art as central to his contemporary value: "The present is once more a time of great transition (Weltwende). We will not be strong enough [to master it] without faith, and no one has given clearer musical expression to faith than Bach."26 By performing such works, present-day musicians were providing "power necessary to fulfill the duty of reconstructing our fatherland in the spirit of Bach and his time." 27

According to Nazi interpreters, Bach was very conscious and explicit about the use of his works in political culture, especially "national festivals." In Bach's view, they maintained, "it belongs among the political duties of a good composer to `accommodate oneself to the conditions of the time, the place, and the audience."' To justify claims about Bach's political purposes, the Volkischer Beobachter reminded readers that the Brandenburg Concertos were "contributions to court concert music," that the cantata Du Friedensfurst, Herr Jesu Christ arose "amid terrible wartime conditions in 1745," and that "Bach's Musikalisches Opfer owes its existence to the festive occasion of a visit by King Friederich [II]."28

Thus did the Volkischer Beobachter deem Bach's music a legitimate instrument for propaganda use, including performances of his Double Violin Concerto on the occasion of Hitler's birthday in 1933 and at numerous festivals marked by commentary from Nazi leaders.29 The most prominent of these were observances in 1935 of Bach's two-hundred-and-fiftieth, Handel's two-hundred-- and-fiftieth, and Schutz's three-hundred-and-fiftieth birthdays. For this celebration of the "Three Old Masters" (Drei Altmeister), Joseph Goebbels spoke at the Berlin Philharmonie as President of the Reichskulturkammer. Flanked by party banners, Goebbels used the occasion to convey his paradoxical goals of upholding the German music tradition while at the same time stimulating new music for the Third Reich. Insisting first that members of this trio were "German" not just because they "shared the blood of the German Volk" but because "their whole lives were a struggle to master the best forces of their Germanness," Goebbels admitted that "it cannot be our job to return to the styles determined by the conditions of past centuries." But, he held, "we must work every day to refresh the forces out of which our great masters created" while simultaneously "laying the foundations for every sort of musical development." The "forms" of classical mastery were outmoded, but "their spirit lives"; external conditions change, "but the essence of Germanness remains constant-as long as the German Volk survives." The "duty of every generation of Germans," Goebbels concluded, is to "ensure the immortality" of the Volk, as had the Drei Altmeister-especially Bach.30

Establishing the "Germanness" (Deutschtum) of every major composer was a primary point on the Volkischer Beobachter agenda. Variable were only the terms by which each "master" was drawn into the Germanic fold. The case of Georg Friederich Handel (1685-1759) involved some effort not because his German origins were in dispute-as for Franz Liszt and even for Beethoven-- but because of his permanent move to London in 1712.(31) Although Nazis could deem him a "true German composer,"32 they had to launch a polemic against associations of his life and art with English culture, particularly after the start of the Second World War.

The first element of the Nazi strategy to reclaim him was to constantly assert that Handel ever remained a "consciously nationalistic artist." He was so, according to the Volkischer Beobachter, "by disposition," "instinctively," because "he couldn't help it." Thus he remained "forever and completely," even during the half-century that he spent in England, "the great Saxon."33 The V61kischer Beobachter perceived Handel beyond just remaining conscious of his German roots, as actively promulgating a Germanic outlook abroad; in their terms, he served as the "earliest and most effective champion of German music in foreign lands." That German music "enjoys the highest respect throughout the world, but particularly in English-speaking lands," was above all thanks to Handel's "pioneering work." From the Nazi perspective, therefore, "Handel's cultural-political significance for Germany" could "not be overestimated." The question whether the music of the "German Handel living in England should be considered German or English seems irrelevant to us." Handel did not "displace English music with a German one." Rather, he "carried forth the musical impetus of nordic England, which had been asleep since Henry Purcell's death, into the great German stream of nordic creative power." Just as in the "creativity of Shakespeare, Holberg, Goethe, Nietzsche, or the important Scandinavian composers and poets of the last century," the "phenomenon of creative exchange between peoples of nordic blood manifests itself in Handel."34

To support these claims, the Volkischer Beobachter delved into the record of Handel's life abroad. Despite his forty-seven year stay in London, the newspaper reported, he "never became an Englishman," which is clear in the fact that he did not "trouble himself to master anything more than the barest essentials of the language of the land" and "only started using English texts for his oratorios in the last ten years of his life." A 1941 wartime article put these themes in stronger terms. Titled "Handel's Martyrdom in England," this broadside associated the composer with present-day Germans who had been living in foreign lands but were making their way back to the Fatherland during the conflict: "Along with the millions now returning to the Reich, there is one that we do not want to forget-one who, after a heroic half-century long battle at his lost outpost of German culture, fell.... Never has an artist of such brilliant, indisputable greatness had to fight his whole life against so much premeditated evil as Handel did in London-to the point of despair."35

The Volkischer Beobachter's approach to Handel's music emphasized its potential as nationalistic propaganda for the Nazi community: "Handel always speaks to the community, to the Volksgemeinschaft. If we are striving today to achieve a new ideal of a Gemeinschaftsmusik, we find the model in Handel and indeed already possess [examples] in his great orchestral works and oratorios."36 Specifically and most intensively, the Volkischer Beobachter sought to wrench Handel's Messiah from its ostensibly British origins and transform it into a German nationalistic instrument. With the Messiah, the Volkischer Beobachter held, Handel "returned to the artistic sources of his homeland, to his memories of youth in Halle: to his experience of German chorales, cantatas, and passions during his earliest, most impressionable years in Halle, Weissenfels, and Hamburg. Thus did he construct the Messiah out of forms which arose from German tradition alone." Most importantly, the Messiah-"his most German work"-was "born out of German faith and fighting spirit."37

The high point of Handel reception in the Nazi era was the combined "German Bach-Handel-Schutz Festival" of 1935. Somewhat surprisingly, the Volkischer Beobachter used this pre-war event to enunciate a policy of improving German-British relations-on the basis of racial affinity: "How the bond of blood has triumphed over all discord through centuries we can perceive in the examples of Shakespeare and Handel. Just as the towering greatness of the former was first truly recognized in Germany, so did the creativity of the latter receive its earliest acknowledgment in his host country." Therefore, the commemorations of Handel's two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday were "particularly suited to strengthen thoughts of nordic cultural unity."38 But in 1936 the Reichsmusikkammer staged the oratorio, Deborah, and Volkischer Beobachter comments made explicit the more ominous political significance Nazis could perceive in Handel's work: "The text [of Deborah] contains sections which could have been written explicitly for our times: `Give to our Volk a leader (Fuhrer) whose name is full of victorious renown, full of honor, whose arm is strengthened with new power-who will slay the enemy who oppresses us!"39

According to the Volkischer Beobachter, with Joseph Haydn came the "birth of the greatest epoch of German music, whose influences reach into our own day, and whose consequences resist all radical efforts at revolution."40 But for all his creative achievements as the greatest Klassiker of the German music tradition, the Volkischer Beobachter focused attention on three particular features in Haydn's career: the composition of what became the German national anthem, his attitude toward German lands during visits to England, and his "patriotic" death.

"The powerful German national consciousness of Haydn, which he always worked to preserve, becomes most clear in the fact that fate chose him to be the creator of the German national anthem. To be sure, he never dreamed of this when in 1796 he put the little tribute poem, Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, to music. But it was his singable and warm-hearted melody that later induced the poet Karl Wilhelm to give it a new text which disassociated it from any individual and-in short-encompassed the totality of Germanness, making out of it the German Volk hymn, Deutschland, Deutschland, fiber alles."41 Though written a dozen years beforehand, the Volkischer Beobachter perceived Haydn's Volkshymne as a "spiritual weapon against Napoleon's triumphant advance." For this reason it was, of all Haydn's creations, "his most significant work: whenever we are inspired by it, we should also think of the immortal genius whose greatest source of pride was always to be a recht deutscher Mann."42

As further proof of Haydn's "powerful national consciousness," the Vol!kischer Beobachter printed a fictional account of the composer under the title "Haydn's Happy Hour." In conversation, Haydn pines for his Heimat: "My life is now like a deep, golden day in autumn. Now I would like to be home among Germans.... Yes, it first became apparent to me here in England how much I depend on my homeland." After saying this, according to the Volkischer Beobachter story, Haydn sat down at his piano and began to play: "This was not him, not his will, not his music: this was Germany. He lost himself in the sound that flowed over him as if from another world, . . . playing over and over the melody which insured his immortality," by which the Volkischer Beobachter meant, naturally, the tune of Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser.43

To his end, according to the Nazi view, Haydn proved himself a patriot and the Volkischer Beobachter supported this-its central claim about the composer-by underscoring the following anecdote. In the middle of May 1809, "as Napoleon occupied Vienna for the second time, sadness and anger filled [his] heart." On 26 May, he called all of his servants into his room, had himself taken to the piano, and "played his Volk hymn three times with an expressive force that shook everyone present. Five days later, he died."44 Thus did the greatness of Joseph Haydn lie principally-in the minds of Nazi propagandists-- in having written the melody for Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles. Little mention was made in the Nazi paper about any of his approximately one thousand other works.

An immediate concern regarding the case of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) for the Nazis was to assess his "blood heritage" (Bluterbe). "Here," stated the definitive Volkischer Beobachter article on the matter, "will be shown the factors and relationships in Mozart's creativity which were determined by blood." Mozart was born of a marriage between an Augsburger father and a Salzburgerisch-Bayerischer mother, resulting in a "blend" (Blutmischung) which "must be considered unique and which determined his life and creativity." 45 In many ways, these convoluted efforts to define the regional characteristics of a German artist mark a continued effort among the Nazis to classify the "German identity." Historians have justifiably concentrated on the terms by which Nazi racism defined non-Germans, but these sources remind us that they also had to work at clarifying what did constitute a "German," given the historical and cultural diversity of the groups they wished to subsume under that category. A further example with reference to Mozart reflects the problems they created for themselves in this pathetic process of self affirmation: "One often hears said that Salzburg belongs to Mozart as much as Mozart belongs to Salzburg. Here he was born and here he first fluttered his wings. But this is not completely accurate, for in Mozart a good measure of swabische blood works along with his Salzburg heritage. His taste for happiness, the droll amorousness of his being, his chattiness, and even that dark shadow of a `philosophical way of looking at things': all of this is completely swabisch. Still, those who consider Salzburg and Mozart as a unified concept aren't all wrong." 46

Somewhat divided about precisely which sort of "German" Mozart was, Nazi critics were united in the opinion that he was indeed a German composer. They did, however, consider it necessary to clarify this point, owing to Mozart's closeness to the Italian music tradition and his reputation-promoted by Nietzsche among others-as a "European" artist. "One casually refers to Mozart as the ultimate `Rococo musician,"' the VOlkischer Beobachter countered, "without recognizing that he is a heroic-demonic fighter and a profound source of the ultimate wisdom." Mozart saw "beyond the borders that were set for his `Italianate endeavors,' conceiving himself as a German musician in the best sense of the word."47

In addition to its Germanic and supposedly patriotic origins, the Volkischer Beobachter perceived at least two further components of Mozart's music that made it relevant to National Socialist culture. The first was an underlying volkish quality: "What strikes us above all is its singability, its melodic character." Grounded on this "primal basis of music,"-melody-- "Mozart's music stirs even the simplest people: it is not in the least addressed to experts." Nazi efforts to draw Mozart from the domain of elite culture opened with reference to Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail. Therein he formulated a "refined German song style despite the Italian buffo element and in spite of the apparent influence of French opera comique." This volkish tendency in Mozart's art was said to have culminated in Die Zauberflote, where "the German-national thrust of the work," especially Papageno's melodies, were "dominated by the Volk tradition of the Vienna Singspiel, and strongly colored by local influences."48

Second were his contributions to the development of Romanticism in music, which the Volkischer Beobachter emphasized to counter views of his art as a pinnacle of musical neo-classicism. Since he referred to composing as his "sole joy and passion," during which "ideas came in streams," Mozart represented a "prototype for the creative genius-and at the same time as a serious admonishment against our 'productive' times: music should be taken as a gift from the Godhead, not as a product of cool reflection or frantic intellectual work." Clearly this opinion of Mozart corresponded with the anti-intellectual, volkish themes of National Socialism in general. Moreover, Nazis perceived in their version of Mozart a counter-example to trends in modern music which they despised: "Our era"-the Nazi era-"which has just left behind an unfortunate period of horrible confusion in the areas of art, confesses itself with open heart to Mozart: whenever again art loses its sanity, it will return to health under the sign of Mozart." Instead of works from the New Viennese school, "produce Mozart's operas and you will commit not only a volkish, fatherlandish deed, but also fulfill an artistic need that is today greater than ever."49

Above all, Mozart's patriotic impulse faced the challenge of promoting a National Opera. High Viennese culture-the center of "German" music lifewas infected by Welschen (Latins), i.e., the Italian music contingent; Mozart's "mission" was to replace Italian fashion with a genuine German opera tradition.50 In the pages of the Volkischer Beobachter, therefore, Mozart's operas received particular attention. His first contribution to the "idea of a German national opera" was Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail; this score surpassed "hackneyed, worn-out applications of forms" associated with the Italian style, "radiating the fire of a lively sensitivity such as one finds nowhere among the Italians themselves, even the best of them,"51 but this was only a start. What Mozart was not able to achieve in his Entfuhrung, namely help German opera triumph over Italian, "he attained-as paradoxical as it may seem-via his 'Italian' works, Figaros Hochzeit and Don Giovanni." These operas "violently broke from Italian influence"; with them "Mozart beat the greatest Italian masters of his time on what had been exclusively their own turf."52

Given its reputation as a document of eighteenth-century liberal values, the Volkischer Beobachter had to take care in appropriating Le Nozze di Figaro: "Admittedly, Figaros Hochzeit draws from Beaumarchais' socio-critical, revolutionary work, but it is not in the slightest sense oriented in that direction: its concern, rather, is with mankind in general."53 This problem so deftly solved, Nazis still had to confront the issue of Da Ponte, Mozart's favorite librettist, who was of Jewish background. This matter drew from Volkischer Beobachter critics dark evidence of its racist agenda: "Da Ponte, the librettist, was-unbeknownst to most people-a Jew." In all of his work and life he proved himself a "definite precursor of that crummy (mornen) bunch of Jews who write too much" and who write "not out of inner compulsion, but just because they know how to make a living out of it."54 The basis for this assessment of Da Ponte was the simple fact that he would work on more than one opera at the same time (as if the "German" Mozart wouldn't have considered doing such a dastardly thing). Beyond this, the Volkischer Beobachter simply assessed Da Ponte's work as substandard-as the weak link in Mozart's creative process which the "German" composer had to overcome: "Mozart did not slip and fall on Da Ponte's shiny Glitz. He ennobled the frivolous text of Figaro by applying to it the reserve, refinement, and soulful depth of German music. Thereby did he provide the librettist a sort of unearned renown, in the shadow of his immortal genius."55 It was concerns like these about Da Ponte that ultimately led to the establishment of the Reichsstelle fur Musikbearbeitung, an office partly devoted to replacing the texts of "German masterworks" which happened to be written by persons of Jewish descent.

Written in Italian and set in Spain, Don Giovanni also required nationalistic rehabilitation for use in the Third Reich: "There is a tendency to misconstrue this work as 'European' or `above nationality,' and yet it could only have arisen from a German nature."56 In the pages of the Nazi paper, Don Giovanni was a proto-Romantic work-meaning, of course, German: "With firm grip," Mozart "seized hold of the darker motives of human passion"; thence, it was "only a short step to the Romantic." Here "strikes the first storm of the `music drama,' which one Richard Wagner was destined to perfect";57 Fidelio, Freischutz, and Tannhauser "go forth on the path broken by Don Giovanni."58

Ignoring that they also attributed this achievement to Handel, Karl Maria von Weber, and Wagner, Volkischer Beobachter writers commended Mozart for writing the "first German opera."59 "Over night, as if out of nowhere, German opera emerged in its most perfect form: German above all is its tonality (Tonsprache), for all its sublimity, simple and richly sensitive; German is the Lied form making its first appearance in opera; German is the magically romantic impact of the music; German is the musical representation of the characters, especially Sarastro and the lovers, Tamino and Pamina. For Germany, September 30, 1791-the day of [Die Zauberflote's] premiere in a modest suburban theatre in Vienna-is also the birthday of German opera. Without Die Zauberflote, German Romanticism would be unthinkable." What attracted National Socialists to Die Zauberflote in particular were its popular-in their term, volkish-elements, embodied in the character of Papageno,60 but Volkischer Beobachter reception of the opera was not wholly unproblematic either; for Nazis, the trouble with Die Zauberflote lay in its Masonic connotations. It is not surprising that the V61kischer Beobachter treated this matter by simply blaming all assumptions about the Masonic content of Die Zauberflote on inappropriate staging. Describing a 1928 performance as a "Jew To-Do" (Judenrummel), the paper reported that "the Bolshevik opera studio in Salzburg and the Jew Max Reinhardt are using Mozart's Die Zauberflote as an advertisement for world-wide Freemasonry, and are thereby ruthlessly raping a musical masterpiece which is dear to us."61

In productions deemed appropriate, however, Nazi cultural operatives considered Mozart's music a valuable propaganda instrument: "Particularly in our times, it should constitute a symbol and a source of hope."62 The best opportunity for cultural politicians of the Third Reich to exploit Mozart came in 1941, the one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the composer's death (Todestag). The fact that this anniversary landed amid the Second World War did nothing to hinder National Socialist Germany from observing it. Indeed, the intensity with which Nazi Kulturpolitiker did so is a strong indicator of the importance they attached to music and art matters in the "new era."63 Even in wartime, concerts, ceremonies, and radio broadcasts were organized throughout "Greater Germany," the Volkischer Beobachter announcing that "everything has been arranged according to the will of the Reichsminister fur Volksaufklarung and Propaganda, Dr. Goebbels." On Mozart's Todestag proper, the main commemorative ceremony took place at the Vienna Staatsoper. After the Vienna Philharmonic performed a Mozart overture, Goebbels rose to give a speech which was later published in the Volkischer Beobachter under the title, "The German Soldier Is Also Protecting Mozart's Music." One could ask, Goebbels opened rhetorically, whether an official function marking Mozart's one-hundred-- and-fiftieth Todestag is "appropriate in light of the brutal events of our day." He responded in the affirmative, "for Mozart's music belongs along with all of those things which our soldiers are defending against assault." More than any other works of art, it has "passed into the possession of the widest masses of our Volk." This, Goebbels continued, is why "we don't see any contradiction between the world of sound in which he lived and worked and the hard and threatening world we are experiencing, the chaos of which we want to transform into discipline (Zucht) and order." The Nazis' arch-propagandist closed by underscoring the composer's volkish qualities: "Mozart's importance is not confined to the fact that he was master of perfect musical form, only for privileged classes and art music experts to enjoy: he is a Volk artist in the truest sense of the word.... Volkish spirit thrives in all of his music." Like scarcely any other, Mozart "fulfilled the great mission of art: to raise the spirits of a tormented humanity and remove it to a better world." 64

On the day after this ceremony, another ritual in Vienna brought out Nazi luminaries again. In front of St. Stephan's Cathedral, representatives from eighteen nations gathered with the Grossdeutsch leadership to lay another wreath. As reported in the Volkischer Beobachter: "By order of the Fuhrer and Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht, the Reichsstaathalter of Vienna, Reichsleiter Baldur von Schirach presented an olive wreath for the foot of a catafalque and memorial flame, expressing the reverence that the German Volk has for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart." Goring, Goebbels, von Ribbentrop, and von Schirach then placed the wreath, "while the sound of all the church bells of Vienna vibrated over the city in praise of a national immortal." Finally, fanfares derived from Die Zauberflote sounded over the Stephansplatz "on which the population of Vienna had gathered under national flags-thus did [the Volk] pay homage to Mozart."65

Of course, all ceremonies in Austria were represented by the Volkischer Beobachter as signs of "Grossdeutsch" culture: "With the homecoming of the Ostmark to the German Reich, a wide gap has been closed, and all traces of the [divided] past will soon disappear. The name of Mozart, which was previously used as a mere advertisement for the Salzburg Festival, has once again begun to shine with its pure, unadulterated brilliance." Special wartime significance was attached to the Salzburg Festival in 1941: "Unlike any previous version," this one was intended primarily for members of the Wehrmacht, "to provide the heroes of this world-historical struggle with some rest and edification." Thus, the Salzburg street scenes were "strongly distinguished by the presence of uniforms." During the militarized Festspiel, Goebbels himself placed a wreath in the room where the "master" had been born, and the Volkischer Beobachter commented: "Mozart, Salzburg; a war amid the peace of a great tradition; the peace of eternal artistry amid a war of world-wide transition-these thoughts and moods can only be expressed superficially, but they unite into a profound community everyone who is doing their duty both in the field and at home"66

Beyond such tributes made at the height of German military success, Mozart references continued to appear in the pages of the Volkischer Beobachter when the tide turned. The most dramatic of these ran under the title, "The Musician of God." This article was published on January 31, 1943, amid the very last stage of the battle for Stalingrad. Simultaneous with the capitulation of the Sixth Army, the V61kischer Beobachter asserted that Mozart's music "finds its greatest resonance in the German populace, conveying an artistic experience which lifts it out of the horrors of daily life into light and blessed heights."67 Thus did the Nazis try to appropriate the music of Mozart as a source of both inspiration in victory and salvation in defeat. But one wonders if statements like these, ostensibly intended to provide solace to those losing loved-ones on the Eastern front, had any redeeming effect at all, since the only subsequent mention of the surrender at Stalingrad to appear in the Volkischer Beobachter was a brief announcement from Goebbels that theaters and concert halls would be closed on February 4 through 6 (1943), as a "memorial gesture."68

What motivated National Socialist propagandists-a term I think we can fairly apply to anyone who wrote for the Volkischer Beobachter-to devote so much energy to linking the party, its leaders, and its platform to the German serious music tradition? It is evident that music reception in the paper was intended to associate the N. S. D. A. P. with the highest strains of German and European culture. This endeavor can be related to the general goal of representing the Nazi leadership as a group capable of constituting a new political and social elite in Germany. In his book on art theft perpetrated by the Nazis both before and during the war, Jonathan Petropoulos detailed the motives driving the "gift and pillage" culture that operated at the leadership level of the Third Reich. In brief, acquiring art masterpieces was a means for Hitler's circle to establish stature both vis a vis the traditional elites of German society and also vis a vis other representatives of the "new order," supposed "comrades" with whom they were in constant, ruthless competition, especially for the Fuhrer's attention.69

Because the option of actually "possessing" musical compositions was less open to them (I have not read of Nazis stealing autographes or first editions, although this may have occurred), it is difficult to establish the personal motives of those interested in appropriating the German music tradition as clearly as Petropoulos did regarding art thievery. Histories of the competition among those who vied to control German music institutions demonstrate that personal status was a motivating factor. But in the matter of manipulating meanings ascribed to musical compositions themselves, motives of greed and conspicuous consumption are less evident than broader intentions of improving the reputation of the party as a whole. We encounter in these sources the interpretive equivalent of pillaging the German music tradition, but this is mainly done in the interest of the party, its Fuhrer, and its ideological program broadly conceived. Appropriating the significance of musical masterworks was a means by which the Volkischer Beobachter increased the self-worth of anyone who was, or might be tempted to become, a member of the party.

This point may be plainer if we consider the populist tone of most Volkischer Beobachter music reception. In articles that blatantly politicized German composers, very little music analysis appeared. Even where discussion of technical issues is unavoidable, for instance in the cases of Bach's fugues or Haydn's contributions to sonata style, Volkischer Beobachter articles countered that, in the end, issues of "production" (a term the paper used in a derogatory way, apparently related to the "productive" thrust of late capitalism) were less significant than the "passionate" aspects of music composition, real or romantically imagined. This decidedly anti-intellectual approach to music correlated with other important themes of Nazi culture. On the one hand, criticism of formalist approaches to the arts as a lamentable tendency of intellectuals (perceived as mainly Jewish), and on the other, emphasis on holistic connections running through arts produced by Germans, their physical landscape, and their social destiny as a "Volk" expressed in neo-romantic terms modified for twentieth-century, post-World-War circumstances-an Iron Romanticism (eiserne Romantik).

But, keeping in mind that the Volkischer Beobachter was written for the average German reading public-or perhaps an even less sophisticated audience: average members of the N.S.D.A.P. - a more immediate explanation might better account for the popular tone of its music coverage. Given that working and lower-middle class exposure to "serious music" was-as ever-limited, German political parties perceived opportunities to fill the popular mind with just enough knowledge about classical compositions to suggest that they represented notions of preferred ideologies. The German left was the first, starting in the late nineteenth century, to institutionalize programs for popularizing the serious music tradition: in socialist terms, of course, but rightwing groups followed suit, particularly after the First World War, and National Socialist cultural politics must be considered within this wider competitive context. Against leftist assertions that the masses should perceive music in Marxist terms-as socially determined and, at its best, prescriptive of proletarian revolution-far right-wingers posited a volkish approach. Beyond rendering it more "accessible" and "relevant" to average Germans, volkish terms of reception offered them a sense of direct association with creative greatness: if they accepted the Nazi line, all Germans could derive strength and motivation from the same sources of volkish Kraft that inspired Bach, Haydn, and Mozart, whether they applied it to composing music, digging ditches, building the Autobahn, or taking action in combat. National Socialist Musikpolitiker extended to readers-no matter how low in rank or status-a way to perceive themselves as tapping into the same fund of genius that inspired the great musicians. When "honoring the German masters," therefore, Germans were indirectly honoring themselves. This was an important aspect of National Socialist propaganda which we tend to overlook; accent was certainly placed on identifying and excoriating enemies, but this was done within an overall project of restoring German confidence after defeat in the First World War and subsequent national downturns, especially in the economy. Self-identification and self-affirmation based on other areas of activity were important themes in Nazi culture and they show up very strongly in the music reception of the Volkischer Beobachter.

Of course, the terms by which the Volkischer Beobachter "taught" the Volk to understand art music also reveal the darker propagandistic motives behind their cultural agenda. As these sources demonstrate, Nazis used music history and criticism as a platform for communicating all of the major planks of their ideological campaign: national and racial cohesion (Deutschtum), antiSemitism, duty, the Fuhrer principle, rejection of modernism, militarism, justification for German hegemony, Anglophobia, Francophobia, and finally, national redemption after defeat in the Great War.

Let me close with a few comments about Volkischer Beobachter reception of composers associated with the "classical" era of music history in particular, defined here as running from Bach through Mozart. Regarding the creations of masters active mainly up to the nineteenth century, the sources indicate that-in comparison to "standard" views of the age-National Socialists either ignored or censured religious content (especially in Bach's work), rococo "frivolity" (as in the music of Haydn and Mozart), any "international" themes (for instance extra-German influences on Handel, Haydn, and Mozart), and all "Enlightenment" aspects of eighteenth-century classicism. Clearest in the Volkischer Beobachter's treatment of the Masonic aspects of Mozart's Die Zauberflote, the latter omission also seems related to Nazi tendencies to minimize the formal aspects of music and maximize its soulful, passionate, mystical-in a word, volkish-elements.

Above all, National Socialist reception exaggerated the proto-Romantic components of the eighteenth-century heritage-at least as represented in music. Throughout these articles and reviews, Nazis insisted on continuity between classical masters and the nineteenth-century Romantic composers whom they clearly preferred, especially Richard Wagner. Accepting Wagner's own line wholeheartedly, they promulgated the claim that all paths of German musical development led to his formulation of music drama, the pinnacle of the tradition. Everything led to the Iron Romanticism they visualized as the cultural basis for uniting the volkish Gemeinschaft and girding it for battle against enemies both internal and external. Implicitly, this outlook constituted a rejection of the ideals of the Aujklarung, but it was nonetheless communicated in terms designed to salvage the masterworks of the period for National Socialist propaganda use.

1 This exhortation, Ehrt eure deutschen Meister, from the finale of Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger, was often inserted into articles about music in the Volkischer Beobachter.

2 Joseph Wulf, Musik im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Mein: Ullstein, 1983); Fred K. Prieberg, Musik im NS-Staat (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1982); Hanns-Werner Heister and Hans-Gfinter Klein, eds., Musik and Musikpolitik im faschistischen Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1984); Michael Meyer, The Politics of Music in the Third Reich (New York: Peter Lang, 1991); Alan Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1993); Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (New York: St. Martin's, 1994); Michael H. Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Pamela M. Potter, Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler's Reich (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998). See my reviews of Levi, Music in the Third Reich in The Historian, vol. 58, no. 1, Autumn 1995, 177-178; Kater, The Twisted Muse in the German Studies Review, May 1998, 376-378; and Potter, Most German of the Arts in the German Studies Review, February 2000, 222.

3 Michael H Kater, "Carl Orff im Dritten Reich," Vierteljahrshefte ftir Zeitgeschichte 43, 1 (Januar 1995): 1.

4 David B. Dennis, Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1996).

5 1 use the term "serious music" as a translation of the German Ernstmusik to indicate my focus on what is commonly known in American English as "classical" music, as opposed to Unterhallungsmusik that would include more popular forms. By "major articles," I mean feature articles that assessed music or musician in some depth, not just concert reviews unless these treated a composition or composer in a unique way or described performances associated with landmarks such as birth or death anniversaries or pivotal events in German history.

6 As Pamela Potter has demonstrated, academic "justifications" for many of these interpretations were derived from musicology which "publicized the German musical legacy as a source of national pride." See Potter, Most German, passim.

7 Dennis, Beethoven in German Politics; and David B. Dennis, "Beethoven At Large: Reception in Literature, the Arts, Philosophy, and Politics" in Glenn Stanley, ed., Cambridge Companion to Beethoven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 292-305.

8 See David B. Dennis, "Review Essay on Recent Literature about Music and German Politics," German Studies Review, October 1997, 429-432, where I addressed Paul Lawrence Rose, Wagner: Race and Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992); Marc A. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1995); Frederic Spotts, Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994); Michael Meyer, The Politics ofMusic in the Third Reich (New York: Peter Lang, 1991); and Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (New York: St. Martin's, 1994). See also David B. Dennis, "Crying 'Wolf ? A Review Essay on Recent Wagner Literature" German Studies Review, February 2001, 145-158, where I discussed Joachim K6hler, Wagner's Hitler: The Prophet and his Disciple, trans., Ronald Taylor (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2000); Stephen McClatchie, Analyzing Wagner's Operas: Alfred Lorenz and German Nationalist Ideology (Rochester, NY: University of

Rochester Press, 1998); and Lydia Goehr, The Quest for Voice: Music, Voice, and the Limits of Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

9 For more on Wagner reception in the Volkischer Beobachter specifically, see David B. Dennis, "The Most German of all German Operas: Die Meistersinger Through the Lens of the Third Reich" in Nicholas Vazsonyi, ed. Wagner's Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, forthcoming).

10 George L. Morse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements Germany from the Napoleonic Wars Through the Third Reich (New York: Howard Fertig, 1975) 33.

11 Hans Buchner, "Joh. Sebastian Bach," Volkischer Beobachter, 29 June 1923.

12 Max Neuhaus, "Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Feier: Erster Tag" Volkischer Beobachter, 13 June 1934.

13 Karl Grunsky, "Weg zu Johann Sebastian Bach," Volkischer Beobachter, 21 March 1935.

14 Heinrich Stahl, "Der Meister," Volkischer Beobachter, 21 March 1935.

15 Buchner, Bach.

16 "Munchener Bachfest 1935: 1. Abend," Volkischer Beobachter, 6 June 1935.

17 Buchner, Bach.

18 Ibid.

19 Wilhelm Hitzig, "200 Bachantaten im Rundfunk," Volkischer Beobachter, 8 Decenber 1937.

20 Buchner, Bach.

21 Richard Wagner, "Was ist Deutsch?" cited in Gr., "Ob er schon gewesen," V61kischer Beobachter, 21 March 1935.

22 For discussion of Wagner's Schopenhauer-inspired "expressivistic" approach to music, see Dennis, "Crying `Wolf?"

23 "Bach-Abend des Kampfbundes ftir Deutsche Kultur," Volkischer Beobachter, 17 November 1933.

24 Dr. B., "Musikrundschau," Volkischer Beobachter, 10 October 1923.

25 Ibid.

26 "Das deutsche Bachfest in Bremen," Volkischer Beobachter, 11 October 1934.

27 Josef Klingenbeck, "Musik von Heldentum und Seelengrosse," Volkischer Beobachter, 14 July 1939.

28 Ibid.

29 "Morgenfeier," Volkischer Beobachter, 19 April 1933.

30 "Drei Altmeister der Musik: Reichminister Dr. Joseph Goebbels fiber Bach, Handel, and Schiitz," Volkischer Beobachter, 31 March 1935.

31 Potter has addressed the issue of Handel's "Germanness" as it was treated in academic publications. See Potter, Most German, 221-228.

32 "Das Problem der neuzeitlichen Handel-Auff ihng," V,Ikischer Beobachter, 9 July 1927.

33 Ludwig K. Mayer, "Georg Friedrich Handel: Zu seinem 175. Todestage," V61kischer Beobachter, 14 April 1934.

34 Waldemar Hartmann, "Georg Friedrich Handel and England: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte nordischer Kulturverbundenheit," Volkischer Beobachter, 22 January 1935.

35 Friedrich Baser, "Handel's Martyrium in London," Volkischer Beobachter, 17 May 1941.

36 Mayer, Handel.

37 Baser, Handels Martyrium. Beside the Messiah, Nazi cultural politicians paid attention to works by Handel which they perceived as "representative examples of music written for national festivities," including his Birthday Ode for Queen Anne, the Water Music, Alexander's Feast, Dettlingers Te Deum, a march for the London Corps of Volunteers, Judas Makkabeus, and his music for the royal fireworks (Josef Klingenbeck, "Musik von Heldentum and Seelengrosse," Volkischer Beobachter, 14 July 1939).

38 Hartmann, "Handel and England."

39 "Wie Handels Test-Oratorium' entstand," Volkischer Beobachter, 11 June 1936.

40 Wolfgang Gottrau, "200 Jahre Joseph Haydn," Volkischer Beobachter, 31 March 1934.

41 Paul Zschorlich, "Deutsche Komponisten aus dem Burgenland," Volkischer Beobachter, 8 January 1936.

42 Ludwig K. Meyer, "Ein recht deutscher Mann: Zum 125. Todestage Joseph Haydns," Volkischer Beobachter, 31 May 1932.

43 Gustav Christian Rassy, "Die gliickliche Stunde Joseph Haydns," Volkischer Beobachter, 21 August 1938.

44 Zschorlich, "Deutsche Komponisten."

45 Uwe Lars Nobbe, "Mozarts Bluterbe," V6lkischer Beobachter, 19 October 1941.

46 Erwin Bauer, "Salzburger Schneurlregen mit Musik," Volkischer Beobachter, 27 April 1941.

47 Nobbe, "Mozart's Bluterbe."

48 Ibid.

49 Junk, "Genie." See also, H. B., "Zum Munchener Mozartfest," Volkischer Beobachter, 24 May 1923.

50 Erwin Wising, "Die Idee einer Nationaloper," Volkischer Beobachter, 26 February 1945.

51 Dr. B., "Minchener Mozart-Festspiele: Die Enthrung aus dem Serail," Volkischer Beobachter, 9 August 1929.

52 Ferdinand M6ssmer, "Die Geburt der deutschen Oper," Volkischer Beobachter, 14 October 1934.

53 Heinrich Stahl, "Operntext and Zeitgeschichte," Vlkischer Beobachter, 25 December 1942.

54 j. St-g, "Don Giovanni," VOlkischer Beobachter, 17 August 1929.

55 Dr. B., "Festspiele im MUnchener Residenztheater: Die Hochzeit des Figaro," Volkischer Beobachter, 1 August 1928.

56 Heinrich Stahl, "Geniale Manner fiber das Genie Mozart: 150 Jahre Don Giovanni," Volkischer Beobachter, 29 October 1927.

57 "Festspiele im Residenztheater: Don Giovanni," Volkischer Beobachter, 17 August 1928.

58 Dr. B., "Don Giovanni," Volkischer Beobachter, 6 August 1927. 59 Mossmer, "Geburt." Die Zauberfiote was, according to their essays, "the work with which Mozart secured a place for his operatic art on every stage in the world. With it Mozart fixed his place in music history, and, as a German, gained victory over Italian opera which still dominated in his day" (G. A., "Die Zauberflote," Volkischer Beobachter, 31 December 1929).

60 "Die Zauberfi,te is not merely an opera, but also a Volkstiick of the Viennese magical and mechanical theater tradition. In order to revive the spirit of that era-particularly the typically South German aspects of this artone should draw out its popular (volkstumlich), sentimental, and naive features" (Franz Posch, "Salzburger Theater- and Musiksommer 1943," V61kischer Beobachter, 29 August 1943).

61 T. H. L., "Die Salzburger Festspiele: Ein Judenrumel," V61kischer Beobachter, 6 September 1928.

62 H. B., "Zum Michener Mozartfest," Volkischer Beobachter, 30 May 1923.

63 "Das Mozartj ahr," VOlkischer Beobachter, 27 January 1941.

64 Joseph Goebbels, "Auch Mozarts Musik verteidigt der deutsche Soldat," Volkischer Beobachter, 6 December 1941.

65 "Ein Kranz des Fihrers zum Gedenken Mozarts," Volkischer Beobachter, 7 December 1941.

66 "Beginn der Salzburger Festspiele," Volkischer Beobachter, 4 August 1941.

67 Gunther M. Greif-Bayer, "Der `Musikant-Gottes,"' Volkischer Beobachter, 31 January 1943.

68 ,Theater and Unterhaltungsstatten bis 6. Februar geschlossen," Volkischer Beobachter, 4 Febrary 1943.

69 Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press), 1996.

DAVID B. DENNIS

Loyola University Chicago

Journal of Political & Military Sociology, 2002, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Winter):273-295

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