In the Nazi imagination, music had a unique significance and power to seduce and sway the masses. The Party made widespread use of music in its publicity, and music featured prominently at rallies and other public events. The Horst Wessellied (Horst Wessel song) was popular and widely sung. Many propaganda songs were aimed at the youth, and the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) developed an elaborate music program.
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“Jonny Spielt Auf" from An Introduction to Entartete Musik, Courtesy of Decca Classics.
In the Nazi imagination, music had a unique significance and power to seduce and sway the masses. The Party made widespread use of music in its publicity, and music featured prominently at rallies and other public events. The Horst Wessellied (Horst Wessel song) was popular and widely sung. Many propaganda songs were aimed at the youth, and the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) developed an elaborate music program.
In 1938, the infamous Entartete Musik (Degenerate music) exhibition was mounted in order to identify to the German public what music was ‘degenerate’, to demonstrate its dangers, and celebrate its purging from German society. The Nazi leadership put great effort into removing ‘undesirables’ from Germany’s musical world, and from early on jazz and ‘Jewish’ music (and musicians) in particular were a target of attack and censorship.
The Nazi quest to purify and rebuild the German music world motivated an enormous amount of activity, planning, and policy-making. The Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Chamber of Music) was founded just months after the Nazi accession to power, with the intention of ‘cleansing’ the musical scene of Jews, foreigners, and political leftists, and improving the situation of ‘Aryan’ musicians. The Jüdischer Kulturbund (Jewish Cultural League), by contrast, was an exclusively Jewish organisation intended to temporarily employ the thousands of Jews fired under Nazi legislation.
Music was also deliberately exploited for propaganda purposes. The Kulturbund was supported by the Nazi leadership in part because it could be presented as proof that Jews were not being mistreated. Similarly, the vibrant Jewish cultural life in Theresienstadt was an effective propaganda tool, reinforcing the image of the camp as a ‘model’ Jewish settlement. In summer 1944, a visiting commission of the Red Cross was treated to a performance of Verdi’s Requiem and the children’s opera Brundibár.
