Karl Böhm

Karl Böhm (1894–1981) was an Austrian conductor renowned for his interpretations of Mozart, Strauss, and Wagner, and for his long association with Europe’s leading opera houses and orchestras. Born in Graz, he studied law at Graz University before pursuing music at the Graz Conservatory, where he trained in conducting and composition. His professional breakthrough came in 1921 at the Graz Opera, and by 1927 he was appointed chief conductor in Darmstadt. He quickly advanced through key German musical centres, becoming general music director in Dresden (1934–1943), where he developed a close professional relationship with Richard Strauss and premiered several of his works, including Die schweigsame Frau and Daphne.^[1]

Like Richard Strauss, Böhm had a complicated and problematic relationship with the Third Reich, despite never officially joining the party. Böhm benefited from the Nazi regime’s dismissal of Jewish colleagues, notably rising to posts in Dresden replacing Fritz Busch in 1934 who had been dismissed for opposing the Nazis. In Dresden, Böhm aligned with the cultural propaganda efforts of the party, glorifying the Nazi regime in “extreme career opportunism at the expense of personal morality.”^[2] By 1935-36, throughout the Nuremburg laws and further denunciations of his Jewish artistic counterparts, Böhm openly praised Hitler’s cultural vision, declaring fidelity to serving the Nazi interests in Vienna, and conducting Wagner’s Die Meistersinger at the Nuremberg Rally. Following the 1938 Anschluss, Böhm delivered a formal Hitler salute in Vienna and insisted that supporting the Anschluss was an essential quality of being German.^[3] By early 1943, Karl Böhm accepted the position of General Music Director of the Vienna State Opera, succeeding Bruno Walter, who had been forced into exile due to his Jewish heritage.^[4] This career move came during the height of Nazi control, and Böhm’s appointment was facilitated by the regime, much like Herbert von Karajan’s earlier displacement of Bruno Walter in Berlin. Although Böhm was denazified in the postwar, his rise is generally viewed as opportunism at the expense of Jewish and other colleagues.

While his political affiliations remain controversial, his artistry cemented his reputation as one of the foremost conductors of his generation. After World War II, he resumed an international career, conducting regularly at the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival, and the Bayreuth Festival, and guest-conducting with major orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and leading ensembles in the United States. Böhm’s recordings, particularly of Mozart’s operas, Beethoven Symphonies, Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and Strauss’s tone poems, are considered benchmarks for their structural clarity, fidelity to score, and expressive yet disciplined style. His legacy endures in both the concert hall and opera house, where his interpretations continue to influence performance traditions. However, Böhm’s aesthetic power and choices as a conductor raise questions about the ability to fully denazify the cultural realm, and the separation of arts and politics in the postwar. Böhm is a parallel to the moral questions of complicity raised by his conductor peers: Herbert von Karajan and Wilhelm Furtwängler. Furtwängler, Böhm, and von Karajan both continued to conduct throughout the Third Reich and all had comparable postwar careers. Because of their staggering contributions to the field and landmark interpretations and recordings, they have been lionized to varying degrees in the scholarship with divergent and highly subjective perceptions on their links to National Socialism. How can we fully address the impact of these conductors within the Nazi party, especially given the specific uses of classical music and prominent orchestras like those in Berlin and Vienna as part of Nazi statecraft? Adorno posited two threats in the wake of the war – music becoming purely for functional use as in commercial purposes, or creating a static musical museum paralyzed in a pre-Nazi aesthetic.^[5] Composers and artists in the immediate wake of the war attempted to justify their actions with the party to the allies, often on aesthetic grounds as well as citing material and detrimental impacts to their career. For example, Böhm is often cited as programming modern works at odds with the regime amidst his embrace of Nazi cultural policies, and he was officially cleared by denazification by the early 1950s.

Karl Böhm exemplifies the paradox of artistic leadership during the Nazi period. He aligned publicly with the regime and opportunistically benefited from the displacement and exile of his colleagues, yet returned to an illustrious career in the postwar. His recordings, particularly of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and Strauss are valuable, leading interpretations of significant works in the classical canon, often made with orchestras which also had a complicated institutional history with the Reich, like the Berlin Philharmonic. The question with the denazification of individuals returns to questions of complicity, of their collaboration with the Reich, and of their postwar contributions to society. Certainly, as artists we shouldn’t forego excellent recordings, landmark aesthetic interpretations of important works simply because of a Nazified past, however, recognizing the mastery of these pieces and their interpretation must never be at the expense of other composers, conductors, and musicians who were silenced by National Socialism.

Sources

1. Franz Endler, Karl Böhm: Ein Dirigentenleben (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1981).
2. Michael H. Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 88.
3. Fred K. Prieberg, Handbuch Deutsche Musiker 1933–1945, 2nd ed. (Kiel: CD-ROM-Lexikon, 2009), s.v. “Karl Böhm” (CD-ROM), citing the March 30, 1938 Vienna Konzerthaus salute and April 1938 statement. Prieberg is a complicated figure himself, best viewed as a compiler of original sources rather than a critical reader of the Nazi period.
4. Vivien Schweitzer, “Karl Böhm,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001).
5. Adorno, “What National Socialism has done to the Arts,” 380-87.