CHAPTER SIX

“I Come Here as a Musician”

Furtwängler, Gieseking, Flagstad, Karajan—and Hitler’s Ghost

ON JANUARY 14, 1949, a large photograph was published in the Chicago Daily News under a bold headline: “Furtwaengler Bows To The Nazis.” Taken during the war, the half-page picture shows the maestro, looking severe, on stage with the Berlin Philharmonic; he is bowing to the Nazi leadership who are applauding in the front row. To help readers comprehend the scene, the newspaper included sizeable labels on the photo with arrows pointing to the four key figures: Wilhelm Furtwängler, Adolf Hitler, and two of the most important Nazi leaders, Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels. The newspaper also supplied a description of the scene: “Expressionless Wilhelm Furtwaengler, in his post as general music director in Adolph [sic] Hitler’s German regime, bows to the dictator’s applause.”¹

The photo appeared at a moment of distress in Chicago musical circles, as the city’s orchestra had recently offered the German musician the opportunity to become its conductor the following season. If one hoped to generate support for Maestro Furtwängler, this was not the kind of image symphony officials wanted Chicagoans to encounter as they thumbed through their daily newspaper. But that is to get ahead of a story that captured the attention of a city and countless Americans across the country.

Four years earlier, on the last day of April 1945, Adolf Hitler shot and killed himself in his Berlin bunker. His wife, Eva Braun, killed herself that same afternoon by swallowing a cyanide capsule. One week later, Germany surrendered to the Allies and the war in Europe was over. By mid-August, after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese had also surrendered, ending the Second World War.

With the capitulation of Germany and Japan, a new era, marked by unprecedented challenges and energizing possibilities, took shape. For the United States, this new age would be characterized by a more assertive orientation toward the world, a transformation that would affect the lives of millions across the globe and, at the same time, reshape American domestic life. The postwar moment was replete with both irony and tragedy, as the United States, which had just won a world war by helping to vanquish horrific regimes in Europe and Asia, would soon believe it was more vulnerable than ever before.

But in late August, two weeks after the war ended, such things were far from everyone’s mind, as sixty members of an American military chorus performed for Richard Strauss, Germany’s most distinguished living composer, on the sprawling grounds of his Bavarian home. The chorus of the 102nd Infantry Division, established a few months earlier, consisted of American veterans of some of Europe’s bloodiest battles. The group was formed at the insistence of Major General Frank Keating, who had been impressed by a Russian army choir that had entertained his men. The members of the American choir were highly trained singers, including a sergeant who had once been a soloist with the Vienna Boys Choir. Billeted on a Danube steamer, the men not only performed for their division and other units, but they also made a number of recordings that were broadcast on American military radio. With the help of a former German diplomat, the visit with Strauss was arranged and the soldiers were granted an opportunity to perform several pieces for the esteemed musician. “It is a pleasure to hear such fine voices singing together,” he said. “We have missed it so much during the war.” At dinner that evening, Strauss shared with the men some of the challenges he had faced in the war, apparently to suggest—contrary to what many believed—that he had not been overly cooperative with the Nazi regime. When the time came to leave, Strauss shook hands all around, told the men he hoped the Americans would help invigorate music in postwar Germany, and gave the choir an autographed copy of one of his pieces. He also provided them with letters of introduction to important musical figures in Germany and Austria. The event surely engendered optimism that the postwar era would be characterized by harmony in every sense of the word.²

Back in the United States, there was a palpable sense that classical music might serve as a pathway to peace, as many musicians embraced the idea that their art could contribute to a more cooperative world. Nevertheless, controversies erupted over musicians whose commitment to humane values was thought dubious because of their wartime activities. Thus, even after the Nazi threat was gone, the prospect of certain artists performing in America, particularly those believed to have supported or sympathized with Hitler, cast a pall over the music scene.

For some in the United States, especially Jewish musicians, listeners, and organizations, Nazism and the Holocaust were—quite understandably—synonymous. As a result, there was little inclination to behave magnanimously toward those linked to the Hitler regime. Indeed, the murder of six million Jews made tolerance unlikely and forgiveness impossible. Given what Nazism had perpetrated across Europe, many believed that, in dealing with those whose wartime behavior was suspect, there was no room for compromise. Moreover, as America’s distress over totalitarianism intensified, a development driven by the fear of Soviet communism (a subject to be discussed), the tendency to equate Stalin’s rule with Hitler’s made it important to grapple with the meaning of Nazism. As a result, concerns persisted about Nazi Germany and what it represented.³

In reflecting on Nazism’s impact on the postwar American music world, one encounters a question Americans had grappled with for decades: Should artists who embraced antidemocratic ideas or consorted with toxic regimes be banished? This question emerged with considerable urgency in stormy postwar debates involving Wilhelm Furtwängler, pianist Walter Gieseking, soprano Kirsten Flagstad, and conductor Herbert von Karajan. Not surprisingly, their alleged wartime ties to Nazism and plans to perform in postwar America created a fevered response among musicians, listeners, government officials, and thousands of ordinary citizens who believed their presence on US soil would contaminate American society. In these postwar musical controversies, one sees—yet again—how the tension between musical universalism and musical nationalism bubbled to the surface of American life.

With the start of the concert season just after the war, ensembles across the country celebrated, often by playing German music, especially Beethoven. In Boston, Koussevitzky and his orchestra dedicated the opening concerts, according to a short note in the program, to “the peace of the world and to the heroism which had made it possible,” offering works by Beethoven and Aaron Copland.⁴ Writing in the Boston Herald, music critic Rudolph Elie, recently back from the Pacific where he had worked as a war correspondent, described the “sense of . . . thanksgiving” that peace had brought to those attending the concert. The world had survived the war and had “emerged unscathed,” Elie noted, a bizarre observation in the wake of a conflagration that had killed tens of millions and laid waste to vast swaths of the globe. Elie did remind his readers that many who never returned would love to have been in Symphony Hall for the opening concert.⁵ According to the Globe, in wartime, the orchestra had enhanced the life of the city, and in peacetime, it would continue its salutary mission, transcending the barriers of “nationality, race, color, [and] creed.” After all, art was “universal.”⁶

That same week, Chicagoans also heard Beethoven as part of the postwar victory theme. Désiré Defauw led performances of five national anthems, allowing the audience to savor the patriotic airs of America’s key allies. With the flags of the Soviet Union, Britain, France, China, and the United States clustered at the center of the stage, the Chicago Symphony played each country’s anthem, with “The Star-Spangled Banner” concluding the tribute.⁷ In Minneapolis, the theme was “Victory,” as a full house of concertgoers was treated to a program, the centerpiece of which was Beethoven’s Fifth, led by Dimitri Mitropoulos. An appropriate choice, the Fifth had been deployed throughout the war as a symbol of victory. The evening was also notable for a rousing performance of “Anchors Aweigh.”⁸

In Cleveland, Beethoven’s Fifth was also featured on the local orchestra’s opening concerts, led by Erich Leinsdorf. According to the concert program, the performance was “dedicated to heroism that has brought victory and restored peace to the world.”⁹ And fittingly, Maestro Leinsdorf, an Austrian emigré who had served in the US Army, was returning to the podium from his wartime service.¹⁰

Throughout the country, a sense of triumph and accomplishment permeated the concert hall, which no doubt reflected the feelings of joy, achievement, love of country, and optimism that washed over the landscape.¹¹ Whether one was inside or outside the auditorium, for a time at least, the sense of “grand expectations” was pervasive.¹²

At this hopeful moment, one hears musicians expressing the universalist idea that classical music could help in constructing a more cooperative world. Speaking at the convocation of the 1945–1946 academic year, the composer Howard Hanson, head of the estimable Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, observed that men were physically and spiritually tired, and hungered not just for peace, but for beauty. To his aspiring musicians, he suggested that music, which possessed “powerful social implications,” could influence “the course of human history.”¹³

Nor was Hanson alone in arguing that music could affect human relations and perhaps even the shape of international politics. Conductor Arthur Fiedler wedded the ratification of the United Nations Charter, approved by the US Senate in July 1945, to music’s power to advance the cause of international reconstruction. According to Fiedler, music recognized “no boundary lines of race or nation,” and as “the international language,” it could join all humanity in a feeling of brotherhood.¹⁴

From the postwar moment through the 1950s and beyond, members of the music community across America claimed that music could help transform relations among the world’s peoples.¹⁵ Musical America reminded its readers that music had helped win the war, and that it would now help secure the peace. According to the editors, music possessed the capacity to “establish basic sympathies and understandings.”¹⁶ No less optimistic about music’s restorative power were the editors of the Musical Courier, who claimed that improvements in travel meant the entire globe was now the “hunting ground for the artist.” And nothing was “more uniting than music.”¹⁷ In Los Angeles, the Times’ music editor Isabel Morse Jones wrote that it was essential for the United States to lead the way in “restoring” the civilizing impulses, and claimed music must become central to the “ethics” of the future.¹⁸

But less hopeful sentiments were in the air, and the nation’s political culture was not without its darker side, which the world of music also revealed. Before turning to the uproar caused by America’s unwelcome European visitors, one must touch on the relationship between Nazism and music in postwar Germany, where the US government, along with the British, French, and Soviet governments, decided it was necessary to purify that country’s cultural life of the toxins that remained from the Hitler years. As part of the “denazification” process, US officials sought to help rebuild the German classical music scene, the larger aim of which was to democratize America’s erstwhile foe. According to historian David Monod, US officials faced the problem of “what to do with an arts sector that had made peace” with a malevolent regime. Among the challenges American officials confronted in postwar Germany, Monod writes, was that of assessing “who was guilty and of what.”¹⁹

Discussion of this task began to appear in the American press in the summer of 1945 and continued for several months, as the public encountered the idea that the war’s end did not mean America’s responsibilities in Europe were over. A Washington Post editorial, “Muted Trumpets,” spoke of the American reform program, which sought to reorient German “esthetic” and “political attitudes,” particularly in the musical realm. Quoting from a US government document, the Post highlighted the decision to ban music that advanced “militaristic ideas” or was linked to the Nazi Party.²⁰ That same summer, Newsweek readers pondered several stories concerning American control over music in Germany; the articles explored what would be played and who would be permitted to play it. The magazine quoted army officials who asserted with simplistic self-assurance, “We destroy only Nazi culture, not German culture.” Those same officials insisted they would approach the musical challenge with care. “We are not book burners.”²¹

Among the more thoughtful reflections on reconstructing German musical life was a piece by Paul Nettl, a Czech musicologist affiliated with New Jersey’s Westminster Choir College, who had lived in the United States for a dozen years. In a long letter to the New York Times, Nettl suggested the Germans must be reeducated by reminding them of the damage the Nazis had done in the musical realm. In Nettl’s judgment, every German should be made to recognize how absurd and pernicious were Nazi ideas about music, which had claimed that figures like Mozart and Beethoven were Nazism’s “musical precursors.” Equally preposterous was the idea that Wagner was the composer of “German blood and soil music,” who had pointed to the destiny of the German people. In fact, Nettl contended, Wagner had never embraced “anything remotely resembling Nazi ideas.” According to Nettl, the Americans should emphasize that the Germans had “betrayed” their most esteemed figures, especially their musicians.²²

As part of America’s cultural reform mission, US-government panels in Germany investigated the Nazi-era activities of leading German musicians, Wilhelm Furtwängler foremost among them. The inquiry would assess musicians’ relations with the Hitler regime and decide whether and when they would be allowed to participate in Germany’s cultural life. In the spring of 1946, US authorities began legal proceedings involving Furtwängler, which led to two days of his direct testimony in December.

In “Music and Collaboration,” Life magazine offered a sympathetic portrait, informing readers that the conductor was a German patriot who was not obligated to leave the Third Reich, and that despite the regime’s policies, he had stayed in the hope that he could maintain German music’s “finest traditions.” In response to questions from a Life correspondent, the musician had claimed he had no sympathy for Nazism and emphasized his record of fighting to “protect” Jewish musicians in his homeland.²³

The Furtwängler affair attracted widespread attention in the United States when the distinguished violinist Yehudi Menuhin expressed his support for the German. Menuhin said he hoped the Allied countries would allow Furtwängler to start performing again, a perspective that rested, he said, on the conductor’s wartime behavior. Menuhin, who was Jewish, observed that when conducting in Berlin, Furtwängler would not give the Nazi salute at concerts, and he retained the Jewish musicians in his orchestra “as long as he possibly could.” The American-born violinist also said the German had not accompanied the Berlin Philharmonic on tours outside Germany, an assertion that was inaccurate.²⁴ In publishing Menuhin’s comments, Time supplied readers with some context on the Furtwängler matter, noting that the allegedly benign conductor, who had fled to Switzerland in the final months of the war, had encountered serious problems there. Two of Furtwängler’s wartime concerts in Zurich had been cancelled by the local council and another appearance in a Swiss town had precipitated large protests.²⁵

Menuhin’s plea to reinstate Furtwängler resulted in a rebuke from Ira A. Hirschmann, the vice president of Bloomingdale’s and a member of the War Refugee Board, who claimed Furtwängler was an “official of the Third Reich” and a Nazi. While the second statement was certainly not accurate, Hirschmann, a key figure in opposing Furtwängler’s 1936 appointment to lead the New York Philharmonic, garnered considerable attention for his incendiary rhetoric. “We are outraged at the very thought of this Nazi invading America,” he snapped. Hirschmann linked the conductor to the excesses of the Hitler regime and, referring to the ongoing Nuremberg trial of Nazi leaders, said it was “incredible,” with Furtwängler’s employers on trial for mass butchery, that there should be any effort to exonerate “one of their conspirators.” The American people will not allow the nation’s air to be polluted by a musician who was completely devoted to serving the Nazi regime, Hirschmann wrote.²⁶

To document Furtwängler’s stance, Hirschmann had provided the press with the incriminating photograph of Furtwängler bowing from the stage to the Nazi leadership. According to Hirschmann, the picture proved Furtwängler’s devotion to the Nazi cause.²⁷

In the face of this diatribe, Menuhin did not remain silent. Musicians in Berlin and Paris had told him that Furtwängler had helped protect Jews, and he made clear that he had never suggested the conductor should come to the United States. He could accomplish more in Germany.²⁸ Pointing to the “prejudice” Hirschmann brought to the matter, Menuhin defended himself: “Surely my name and position and the causes I have fought for should put me beyond suspicion of trying to bring a Nazi into the United States.”²⁹

Others have surveyed the tale of Furtwängler’s situation in postwar Germany;³⁰ what is worth noting is the extent to which the story filtered back to the United States.³¹ As 1946 came to an end, Furtwängler was called to testify before the Berlin Denazification Board for Creative Artists. Between one hundred and one hundred fifty people filled a small room, a group that included American journalists and a large contingent of Germans who seemed to support the musician. Covered in some detail in the American press, the tribunal examined the conductor’s attitudes toward the Hitler regime and Furtwängler’s activities during the Nazi era.³²

American readers learned that Furtwängler seemed “nervous, irritable, and unsure of himself,” and answered the charges against him with inadequate “excuses or explanations.”³³ At one point, he offered the curious defense that he was “no politician, but only an artist,” adding, “Actually I am no more guilty than a potato dealer who continued to sell potatoes in the Third Reich.” As for why he had continued to lead the Berlin orchestra on foreign tours, Furtwängler claimed he had not done this for propaganda purposes. “I wanted to demonstrate by these tours that art was above politics.” Nor was he responsible for the Nazi regime’s use of the tours to advance its political ends. Indeed, he insisted, “I couldn’t have done anything else about it. Otherwise I would have had to leave Germany.” And that was the essence of the problem, for according to his critics, by deciding to stay, the maestro had offered implicit support for the regime. But the conductor saw things differently. While Nazi leaders told him he was free to leave the country, he was warned that he would not be permitted to return.³⁴ American readers also encountered Furtwängler’s claim that he had been a “victim of lies in the world press” and had never been an “ambassador of Nazi culture.”³⁵

Less than a week after his initial appearance, on December 17, 1946, Furtwängler was called again for a second day of questioning, this time buttressed by witnesses who testified on his behalf. By the end of the day, the panel had cleared the conductor and would forward its recommendation to the Allied commission for formal approval. According to the New York Times, Furtwängler was “acquitted of nazism,” while the Herald Tribune said he was cleared of charges of serving the Third Reich’s interests. The tribunal also decided there was “no case” against the conductor for having “Nazi sympathies.” Upon hearing the decision, the musician bowed to the tribunal and to his German supporters in the cramped room. As the Times noted, the evidence indicated Furtwängler had helped keep Jewish artists out of concentration camps and aided them in other ways. With the tribunal’s conclusion, Furtwängler was allowed to resume his career, a decision American newspapers conveyed to millions of readers.³⁶

The following spring, that is what happened. In April 1947, the German received the imprimatur of the Denazification Committee of the inter-Allied board, which led, one month later, to a performance with the Berlin Philharmonic. It was Furtwängler’s first time standing before the august ensemble since the war. In considering the April decision, the New York Times pointed out that the conductor had been the most controversial figure involved in the denazification program. The article also claimed that protests had been spearheaded by “friends of music” in the United States, who feared the German might soon be engaged to perform in America.³⁷

But in late May, such an eventuality was not on the minds of the two thousand listeners who packed Berlin’s Titania Palast, a former cinema, to hear the denazified German conduct the city’s orchestra in an all-Beethoven concert that was ecstatically received.³⁸ Within eighteen months after his name had been cleared, he would conduct the orchestras of Vienna and Berlin, not just in their home cities, but across Europe and in Britain. And in early 1948, Furtwängler led the London Philharmonic in eleven concerts, and crossed the Atlantic to appear in South America, directing the Teatro Colón Orchestra in Buenos Aires.³⁹

Despite his international music-making, Furtwängler had not stood before an orchestra in the United States for some twenty years. In the summer of 1948, the Chicago Symphony reached out to him, inviting Furtwängler to become its conductor for the 1949–1950 season. The belief that Furtwängler’s actions were inseparable from those of the Nazi regime would generate an impassioned response, even if Chicago’s administrators were remarkably uncomprehending of this possibility.⁴⁰

From the start, Furtwängler was uncertain about moving to America, partly because of his European commitments, but also, he noted candidly, because of the continuing “calumnies and difficulties of political nature [sic] which have kept me away from the States.” But he wanted to know more about the terms of the offer. What would be expected of him? How much would he be paid?⁴¹

Eric Oldberg, the orchestra’s vice president, penned a tone-deaf reply, which betrayed a profound ignorance about the way many in the music community perceived Furtwängler. He addressed the German’s concern as to how American audiences would receive him, saying the orchestra had looked into that. “There is no ground for apprehension.” All would be fine. The setting would be especially conducive to a man of Furtwängler’s gifts, Oldberg explained, for the city was America’s second largest and the orchestra was positioned to “occupy a pre-eminent” place in the country’s musical establishment. “The opportunities for great . . . success” were better in Chicago than in any other city in America.⁴²

The first stumbling block, from Furtwängler’s perspective, concerned the time commitment the orchestra expected. He had no desire to spend twenty weeks or more in Chicago. Though reluctant to abandon his European musical life, Furtwängler realized American orchestras were excellent and that Chicago’s was superb. The conductor acknowledged that musical life in America was improving and he wanted to believe that the political opposition that had kept him from coming to America was waning. Growing more reflective, he wrote to Oldberg, had the invitation reached “me in my 40th rather than my 60th year, it would have been an easy decision.” But now, Chicago’s orchestra seemed to demand a “complete and final . . . parting from Europe.”⁴³

Furtwängler described his life as an artist on the Continent, which, while not equal in a material sense to Chicago’s offer, was still artistically rewarding. To be sure, a “prostrate Germany” was problematic, he wrote, but there were many fine opportunities in Europe. And lest one forget, the “Vienna Philharmonic—at present still the best orchestra of Europe—comes under my leadership.” Accepting the Chicago offer, which would necessitate a break from his European activities, would be difficult.⁴⁴

The back and forth with Oldberg continued.⁴⁵ But the conductor remained unconvinced. “I have . . . certain moral obligations to prostrate Germany and Austria . . . which I cannot and should not like to shun.” The musician pointed to his need to continue his work as a composer, and “since I am only a man, I also need a few weeks of holidays.” For now, Furtwängler wrote, “I cannot accept your offer.”⁴⁶

Undeterred, Oldberg noted how quickly one could now travel from the United States to Europe. “I can fly directly from Chicago to Geneva, each Saturday, in 24 hours,” while New York to London took a mere 19 hours. With the board’s flexibility, they would now expect him in Chicago for only eighteen weeks. Nor was it necessary to dive into the position permanently. “[W]e are conservative and responsible people,” who understand that “acquaintanceship takes time,” which made a year-to-year arrangement possible.⁴⁷ In November, the orchestra’s president wrote the maestro saying an affirmative reply would be received with great excitement by the board and by the city’s “music lovers.”⁴⁸ Soon enough, the orchestra’s Furtwänglerian fantasy would be realized.

In November and early December, reports began to trickle out in the Chicago press about the possibility of Furtwängler’s appointment. Claudia Cassidy, the city’s leading music critic, raised the subject in her column, reporting that the conductor, when asked by a journalist in London about the prospect, had replied, “Nein, nein, nein, it is the first I’ve heard of it.”⁴⁹ Interestingly, as these reports surfaced, an official from the orchestra, George Kuyper, who had discussed the job with Furtwängler in Hamburg, wrote to the conductor, observing that the press had begun reporting the possibility of his coming to America. As Kuyper reassuringly noted, and he enclosed a clipping from the Chicago Tribune, the report had caused “no repercussions, so I am more than ever certain that the political campaign—about which you expressed some fears—will never develop.”⁵⁰

On December 2, the news broke that the Chicago Symphony had indeed been negotiating with the German conductor. When asked whether there were any concerns about his past activities, Edward Ryerson, the orchestra’s president, replied that they had looked into it. He had been “completely cleared.”⁵¹ The local press reported on the enthusiasm among players in the orchestra, while noting the emerging opposition in the Chicago community. It would be “inspiring to work under him,” remarked Adolph Herseth, the orchestra’s principal trumpeter who had recently joined the ensemble and was destined to become one of the most celebrated orchestral musicians of the twentieth century. “I believe he and Bruno Walter are the best to be had.” Expressing his support rather differently, an orchestra representative said, “I doubt if he’ll turn us into Nazis.” Less hopeful was Samuel Laderman, a former sustaining member of the orchestra and now president of the local chemical workers union, who said that any “artist who has worked with the Nazis has not only degraded himself as a man but also degraded the art which he professes.”⁵²

In early December the offer was made, and it seemed likely the famed conductor would start the next fall.⁵³ There were some problems to be ironed out, however, which involved not just politics but the terms of his contract. How many weeks would the maestro be required to conduct in Chicago and how much would he be paid? Might he and the orchestra agree on a reduced commitment?⁵⁴ Even the new locale, with its notorious weather, was not without its worries. “I’m afraid the wind w[ill] make me very nervous,” Furtwängler wrote. And lingering doubts remained about his reception. According to a friend of the maestro’s wife, even though his name had been cleared in Berlin, the conductor continued to worry about public opinion and feared he would be unwelcome because Hitler had appointed him “first musician of the reich.”⁵⁵

On December 17, 1948, it was announced that Furtwängler would come to America as the Chicago Symphony’s guest conductor rather than its chief conductor. He would be in residence for two months, which meant the orchestra would need to enlist the services of other guest leaders, while the board continued to search for a permanent conductor. (The necessity for that would be tied to Furtwängler’s future commitment to the ensemble.)⁵⁶ Claiming no worries about the orchestra, Furtwängler recalled what the legendary conductor Hans von Bülow had said. “There are no bad orchestras, only bad conductors.” About the Chicago ensemble, he observed, “I have never heard [it], not even on records, but I know its reputation is one of the best.” Commenting on his famously imprecise stick technique, he said his new orchestra would quickly become accustomed to his beat, which he admitted was unusual. But he was not concerned. “Orchestras always understand my beat, which is aimed at producing a softness.” As the Chicago reporter helpfully pointed out, the German was referring to his unique approach, in which “he quivers as he waves the baton.” As for his travel plans, after completing his European obligations, he would leave for Chicago in October. About his salary, his answer was terse: “What I asked for, I got.”⁵⁷ So it seemed America would become reacquainted with a man regarded as one of the world’s preeminent conductors.

But now the public, particularly Jewish leaders and organizations, began to weigh in, and the bright picture the ensemble’s administrators had painted quickly darkened. A December 20 cable sent to the orchestra’s chairman by Mrs. Joseph Perlman of the Anshe Emet Synagogue, who represented 1,250 Chicago families, declared that they “vigorously” objected to the appointment. Even as Perlman noted that Furtwängler was not thought to have been a collaborator, the cable asserted that he had “prostituted his art to the brutal Nazi while other, more principled artists fled Germany, or . . . refused to serve the Nazi masters.”⁵⁸ In mid-January, the Chicago Council of the Pioneer Women, part of the Women’s Labor Zionist Organization of America, contacted the orchestra. They informed the board that their two thousand members also opposed the appointment, claiming it was “unfitting” to honor a man who had played a key role in “carrying out in actual deed the horrible concepts of Hitlerism; concepts . . . in direct opposition to all righteous democratic principles as practiced by the citizens of our great country.” If Furtwängler came to Chicago, the Pioneer Women stated, they would no longer attend Chicago Symphony concerts.⁵⁹

That same month, Rabbi Morton M. Berman, president of the Chicago branch of the American Jewish Congress, spoke out against Furtwängler’s appointment, albeit somewhat inaccurately. “Furtwaengler preferred to swear fealty to Hitler,” Berman said, and “accepted at Hitler’s hands his reappointment as director of the Berlin Philharmonic.” Moreover, Berman contended, the conductor enthusiastically served Goebbels’s ministry of culture and propaganda. As for Furtwängler’s contention that he had helped Jews, Berman said that while in Germany he had repeatedly heard war criminals who were on trial make this claim. But this mattered little. Saving a small number of Jews did not excuse him from “official, active participation in a regime which murdered 6 million Jews and millions of non-Jews.” According to Berman, the conductor represented those odious things for which the youth of Chicago and of the entire country had fought. And though he could have done otherwise, Berman pointed out, Furtwängler allowed the “Nazi murderers” to use him as their “symbol of responsibility and culture.”⁶⁰

Assuming a more activist stance, the Young Progressives of Illinois, a left-wing political organization, opposed the appointment by protesting and passing out leaflets to concertgoers in front of Orchestra Hall, the Chicago Symphony’s home. The leaflets included Toscanini’s assertion that Furtwängler, because he had conducted under fascism in Germany, had no right to conduct Beethoven. Moreover, the handout claimed, the German had removed a Mendelssohn symphony from a 1936 Vienna Philharmonic program, the music having been proscribed by the Nazis.⁶¹

But not everyone took to the streets to register their disapproval. A poignant letter written to the orchestra by Bronx resident Murray Lobel noted that he was an American citizen and a veteran who had served in the army for three years. “I want to . . . protest against your allowing this Nazi follower of Hitler to conduct” in the United States. According to this ex-soldier, the help of figures like Furtwängler had allowed Hitler to kill millions, including hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. “[M]en like Furtwaengler hate democracy” and everything America represents, Lobel declared. “We must not let him come here.”⁶²

After the appointment was announced, considerable hostility roiled the music community. Among those who said they would not perform with the Chicago Symphony if it engaged Furtwängler were pianists Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, and Alexander Brailowsky; violinists Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, and Nathan Milstein (he later claimed his inclusion was erroneous); cellist Gregor Piatigorsky; and soprano Lily Pons and her husband, conductor Andre Kostelanetz. The conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, also said he would not return to Chicago as a guest with Furtwängler on the roster, and other guest conductors scheduled to appear in the 1949–1950 season indicated they might also stay away.⁶³

Rubinstein and Horowitz were particularly scathing in their indictment of Furtwängler’s activities during the Nazi years. Horowitz said his decision not to perform in Chicago was made out of respect for the thousands of Americans who had died fighting Nazism. Moreover, he declared, given Furtwängler’s international standing, he could have left Germany and had a career outside the country. Horowitz said he was willing to forgive the “small fry” who had little choice but to remain in Germany, but this did not apply to Furtwängler.⁶⁴ Rubinstein was equally unsparing, claiming in a telegram to the New York Times that he would not work with anyone who had collaborated with Hitler, Göring, and Goebbels. Like Horowitz, Rubinstein pilloried Furtwängler for remaining in Germany, contending, had he been “firm in his democratic convictions,” he would have left. Concerning the claim that Furtwängler had protected Jews from the Nazi regime, Rubinstein called this unconfirmed.⁶⁵ The pianist was brutally direct: “My feeling against the Nazis is deep seated. They burned my entire family alive.”⁶⁶

Along with the public uproar, behind the scenes the matter was becoming problematic for symphony officials who began to doubt the wisdom of their decision. In late December, George Kuyper cabled Furtwängler to inform him that the orchestra had received word that three conductors and six soloists scheduled to perform the following year had told the organization they would not appear if the German arrived in Chicago. Kuyper wrote of his astonishment at this, which led him to wonder whether it made sense to continue their plans for the coming season.⁶⁷

Over the next few days, communication with Furtwängler intensified as he expressed his desire to come to Chicago, and his concern that, by backing out, his position in the United States would be severely weakened, precluding his chance to appear there in the future. Symphony officials disagreed, believing his arrival would harm conductor and orchestra, though they were surely more concerned about the latter. The board made clear their wish to end the relationship, at least for next season, and urged Furtwängler to step aside. The orchestra’s president, Edward Ryerson, had suggested that by staying away, the maestro would help his future position in the United States and “public sentiment” would move in his favor.⁶⁸

On December 31, Ryerson wrote the conductor, recounting what had happened over the preceding few weeks, in an effort to convince Furtwängler that his relationship with the Chicago Symphony had to end—at least for the time being. Public demonstrations had begun, hostile letters appeared in the local papers, and some conductors and soloists were “warned” to stay away from Chicago.⁶⁹ The board now believed a “public underground outside of musical circles” had developed, which would stage “mass protests” and “disturbances of the peace.” They feared a catastrophic result if the German arrived and believed he would be forced to lead the orchestra under “police protection.” Deeply regretful over this turn of events, the board felt responsible for having urged the maestro to come to Chicago. They hoped he would do what was “best” for everyone.⁷⁰

In early January 1949, stories started to appear in the press indicating that the reaction among the public and in the music community had led the board to consider pulling the Furtwängler offer.⁷¹ Some of the articles quoted Furtwängler, who explained his position and sought to legitimize his right to perform in the United States. In a telephone interview, he pointed out that he had been cleared by denazification courts in Berlin and Vienna, and by a tribunal of German musicians. Moreover, he said, the “interallied court in Berlin acquitted me of all charges,” and he had a letter from the “United States military government” exonerating him.⁷²

In a statement a few days later, the conductor again defended himself in the American press. Surprised by the list of musicians who wanted to keep him from performing in America, he asserted, when the Nazi regime was persecuting artists, he had done his “best to help them in the cause of the international solidarity of all artists.” Yet today, “artists . . . are persecuting me.” In one of the maestro’s more revealing observations on why he had remained in wartime Germany, Furtwängler contended that some musicians would not work with him today for but one reason: “I fought Hitler in his own country instead of fighting him from abroad.” Beyond the extraordinary claim that he had fought Hitler from inside Germany, Furtwängler also said he had saved the lives of several Jewish musicians or their wives, naming two people and suggesting there were others from the orchestras of Berlin and Vienna whom he had rescued. As for the Jewish organizations that condemned him, they were “wrongly informed.”⁷³

Responding to reports that the orchestra might rescind its offer, some spoke up on Furtwängler’s behalf, most notably Yehudi Menuhin, who risked the wrath of his colleagues by publicly rejecting what he believed were the calumnies aimed at the German maestro. From Rome, Menuhin contended that the criticism of Furtwängler was off the mark. Having recently recorded the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Furtwängler in Lucerne, the violinist claimed that of “all German musicians,” the conductor had “put up the most resistance to the Nazis.” He had never joined the party and had done his best to protect Jewish musicians in the Berlin Philharmonic, which was true. And in a curious formulation, Menuhin observed that Furtwängler had behaved “as well as could be expected of a man who is entirely German, who is a good German in the best sense of the word.” (Despite what Menuhin believed, historian Michael Kater has written that Furtwängler, in acting “on behalf” of people in Germany, had helped a wide range of figures, including Jews, opponents of the Nazi regime, anti-Semites, musicians sympathetic to the Nazis, and, in some cases, Nazis. In Kater’s estimation, the conductor was no “altruist,” but a “man obsessed with personal connections,” who needed to be “at the center of things.”)⁷⁴

Writing to the Chicago Daily News, Robert Stelton, a local resident, supported bringing Furtwängler to Chicago, arguing that he was defending not the man but a principle long honored in the United States. All men are innocent until proven guilty; and in this instance, the German musician had been cleared by a denazification board. As for figures like Rubinstein, Horowitz, and Milstein, they should keep in mind how “prejudice, intolerance, and injustice have operated against those of their religion.” They should be the very people who cry out “for law and order, for justice.”⁷⁵

One irascible Chicagoan argued that the true music lover “submits no protests as to who is conducting, who composed the score, or who is playing the solo in regard to their background, creed or color.” With sarcasm dripping from his pen, the correspondent declared that Furtwängler, while on the podium, was not “going to don a Nazi uniform and wear a swastika on his arm.”⁷⁶ Another letter writer, a self-described “German-Jewish refugee,” backed Furtwängler, though denazification was less important than were his artistic gifts. By condemning Furtwängler, the writer told Tribune readers, people were replicating Nazi policies, such as “burning books and banning teachers.”⁷⁷

The case also captured public attention outside Chicago. From Southern California, Mabel Ostbye wrote to the Los Angeles Times, rejecting the opposition of America’s leading musicians. Figures like Rubinstein and Lily Pons who had criticized Furtwängler knew nothing of his “secret convictions.” Ostbye was certain he had protected Jews and their families.⁷⁸ Expressing support, if morbidly, a New York Herald Tribune reader suggested that the hundreds of thousands of Americans who had died in the struggle against Nazism would not favor the hatred and revanche undergirding the opposition to Furtwängler. According to Joseph O’Donohue, the “wounds of war were slowly healing,” and those fighting against Furtwängler were “perpetuat[ing] hatred” and hindering America’s desire to do good in the world.⁷⁹

From overseas, members of the Vienna Philharmonic, a group with a problematic wartime record of its own, cabled the Chicago Symphony and begged its president to support Furtwängler against the “slander campaign against our master conductor . . . who in most difficult times has made personal sacrifices for us.”⁸⁰ The Berlin Philharmonic also contacted the Chicagoans to express “astonish[ment] about the negative attitude” toward the conductor. They were indebted to him for his actions between 1933 and 1945.⁸¹

Most memorably, a poignant letter reached the orchestra from Prague, penned by a Serena Krafft, who wrote that she had just heard on the radio “that some action is being done by the Jews in Chicago with the view to hinder Mr. Furtwängler’s engagement.” Notwithstanding the anti-Semitism embedded in this characterization of local developments, Krafft identified herself as the wife of a former member of the Berlin Philharmonic who had “not returned from the Auschwitz concentration camp.” As few connected with the Berlin orchestra now remembered the prewar years, she wrote, “I feel myself obliged to write to you about Mr. Furtwängler.” Before the war, Krafft recalled, his behavior was in “no way antisemitic. I know for sure that [he] was doing his best to help Jewish musicians in his Orchestra during the hard time of the nazi regime.” She recounted a story in which Furtwängler “engaged the Jew Simon Goldberg” as the orchestra’s first concertmaster, though at the time “Jewish members were obliged to leave their permanent job” in the ensemble. But the conductor “did his best to carry through that the Jewish musicians could stay.” And even after they left the orchestra, he “kept on trying to get at least some material help for them.” Finally, Krafft told Chicago officials, “I do not believe that Dr. Furtwängler changed his standpoint and behavior during the time I was in the concentration camp.”⁸²

In assessing the case, the Chicago Tribune published a piece by Sigrid Schultz, who had been the paper’s Berlin correspondent before and early in the war. Schultz recounted stories suggesting Furtwängler had subtly pushed back against the Nazi regime, claiming he had not kowtowed to Hitler. Moreover, Schultz wrote, unlike many wartime Germans, Furtwängler never argued that Nazism was not as bad as it appeared. No one who knew him in those years would have thought he supported the government. On one occasion, Tribune readers learned, an unwell Furtwängler called for his doctor, who had been placed in a concentration camp for his anti-Nazi sentiments. He could not conduct otherwise, he said, and his doctor was released, if only for a short time. “To Americans who do not know terror,” Schultz explained, someone who requests care from a doctor arrested by the Nazis might not seem courageous, but in “Germany people hastened to forget victims because it was dangerous to know any one in a concentration camp.”⁸³

Then, on January 14, the disturbing wartime photo of Furtwängler and the Nazi leadership appeared in the Chicago Daily News.⁸⁴ Five days later, the newspaper published a brief story, with a Geneva dateline, stating that Furtwängler had cabled the symphony board to say that he was withdrawing from his fall engagement. In a blunt and unrepentant message infused with considerable disappointment and more than a little anger, he claimed the American musicians protesting against him had based their position on reports that the “official propaganda in Nazi Germany chose to publish about me, and not on truth. It is inconceivable,” Furtwängler wrote, that “artists should perpetuate hatred indefinitely,” while the whole world desired peace. He would spare Chicago’s orchestra “further difficulties.”⁸⁵

The news received wide national coverage. A lengthy piece in the Tribune traced the entire affair, including the thoughts of Edward Ryerson, the board president who said, if a touch misleadingly, that the orchestra felt it would be unfair “to ask such a distinguished musician to appear under adverse circumstances.” With resistance to the appointment rising, Ryerson claimed, the orchestra had “found clear evidence of a well organized opposition” from the public and in the “music community.”⁸⁶ While Ryerson said he had known the appointment would cause “some opposition and controversy,” he had hoped America’s triumph in the war would have created “a world of tolerance.” But the Furtwängler saga suggested otherwise, he believed. Such tolerance, among the public and some leading artists, had not yet been achieved. The nation’s victory remained incomplete.⁸⁷

This reaction to the denouement suggests Ryerson’s inability to grasp the degree to which Furtwängler’s arrival in Chicago would prove deeply troubling to members of the local community. By claiming the matter revealed intolerance on the part of Furtwängler’s opponents, Ryerson betrayed an unsettling failure to empathize with those for whom the wounds of war had not yet healed. Moreover, his claim that the victory achieved in 1945 remained incomplete because certain people were not yet prepared to welcome to the United States a celebrated artist who had chosen to work in Nazi Germany throughout the war displayed a disquieting unwillingness to consider the moral questions raised by Furtwängler’s wartime behavior. And the obvious but crucial fact that the defeat of Germany had occurred less than four years earlier, barely time for the war’s torment to fade, makes Ryerson’s response still more troubling.

Nevertheless, some shared Ryerson’s view. Among those dismayed by the end of the Furtwängler experiment was Yehudi Menuhin, who lashed out at his colleagues in the music world. “I have never encountered a more brazen attitude than that of three or four of the ringleaders in their frantic and furious efforts to exclude an illustrious colleague from their happy hunting grounds. I consider this behavior beneath contempt,” he said, implying that the musicians who had opposed Furtwängler’s performing in America did so to gain a professional advantage.⁸⁸

Another supporter, Klaus Goetze, writing to the orchestra from Cambridge, Massachusetts, asked that his name be added to those who opposed the decision to cancel Furtwängler’s invitation. It was clear that Furtwängler’s artistic credentials were not deficient. As for the “probity of his character,” Goetze pointed out that the conductor had been cleared of charges by American military authorities. The “only fault” seemed to be that Furtwängler was a German. Apparently, Goetze observed, it made little difference that Furtwängler had been conducting in London and Paris, where the war’s impact is “more keenly felt than in Chicago.” Embracing a universalist perspective, Goetze wondered whether it could be “said of us Americans that we make the one truly international language, that of music, the football of political issues.”⁸⁹

No Chicagoan, or, for that matter, anyone in the United States, would again hear a Furtwängler concert in an American concert hall. In announcing the news to subscribers, Edward Ryerson expressed his disappointment while asserting he had faith that someday soon artists and scientists of any “nationality” would have the opportunity to inspire the public.⁹⁰

Ryerson was in touch with Furtwängler, penning a long letter in early February, which assessed the affair in the most heartening way he could. He told him that the orchestra had hoped the commitment between conductor and ensemble would have deepened as the years passed, and he painted a positive picture of the situation in Chicago, which suggested that many had opposed those who objected to the offer. “I am satisfied that this reaction will continue to grow,” he wrote, “and that more and more people who are honest in their opinions will come to realize that you have been unjustly attacked and that the future of music in this country [has been] seriously damaged.” Whether Ryerson genuinely believed that support for the conductor would grow is difficult to say, but to convince the maestro, he enclosed numerous press clippings intended to demonstrate the allegedly widespread enthusiasm for the musician. The orchestra had sent out a statement on the affair to thousands of subscribers and supporters, he said, which reflected well on the conductor. And Ryerson attempted to reassure Furtwängler that his reputation in America was intact. “I think you should feel reasonably well satisfied that the final handling of the matter was done in a way to redound very greatly to your credit and has improved your general public relationship rather than having injured it.”⁹¹ This, too, was wishful thinking.

Writing to Ryerson in early February, Furtwängler spoke of those who sought to portray him as being “guilty at any price.” He mentioned that the investigation of him, carried out “carefully and thoroughly,” had validated his acquittal. The conductor requested copies of everything written about him in the Chicago newspapers, because, he wrote, “I would . . . very much like to know what was said about me.”⁹² A few weeks later, the orchestra received a letter from Furtwängler’s aide, which noted with some candor that the “cuttings we have received were of great interest but we have the feeling that it is more or less a choice of favorable ones. Have no negative letters been published?”⁹³ And to be sure, the opposition had been intense. As one group, the Society for the Prevention of World War III, stated in congratulating the orchestra for cancelling the invitation, “We are confident that this action will be supported by all fair-minded Americans who have been aware of Furtwaengler’s perversion of culture when he served the Nazis.” The New York–based organization lauded the orchestra’s administration for its patriotism, calling it a credit to those “who cherish the fine traditions of music which were besmirched by the Nazis.”⁹⁴

Whatever Edward Ryerson thought about the need for tolerance, and despite his comforting words to Wilhelm Furtwängler, the toxicity of the Nazi ideology continued to distress those who were unwilling to sever the connection between art and politics. Though Nazi Germany had disappeared in the spring of 1945, the malevolent character of Nazism had impressed itself upon the American mind, and the war’s end did not mean its effect had evaporated.

A self-described Jewish subscriber wrote to the Chicago Daily News in January 1949 to share his thoughts on the Furtwängler affair. He acknowledged it was difficult to be unbiased, particularly since he was a “member of that religious group which suffered most under Hitler. . . . But where in the history of the world has a people had such a reason to fear and distrust?” More chillingly, in assessing the view of those who had supported the conductor based on the “sanctity of art,” he declared, “a knife wielded by an artist will cut as surely as that wielded by a butcher.”⁹⁵

Wilhelm Furtwängler’s actions engendered a range of feelings, not all of which emerged at the time of the Chicago episode. Indeed, soon after the tribunal had acquitted Furtwängler of Nazi activities in 1946, a genuinely illuminating piece appeared in the New York Times, in which journalist Delbert Clark rebuked the conductor for his behavior. As Clark asserted, “Nazi activity [was] punishable under the [tribunal’s] rules,” but lacking a “moral sense” was no crime. As the Times’ reporter acknowledged, based on the evidentiary rules demanded by an American court, it was “more than probable” that Furtwängler would have been acquitted. But throughout the case, Clark observed, the conductor’s attitude was hardly that of an “opponent of Nazism.” When the trial ended, Clark reported, a “self-confident” Furtwängler had stood up and proclaimed, “I don’t regret having done this for Germans and for Germany.” Many in the small chamber applauded, which the conductor “acknowledged with several bows as in the old days.”⁹⁶

To some in the United States, that 1946 declaration made clear that Furtwängler harbored no regrets about his behavior during the Hitler era, which is not the same as saying that he supported Nazism. (The evidence indicates he did not.) But whatever Furtwängler hoped to accomplish by remaining in Hitler’s Germany, there was something ignoble about his actions, for he allowed a depraved regime to use his undeniable artistic gifts in an attempt to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the world. While that effort did not succeed, a convincing case can be made that Furtwängler was complicit in the German government’s plan to burnish its image, a position he could have avoided had he left the country and continued his career elsewhere.

There was, in Furtwängler’s stance, a dogged consistency. Whether one considers his views before or after the war, his perspective did not waver. As American readers learned from a piece published in The Commonweal during the war, Furtwängler was convinced he could continue to perform in Nazi Germany, a land “where murder and force prevailed . . . as if all that did not concern him.” According to the author of that piece, music critic Max Graf, an Austrian refugee who had come to the United States and was teaching in New York, he had asked Furtwängler in 1937 why he had remained in Germany. “After all, I am a German” was the reply. Furtwängler believed, Graf wrote, that his duty was to support his country’s musical culture, though Graf claimed Furtwängler could not comprehend the impossibility of keeping culture alive in a “barbaric land.”⁹⁷ After 1945, Furtwängler’s outlook remained unchanged. But for many Americans, the notion that an artist could remain outside politics, especially when plying his craft under a regime that did not recognize a boundary between art and politics, was unacceptable. That conviction kept Wilhelm Furtwängler from raising his baton in Chicago.

• • •

The capacity of Nazism to inflame political passions in postwar America appeared once more when pianist Walter Gieseking became entwined in the web of the defunct and discredited ideology. While the Gieseking episode of 1949, which overlapped with the Furtwängler story, generated less distress than did the conductor’s saga, it illustrates how the specter of Nazism haunted postwar political culture.

Born in 1895 in Lyon, France, and trained in Germany where he moved with his family as a teenager, Gieseking (who had served in the German army in World War I) first appeared on the American concert scene in 1926. One of the most esteemed pianists of his generation, Gieseking was especially admired for his interpretations of French music, though critics also acclaimed his Beethoven.⁹⁸

Shortly after the end of World War II, American military authorities prohibited Gieseking from playing in the American-occupied zone in Germany. The restriction hinged on his close ties to the Nazi regime and his decision to remain in Germany and continue to perform there throughout the war. According to a lengthy 1948 article in the New York Times by the Berlin-based Delbert Clark, the military believed that Gieseking had willingly given his “talents to the furtherance of Hitlerism” during the war, and unlike Furtwängler, who had long denied supporting the regime, it was said that Gieseking harbored no reservations about having done so. The pianist said he perceived no fundamental principle at stake in the war, “except perhaps anti-communism,” and had asserted it was “difficult to tell” who had started it.⁹⁹ The ban on Gieseking lasted until February 1947, at which point he was permitted to resume performing, though the US military offered no public explanation as to why.

Walter Gieseking

Thus, when arrangements began in 1948 for the pianist’s 1949 American tour, it was not surprising that passions flared. In New York, the street outside the Fifth Avenue office of concert promoter and Gieseking manager Charles L. Wagner was the scene of picketing by the left-wing American Veterans Committee, which demanded that the pianist cancel his tour. While only two picketers were permitted, they passed out a thousand copies of the Times article chronicling Gieseking’s alleged wartime transgressions. According to Wagner, the dismayed promoter, “Gieseking is one of the finest characters I’ve ever met . . . and was thoroughly Americanized.” Nothing had been proven against him, he said, noting the pianist had often toured the United States. Wagner also asserted that he would not represent him if it could be shown that he had “even the faintest taint of Nazism about him.” The picketers continued handing out the Times article, at the bottom of which a question appeared: “Do you still want to hear him again?”¹⁰⁰

A few months later, critic Irving Kolodin penned a trenchant piece on the merit of allowing artists with dubious pasts to perform in the United States. Figures like Gieseking and Furtwängler now ask us, Kolodin wrote, to “receive them in the name of the ‘universal language’ of art.” But the critic wondered, “What service to that powerful concept did they render when the time came for them to stand up and be counted as men?” There were many who decided to leave, Kolodin contended, using the era’s gendered language to praise Thomas Mann and the Busch brothers, along with Toscanini, who had stood up to Italian fascism. Such artists did the “manly thing, as men, regardless of any influence on their status as professionals.”¹⁰¹ Kolodin wondered if our devotion to art was so great that we jettisoned our principles. Figures like Gieseking and Furtwängler were kept from us when under the control of Hitler. Surely, we could now “live without them.”¹⁰²

Still, the pianist arrived in America for his lengthy 1949 tour two days before his first recital scheduled for January 24, at a sold-out Carnegie Hall. (His final performance was set for early April.) Upon reaching New York, Gieseking answered reporters’ questions about his activities in Nazi Germany. “The only appearance I made before Adolf Hitler was at a public concert in Berlin in 1936,” he said. “I never played privately for any Nazi official, and I only met Goebbels once—at a reception for German musicians.” Asked about government backing for his performances, Gieseking claimed, “I never played in any concert sponsored by the German Cultural Ministry,” adding, “I played more concerts for Allied soldiers than I did for Germans.”¹⁰³

Several organizations expressed opposition to Gieseking’s upcoming New York appearance. In response, the president of Carnegie Hall, Robert Simon, explained that the auditorium did not select or engage performers, but leased the hall to artists or managers who wished to rent it. The hall did not censor events, except when directed to do so by government agencies. Speaking for Gieseking, a representative stated that the pianist had been cleared of the “suspicion” of having performed in foreign countries during the Nazi era. Moreover, after the war, the local denazification board in Wiesbaden, where Gieseking lived, had not tried him because it was understood that “he was not a Nazi.” Having known the pianist for twenty-five years, Gieseking’s manager Charles Wagner lauded him as “a man of brilliance and integrity, a giant among pianists and an expert on butterflies.”¹⁰⁴

Although Gieseking’s scheduled appearance had led to substantial opposition from Jewish organizations, veterans’ groups, and artists like Rubinstein and Horowitz, it seemed the recital would go on as planned. While noting that the case was being considered and that the pianist was under the supervision of his office, an immigration official said no hearing was contemplated.¹⁰⁵

But less than two hours before Gieseking was scheduled to perform, it was announced that there would be no recital, due to a US government decision to prohibit him from taking the stage. In the late afternoon, agents of the Immigration Service had detained the pianist after initiating a preliminary investigation into his background, looking specifically at allegations that he had a pro-Nazi record and had collaborated with the Nazi Party before and during the war. According to press reports, protests against Gieseking had emerged in Washington (including concern among some in Congress) and in other cities where he was scheduled to play. On the morning of the opening day of his tour, a Department of Justice investigation had begun in New York (led by the Immigration Service), which heard evidence from representatives of several organizations about the musician’s activities during the Nazi era.¹⁰⁶

Among the charges against Gieseking were these: He had applied for membership in a Nazi-affiliated cultural organization in 1933; he had tried to convince an anti-Nazi conductor in the United States to soften his antagonism toward Hitler before the war; he had played before Hitler and other Nazi leaders; he had performed in Turkey on a cultural mission intended to gain support for an alliance with Germany; and he had dropped certain composers from his concert programs in accord with Nazi demands. Consequently, immigration officials determined it was necessary to hold a formal hearing to determine whether he was an “undesirable alien,” a process that could take several weeks. Rejecting this plan, Gieseking left the country on January 25, with his manager claiming this was not an admission of guilt but a practical choice made by a musician who preferred not to waste his time in the United States when he could continue his career elsewhere.¹⁰⁷

Just after 7:00 on the evening of the Carnegie Hall recital, the hall’s management received the unwelcome news about the cancellation, which was conveyed to a crowd that included a couple hundred picketers from the Jewish War Veterans, the American Veterans Committee, and several other groups that had gathered to protest Gieseking’s appearance. Upon hearing of the cancellation, an impromptu victory celebration began and the parade of gleeful protesters and others in the crowd began singing the national anthem. An array of placards could be seen among the throng: “GIESEKING WILL PLAY A FUNERAL DIRGE FOR 6,000,000 JEWS TONIGHT” and “WE FOUGHT THEM, DON’T YOU PAY THEM.”¹⁰⁸

The crowd on West Fifty-Seventh Street continued to grow, with estimates ranging up to five thousand, including nearly three thousand audience members who had planned to attend the concert. Skirmishes broke out between those supporting the cancellation and those opposed. The police did their best to quell the fistfights, which kept the situation from spinning out of control. One of the evening’s more memorable sights was that of a man walking up and down waving a rosary over the heads of the picketers. His task, he said, was to represent “Christianity.” After two hours of clamor and excitement, the crowd thinned, the handbills were swept into the street, and by 9:00 P.M., the scene was quiet, though the story would attract widespread attention across the country.¹⁰⁹

As newspaper readers learned, after arriving at the airport the next morning, Gieseking had a short hearing, which, according to one report, “formed the basis for an exclusion order.” The pianist did not deny the evidence presented against him and refused to appeal the decision.¹¹⁰ He shared bitter words with journalists at Idlewild Field. Complaining that he had been treated harshly, Gieseking was upset by the unfair way American authorities had handled his case. “Everywhere in Europe they ask for concerts and I give them. This is the first time in my life I have not been treated as an artist should be treated.” He then offered an odd and altogether dubious observation: “If I had joined the German Army and killed 100 American soldiers I would be a hero.” He was glad to be going to France, he said, where there was “more artistic freedom.” Rather than trying to clear his name, which could take months, he had decided to leave. “I did not want to go to Ellis Island.”¹¹¹ When asked if he was disappointed that he would not be returning home with a “pocketful” of dollars, Gieseking snapped, “I can make more money in Europe.” “More?” a doubting reporter asked. “Well, enough, anyway,” he retorted.¹¹² In a news story that achieved national prominence, readers learned that the only moment of levity that morning occurred when a breathless bellhop squeezed through the crowd of reporters to present the artist with his laundry, prompting the German to observe that the “laundry service here is better than anything else.” (The paper made a point of reporting that he did not tip the bellhop.)¹¹³ As he boarded his plane, Gieseking was asked how it felt to leave America. “It is not fit to print,” he snapped.¹¹⁴

Despite the long flight, the pianist’s anger had not subsided when his plane reached Orly airfield in Paris, where he spoke of Furtwängler’s “good judgment” in deciding not to fulfill his Chicago engagement (even if that was not exactly what had happened). He noted how a “few rabid anti-German columnists and demagogs [sic]” were able to “make life in the United States impossible for any one who remained in Germany during the war.” And in one of the more memorable lines uttered during the affair, which revealed his failure to imagine that artists and other leading figures possessed ethical responsibilities because of their positions, Gieseking asserted that his American opponents seemed to think that “70 million Germans should have evacuated Germany and left Hitler there alone.”¹¹⁵ The record is silent as to whether anyone pointed out that not all Germans had been blessed with such options. Nor did Gieseking’s departure end the conversation about his behavior during the Hitler years.

One day after the Carnegie Hall cancellation, three pro-Gieseking picketers outside the auditorium carried placards reading “AWAKE, THE WAR’S OVER. STOP THE HATE”; “MR. GIESEKING, WE TRUE AMERICANS APOLOGIZE FOR THE WRONG DONE YOU”; and “MR. GIESEKING, DON’T BE RUN OFF BY A FALSE MINORITY. COME BACK TO PLAY.”¹¹⁶ But such views would be counterbalanced by the response of those thrilled by his expulsion. Indeed, in the wake of his departure, a multitude of voices was heard, as musicians, columnists, newspaper subscribers, and religious figures weighed in on Gieseking’s character and responsibility as an artist, and on the decision to expel him.

Most outspoken was Arthur Rubinstein, who responded to the charge that America harbored an anti-Gieseking cabal by explaining that he had acted independently. “I . . . will not associate in any way with a Nazi,” he asserted. With “typical hauteur, Gieseking, himself, had told me in 1938 that he was a Nazi.” Needing no further convincing, Rubinstein said he had given concert managers a choice: “Gieseking or me.” He had done the same regarding Furtwängler. Considering the two, Rubinstein suggested he would have ignored their behavior had they offered “even the slightest evidence that they deplored their association with Nazism.” But neither had done so. They had expressed no “regret [or] sorrow . . . at the havoc wrought upon millions.” Tried in courts that had looked for an “overt act to establish their criminality,” Furtwängler and Gieseking were found innocent, Rubinstein observed. And “perhaps in a legal sense” this was true, but on moral grounds, Rubinstein contended, both had failed.¹¹⁷

Columnists pondered the relationship between art and politics, at times colorfully. In his popular Daily Mirror gossip column, Walter Winchell referred to the “internationally famous” Walter Gieseking, who would be playing at “Carnazi Heil (where else?),” and examined—and rejected—the claim that Gieseking’s wartime background was benign. “This pianazi” was guilty of various transgressions during the Hitler era, Winchell asserted.¹¹⁸ More-thoughtful reflections on Gieseking appeared, including a column in The Nation by music critic B. H. Haggin, which imaginatively considered whether it was appropriate to turn one’s back on good art because the artist was not a good man. One should not reject outright the work of an artist who was in some way flawed, though Haggin said he would choose not to “accept personal association” with a bad man who had produced good art. Gieseking’s wartime behavior would have kept Haggin from interacting with him personally, or from attending a concert, which might suggest “approval” of the pianist. But listening to Gieseking’s recordings Haggin felt was fine, as that allowed one to appreciate his artistry without sanctioning his past behavior.¹¹⁹

Writing for the New York Sun, Irving Kolodin examined how best to understand Gieseking’s actions. Appearing two days before the Carnegie Hall cancellation, the article reflected upon the oft-heard notion that “great art should be above politics,” an idea Kolodin evaluated by offering a direct, if historically inaccurate, answer: “May we patiently repeat that it always was, until the Nazis put them indissolubly together.” The journalist argued that an artist is not simply an artist. “He is a symbol of the background which produced him and the people who revere him.”¹²⁰

Not everyone favored expelling the pianist, with some suggesting the country would be better served if it had allowed him to share his artistic vision. Forgiveness was the theme of the Reverend Donald Harrington’s sermon at the Community Church of New York, in which the minister declared the time had come to “heal the wounds” that continued to “rend the body of mankind.” Calling Gieseking a regular German, whose vanity drove him to seek the praise of the German people and the Hitler regime, Harrington acknowledged that the musician had not fought against “tyranny and mass murder” when doing so would have meant a “concentration camp.” In a burst of myopic reasoning, Harrington observed that Gieseking was as “vain and cowardly” as were nearly all men, “whether German or American, Christian or Jew.” The mass protests against the pianist had revived resentment, and some were angered, Harrington claimed, because a small number had denied the rest the opportunity to hear Gieseking “not preach Nazism but play the piano.”¹²¹

The passion aroused by the Gieseking affair spilled onto the letters page of newspapers and magazines, where readers pondered the relationship between art and politics. The New York Herald Tribune published numerous letters on the decision to prohibit the performance. Edith Talcott Prescott noted that concertgoers who had wished to hear Gieseking were motivated by one sentiment: “We want what we want when we want it.” But as Prescott reminded readers, countless families no longer had the chance to “hear the music of a son’s or father’s spoken word.” Nor would they hear the “step on the stair,” or the “joyous boyish noise of that high school kid.”¹²² Another reader, Norman Greene, was troubled by those who had disparaged Gieseking’s opponents by calling them “un-American and un-democratic” because they had worked to keep him off the stage. Since when was it “un-American” to engage in “peaceful picketing?” Greene asked. As for those who refused to perform with Gieseking or Furtwängler, there was nothing un-American about their unwillingness to appear with a man who had failed to “protest the murder of millions.” Finally, Greene lobbed an indictment at the German people, who did “nothing to stop the massacres . . . carried out in their name.” America’s crime would be “still greater if we are too prone to forgive and forget.”¹²³

But Gieseking had his supporters among Herald Tribune readers, one of whom claimed that, given the “peaceful” mission that had brought him to the United States, his treatment had been “un-American.” According to Alfred Fitzpatrick, many had wanted to hear him, and in a thinly veiled anti-Semitic reference, he pointed to the “vociferous minority, always careful to underscore discrimination against themselves,” while failing to perceive their own behavior as “discriminatory.”¹²⁴

Sharing readers’ views on the Gieseking affair, The Nation published some unusually thoughtful letters on both sides of the issue in January 1949, which suggest the wounds of Nazism continued to arouse intense emotion. Writing from Beverly Hills a few weeks before Gieseking arrived in the United States, Lawrence Morton contended that Gieseking should dedicate the remainder of his life to rebuilding what “Hitler had destroyed.” Morton lamented the creative careers ruined because of “racial impurity” or opposition to Hitler. Let Gieseking work to revive the reputations or fortunes of such figures, through all-Schoenberg, all-Bartók, or all-Mendelssohn recitals offered to the German people. It was not clear, he said, that the West had experienced “cultural decay” because Gieseking had been absent from concert life. With biting sarcasm, Morton wrote that a man so committed to his art that “he never developed a sense of political responsibility, would not dream of playing just for money.” Perhaps he should announce that the proceeds from his concerts would go to the “families of artists who died in Buchenwald” or to reconstructing auditoriums German bombers had destroyed. While it might not be possible to ascertain exactly the extent of Gieseking’s guilt, Morton suggested, we know he was not completely innocent. Maybe he should stay home.¹²⁵

The impassioned discourse caused by Gieseking’s aborted 1949 trip, and the allegations that he had supported the Nazi regime, did not represent the last time he would confront public animosity in postwar America. Four years later, after touring Japan and Canada, he returned to New York for a Carnegie Hall recital in April 1953; hundreds marched outside the auditorium. In the weeks before the event, it became clear that some New Yorkers remained outraged at the prospect of a Gieseking performance.¹²⁶ An official of the American Jewish Congress insisted that the pianist had utilized his considerable “skill and influence to curry favor with high Nazi officials” and to advance Germany’s malign plans. Many Americans believed Gieseking symbolized an “unregenerated Nazism.”¹²⁷

On the evening of April 22, 1953, Gieseking played to a packed Carnegie Hall, displaying the artistry of one of the century’s great pianists. As he offered listeners Mozart of “rare beauty,” passionate Beethoven, poetic Brahms, lucid Mendelssohn, and atmospheric readings of Ravel and Debussy, outside the auditorium the mood was less sublime. For some two hours, 250 members of the Jewish War Veterans and 50 members of Brit Trumpeldor of America, a Zionist group, demonstrated, while a sound truck supplied anti-Gieseking statements. Adding their voices to those of the protesters were Manhattan borough president Robert Wagner and the director of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, who pleaded with concertgoers not to attend the recital. Developments on Fifty-Seventh Street and Seventh Avenue unfolded under the watchful eyes of dozens of police officers and detectives, and members of the Zionist group “exchanged sharp words” with those entering the hall. At one point, the group unfurled a large Nazi flag to dramatize their message. By 10:00 P.M. the marchers were gone, and by 11:00, the recital was over.¹²⁸ Despite the mayhem, Gieseking’s playing had enthralled thousands of listeners.

Other artists, including one with a more elusive connection to the Hitler regime, also inflamed the music scene in these years. Though not from Germany, soprano Kirsten Flagstad encountered grave postwar difficulties, as her wartime activities cast a pall over her reputation. Born in 1895, the Norwegian made her operatic debut in 1913, and more than twenty years later came to America, where she appeared for the first time in 1935, singing Wagner to great acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera House. Over the next few years, not only did critics praise her with gushing superlatives, but she also captured the hearts of American opera lovers. Audiences could not get enough of her magnificent voice, which W. J. Henderson described in a 1937 review: Every note was produced with “exquisite floating tone . . . with perfect breath control and with consummate ease of attack and a sustained legato of celestial texture.” As she ascended to “the upper C,” it was “something for the student of vocal technic to keep in his mind forever.”

Kirsten Flagstad

Much to the dismay of her public, in April 1941, Flagstad left the United States for Nazi-occupied Norway to be with her husband, a wealthy Norwegian lumber merchant, whose dubious political affiliations and willingness to conduct business with the Nazi occupiers would land him in jail after the war. For several years in the postwar period, the beloved Wagnerian would be pilloried for her decision to leave the United States to spend the war in her homeland, an act that led some to label her a Nazi sympathizer. Along with repeated assertions that she had sung for Nazi officials during the war, a baseless charge, Flagstad’s wartime departure for Norway raised hackles both inside and outside the American music community and in her native land, as well.¹²⁹

With the war’s end and her husband in jail awaiting trial for war profiteering, Flagstad declared her wish to return to the United States as soon as possible to see her daughter, who was living in Montana with her American husband. Besides this maternal lure, it was thought she might resume her career in the United States. Given Flagstad’s status in postwar Norway, her desire to return to America was not surprising. Her people had turned against her, believing she could have aided the country in wartime by remaining overseas and speaking out against the German occupiers. But Flagstad had returned to Norway and remained silent. In light of such difficulties, the soprano insisted she would never again sing in the land of her birth, claiming she was unwilling to endure the hostility of her fellow citizens. Asserting that she had become the object of unfair allegations, Flagstad pointed out that during the war she had sung twice in Sweden and twice in Switzerland. “I had no offer from the Germans to sing in Berlin, and had Germany extended such an invitation,” she said, “I would have refused.” While the soprano made clear that she was glad Norway was free, her plight was a source of pain. “I am a true Norwegian, but our freedom has not been made too happy for me.”¹³⁰ There was much truth in this observation, which was underscored by an assertion offered by the president of the Norwegian Parliament, who told a group of New Yorkers that from the perspective of the Norwegian people, “Kirsten Flagstad is dead.”¹³¹

It would take two years for Flagstad to return to the United States, and after performing in Europe in early 1947, she alighted on American soil in March for recitals in several cities, where her singing again moved concertgoers. ¹³² Upon reaching America, Flagstad said she had “nothing to be ashamed of,” and when asked whether she expected any opposition to her recitals, she snapped, “Of course not.”¹³³ But unlike before, she was sometimes forced to endure heckling from those distressed by her questionable wartime activities.

Performing first in Boston’s Symphony Hall, Flagstad was hailed by critics, who wrote that she sounded as good as ever, with Cyrus Durgin of the Globe claiming she remained the “Queen of the Big Voices.”¹³⁴ Virgil Thomson, the distinguished composer and critic, who was there, reported that she was “singing like an angel.” Among Bostonians, there was no “unfavorable demonstration” at all. As to whether such a demonstration was merited, Thomson pointed out that Flagstad’s own government had declared her “without taint of disloyalty.” His task was to assess the artist’s singing, about which he wrote, never had her voice “seemed so lovely.”¹³⁵ In Boston, at least, Flagstad’s political problems had been forgotten.¹³⁶

The next few weeks were not quite so trouble free, as pickets marched outside Flagstad’s concerts in New York and Chicago, while in Milwaukee the demonstrators were aided by some who defaced her concert posters. But the reviews were superb, with Chicago’s Claudia Cassidy writing that “Flagstad’s is one of the wonder voices of the world.” The Chicago picketers, mainly female, numbered no more than thirty, but their incendiary signs referred to traitors and to virtuous Norwegian women, who, unlike Flagstad, had fought in the underground.¹³⁷

Flagstad’s experience in New York was a study in contrasts. Inside Carnegie Hall she encountered boundless affection, as an adoring audience clapped, cheered, stomped its feet, and whistled, as she offered Beethoven, Grieg, Brahms, Wolf, and several American pieces. Responding to the repeated shouts of “Wagner,” she concluded with the “Liebestod” from Tristan.¹³⁸ While policemen and plainclothes officers made sure order reigned inside the auditorium, outside, dozens of picketers, mostly from the American Veterans Committee, proclaimed their distress over Flagstad’s wartime behavior.¹³⁹ “We want to register our disapproval of an artist who has been connected with Nazi activities,” declared one of the organizers. “She represents the very things we fought against.”¹⁴⁰ Marching before, during, and after the concert, the protesters chanted in unison, calling the soprano a traitor, and, as newspaper photos made clear, they held signs emblazoned with swastikas and damning accusations: “DON’T LOOK NOW FLAGSTAD BUT YOUR SWASTIKA IS SHOWING”; “KIRSTEN ENTERTAINED NAZIS! WE FOUGHT THEM”; “LET FREEDOM SING . . . NOT FLAGSTAD.” Despite the demonstrators, at concert’s end, a throng of admirers gathered outside to cheer their heroine, though they never encountered her, for she slipped off into the night, unseen.¹⁴¹

A few days later, things took a more dramatic turn as the soprano confronted a more threatening group of detractors in Philadelphia’s venerable Academy of Music. Hundreds of demonstrators paraded outside the auditorium, chanting and carrying the usual signs: “ARTISTS ARE NOT ABOVE JUDGMENT WE CONDEMNED HITLER! WE CONDEMN FLAGSTAD! STAY OUT.” “FLAGSTAD PREFERRED A NAZI REGIME.”¹⁴² While dozens of police officers worked to maintain order on the streets, the concert hall was far from tranquil, as an evening of vocal artistry was repeatedly interrupted by boos and angry cries, some from the front rows, practically at Flagstad’s feet: “Nazi!” “Fascist!” “Norwegian traitor!” And just before the soprano offered the “Liebestod” from Tristan, an irate heckler screamed, “Send her back to Norway!” Adding to the mayhem, such exclamations engendered violent reactions from the singer’s supporters, some of whom leapt from their seats to lash out at the protesters. In one instance, a middle-aged Flagstad defender sprang up, snatched the glasses from a noisy heckler, and proceeded to beat him “about the face and ears,” after which she returned to her seat, satisfied.¹⁴³

At another point, about a dozen men interrupted the proceedings by bellowing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” making it impossible for Flagstad to continue, though their pseudo-patriotic efforts were drowned out by vigorous applause from an overwhelmingly pro-Flagstad audience. Adding to the chaos, between pieces, “stench bombs” were released in the theater more than once, which was hardly the sort of behavior the esteemed singer had bargained for, though the foul air caused none to flee. It was an evening of “stench bombs, boos, and fisticuffs,”¹⁴⁴ which did not conclude until the singer was taken by police through a little-used side entrance, thus allowing her to avoid the crowd of both antagonists and supporters that had massed outside to await her after she had completed her evening’s toil.¹⁴⁵

Responding to the Philadelphia episode, one of America’s most distinguished classical musicians, eighty-five-year-old Walter Damrosch, a man who had lived through periods of political upheaval in the music world, spoke in Flagstad’s defense. In a statement to the press, he said, if she planned to perform again in New York, he would happily accompany her on the piano on one piece. Commenting on the Philadelphia recital, the immigrant musician declared, “I am sure I am only one of the many Americans who feel a sense of shame over the indignities to which that great artist . . . was subjected.” What made it even worse, the charges against her were unsubstantiated.¹⁴⁶

Fellow singers also came to Flagstad’s defense. The revered soprano Geraldine Farrar asserted that the “wicked, misleading impressions” that had been spread about Flagstad had done nothing to erode the “loyalty” of those thousands who believed in her. How “disgusting” it was that people had misused the “democratic process” to destroy a great artist.¹⁴⁷

Nor were musicians alone in sharing their thoughts on Flagstad’s return, as newspapers and magazines were filled with a range of reactions. Columnist Walter Winchell was especially nasty, referring to the singer as a “Nazi pet.”¹⁴⁸ In one of his more vicious observations, Winchell noted that Flagstad had spoken of becoming an American citizen, which led him to snarl, “a voice which lifts itself in song amid the screams of torture of its own country—certainly can’t mean much when it swears allegiance to the American Flag.”¹⁴⁹ In late 1948, after the soprano slipped on the stage during a Carnegie Hall performance, Winchell wondered what caused the stumble: “Prob’ly thought she saw Hitler in a box-seat.”¹⁵⁰

Not everyone was as brutal, even if they were uncomfortable with Flagstad’s wartime behavior. Olin Downes acknowledged her complicity was uncertain, noting that some claimed she had acted out of “wifely devotion” and had not understood how her actions would be seen. Questioning those artists who implored everyone to forget the past for the sake of music, Downes insisted that was neither possible nor desirable. Such a course would leave one “fearful for the future” of both “art” and “humanity.”¹⁵¹

Irving Kolodin pondered what Flagstad had done to help her country in the war, observing that she had chosen her own “domestic interests” over the best interests of Norway. To those who suggested Flagstad’s brilliance was the only criterion for assessing whether she should return to the Met, Kolodin demurred. Artists are “rational beings,” who “must be held accountable for their actions.” While Flagstad had a right to hire Carnegie Hall for a public concert, performing at the Met was different, for it received a New York exemption as an educational institution and offered season subscriptions to patrons who had to accept the artists that were presented. The company had been fine without her for several years. “Why reverse the course now?”¹⁵²

But others thought differently. Writing in the New York Sun in support of Flagstad, columnist George Sokolsky called suppressing thought and speech “a crime against democratic existence.” If one chose not to see a Chaplin movie because of the actor’s politics, that was fine, but one had no right to “throw a brick at the theater” where the movie was playing. In the case of Flagstad, opposition to her performing was based on her politics not her art, and Sokolsky insisted she had the right to “sing unmolested.” Likewise, those who wished to hear her had the right to do so. This was essential in a democracy because we must prove that “we can tolerate differences.”¹⁵³

Responding to an editorial in the Washington Post, which suggested that it might be time to move beyond the vengefulness of the war, one reader insisted, as a gifted artist, Flagstad was not “above politics,” and claimed the issue hinged not on politics at all, but on “life itself.” If Flagstad was not, strictly speaking, a collaborator, she had lived for five years with “one of the most notorious Nazi entrepreneurs of the land—her husband.” What was at stake was whether “civilized people [could] afford to cover up cancerous growths by wishful thinking.”¹⁵⁴

New York readers also expressed strong feelings about Flagstad’s return, with one Times letter writer observing that music, because it “transcend[ed] national boundaries and political narrowness,” could unite diverse people. Since there was no proof that Flagstad embraced Nazi ideas, this Brooklynite believed her status as an esteemed artist trumped any political considerations.¹⁵⁵

Against the backdrop of this national conversation, Flagstad sang to great acclaim in the last years of the decade, though her recitals continued to attract picketers. Whatever the demonstrators had to say on the streets, and it was often harsh, inside America’s auditoriums, there was unanimity that the quality of her voice was undimmed. If a contingent of veterans was determined to remind concertgoers of Flagstad’s wartime actions—“Mme. Flagstad, where were you during the Battle of the Bulge?”¹⁵⁶—music critics offered their distinctive perspective, with one comparing the “luminosity” of her voice to “the glint of the noonday summer sun on a mountain lake.”¹⁵⁷

Nevertheless, Flagstad continued to encounter problems. In January 1949, Maestro Gaetano Merola of the San Francisco Opera reached out to see if the soprano would be interested in singing during the coming fall season. Flagstad expressed hesitation, noting she did not wish to embarrass the conductor and the opera company as a result of a possible “militant protest.” But Merola and her agent convinced the singer to sign a contract, reminding her she had done nothing wrong.¹⁵⁸

The contract was signed in June, and the protests, spearheaded by local veterans’ organizations, began. The War Memorial Opera House, where Flagstad’s four performances of Wagner were scheduled to take place, was controlled by a small board that proved sensitive to the distressed public response to the soprano’s upcoming appearances.¹⁵⁹ After a public meeting in mid-July, the board decided—because Flagstad was scheduled to sing at the house—that they were not prepared to rent the venue to the San Francisco Opera Association, which meant it would be impossible to offer Flagstad’s performances. The board was concerned that it would be difficult to protect the safety of the company’s patrons or the security of the opera house.¹⁶⁰

In the wake of the decision, opera company officials claimed that without the financial benefit provided by the four Flagstad performances, it would not be possible to present any opera at all that year, a startling assertion in a city that had not missed an opera season in more than twenty-five years. Either the full season would proceed as planned, the company said, or there would be no opera.¹⁶¹ In response, Judge Milton Sapiro, who was representing the local branch of the American Legion (which fiercely opposed Flagstad), declared it would be better for the opera company to go out of business than to employ “a traitor to Norway.”¹⁶² According to Sapiro, “We object to traitors singing in this country.” The soprano should have remained in the United States during the war, he said, to raise money for Norway. “We wouldn’t want a Benedict Arnold to sing in this Opera House, and she’s just as guilty.”¹⁶³

Over the next several days, there would be no peace in San Francisco’s political and musical community, as the “warring factions in l’affaire Flagstad”¹⁶⁴ staked out their positions on whether the singer should be permitted to appear. The press entered the fray, with the Chronicle setting the decision to ban Flagstad in the context of the nation’s values, calling it “an act unworthy of the American tradition.” Banning an artist for political reasons, the editors asserted, was something the “Soviet Politburo” does, and “we as a free people don’t like it.”¹⁶⁵ Acting mayor George Christopher spoke up on Flagstad’s behalf, and readers of the local papers expressed a range of views on tolerance, bigotry, and chauvinism in a democratic society.¹⁶⁶

A second editorial in the Chronicle, which rejected the position of the opera house board, noted the many letters the paper had received which overwhelmingly favored allowing Flagstad to perform. The case against her was “preposterously flimsy,” the editors insisted, claiming it was the responsibility of the police to protect the singer and the audience. Those intimidated by the fear of “stink bombs and picket lines” were “opening the door to the cultural rule of . . . hooligans.”¹⁶⁷ In turn, one board member pointed out that the War Memorial buildings, of which the opera house was part, had been constructed to honor the nation’s war dead. Flagstad’s appearance would not just endanger the physical structure, but would “darken them spiritually.” The city should allow Flagstad to perform, but not at the War Memorial Opera House.¹⁶⁸

Flagstad’s supporters made their views known in impassioned letters to the local press. As one reads their reflections, it is clear that those backing the soprano offered a more compelling case than those who would silence her. In the words of one reader, the “controversy makes me ill with its unleashed intolerance.” What right did the auditorium’s board have to “smear her?” To another distressed reader, Flagstad’s vilification was “so ugly” that he exhorted all “decent” people to repudiate such “bigotry.” And from just outside the city, one man’s plea was unforgettable: “I must bow my head in shame, for here indeed is the dark side of America.”¹⁶⁹ Finally, a local woman linked the controversy to the recent war by excoriating the veterans’ groups that had led the ban. Their attitude betrayed “the very intolerance against which they and their comrades . . . fought, bled and died.”¹⁷⁰

Those who would keep Flagstad off the stage had a more difficult position to defend, and their efforts fell short of the mark. The most vocal of the opera house trustees who had voted for the ban, Richard Newhall, did little to help matters when he referred repeatedly in a public hearing to “Madame Flagstaff,” declaring, he had “never heard of Madame Flagstaff before this thing came up.”¹⁷¹ Leaving a meeting in late July in which the mayor had argued that the Norwegian government had cleared her of wartime collaboration, one soldier was heard muttering, “I’d like to know who the hell Norway is—telling us who can sing here and who can’t.”¹⁷²

As the Flagstad drama neared its final act, a Menlo Park man invoked the memory of the war in support of the Norwegian soprano. Writing to the local paper, the aptly named Rex Gunn linked the case to American ideals: “I can vouch for the attitudes of at least six World War II dead, who were my friends.” Three had no desire to go to the opera, but they would not keep anyone else from attending. The others enjoyed opera. “I brushed shoulders with scores of other persons who were killed in the Pacific.” None spoke of silencing “beautiful music as a war aim.”¹⁷³

In the end, beautiful music would not be silenced in San Francisco. On August 1, the trustees of the War Memorial Opera House voted 6–5 to rescind the ban, which they had passed two weeks earlier. One trustee, a prominent local attorney who voted in support of Flagstad, said he was convinced that no ill effects would result from her performance.¹⁷⁴ Another, who had switched his vote from anti- to pro-Flagstad, revealed that his fellow veterans had threatened him and he was told they were planning to picket his employer’s office. “I don’t like it a bit,” he said. The “wrong people” were in charge of groups like the American Legion. What they had forgotten is that America’s policy is one of “tolerance.”¹⁷⁵

That same day a San Francisco Chronicle editorial set the Flagstad battle against the backdrop of a larger set of American values. In proclaiming a victory for those who embraced facts over those who rejected them, the editors reminded San Franciscans that American principles concerning the “presumption of innocence” and a discomfort with censoring art for political purposes had been preserved. The “hysterical” case against Flagstad had been exposed, allowing the correct decision to carry the day.¹⁷⁶

Several weeks later, on the last day of September, the much-maligned and much-appreciated soprano sang the role of Isolde under the baton of William Steinberg in a performance to a packed house. The reviews were splendid, with critic Alfred Frankenstein calling Flagstad the era’s “supreme Wagnerian soprano.” Her voice was an “instrument of incomparable golden glory supported by the most unfailing perfect ear in opera.”¹⁷⁷ While the performance was superb, Flagstad’s professional plight remained uncertain, for she had yet to return to a certain stage some three thousand miles to the east, where she had achieved her greatest American triumphs.

The man who would be responsible for the soprano’s return to the Metropolitan, Rudolf Bing, arrived in New York from Britain in late 1949 to begin planning the work he would take on as the company’s new general manager, a position he would assume in the 1950–1951 season.¹⁷⁸ While Flagstad had been performing in New York and elsewhere since 1947, the decision to bring her to the Met was one Bing realized would be highly controversial, which he explained in a letter to Bruno Walter, who would conduct Fidelio at the Met, with Flagstad appearing as Leonore. “I quite expect there will be a row about her re-appearance,” he wrote the conductor, who, having fled Nazi Germany a generation earlier, knew something about the unpleasant intersection between politics and music. Like Walter, the Vienna-born Bing had left Germany after Hitler came to power; the newly hired general manager claimed he was “confident” it would “all blow over by the time” she reached the Met. In any case, he wrote, it was right to “engage her. After all, there must be an end to political discriminations.” Moreover, he told Walter, she was, without question, “one of the vocal phenomena of our time.” It would be wrong to keep her away from New York.¹⁷⁹

In January 1950, the Met’s board approved Flagstad’s contract and within a year, she would again grace the most famous operatic stage in America. But many found Bing’s decision deeply troubling, and they made their feelings known, often venomously. But Bing, who was Jewish, was prepared for the onslaught, and as he suggested to a distressed patron, he did not believe he had the right to close the door to a great artist whom the US government had allowed to enter the country. “This is an artistic institution, and not a political one.”¹⁸⁰

Rudolf Bing

Over the course of many months, people sent several hundred letters to Bing. Reading through them today leaves one sobered by the impact Flagstad’s impending return had on people from all walks of life, some devoted to opera and some who could not have distinguished Wagner from Verdi. The capacity of classical music to rouse the emotions of the public is palpable in this decades-old correspondence, which now rests in the Met’s archive.¹⁸¹ Of those who wrote to Bing, a minority were appreciative and wished to thank him for bringing Flagstad back to the Met. One New York couple, who described themselves as “lovers of all that is best in music and art,” wrote in April 1950, “We believe that nothing—neither political nor nationalistic prejudice should interfere with the production of what is best in opera. The wonderful singing of Mme. Flagstad is a fine first step.” As was his habit, Bing penned a respectful response, thanking them and explaining his decision. In his standard reply, he spoke of the Met’s obligation to present “the best talent available.” Beyond that, he said, the company had “a duty not to take any action that may offend the public concept of human rights.” The Met had waited for “several years after the war,” inquired carefully into Flagstad’s activities, and found “no evidence that she was disloyal to this, or her own country, or that she participated in, or supported Nazism.” Since the end of the war, Bing told many who wrote to him, Flagstad had sung, “without incident, in countries which were our Allies, and which suffered from Nazi attacks.” She had also performed across America. He was convinced that Met audiences should have the chance to experience her superb artistry.¹⁸²

Another supporter, writing to Bing from Indianapolis, enclosed a letter she had penned to the Indianapolis Star arguing that Flagstad had been attacked unfairly. She wanted Bing to know that she backed his decision, telling him she was grateful “you have the courage of your convictions, which may seem a trite remark; but it is an old truth.” In response, Bing expressed gratitude for such sentiments, which go “a long way in encouraging me to believe that I am on the right track.”¹⁸³

But if Bing had his supporters, the correspondence reveals a larger number who opposed him, often brutally. The viciousness of some of the letters toward both Bing and Flagstad is, at times, jaw-dropping. “Be sure to have a big supply of swastikas on hand and completely displayed . . . when Kirkstink Flagstad” appears next season, wrote one correspondent, who signed the missive “An American Citizen.” A telegram to Bing sneeringly congratulated him for signing Flagstad, “the Queen of song who could sing (as she did) AGAINST THE AGONIZED MOANS OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS; THE CRIES OF THE STARVING CHILDREN AND THE DEATH SCREAMS IN THE NAZI GAS CHAMBERS.” After quoting from a particularly nasty Walter Winchell column, this unnamed writer concluded: “SHAME ON YOU MR. BING. SHAME ON THE METROPOLITAN OPERA.”¹⁸⁴

In a letter headed “YOUR FIRST, LAST AND ONLY WARNING,” one xenophobic correspondent from Washington wrote to “Rudolph Bing,” explaining, “I do not address you ‘Mister’ as you do not deserve this American title for your stand and statements regarding that huzzy, lousy, bitchy Flagstad.” This Washingtonian was deeply disturbed that Bing had hired a foreigner, rather than an American, asking how he could “pluck such a louse.” The self-described Met listener said that Americans, “especially our beloved G.I.’s,” would not “allow the infiltration of such trash,” and suggested Flagstad should take the “first boat” home, adding, “perhaps a plane would be better as they some times crash.” The letter concluded with the following warning: “Don’t take this lightly. If you book that damn Nazi Flagstad YOU WILL BE SORRY AND SO WILL THE BITCH.”¹⁸⁵ A more concise Floridian sent Bing a copy of a letter critical of Flagstad from his local paper, which he enclosed for Bing’s “enlightenment.” The writer encouraged Bing to read it, after which he declared, “please oblige me and drop dead.”¹⁸⁶

Of the many anti-Flagstad letters Bing received, not all were this malevolent. Some conveyed the thoughtful reflections of those determined to explain their opposition to the singer’s return, though they often inaccurately labeled Flagstad a Nazi, a fascist, or a Nazi sympathizer. Writing from New York, a Mrs. Ehrlich said she recognized music was “international,” noting, “we all respect Wagner’s music . . . because as far as we know,” he was “not a traitor.” Nevertheless, bringing Flagstad back to the opera house was a “disgrace to America because the graves of our American boys are too fresh yet and because they died through direct cause of people” like her. As long as the soprano was linked to the opera house, Ehrlich would not enter the building. In another letter, a group of Met subscribers wrote jointly to express their opposition to Flagstad: “We have it on very good authority that Mme. Flagstad is shunned in her native Norway.” Criticizing Bing and his supporters for their “callousness,” they asserted that the Met’s historical memory was “too short.” It was essential to “round up all known Nazi sympathizers.”¹⁸⁷

Writing Bing from Manhattan, a Met subscriber, Ethel Cohen, penned a heartfelt message worth quoting at length: “You have presented many of us with a dilemma and a very serious inner conflict,” she said. “Are principles, ideals, ethics and decency of any significance in the development of America?” Or are these “unimportant where Art is concerned?” Beseeching Bing, Cohen asked, “What are we to tell our children, many of whom are now lingering in hospitals because of the war which the Nazis brought to the world? Shall we tell them that the future of America depends on our kow-towing to Nazi artists because of their superior voices?” Must we “put art above morality and humanity?” Finally, she turned to the Holocaust, which was the subtext of many of the letters Bing received: “When I think that six million of my people, the Jews (I don’t know whether or not you were born a Jew; but if you were you might have thought deeply before engaging Flagstad) who were brought to the crematoria while Flagstad survived as a Nazi and is now being honored, I feel degraded and shamed before God to support an institution whose sense of honor and decency mean nothing.”¹⁸⁸

Bing responded almost immediately. “I have sincere respect for your feelings.” But he asked that she respect his “convictions.” He had left Hitler’s Germany, he wrote, soon after the dictator had come to power. By fleeing, “I have lost friends and . . . all my possessions.” But now his task was to “run the greatest operatic organization in the world,” and he would do so “without prejudice of race or politics, on the basis of quality.” After pointing out that Flagstad had been cleared of all wrongdoing, Bing posed a question to Ethel Cohen, though one can imagine he was addressing the hundreds who had written him: “Is there to be no end to hatred?” His decision was based solely on the soprano’s “vocal and artistic qualities and on nothing else.”¹⁸⁹

In the Met archive, one even encounters a letter written by the soprano herself, thanking Bing for his support in the face of all “the trouble which has been placed at your door” in light of the decision to engage her. As she told the incoming general manager, “throughout my entire life, both as a person and as an artist, I have only tried to behave in an honest and straightforward manner.” It has been very difficult “to face the accusations . . . heaped upon me.” She had been accused of disloyalty to Norway, even by some Norwegians. It was “inconceivable,” she insisted, “that anyone would accuse me of disloyalty” to her “beloved homeland.” She emphasized how much she loved singing in America, especially at the Met, where she would do all she could to help make Bing’s first year successful.¹⁹⁰

For those worried that the general manager would buckle under the pressure of the anti-Flagstad forces, there was little to fear, for Bing was determined to bring Flagstad back. Responding to one writer who declared that those defaming Flagstad were engaging in a “hate campaign” based on “falsity, perversion and deceit,” Bing said he was “unperturbed.”¹⁹¹

Despite the deluge of fevered opinion, there was opera to be heard, and Flagstad’s return to the Met in Tristan in January 1951, with Fritz Reiner on the podium, was a triumph. It had been ten years since she had appeared there, having last performed on the revered stage, ironically enough, in the same opera in 1941. The reaction was spectacular. No pickets paraded outside and the plainclothes officers patrolling inside had nothing to do but listen to Wagner. As the overture ended, the audience roared, causing an uncalled for break in the music, which surely disturbed the exacting Reiner. Before the music resumed, a woman seated upstairs captured the evening’s spirit, crying out, “Welcome back!” As the first act concluded, half the audience stood to cheer the singer, and at midnight, with the end of the performance, the reaction was delirious, as Flagstad received repeated ovations. Indeed, the Flagstad-starved New Yorkers demanded nineteen curtain calls.¹⁹² In the words of one critic, the soprano’s devotees had “come, heard, and were once again conquered” by the possessor of “the world’s grandest operatic voice.”¹⁹³

The question about the artist’s relationship with Nazism persisted into the mid-1950s, this time touching the activities of a musician, Herbert von Karajan, who had an identifiable connection to the Nazi Party. Karajan’s visit with the Berlin Philharmonic—the first time he had conducted in the United States—was marked by protest and condemnation, as the Austrian was pilloried for his Nazi Party membership and the years he had worked in Hitler’s Reich. Born in Salzburg in 1908, Karajan had an auspicious start as a gifted young pianist, after which he demonstrated an aptitude for conducting. Beginning his professional career in the opera house at Ulm, Karajan then moved to Aachen, where he would direct the opera and, soon after, the symphony. In 1936, his talent on the podium would be rewarded with the opportunity to conduct the Vienna State Opera, which he led in a performance of Tristan, to be followed two years later with debuts in Berlin with both the Berlin Philharmonic and the State Opera. In 1933, soon after Hitler seized power, Karajan joined the Nazi Party, a development that would cause problems for him not only with Allied authorities after the war, but also with some in postwar America who were disturbed by his connection to Hitler’s regime. Despite this, by early 1955, when he came to the United States with the Berlin Philharmonic, Karajan was one of Europe’s leading conductors.¹⁹⁴ (Furtwängler had been scheduled to lead the tour, but he had died a few months earlier.)

The Berliners’ first American performance was set to take place in the nation’s capital on February 27, but even before the ensemble reached the United States, newspaper coverage highlighted the opposition that had begun simmering in anticipation of the tour. “We must prove that music has nothing to do with politics,” said Dr. Gerhart von Westerman, the orchestra’s manager. “It is possible there will be objections to us,” he acknowledged, but “we hope we can win over the objectors through our music.” Like Karajan, Westerman had belonged to the Nazi Party, and would also become an object of discontent among those opposing the orchestra’s American journey, which took it to nineteen cities over six weeks. While some orchestra members had belonged to the Nazi Party and about half had played in the ensemble during the war years (they were reportedly granted an exemption from military service by Hitler), this would not become a significant issue for American audiences.¹⁹⁵

Herbert von Karajan

A few days before the group reached the United States, however, more than seven hundred musicians from the American Federation of Musicians Local 802 signed a petition asking their board to prevent the ensemble from performing in New York, where three concerts were scheduled. The petition stated that both the orchestra’s conductor and manager had Nazi records and pointed out, erroneously, that the tour was being subsidized by the US government. This was unacceptable, the union said. According to the petition, the Nazi Party membership of the conductor and the manager meant that both bore “responsibility for the death and exile of countless musicians” in Nazi Germany. In response, an official from Columbia Artists Management, which was representing the German ensemble, said the tour was fully funded by the German government.¹⁹⁶

In light of the petition, Westerman, who was still in Germany, addressed the issue of his and Karajan’s Nazi Party membership, claiming they had joined the organization only in a “formal” sense, so that they could continue with their work in music. (Westerman said he himself had joined the Party in 1933.) Readers of the New York Times also learned that Karajan’s membership in the Nazi Party led American authorities to prohibit him from conducting from the war’s end until 1947, when he was permitted to lead the Vienna Philharmonic.¹⁹⁷

The upcoming tour continued to attract attention in New York, this time from an organization supporting the ensemble, which repudiated the protest lodged by the musicians’ union. Weighing in on the matter, author James T. Farrell, the chairman of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, claimed the Nazi membership of Karajan and Westerman, “while deplorable,” was irrelevant, as the orchestra’s appearance in New York was of a “non-political nature.” Moreover, Farrell asserted, in a statement undermining the assertion that the Berlin Philharmonic was not involved in politics, the ensemble had significantly aided “the cause of free culture in Europe and symbolize[d] the courageous resistance of the people of Berlin to Communist totalitarianism.” According to New York’s Herald Tribune, the committee headed by Farrell was an organization of “scholars, artists and scientists” opposed to communism.¹⁹⁸ That the committee (which was backed by the Central Intelligence Agency—a fact that would become known years later) had become involved in the debate over the Berlin tour suggests the degree to which the trip was thought to have political implications.¹⁹⁹

On the day the German musicians left Berlin for New York, the executive board of Local 802 again demanded that James C. Petrillo, the union’s president, halt the tour because of the Nazi membership of Karajan and Westerman. The union’s petition, which now had a thousand members’ signatures, was accompanied by a variety of supporting documents from members of the Local and other organizations. In response, André Mertens, vice president of Columbia Artists Management, which was in charge of the tour, said the union protest would have no impact on the concerts.²⁰⁰ Before leaving Berlin, Westerman denied ever saying that he and Karajan had joined the Nazi Party for professional reasons, and claimed such statements had been “manufactured.”²⁰¹

The Berliners reached America on February 24, landing at Idlewild Field in Queens from where buses brought the musicians to their Manhattan hotel. Three days later, they would play their first concert in Washington, DC. But before the public could focus on the music-making of Karajan and his distinguished ensemble, several questions would be posed, a few would be answered, and still more would be brushed aside. Upon arriving, the orchestra’s maestro declared in words that might have been spoken by Walter Gieseking or Wilhelm Furtwängler (had he reached Chicago): “I have nothing to say about politics. I come here as a musician.” Given his background, the notion that there might be something problematic about performing in the United States was not one the Austrian was willing to entertain. By asserting that his role was purely artistic and that there was no moral ambiguity attached to his past, Karajan sought to foreclose the possibility of reflecting upon decisions he had made in the 1930s. During his American sojourn, Karajan believed it was unnecessary to ruminate in a serious way upon his actions as a young musician.²⁰²

Karajan was ill and thus absent from the press conference the following day, where orchestra manager Westerman discussed his own activities during the Nazi era. Westerman acknowledged that, while he had been a member of the Nazi Party, he had never attended a meeting and had joined to keep his position as an official of the orchestra. Concerning Karajan, Westerman said “allegations” that Karajan had joined the Party in Austria in 1933 were untrue. Instead, Westerman claimed, Karajan had joined the party in 1935 when he became general music director in Aachen—a statement that was inaccurate.²⁰³ That same day, two orchestra members came to Westerman’s defense. Violinist Bruno Stenzel, who was half Jewish, stated that he had been forced to leave the orchestra during the Hitler era because of his background, and claimed that despite being prohibited from working, Westerman had made sure he was paid regularly. Clarinetist Ernst Fischer also spoke up for Westerman, pointing out that the orchestra manager had used his position to protect Fischer’s Jewish wife during the war, keeping her from being sent to a work camp. But such declarations hardly settled the matter. That day, as the orchestra was trying to ameliorate the situation, the New York director of the Jewish War Veterans, Stanley R. Bookstein, spoke harshly of Karajan: “There can be no doubt his dedication to Nazism was complete and without reservation.”²⁰⁴

Whatever Herbert von Karajan’s wartime attitudes, and there is little reason to imagine he was a devout Nazi, his American conducting debut in Washington’s Constitution Hall was a triumph. Leading the Berliners in symphonies by Mozart and Brahms, a tone poem by Richard Strauss, and a Wagner overture as an encore, Karajan was acclaimed by the critics and, along with his orchestra, rapturously received by an audience that included representatives from the diplomatic community and the US government. As the orchestra appeared on stage, from the entrance of the first musician, the audience began to applaud, which, in the words of critic Paul Hume, was a “tribute” that had never been seen before. When the forty-six-year-old maestro made his entrance, “the crowd burst into fresh approval.”²⁰⁵

Assessing Karajan’s conducting and the performance, Hume noted that in his technique, there was “not a harsh or angular motion. . . . Commands appear, dynamics are expressed in a wide scale from the merest whisper to a full-bodied ensemble of superb tone.” As for the orchestra’s distinctive character, Hume called it an ensemble comprising “superlative equipment for producing music in its most beautiful state.” Together, conductor and orchestra offered an evening of memorable music: Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel was notable for its stunning “vitality,” while Mozart’s Haffner Symphony was performed with “high taste.” Brahms’s First left Hume wanting an interpretation with greater fluidity, as the conductor seemed to dally “at every lush moment.” About Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture, Hume said the effect was “beyond imagination.”²⁰⁶

In addition to the extraordinary quality of the opening concert, it was striking that no opposition marred the appearance of Karajan. With a touch of pride, the local paper pointed out that the performance had been met with unconditional enthusiasm, even though for several weeks there had been “insistent propaganda on the radio and television” against both orchestra and maestro, causing many to fear an outburst. The city could “congratulate itself” on the way it had received the ensemble, the Washington Post observed. The editors noted that the capital audience had shown the country that Karajan and his men were as welcome there as anywhere in Europe, where orchestras from Germany and Austria had played in recent years “without anybody caring to what political parties the artists [once] belonged.” The editorial contended that no one was forced to attend such concerts, and those who did had the right in a democracy to expect that one’s “enjoyment [would] not be disturbed by political demonstrations.”²⁰⁷ The Austrian conductor was pleased. “We are not accustomed to such welcomes.” Moreover, Karajan remarked, the support enhanced their performance, claiming that one saw “the effect of that warmth in their playing.”²⁰⁸

The German band headed north, offering a superb concert in Philadelphia the next evening, which was received with enthusiasm by an audience accustomed to distinguished orchestral performances. This concert, too, went off without incident, the only demonstrations being the demand for an encore.²⁰⁹ New York was next, and here the visitors would find the cultural climate more variable, as suggested by two letters to the Herald Tribune, one lauding the orchestra for coming to “share . . . the beauty of music,” while another writer declared he would not permit himself to “erase” the memory of Hitler’s “heinous crimes.”²¹⁰

On the day the orchestra was scheduled to play in Carnegie Hall, the press reported that all the musicians, including Karajan and Westerman, had met the State Department’s legal tests for entry into the United States. A statement released by the department noted that the Berlin Senate had paid for the trip as a “tribute to the American people for their many acts of kindness toward the people of Berlin—most notably during the [1948–1949] airlift when Berlin was isolated from the free world.” The visit was intended to represent the Germans’ appreciation for America’s help after the war. As a result of this message, which was also sent to the head of the American Federation of Musicians and to the national headquarters of the Jewish War Veterans, the Jewish group decided to prohibit organized demonstrations against the Berliners (though it urged members to boycott the performances), and those in the musicians’ union were told there would be no “official picketing” of the concerts.²¹¹

The Berliners’ performances at Carnegie Hall of Haydn’s London Symphony, the Prelude and Love Death from Wagner’s Tristan, and Beethoven’s Fifth received excellent, and sometimes superb, reviews from New York’s community of critics. Writing in the New York World-Telegram, Louis Biancolli said the concert represented an extraordinary example of “symphonic teamwork at its best.” The conductor was “quite the master on the podium,” a feat he accomplished “with a minimum of gestures.”²¹² Paul Henry Lang wrote that the ensemble’s superb articulation was rarely heard in the United States. The conducting, Lang wrote, was “judicious, well planned, and utterly musical.”²¹³

Nor was the approbation confined to the critics, for those inside Carnegie Hall were unsparing in their enthusiasm. Howard Taubman of the New York Times described the triumphant welcome the players and their director received, noting the “bursts of applause, which mounted in fervor as the concertmaster appeared,” and “exploded into thunder when Herr von Karajan strode out.” The excitement continued throughout the performance, and the reaction was so “clamorous” that the ensemble rewarded the devoted throng with an encore, the Overture from Tannhäuser. While impressed with the orchestra’s efforts, Taubman offered a reservation or two. He longed for additional “light and sparkle” from the group, and claimed the band’s individual soloists were, in some cases, not on the same level as those found in the United States or some other foreign orchestras. While the Berlin was one of Europe’s “great orchestras,” on this concert, at least, it did not “quite measure up” to Taubman’s memories of the Vienna Philharmonic or Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra. As for the Austrian maestro, he was “remarkably gifted.”²¹⁴

Karajan’s appearance engendered a different reaction on the streets outside the concert hall, as his Nazi Party membership and decision to enrich the cultural life of Hitler’s Germany led a few hundred New Yorkers to register their anger. As local newspapers reported, approximately two hundred picketers marched outside the hall protesting the Nazi ties of Karajan and orchestra manager Westerman. Two groups led the demonstration, the Citizens Committee of One Hundred, which had been formed to protest the Berlin’s New York appearances, and Brit Trumpeldor, the anti-Nazi, anti-Communist Zionist organization. Members of the musicians’ union were also on hand, though their union had ordered them not to participate. Cries of “Nazis go home” could be heard by those entering the concert hall, and placards proclaiming anti-Nazi messages—“NO HARMONY WITH NAZIS,” “PROTEST HITLER’S PET CONDUCTOR,” “A NEW NAZI TUNE WHILE GAS CHAMBERS FUME,” “PUT NAZIS IN JAIL NOT IN CONCERT HALLS,” and “REMEMBER SIX MILLION JEWS”—were held aloft by the demonstrators. Some sixty policemen were there to keep the protest from spinning out of control. According to a man on the street, a self-described refugee from Hitler’s Germany, the picket line would hurt Karajan “where it hurts most—his pride. He will never come back to this country to conduct.” Whatever the demonstration accomplished, that prediction proved inaccurate, for the Austrian would be a frequent visitor to America. Indeed, he would return with a British orchestra less than a year later.²¹⁵

The day after his Carnegie Hall appearance and before leaving New York to continue the tour, Karajan met with local reporters. Claiming he was unaware of the demonstrations outside the hall, Karajan spoke of being “overwhelmed by the friendliness of the people.” The journey was unfolding “as intended from our side—a goodwill tour.” Answering most of the questions in English, Karajan relied, at times, on the help of the tour promoter André Mertens, a German speaker. The conductor was asked if he had ever espoused Nazism or supported Hitler’s policies of persecution of “non-German races or religious groups”; and if he had, would he now disavow such views? In paraphrasing the maestro’s response, Mertens said Karajan’s life was devoted to music. Indeed, he lived “in a world of music.” Politics had never interested him. Of course, he was “not sympathetic to these matters,” by which, Mertens explained, he was referring to the “Hitler persecutions.” As Mertens supplied the English answers to the questions posed to Karajan, the maestro, described as a “slight, nervous man” with graying hair, nodded in agreement.²¹⁶

From New York, the ensemble continued its American journey, playing in several cities and even in some smaller settings. In Chicago, the orchestra gave three concerts of traditional orchestral fare, while offering one American work, Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Karajan told the Chicago press of the warm embrace the American people had given his orchestra. “We have never had such a reception. The open mind of the American public for music—it’s really wonderful!” He spoke, too, of his impression of America, observing that he was surprised by the standard of living. He made a point of trying to see something of the country, sometimes traveling between cities by automobile, which offered him the chance to meet regular people, including “music students on campuses and truck drivers at highway eateries.” Chicago readers also learned that the Germans had prepared meticulously for the trip, rehearsing six hours a day for seventeen days.²¹⁷

The results in Chicago and beyond suggested the arduous rehearsal schedule had been worth it. Chicago’s distinguished critic Claudia Cassidy gushed over the performances, describing them as “mesmeric and deeply electrifying.” The music produced by the orchestra and shaped by their maestro was not unlike “a great wine,” she wrote.²¹⁸ As for the conductor who had aroused so much ire earlier in the tour, Cassidy was unmoved by such concerns. Karajan was “the magnetic center” of the orbit of music, “a dynamic force both centripetal in its attraction and centrifugal in its release.” He was “possessed by music,” but with a sense of “self-discipline,” which let “the deep, inner fires of music blaze” and “in their light,” produce “revelation.”²¹⁹

Clevelanders likewise thrilled to the Berlin musicians. It was said that the auditorium in the Ohio city had never before witnessed such thunderous applause.²²⁰ Bostonians were similarly enraptured and one heard no protests from the Symphony Hall crowd, which stamped and cheered enthusiastically, leading the Globe’s Cyrus Durgin to remark that “every decibel” of the reception was richly deserved. Calling the group “one of the greatest orchestras in the world,” Durgin claimed he had never heard Haydn and Wagner played so well.²²¹

Though the tour was enormously successful, there was a measure of discontent along the way, which revealed persistent feelings of distress over the presence of Karajan and Westerman on American soil. In Cincinnati, half the student body and some faculty members at the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion protested the upcoming Berlin concert in their city, asserting that the Nazi connections of Karajan and Westerman should have kept the local orchestra from sponsoring the performance.²²² Musicians in Detroit spoke out against the concert the Berliners were scheduled to play, and student groups at the University of Michigan protested the orchestra’s upcoming performance on the Ann Arbor campus.²²³ Another Detroit organization, the Polish National Alliance Council, was distressed that Karajan would be performing, contending he had “never recanted or disavowed his Nazi affiliations.” According to the group, the upcoming concert represented an “insult to the memories of those left on the beaches of Europe.”²²⁴ Nevertheless, the city’s symphonic devotees filled the local concert hall and cheered the maestro and his ensemble.²²⁵

Before departing for home, the orchestra returned to New York for two final concerts at Carnegie Hall, the first of which, in particular, was marked by unrest inside and outside the auditorium. The evening of the penultimate concert, March 30, provided those who appreciated symphonic music a chance to hear a memorable orchestral performance and to encounter several unlikely visitors whose breeding left them unprepared for a night of music. Before the concert, hundreds began protesting near the entrance to the hall on West Fifty-Seventh Street. According to press accounts, for two hours, between seven and nine o’clock, two groups gathered. The larger comprised some five hundred members of the Jewish War Veterans, who were demonstrating against both the appearance of Karajan and Westerman and against a recently passed law, the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act. The new law, they said, made it impossible for the government to keep ex-Nazis and Nazi sympathizers out of the United States. The second group, made up of some twenty to thirty members of the Zionist youth organization Brit Trumpeldor, also registered its disapproval of Karajan and Westerman. A contingent of several dozen policemen on foot and horseback sought to keep the peace.²²⁶

Inside the hall, as the ensemble played Beethoven’s Leonore Overture no. 3, several pigeons bearing anti-Nazi messages were released from the upper balconies by “young zealots,” which was how a local paper described the perpetrators. The birds “fluttered harmlessly about” during the Beethoven, as the musicians continued to play, ignoring the distraction overhead.²²⁷ Two of the birds were captured quickly by ushers who released them outside, while a third flew around the dress circle, out over the patrons in the orchestra seats, and then perched atop the proscenium arch, where it remained throughout intermission, after which it listened to most of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. Later, two birds, smuggled into the hall by members of the Zionist Youth of New York, were found suffocated in a duffle bag in the dress circle, with messages attached to their legs, written on white cards: “Heil von Karajen [sic] the cleansed Nazi”; “Death to the Nazis”; and “Deuts land [sic] Unter Alles Now and Forever.”²²⁸

Three days later, with their final New York concert behind them, the 104-member orchestra departed for home, arriving in Berlin on April 3. Upon leaving, Karajan spoke well of the American people, emphasizing “their warm and friendly reception, which was far above our expectations.”²²⁹ When his band touched down in Germany, he reiterated those sentiments.²³⁰ Within six months, Karajan would return to America with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London on a four-week tour in the autumn of 1955 that would garner extraordinary reviews.²³¹

The questions raised by Karajan’s music-making in America persisted, even among those who admired his gifts. Howard Taubman of the New York Times acknowledged it was reasonable to argue that music should stand above politics, while he admitted the arts-politics relationship was complicated. Those who embraced the idea that art should transcend politics articulated an ideal that was alluring in theory but elusive in practice, he said. Art could not stand above political battles, Taubman insisted, for artists were human and their work was, at times, directed toward a “specific purpose.” In the case of the Berlin Philharmonic, the politics of the visit were clear: The United States wished to “cultivate friendship” with West Germany due to the international situation, which had transformed the nature of America’s relationship with its erstwhile enemy. That former adversary was now a bulwark against communism.²³²

Pondering Karajan’s visit, Taubman gave voice to the debate between nationalists and universalists. Many had not “forgotten the ghastly evils and crimes that Germany let loose on the world,” and for people who found it difficult to forgive those “they suspect of nazism, they have more than a little right on their side.” But those who embraced the idea that it was imperative to bring an “end to hatred” also had a point. Taubman considered the listeners who believed in music’s power to serve as an “agent for healing scars and bringing nations into better understanding,” writing that such people pay the “art a tribute it deserves.”²³³ For many, Karajan’s visit illustrated this conundrum.

Some were less evenhanded in rendering judgment on Karajan and others like him, and were certain they did not belong on American soil. Writing to the Times a few weeks after Taubman’s piece appeared, New Yorker Irma Jaffe spoke of the “reverence” people had for the artist because he affirms “the dignity and beauty of humankind.” Turning to Karajan’s relationship with Nazism, Jaffe insisted it did not represent one’s “political choice.” Nazism was different. It was not a “system of government,” nor a “theory of the organization of society.” In Jaffe’s words, “We are not dealing with politics when we speak of nazism, but with morality—obscene morality—and a Nazi is one who chose an obscene morality to live by.” There was no room here for “political tolerance.”²³⁴

• • •

By mid-decade, some key figures had passed from the scene, their departures offering an opportunity to reflect on their actions as creative individuals whose lives were enmeshed in world affairs. Over a two-year period, Furtwängler, Gieseking, and Toscanini died, with Furtwängler succumbing unexpectedly in November 1954. Upon Furtwängler’s demise, music writers had the opportunity to praise his interpretive gifts, which they sometimes did without pausing to reflect carefully upon his decision to remain in Nazi Germany.

Noting the “profound shock” they felt upon learning that Furtwängler had died, Musical America’s editorial staff remarked that his conducting style created “the aura of a high priest at some sacred rite.” The editors were grateful that Furtwängler’s “personal and political controversies” had “never touched his art,” believing—quite stunningly—that the musician, in practicing his craft in Nazi Germany, had successfully managed to divorce his creative life from the political sphere. He was praised for insisting, more fiercely than anyone else, they said, that music ought not be “the plaything of politicians,” and lauded for his belief that art would be debased if it became “the servant of dictators.”²³⁵ One might have rejected the assertion that Furtwängler had effectively separated art from politics, and contended, instead, that, during the Nazi era, his goal of preserving the cultural traditions of pre-Hitlerite Germany was indeed political. But this notion eluded the editors.

Nor was Musical America alone in arguing that Furtwängler had stood above the fray in Hitler’s Germany. In Chicago, the Tribune’s Claudia Cassidy observed that Furtwängler’s death meant music had “lost a giant.” Lamenting Chicago’s loss (and America’s), since he had been unable to return in 1949, she noted that his conducting was “light to banish darkness and truth to shame the lie.” With scant reflection, Cassidy suggested that Furtwängler’s wartime decision to remain in Germany was “the case of a man who felt that his place was with his people.” To bolster the point, she cited the conductor’s words: “It would have been much easier to emigrate,” he had told her in 1949. “I felt that a really great work of music was a stronger and more essential contradiction of the spirit of Buchenwald and Auschwitz than words could be.” He had also told Cassidy that “all the good and real Germans” who had remained needed “a spiritual center of integrity,” which he seemed to believe he had provided.²³⁶

In New York, readers of the Times could contemplate Furtwängler’s death and his contribution to cultural life in the twentieth century. He belonged, wrote Henry Pleasants, not simply to the German-speaking world, but to the “Western World.” To this distinguished music writer, Furtwängler’s “spiritual world was closed to anything not exclusively German.” His people “worshipped” him, “not just as a man or as a conductor, but as a symbol of the continuity of their musical culture.” Readers of Pleasants’s piece would have searched in vain for serious consideration of Furtwängler’s problematic past, for the critic barely touched upon the conductor’s activities under Hitler.²³⁷

Less than two years later, in October 1956, Walter Gieseking died in London. The pianist was remembered in the New York World-Telegram as a brilliant artist, though the paper did point out that he had been known in the United States and overseas as “Hitler’s favorite pianist.” According to the World-Telegram, the concert halls were filled with enthusiastic listeners wherever he played, during a career that included 196 concerts in Nazi Germany, one of which was a private performance in 1937 for Hitler.²³⁸ New Yorkers who read the Times learned of Gieseking’s enormous gifts and about the blowup that had occurred in New York, where he was stopped from launching his 1949 tour. The article recalled the response of the crowd that had demonstrated outside Carnegie Hall on that fateful evening: “ORDERS TAKEN FOR LAMPSHADES. SEE WALTER UPSTAIRS” read one protester’s placard, a reference, the story explained, to “the lampshades alleged to have been made of human skin at the Buchenwald concentration camp.”²³⁹

A few months later, in January 1957, the world’s most celebrated conductor died, an event marked by a torrent of praise in the United States. Before Toscanini’s body was returned to Italy for burial, a solemn mass, led by Cardinal Spellman, was said before more than three thousand mourners in New York’s Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, where a multitude of musicians came to pay final tribute to the beloved maestro.²⁴⁰ Lauded in the press for his brilliance on the podium and his devotion to freedom and democracy, observers remembered Toscanini for his interpretive gifts and his bold stance against fascism. Musical America spoke of the maestro’s unwillingness to compromise, noting there were “no half-measures in his music or in his life.” The man who would “rage at an orchestra” was every bit as impassioned in expressing “contempt for dictators like Mussolini and Hitler.”²⁴¹ President Eisenhower recalled the admiration Toscanini had garnered across the world, observing that the conductor “spoke in the universal language of music, [while] . . . he also spoke in the language of free men everywhere.” According to the president, the music Toscanini “created and the hatred of tyranny that was his are part of the legacy of our time.”²⁴² Newspaper readers across the country were reminded of his fight against fascism during the 1930s and in wartime, and that he had “protested vigorously at Nazi depredations against Jewish artists.”²⁴³ His “idealism,” the New York Times declared, “reached . . . into every corner of life.”²⁴⁴

That certain artists used their status as cultural figures to combat the evils that permeated international life during the 1930s and in wartime while others had temporized or collaborated with toxic regimes lay at the heart of America’s postwar musical feuds. While fascism no longer threatened the United States, some believed the behavior of musicians like Furtwängler, Gieseking, Karajan, and even Flagstad made them unfit to display their artistic wares in America, although the motives for their alleged complicity differed. For Karajan, perhaps it was careerism that explains his actions in the Hitler years; for Gieseking, it is possible that support for the Nazi program was the driving force; and Furtwängler appeared genuinely to believe that by remaining in his homeland, he could help preserve the cultural achievements and nobility of an older Germany, which he hoped would flourish once the Nazi nightmare ended. (Of the four, the Flagstad episode seems most unjust; the singer’s ties to the Hitler regime were imagined, not real.)

While one cannot be certain what motivated such figures to act as they did, for some Americans, the taint of Nazism, once an artist was associated with it, was difficult to remove. Powerful emotions and enduring memories made reconciliation impossible. But others, hoping to heal the wounds of war, were prepared to separate an artist’s gifts from his or her relationship with Nazi Germany, and even to forgive the Karajans, Giesekings, Furtwänglers, and Flagstads their transgressions.

Such issues would become less pressing as the postwar years unfolded, but not just because the memories of Nazism began to fade. More significantly, the concerns of the American people had shifted, and policy makers and ordinary people came to believe the danger now emanated from Moscow, not Berlin. That conviction would transform the character of American political culture, and the country’s growing obsession with the Soviet Union would influence the classical music community in ways large and small. Without question, the music would continue to occupy a central place in the nation’s political life, but developments in the Soviet Union now grabbed America’s attention, and the East-West competition came to shape the way millions experienced and thought about classical music.