# Where nazi into ''degenerated'' art-form classical Hitler like because 100% german?



## deprofundis (Apr 25, 2014)

Ockay i know the story here, hitler was against avant-garde , but what if they were classical composers of pure german lineage that look like Ivan drago(Dolph Lungren) would he tolerated there music and close his eyes and party sanction over the composer.

What would be consider ''degenerated art '' by nazi but acceptable since very germanic or something..

Just wondering?

:tiphat:


----------



## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

In a word—No. Consider the cases of Karl Amadeus Hartmann and Paul Hindemith


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Hindemith did get away with it for a while in Hitler's Germany (and for some of the very reasons given in the OP) but, much to his distress (it is said), he was eventually looked upon as a degenerate avant garde composer.


----------



## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Was there a composer who was a national socialist but whose music was considered degenerated?


----------



## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Not as far as I am aware. However, in order for one's music to have been approved, it does not seem to have been necessary to be an active Nazi but merely not to be of the wrong ethnicity, to compose music which was not considered too modern or dissonant and to not actively oppose the regime.

The rules on degenerate music were often absurd in any case, Stravinsky's "Firebird" was approved and could be performed but his "Rite of Spring", composed only a couple of years later, was banned.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Sloe said:


> Was there a composer who was a national socialist but whose music was considered degenerated?


This was the case with painting, with Emil Nolde


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The Austrian Ernst Krenek had his card marked as early as 1933 - this was primarily for musical reasons (in particular his famous 'jazz opera' from the mid 20's - _Jonny spielt auf_) but perhaps it was also to do with his ex-wife being Anna Mahler, whose father's music was soon to become off-limits. He left Germany in 1938.


----------



## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> This was the case with painting, with Emil Nolde
> 
> View attachment 104671


I was thinking about Emil Nolde but I did not feel like mentioning him.


----------



## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Krenek's music was far too "modern" for the Reichsmusikkammer to tolerate, particularly as it was frequently influenced by jazz, an "alien" form of music as far as the Nazis were concerned. I agree that having been married to Mahler's daughter probably didn't do him any favours either.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Yes, and Alban Berg had already felt the backlash before he died in 1935.


----------



## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

The Nazis were not fans of twelve tone serialism. Schoenberg was the target of vitriolic attacks for coming up with the technique as well as for his ethnicity. He wisely left Germany shortly after the Nazis came to power and did not return.


----------



## R3PL4Y (Jan 21, 2016)

Webern was certainly not a favorite of the Nazis, and although he grew to become more skeptical of them, he certainly was an enthusiastic supporter of the party for some time.


----------



## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

As a side remark, Wikipedia has a short mentioning of Nazi Germany presenting composers from their ~allied countries on concert programmes during the WW II years, including Bartok

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_the_Third_Reich

A bit weird though, since Bartok fled the Nazis and opposed them, a fact that must have been hidden by the nazis.

There must have been many more openly pro-Nazi composers besides those we tend to discuss (such as Pfitzner, Webern, Strauss, Orff, Karl Höller etc.), but information about them isn´t very easy to obtain.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Interesting the way these tyrants have to justify themselves by declaring music 'degenerate'. Why not just say, "I don't like that so don't play it"? Everyone would know what he meant.


----------



## Norman Gunston (Apr 21, 2018)

Will North Korean composers now emerge from behind closed doors


----------



## kingtopher (Aug 5, 2013)

That would imply that anything related to the atrocities Un has committed against his people will change, which it won’t.


----------



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

While Hitler and the Nazis were utterly opposed to what was then avant-garde music and art , their idol Wagner was originally an avant-garde iconoclast himself . Oh the irony !


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Norman Gunston said:


> Will North Korean composers now emerge from behind closed doors


Isang Yun might fit the category.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

science said:


> Isang Yun might fit the category.


Absolutely right, except that it was South Korea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isang_Yun#Kidnapping


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

superhorn said:


> While Hitler and the Nazis were utterly opposed to what was then avant-garde music and art , their idol Wagner was originally an avant-garde iconoclast himself . Oh the irony !


I think it's worth stating that Wagner was only an idol of Hitler and not Nazis in general. There are pictures of Nazis goons going into Bayreuth to fulfil Hitler's wishes and look as if they are going to the dentist.


----------



## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

A concert programme from Nazi Germany would generally have been made up of various combinations of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Wagner, Bruckner and Brahms along with perhaps some composers from allied/occupied nations (Sibelius, Bartok, Dvorak, various Italian baroque composers etc). On certain rare occasions possibly a work by Russian composers who could be definitely proven not to have communist sympathies (Rachmaninov, Stravinsky etc). In the case of more modern composers, only their more tonal works would have been permitted, as in the case of my earlier point re Stravinsky.

Interesting to consider that this was, in a way, paralleled at the same time in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Dissonance was not encouraged as this was seen as a sign of "bourgeois decadence" and a departure from the approved format of "socialist realism", i.e. the production of works that could easily be comprehended by the proletarian masses. Shostakovich's "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" very nearly resulted in the composer being sent to the gulag after Stalin allegedly walked out of a performance and he only redeemed himself with the much more tonal Symphony No 5.

Clearly both dictators did not appreciate music that was not obviously tonal with clear melodies and official policy was made to reflect their own personal tastes.


----------



## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

chill782002 said:


> A concert programme from Nazi Germany would generally have been made up of various combinations of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Wagner, Bruckner and Brahms along with perhaps some composers from allied/occupied nations (Sibelius, Bartok, Dvorak, various Italian baroque composers etc). On certain rare occasions possibly a work by Russian composers who could be definitely proven not to have communist sympathies (Rachmaninov, Stravinsky etc). In the case of more modern composers, only their more tonal works would have been permitted, as in the case of my earlier point re Stravinsky.
> 
> Interesting to consider that this was, in a way, paralleled at the same time in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Dissonance was not encouraged as this was seen as a sign of "bourgeois decadence" and a departure from the approved format of "socialist realism", i.e. the production of works that could easily be comprehended by the proletarian masses. Shostakovich's "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" very nearly resulted in the composer being sent to the gulag after Stalin allegedly walked out of a performance and he only redeemed himself with the much more tonal Symphony No 5.
> 
> Clearly both dictators did not appreciate music that was not obviously tonal with clear melodies and official policy was made to reflect their own personal tastes.


It was more than their personal tastes. Stalin particularly wanted music that would uplift the masses, promote Socialism, etc. There was to be no music produced for its own sake...it was supposed to glorify the State and not confuse the common man with complexity


----------



## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Triplets said:


> It was more than their personal tastes. Stalin particularly wanted music that would uplift the masses, promote Socialism, etc. There was to be no music produced for its own sake...it was supposed to glorify the State and not confuse the common man with complexity


You are right of course although Stalin seems to have had little interest in overt propaganda works (Shostakovich's Symphony No 2 ("To October") and "The Sun Shines Over Our Motherland", Prokofiev's "Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution" and "Zdravitsa" (which, incidentally, was written in honour of Stalin's 60th birthday)) and much preferred Mozart and Tchaikovsky, if his biographers are to be believed.


----------



## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

The use of the word 'degenerate' illustrates the way that social Darwinism had embedded itself in Nazi terminology to an extreme, if not psychotic degree, fuelled by the belief that societies that failed to advance by conquest were doomed to become decadent.


----------

