Fred Brouwers - Beethoven in the Bunker: Musicians Under the Nazi Regime

Introduction
Music in the Bunker

Paul Abraham
The Would-Be Hollywood Star

Arturo Toscanini
The Tyrant

Richard Strauss
The Opportunist

Elly Ney
The Fervent Anti-Semite

Josef Bor and Rafael Schchter
Two Camp Mates

Igor Stravinsky
The Man Who Adored Mussolini

Bronisaw Huberman
Public Enemy Number One

Anton Webern
A Forgotten Cult Figure

Olivier Messiaen
The Composer Ornithologist

Anita Lasker
A Little-Known but Noble Woman

Paul Hindemith
The Atonal Noisemaker

Fritz Lhner-Beda
The Hit Machine

Willem Mengelberg
National Hero

Franz Lehr
Idolized by Hitler

Herbert Ritter von Karajan
A Member of the Party

185 Joseph Schmidt
The German Caruso

From Myra Hess to Vera Lynn
The Power of Music

Hanns Eisler
The Revolutionary

Paul Douliez
From Socialist to Nazi

Beethoven in The BunkerMusic
A Playlist

In the late 1960s, including that magical year of 1968, I was a student of Germanic languages at the university in Leuven, the city where I was born. Student protests were raining down in Paris; in Leuven, there was a slight drizzle. As students, we rebelled against the blind authority imposed on us by our institution of higher learning, our parents, and the political establishment. Power for powers sake was thrown overboard and multiple political leanings were welcomed. This extended to the realm of my greatest passion, music. Various musical streams were mixed together. While marching in the streets, we sang We Shall Overcome. Deep Purple played their Concerto for Group and Orchestra with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Malcolm Arnold. I still get goosebumps thinking about Jon Lords entrance on the organ! Classical composers like Cornelius Cardew and Frederic Rzewski wrote politically charged works. We embraced protest songs by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan. Their European counterparts inspired us too, including Wolf Biermann in East Germany; Ewan McColl and Leon Rosselson in the United Kingdom; Boris Vian, Jean Ferrat, Georges Brassens in France; and our own Belgian Jacques Brel, who took aim at the bourgeoisie. We were familiar with bootleg tapes by the dissident Vladimir Vysotsky, which circulated clandestinely in the Soviet Union. Musicologists explained that Beethoven was both a musical genius and an enemy of dictatorial authority, as was clear from his Third Symphony. And hadnt Bach, the great master, been reprimanded during his years in Weimar for daring to clash with a student who happened to have wealthy parents? Pure class justice!

From the early 1970s on, I worked in the world of radio and television, and I carried the political sentiments of the 1960s with me. But let me be clear: the beauty and power of music and words always remained paramount. The connection with politics and the world at large was an extra dimension. My first project was a radio program entitled Politheek, a combination of politics and the Flemish word for discotheque. Every week, I selected a political or social theme. I found an hours worth of music to illustrate an endless stream of topics including sexism, homosexuality, racial discrimination, political dictatorship, slavery, the womens movement, anti-Semitism, and war. The music ranged from Bob Dylans song about Rubin Hurricane Carter to Joseph Haydns Farewell Symphony. The 1970s were followed by decades of working on programs, both on radio and television, dedicated exclusively to classical music. Perhaps the best known of these is the Queen Elisabeth Competition, which I presented for thirty-five years. In 1983, Frederic Rzewski even wrote the required piece for that competition, although it was 100 percent music, unlike The People United Shall Never Be Defeated, a 1975 work in which the soloist was expected, among other things, to whistle and slam the piano lid.

My fascination for the connection between music and society never waned. In 2014, shortly after I retired, the city of Leuven commissioned me to organize a concert commemorating the start of the First World War. Leuven had been devastated by that conflict, becoming what is known as a martyr city. It received attention and genuine support from the United States and the United Kingdom. For the memorial concert I chose the Mozart Requiem and a new work entitled The Sack of Louvain. Written by Belgian composer Piet Swerts, the work was based on four poems by war poets. The four vocalists chosen represented both reconciliation and the hope for peace: a Belgian tenor and soprano, Thomas Blondelle and Ilse Eerens; a German baritone, Dietrich Henschel; and an American mezzo-soprano, Vivica Genaux, all conducted by a British conductor, David Angus.

While working on that project, I often thought about the Second World War. It had ended in 1945, so 2020 was to be the seventy-fifth anniversary of the cessation of hostilities. Because of my background in media I always try to find ways of contributing to important historical landmarks. During my research, I stumbled across an article from August 2007 in the German magazine