Mozart and the Nazis: How the Third Reich Abused a Cultural Icon by Levi Erik

Author:Levi, Erik [Levi, Erik]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2011-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

23 Joseph Goebbels delivering his Mozart speech at the Staatsoper in Vienna, 4 December 1941.

24 Goebbels visiting the newly restored Figarohaus in the Domgasse Vienna, 5 December 1941.

After his speech Goebbels attended a performance of Die Zauberflöte in the company of Nazi luminaries such as von Schirach, Seyss-Inquart, Gauleiter Hanke, Gauleiter Rainer, the Hungarian finance minister Remenyi-Schneller, Benno von Arent and many guests from Party and the Wehrmacht. He remained in Vienna for the Mozart anniversary day, visiting the restored Figarohaus in the Domgasse, which had been formally opened by von Schirach a few days earlier, and attending a performance of the Requiem under Wilhem Furtwängler.

Baldur von Schirach had argued in his speech that the performance of the Requiem would act not only as a mourning for the death of Mozart, but also as a tribute to every person killed in action. Goebbels disagreed with his rival. While acknowledging the profound impact of the music over the assembled audience, he wrote in his diaries that he would forbid any further radio broadcasts of the Requiem. Such a work, he suggested, could not offer comfort to people in the current climate and would only serve to depress them further: ‘At present we need heroic death music, but not a work that has a Christian or even Catholic message.’63

The Requiem was preceded by an elaborately choreographed Party ritual designed to pay formal homage to Mozart on the anniversary of his death. Captured on film and featured in the weekly propaganda newsreel Deutsche Wochenschau, the ceremony was shown throughout the German Reich and the occupied territories. It took place in front of the Mozart monument on the Albertinaplatz next to St Stephen's Cathedral. A soldier stood guard as a memorial flame was lit on top of the monument which had itself been decorated with swastikas and a golden wreath inscribed with the letter M (for Mozart). The square, thronged with people, was decked with swastikas and the flags of nineteen different states. It was an extremely festive scene, undoubtedly enhanced by the order from von Schirach that the residents of Vienna should erect flags in Mozart's memory on all the buildings in the city so as to ‘express their gratitude to this most brilliant and multi-faceted genius of music’ and to bestow on him ‘the honour which was denied to him when he was carried to his grave, lonely and deserted’.64 At the stroke of midday a distantly placed trumpet choir intoned the March of the Priests from Die Zauberflöte as von Schirach strode towards the Mozart monument and memorial flame to lay a wreath in the name of the Führer. With his right arm raised in salute, von Schirach stood for a minute's silence as a mark of respect.65

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