Third Reich Flashcards
Kampflied
Fighting song with simple lyrics, catchy tunes. Direct means of communicating propaganda
Uses of music (2)
- Consolidating power and control
2. Advancing Nazi racial goals
Consolidating power and control
Mass song and rallies, youth organisations, parades
Horst Wessel Lied
Nazi anthem about Nazi member killed in 1929 street fight. Became party anthem
Radio
Radio usage greatly increased as 1930s continued, and newspapers, public pageantry and film also used to spread Nazi ideology
Advancing Nazi racial goals
National pride in music, German romantic composers used same Germanic mythology Nazis played on: anti-Semitic writings on Wagner
Focus on Germanic gods
Strong link between nationalism, German past and music
Types of purged music
Cabaret, jazz and swing - believed to be Jewish and Negro conspiracies
Classical music purged of innovations associated with Jews and Communists (music of the period tended to be modern and experimental, not using classical key signatures, which was associated with them)
RKK (general)
Reichskulturkammer.
All 94K professional musicians had to join.
Similar organisations for literature, film, press and radio existed too
Qualifying tests used to stop foreigners, then Jews, then the Roma from being musicians
Depression and cinema
Due to depression and introduction of sound to the cinema, live musicians were no longer needed, so less jobs, so easy excuse to remove problem groups
RKK 1938
November 1938: RKK purged Jews from the RKK as a means of removing Jewish music and history
RKK 1939
All works by Jewish composers banned August 1939
RKK Inspections
RKK inspected music areas to check everyone had a card from the RKK saying they would play.
Intimidated people who had the cards to remind them they had power
Dusseldorf 1938
Degenerate music exhibition, followed by one in Munich which showed modernist avantgarde art previously banned
‘Negro culture’
Idea that Negro culture and Jews corrupted German women
1930 - Nazi interior minister of state of Thuringia banned ‘Negro culture’ including jazz band and drum music, which stayed until Nazi party lost state’s election in 1931
Ban on saxophone: why
Saxophones and syncopated rhythms not suitable for marching due to ‘swing’, so said to be corrupting and stopping Germans from exercising discipline
Saxophones also considered symbol of sexual permissiveness (swinging hips while playing)
Ban on saxophones: success?
German instrument manufacturers complained, so instead attacked the way black musicians used saxophone
In practice, banning of jazz left to provincial governors and not banned by central government
Measures against jazz
Many provinces made laws against jazz 1938-9 around time of Kristallnacht
Banned jazz on radio October 1935, but could not ban jazz records immediately (foreign contracts, dependency on currency)
Semi-official harassment - Hans Bruckner of Das Deutsche Podium
All records by non-Aryan artists banned April 1937, but could still be bought surreptitiously or smuggled in
Das Deutsche Podium
Newspaper that exposed Jewish musicians so many were beaten (some to death) even though there were no laws against them performing
Increased after US entered war Dec 1941
Swing Kids subculture
People who dropped out of youth organisations, dressed quite provocatively and listened to swing music
Officials tried to break up Swing Kids subculture in Hamburg
Music by enemy states
All records from enemy states or containing performances by enemy musicians banned Feb 1942, anyone caught listening could be sent to a concentration camp
US used Jazz and Swing to lure people in to listen to propaganda/news
Glenn Miller played for US troops, and was also broadcast to Germany - interviewed about how great it was that they could play/listen to whatever they wanted, even though Italian/German copyright was banned in US as it gave country money, or if it had the language as then it was nationslistic
Jazz substitution
‘New German Dance Music’ to fulfil same function as jazz, but without non-Aryan elements
Golden Seven founded 1834 - swing band
Jazz-like music allowed on German radio to prevent Germans listening to Allied stations during war, but was not called jazz
‘German Dance and Entertainment Orchestra’ 1942
‘Charlie and his Orchestra’ 1940 - swing band played on English-language radio directed at UK, used to emphasise anti-Semitic Nazi ideology but played by Jewish and black people
‘Spiritual Resistance’
Victims of Nazism deriving emotional comfort and support through singing
Victims asserting solidarity in music as survival mechanism
Gilbert and (later) Kater
Evidence of music about misery and inequality
Some people being exploited by their own (e.g. other Jews in ghettos)
Wrong to assume that music was immune to processes of politicisation and corruption
Ghettos: general
Justified to prevent spread of disease, combat Jewish profiteering, separate Jews from Poles
Over half a million people died in ghettos, over 400 ghettos existed in Nazi-occupied Europe, some for months, some for years
