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Furtwängler's Name Cleared—At Last

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Furtwängler's Name Cleared—At Last Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 19, Number 33, August 21, 1992 Furtwangler's name cleared-at last by Kathy Wolfe The Devil'sMusic Master: The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwingler by Sam H. Shirakawa Recording session of the Vienna Oxford University Press. New York. 1992 50, with Furtwiingler (seated 506 pages. hardbound. $35 center). Legge made it diffiCUlt for recordings, while promoting Nazi SUD'erstar never joined the Nazi Party a d openly acted against the ABC News reporter Sam H. Shirakawa has done history, regime until its fall. Germany, and Wilhelm Furtwiingler (1886-1954), in that "Wilhelm Furtwiingler was a creature whose overween­ order, fine service, with his new biography of the great con­ ing confidence in his own ca�acity to make a difference ductor. Anyone who wishes to save classical music from its against one of the most male olent forces the world has present state near-death should read this book. known catapulted him far beyoJ?d the confines of his profes­ Furtwiingler, who began composing music and conduct­ sion. That peculiar spark of hubhs drove him into resistance, ing in 1905, before he was 20, was by the 1920s rightfully rebellion, and sedition, in defeqse of a culture being annihi­ among the premier conductors of Europe, for the extent of lated . and he became a leading figure in the Resistance singing expression and contrapuntal construction he could inside Germany, despite later eforts to prove otherwise." draw from Beethoven and other classical compositions. Any­ Shirakawa documents how Furtwiingler used every mo­ one unfamiliar with him should purchase his Beethoven sym­ ment of the war to save lives ahd to try to give some small phonies, especially, as Mr. Shirakawa notes, his firstpostwar spark of hope to the German �eople, to present an actual performance of the Ninth (Choral) Symphony on July 29, alternative to Hitler. Many leadIng musicians fled Germany, 1951. and even some of Furtwiingler'� friends, such as conductor The book's title refers to the vile campaign of lies against Bruno Walter, criticized him fot staying and "lending legiti­ Furtwiingler, run in the U.S. by the Anti-Defamation League macy to the regime." But mos� Germans could not simply of B 'nai B'rith (ADL) and directed by the real pro-Nazis in hop on a plane and land a fat co tract abroad. Britain, because he did not abandon his country during World Shirakawa quotes German pianist Walter Gieseking's War II. For this, they called him Hitler's conductor, "The succinct comment: After the war, Furtwiingler's critics "evi­ Devil's Music Maker." dently believed that 70 million <iiermans should have evacu­ In fact, as Shirakawa's preface notes: "When thousands ated Germany and left Hitler thd e alone." of intellectuals and artists joined the exodus of Jews from Germany after the Nazis seized power, Furtwiingler re­ The New York Times, the ADL, and the mained behind with the conviction that he could save the real Nazis culture which produced Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and oth­ While Shirakawa seems not to know of the ADL and how ers from annihilation by the Third Reich. Despite his well­ the lies against Furtwiingler we�e orchestrated by London, documented and astonishingly successful efforts to keep he exhaustively documents the campaign and how false it Jews part of German cultural life and his manifold endeavors was. It started, he shows, as erly as 1937, when Macy's to assist anyone who asked him for help through the Third executive lra Hirschmann, a former board member of the Reich, saving hundreds from certain death, he was all but New York Philharmonic, and {he New York Times began branded a war criminal and nearly framed at a de-Nazification attacking Furtwiingler as "anti-Semitic." Both Hirschmann trial at the end of the war. This even though Furtwiingler and the Times's Sulzberger fabily owners were leading 58 Books EIR August 21, 1992 © 1992 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. members of the ADL, closely connected to the London Royal Institute of International Affairs, which actually backed Hit­ ler by promoting Nazi Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht. Shirakawa also documents the horror of the Allied post­ Books Received war occupation, during which Walter Legge promoted com­ mitted Nazi Party member Herbert von Karajan as a star. The Transformation of Ameri�an Quakerism: Or­ Walter Legge was the British Intelligence agent who ran thodox Friends, 1800-1907, by Thomas D. Hamm, London's EMI Records, and who made it almost impossible Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Ind., 1992, for Furtwangler to record. Meanwhile, the anti-Nazi Furt­ 261 pages, hardbound, $29.95; paperbound, $12.95. wangler was forced through a brutal "de-Nazification" trial. Again in 1949 and 1950, Shirakawa shows, the Hirschmann­ Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa's Creation and New York Times cabal orchestrated the Chicago demonstra­ the Tragedy of the Xhosa People, by Noel Mostert, tions against Furtwangler and kept him out of the U. S., Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1992, 1,355 pages, threatening any musician who would not boycott him, as hardbound, $35. Yehudi Menuhin reveals in Chapter 19. Only Man Is Vile, The Tragedy of Sri Lanka, by Shirakawa is at his best in his devastating expose of the William McGowan, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New evil genius of EMI, Walter Legge, and his golem von Kara­ York, 1992, 397 pages, hardbo ..nd, $25. jan, who destroyed postwar music with the recording indus­ I try. In the final chapter, he notes that while Furtwiingler Lincoln at Gettysburg, The Words that Remade faded into obscurity, the recording industry "became a America, by Garry Wills, Simon and Schuster, New mighty money machine . a vast parade of younger con­ York, 1992, 317 pages, hardbound, $23. ductors" who offered only "an ever-increasing trend toward Grand Inquests, The Histori� Impeachments of silken homogeneity of orchestral and vocal sound.... No Justice Samuel Chase and Pre�ident Andrew John­ conductor of the 20th century made more of a fetish of it son, by William Rehnquist, William Morrow, New than Herbert von Karajan. Whether it was an achievement in York, 1992, 305 pages, hardbO\.Ind $23. musical expression did not seem to matter much. : "But Karajan always felt cowed by his fear that Furt­ Bargaining for Life--A Social ,History of Tubercu­ wiingler was irrefutably superior, and he turnedfrom striving losis, 1876-1938, by Barbara �ates, University of to be the world's greatest conductor, to becoming the world's Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1992, 435 pages, most powerful, and in that objective he attained the highest hardbound, $45.95; paperbound, $19.95. glory . for few musicians leave an estate worth more than The Buried Mirror: Spain an4 the New World, by $270 million. But the Alberich [gnome] within Karajan made Carlos Fuentes, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1992, 399 him miserable. After a sensational performance, his men ' pages, hardbound, $35. came to contratulate him. 'Quatsch!, he grunted. 'Furtwiing­ ler would not have liked it.' " Amen. Power, Ideology, and the War on Drugs: Nothing Succeeds Like Failure, by Dr� Christina Jacqueline Johns, Praeger Publishers, Wt!!stport, Conn., 1992, 207 pages, hardbound, $45. The System: An Insider's Life in Soviet Politics, by Georgi Arbatov, Random Houte, New York, 1992, ' 380 pages, hardbound, $25. The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II, by Edvard Radzinsky, translateq by Miriam Schwartz, Doubleday, New York, 1992,462 pages, hardbound, $25. Sam Walton: Made in Ametica, by Sam Walton with John Huey, Doubleday, New York, 1992, 269, ' hardbound, $22.50. Cargill: Trading the World'siGrain, by Wayne G. Broehl, Jr., University of New England Press, Han­ over, N.H., 1,032, hardbound; $35. EIR August 21, 1992 Books 59 .
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