Music on the Eve of the Third Reich
17 Music on the Eve of the Third Reich MICHAEL MEYER Das Husikleben ist kein Leben flir die Husik. Theodor \l, Adornol Ohne eine traßende Gemeinschaft, die dahintersteht, ist das musikalische Kunstwerk--im eigentlichen Sinne ein Gemeinschaftswerk--nicht lebensfähig. llilhelm Furt\vlinßler2 In view of its probler.1s, tenuousness, and brevity, and its proximity and special relationship to the Third Reich, the Heimar Republic has commonly been called a crisis state. Humerous contemr>orary commentators and later historians have examined ti1e economics, politics, and culture of Germany between 1919 and 1933 in terms of liberal, democratic, socialist, and conservative principles that were instituted to varying degrees in the period, only to then be abolished or channeled into the totalitarian dictatorship of Hational Socialism in 1933. The ideals reemerged and were reinstituted in the nost-Horld lvar II era, aßain in various combinations in both German successor states, and became the ideological framework for the historical analyses of conditions in the 1/eimar Republic. In sympathy wi th select lveimar ideals and horrified over the Third Reich, postwar and Holocaust historiaas have not been able to deal with the lleimar Republic discretely. Cultural achievement, tiwugh acbwwledged, consistently has been seen through the shadow of Auschwitz. Yet, the sense of dool'l, crisis, and failure is not the exclusive product of retrospection; it is contained in self-conscious lleinar commentary and introspection. A creature of nomentous historical forces and circumstance, the lleimar Republic :1ad i ts Vernunftrepublikaner who entertairred reservations ab out the new order but accepted it. Proßressive intellectuals shared with them a historical perspective, one of 316 Towards the Holocaust comparison and contradiction; a v ie~• of existence that stressed change, to some, even considered to be its essential feature.
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