Revised Pages The Jazz Republic Revised Pages Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany Kathleen Canning, Series Editor Recent Titles Bodies and Ruins: Imagining the Bombing of Germany, 1945 to the Present David Crew The Jazz Republic: Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany Jonathan Wipplinger The War in Their Minds: German Soldiers and Their Violent Pasts in West Germany Svenja Goltermann Three-Way Street: Jews, Germans, and the Transnational Jay Howard Geller and Leslie Morris, Editors Beyond the Bauhaus: Cultural Modernity in Breslau, 1918–33 Deborah Ascher Barnstone Stop Reading! Look! Modern Vision and the Weimar Photographic Book Pepper Stetler The Corrigible and the Incorrigible: Science, Medicine, and the Convict in Twentieth- Century Germany Greg Eghigian An Emotional State: The Politics of Emotion in Postwar West German Culture Anna M. Parkinson Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Paul B. Jaskot, Editors Consumption and Violence: Radical Protest in Cold-War West Germany Alexander Sedlmaier Communism Day-to-Day: State Enterprises in East German Society Sandrine Kott Envisioning Socialism: Television and the Cold War in the German Democratic Republic Heather L. Gumbert The People’s Own Landscape: Nature, Tourism, and Dictatorship in East Germany Scott Moranda German Colonialism Revisited: African, Asian, and Oceanic Experiences Nina Berman, Klaus Mühlhahn, and Patrice Nganang, Editors Becoming a Nazi Town: Culture and Politics in Göttingen between the World Wars David Imhoof For a complete list of titles, please see www.press.umich.edu Revised Pages The Jazz Republic Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany Jonathan O. Wipplinger University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor Revised Pages Copyright © by Jonathan O. Wipplinger All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (be- yond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid- free paper 2020 2019 2018 2017 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Wipplinger, Jonathan O., author. Title: The jazz republic : music, race, and American culture in Weimar Germany / Jonathan O. Wipplinger. Description: Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2017] | Series: Social history, popular culture, and politics in Germany | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016046421| ISBN 9780472053407 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780472073405 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780472122660 (e- book) Subjects: LCSH: Jazz— Social aspects— Germany— History— 20th century. | Jazz— Germany— 1921– 1930— History and criticism. | Germany— Civilization— American influences. | Music and race— Germany. Classification: LCC ML3918.G3 W57 2017 | DDC 306.4/8425094309042— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046421 Revised Pages And now I have to tell you how it was back then, when the world, pretty much reaching its goal on the first try, had become jazz. —Hans Janowitz Revised Pages Revised Pages Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 Jazz Occupies Germany 21 2 The Aural Shock of Modernity 51 3 Writing Symphonies in Jazz 84 4 Syncopating the Mass Ornament 115 5 Bridging the Great Divides 141 6 Singing the Harlem Renaissance 165 7 Jazz’s Silence 197 Conclusion 226 Notes 241 Index 303 Revised Pages Revised Pages Acknowledgments This project has accompanied me now for more than ten years and across four institutions. Over this period, I have had more opportunities than I can recount to converse with scholars and colleagues about the subject of jazz music and popu- lar culture in Germany during the 1920s. Their cumulative effect has helped shape The Jazz Republic. Even more so, without the collective support, guidance, and knowledge of friends and colleagues, The Jazz Republic simply would not have been completed. Throughout, I’ve also been financially supported through a number of grants and stipends from the University of Michigan, North Carolina State University, and the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. At both my current and previous institutions, senior colleagues in German have supported me to a degree that went far beyond the call of duty. Fittingly, they each share the first name “Ruth.” At North Carolina State, Ruth Gross was my department chair, a scholarly mentor, and simply a wonderful colleague. At Milwaukee, I have had the luck to be helped along and quite often lifted up by Ruth Schwertfeger: our conservations always left me with a smile on my face. I cannot thank each of them enough. The following is an attempt to list, in no particular order other than alpha- betical, some of those who have contributed to the current work over the years. My apologies in advance to anyone I’ve forgotten: Vanessa Agnew, Kevin Ami- don, Don Anderson, Paul Anderson, Naomi André, Kerstin Barndt, Vlad Bilen- kin, Viktorija Bilic, Ulrich Biller, Stephen Bourne, Helga Braunbeck, Sylvia Schmitz- Burgard, Peter Cahn, David Choberka, Michael Cowan, Chip Deffaa, Bill Donahue, Andrew Donson, Michelle Eley, Carla Garner, Michael Garval, Karl Gert zur Heide, Daniel Golani, David Gramling, Jürgen Grandt, Jane Hawkins, Gabriele Hayden, Jürgen Heinrichs, Leroy Hopkins, Jochen Hung, Andrew Hurley, Catherine Kirchman, Lutz Kube, Alan Lareau, Priscilla Layne, Rainer Lotz, Jason Miller, Tobias Nagl, Nancy Nenno, Marc Pierce, Arnold Revised Pages x Acknowledgments Rampersad, Don Rayno, Marc Reibold, Christian Rogowski, Andreas Schmauder, Michael Schmidt, Barbara Schoenberg, Laurence Senelick, John Sienicki, Meredith Soeder, Werner Sollors, Scott Spector, Noah Strote, Kira Thurman, Louise Toppin, Elisabeth Trautwein- Heymann, Simon Walsh, Silke Weineck, and Michelle Wright. Special mention, though, is due to two independent researchers of jazz music and African American musicians in Germany and Austria: Hans Pehl and Konrad Nowakowski. Each of them has contributed greatly to the follow- ing project through collaboration, joint research, and sharing of their years of knowledge and expertise. They have each greatly enriched the project and their generosity has known no bounds; each read drafts of the manuscript and, in the process, contributed new information and eliminated any number of errors. Needless to say, any mistakes that remain are my own. My research was also furthered through a number of archives and libraries in the United States and Germany. Generally, I’d like to begin by thanking the interlibrary loan staff at both the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee and at North Carolina State University for procuring almost every obscure request I’ve made. In addition, I’d also like to thank specifically: Akademie der Künste (Michael Schwarz), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale Uni- versity, Center for Research Libraries in Chicago, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bib- liothek Weimar (Dr. Hans Zimmermann), Hochschule für Musik und darstel- lende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main (Dr. Andreas Odenkirchen), Institut für Theaterwissenschaft of the Free University Berlin (Dr. Peter Jammerthal), Li- brary of Congress, Moorland- Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, New York Public Library, Paul Whiteman Collection at Williams College, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg of the Landesarchiv Baden-W ürttemberg, Staatsbibliothek Berlin, and the The- aterwissenschaftliche Sammlung of the University of Cologne. To the University of Michigan Press and its entire staff, in particular LeAnn Fields, who has supported the project from the start, I am deeply grate- ful. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript as well for their extremely useful comments. Outside of academia, I have also been supported through my family, my mother and father as well as mother- and father- in- law and my entire extended family. This book, though, is dedicated to my wife, Katie, and children, Charlotte, Grace, Josephine, and Isabelle. Any words here will not suffice to express what you mean to me, so I’ll only say that without you, I would be lost. Revised Pages Acknowledgments xi Note Regarding Language Throughout this work, the word “Black” is capitalized when used in reference to people of African descent and the Black African diaspora in all cases except when occurring in direct citation. This usage is common though by no means universal in a variety of fields such as African American Studies and African Diaspora Studies. It is adopted here as a means of signaling these groups’ sta- tus as communities on par with other nationalities, peoples, etc., yet in a way that also attends to the diversity of Black peoples and cultures in the United States and globally, something especially important given the derogatory and dehumanizing language contained within some of my primary sources. The manuscript also uses “African American” in non- hyphenated form throughout for similar reasons and employs “Black” and “African American” synony- mously where appropriate. Revised Pages Revised Pages Introduction Sometime in the spring of 1925, a sixteen-year - old Berlin native, Alfred Lion, decided to spend a day at the Theater im Admiralspalast. One of the most im- portant entertainment establishments of the German capital, it was well known to Lion from his youth for its renowned skating rink. In 1922, however, the building had been renovated and the rink replaced with a theater hall that could fit an audience of over 2000.1 In addition to its café and casino, this institution featured performances by musical revues and operettas throughout the 1920s. On that spring day, there was a performance of the African American revue Chocolate Kiddies. As Lion recalled much later, in part mixing the establish- ment’s past and present: Well, you know I was a young boy and I used to go skating, roller- skating, in a place called the Admiralspalast, I think it was.