Welcome again and thank you for joining us for another episode of "Music and Politics." As ever our discussions precede and finish with musical selections. Today's two musical texts are pre-war historical and are presented in full. These are shellac recordings made in the 1930s by members inside the institution that is our discussion to day the Jewish Kulturbund of Nazi Germany They are:

1. The Orchestra of the Jewish Kulturbund performs "Jewish Dance," part of the suite named "Uriel Acosta," recorded in 1935, a modern composition by Karol Rathaus, student of Franz Schreker. He escaped Nazi Germany in 1933 ultimately serving as a longstanding composition professor at Queens College.
2. The Choir of the Kulturbund here performs "Moaus Zur," this is an ironic liturgical poem known in English as the "Rock of Ages." Choir director Berthold Sander, A trained Kapellmeister at the Conservatory in Frankfurt, he served in that function in Mainz and Hildesheim before the handover of power to the Nazis. A leading Kulturbund activist for seven years, in 1941 he was deported to Theresienstadt from where he never returned.

By the Law of April 7, 1933, Jewish writers and artists were no longer allowed to be members of public orchestras or opera or theater companies, to have concert agents, or to join artists’ clubs or organizations. In the wake of this mass firing, the Kuturbund was formed. It is entirely probable that the Nazis would never have invoked such a solution if left to their own devices, if only for the fact that an operating set of procedures for Jewish exclusion had not been established. Although the Cultural League could easily insert itself into Nazi structures, it was the result of Jewish self-assertion, an initiative that achieved more through its independence of motivation that it would have at the behest of the Nazi cultural bureaucracy. It also should be noted that the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden or Cultural League of German Jews as it was originally called, fulfilled in a dual manner what could be referred to as a Nazi state of desired norms with reference to the Jewish minority in Germany. First, it solved the problem of Jewish mass unemployment and appeared to elide the costs of Jewish exclusion in an attractive framework which would not damage the international reputation of the new German government. If the Jews had a thriving cultural life supported by the government than the stories of persecution would appear implausible. Second, in addition to the “extraction” of politically undesirable or culturally modernist elements, Nazi cultural essentialism sought to remove Jewish cultural production, regardless of its national or aesthetic orientation from the larger German cultural sphere. Nazi essentialism refers to the fact that identity was determined through race of biology not choice or religion, and that one did not have to consciously express racially undesirable traits in order for them to appear.

Political and social compromise and dependence coexisted with cultural autonomy. The “collaboration” of the Cultural League, if one were to call it such, could not be subsumed under the categories of the collusive, i.e. shared ideological suppositions, or the combatative, i.e. as a facade for an active resistance, because the aim of such “spiritual resistance” is not at all contiguous with the goals of material resistance and, by extension, actual physical survival. Cultural autonomy is characterized by the fact that even after ideological or material appropriation or instrumental use under a political regime, authoritarian or otherwise, there is still a space of artistic purposiveness

This episode is a lecture delivered at the Historisches Seminar at the Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich. It is preceded by an introduction and two musical works:

1. Gloria: Cum Sancto Spiritu (1926) Berlin Philharmonic Chrous, conducted by Siegfried Ochs
2. Bist du Bei Mir, sung by contralto, Paula Salomon-Lindberg, believed to be recorded after 1933, accompanied by Rudolf Schwarz on the piano. (He survived the Holocaust and went on to become the conductor of the Birmingham City Orchestra where he mentored a young Simon Rattle.

As Glen Gould once observed, Bach had “little impact in his own time,” and certainly not outside of his native region of provincial Saxony. When speaking of Bach therefore, one must inevitably grapple with the phenomenon of revival. It was Adoph Marx who referred to Bach as a “temple long shut down.” It is a point of musical historical fact, that much of Bach’s oeuvre, from the passions to the cantatas, entered widespread circulation only belatedly, decades after the composer’s own lifetime and only due to the efforts of others. Conspicuous amongst these others were German Jews, specifically based in Berlin.

Felix Mendelssohn’s 1829 Berlin “premiere” of the St. Matthew Passion at the Sing-Akademie looms particularly large in legend. For some it formed the basis not only of the specific German cultural attachment to music, but even the establishment of music as having a distinctly public ethical function.

I would like to make use of the intellectual brace offered by the Marxist-Messianist cultural critic,Walter Benjamin, namely his notion of “secular priesthood.” Benjamin himself embodied this concept as did the activists to be discussed here. He advised that poets and artists of the productivity obsessed bourgeois epoch, as first developed in 19th Century Paris, had to grapple with a new conception of work distinct from the feudal idea of leisure formerly linked to such creative endeavors. Benjamin held that those most comfortable in their own skin as artists were those who most closely resembled “secular priests.” He sought to draw a contrast to modern artists who rushed into mass entertainment, the avant garde or who cultivated a proletarian ethos aimed at the most unfortunate. Within this analysis, the activists of “care for Bach” fit in neatly: modern without being avant garde, collectivist while not proletarian, edifying rather than distracting. Devotion to Bach provided a cultural highway to navigate around distinctly modern and potentially hazardous turn-offs.

Furthermore, it has almost become a platitude to suggest that the oeuvre of Bach is amongst the best proofs for the existence of an omniscient deity. In this sense, Bach functions in ways distinct from all other composers. This has become something of a stand-alone discourse and subject in the English-speaking world. To name one example, the biologist Lewis Thomas, in response to questions about which music be aboard the Voyager space craft, suggested that sending the complete works of Bach to extraterrestrials would be “boasting.” The figures here were ahead of their time in illustrating an attraction to Bach based on the power of persuasive belief itself, not one specifically or exclusively Christian. Belief itself is especially pertinent in the German Jewish context where the hope for integration and ultimately even survival itself required an inordinate amount of belief in one’s external reality, one that was tragically in the end misplaced.

At a time when America's democracy can seem like its teetering on the brink, its worth remembering that West German Democracy was a shining success story in its democracy and the cultural attraction to its freedoms. This was a singular case, where after World War Two the occupying army was not seen as a threat or a terror but rather as a glimpse of a better life. The reactions to rock were by no means universally positive, with some, especially ex-storm troopers even dreaming of "rock n roll" concentration camps.

Before we start our conversation with trained sociologist and chef Ronald Herrmann, we listen to Peter Kraus's "Du Gehörst Mir" and Ted Herold's "Küss Mich," two stellar yet overlooked examples of early West German Rock from the late 1950s.

In this episode we cover:

• What was unique about post-war Germany's Rock Culture

• How did both Elvis and the Beatles play a distinct role in German rock development?

• How did Rock trigger rioting in post-war Germany?

• What role and impact did Nazism still have in post-war Germany especially in the attempt to police the new Rock culture?

• What role did racism play in the reception of rock?

• How did fashion play a role in cultural provocation?

• Who was the "German Elvis"? (Answer: Peter Kraus)

• How did Germany's Colonial Empire in Africa still influence the reception of rock?

Dear Friends, please like, rate and comment, any input is most highly valued.

A great thanks to our conversation partner today, Ronald Hermann and do stop by Ronald's restaurant in the Wedding District of Berlin, the "ExRotaprint Kantine," for delightful continental cuisine. Unbeatable prices and it has 4.8 star rating on google!