>James here.....
>
>This comment concerns me. I would hope classical musicians paid more
>attention to music history !
>Hitler is reported to have liked Wagner. This is where the assoc. of Hitler
>and Wagner started. So if Hitler liked dogs should we all hate dogs ? Not
>very logical. Someone also pointed out that Wagner was 19 th century and
>Hitler was 20 th century, these two men did not know each other.
I can see both sides here -- Wagner's music and the opera house at
Bayreuth were used by Hitler to propagandize his ideas of an "Ubermensch",
a ruling Arian race, and the association is very strong. For a long time
Israel wouldn't play music by Wagner, and such strong aversion must be born
of an overwhelming awareness of terrible personal pain and injustice.
Although Wagner's music is consciously Nordic I know of no clear evidence
that he wrote it to specifically champion Germans over the Jews. Wagner's
wife, however, was a rabid anti-Semite, and she lived much longer than
Wagner, right into the Nazi era. Strauss took over the role of musical
symbolizer of Nazi domination. (Note I didn't say German! Dietrich
Bonhoffer was German, and fought against what was happening.) If we used
the "ad hominum" argument with respect to art, and say that the idea is bad
if the person who espouses it is bad, we would decide not to laugh at jokes
told by Peter Sellers nor read novels by Evelyn Waugh if we discover that
they were nasty human beings. Similarly, we cannot judge an entire nation
of individuals by the decisions of its leaders.
Karen Jensen
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