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150 SHOFAR Spring 1999 Vol. 17, No.3 "Bread and Circus"Thoughts on Reading Mich.ael Kater's Twisted Muse Review Essay Alexander L. Ringer University of Illinois The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich, by Michael Kater. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 327 pp. $35.00. Michael Kater's comprehensive survey of musicians active in Nazi Germany joins a growing number of volumes in which York University's Distinguished Research Professor of History has meticulously covered various aspects of Third Reich culture and professional life. This, his latest tour deforce, too, is based on a plethora ofprimary and secondary sources and offers a virtual "Who Was Who and What Was What in the Musical Life of the Third Reich." Judging by the breathless pace and tone of this unquestioned labor of love, however, that may not have been exactly,what he had in mind. Appearing, as it did, within a year after Daniel Goldhagen's highly controversial dissertation, this in many ways rather surprising book mayor may not be indicative of broader trends in current treatments of the Third Reich's deeds and misdeeds. But whatever the case, none accustomed to the ways of old-fashioned historical scholarship will be able to ignore the extent to which "postmodemism" interfered also in this case with the requisite in-depth examination of complex human issues. Where untractable political contexts time and again caused appearances merely to camouflage true motivation and intent, posterity surely ought to be careful not to judge events and individuals lightly from emotionally determined a priori positions. Unfortunately and, indeed, ironically, "political correctness" now causes even bonafide critics of the Third Reich to succumb to this method of thoughtless judging, seemingly unaware that this was precisely the attitude that enabled Adolf Hitler, ably assisted by that crafty social psychologist Joseph Goebbels, to consolidate his power among millions who had consistently voted against him. That intellectual and artistic circles were among the first to fall into line should hardly surprise any thoughtful student of Third Reich culture, given the German academic establishment's longtime conditioning for ready acceptance of the notorious Gleichschaltung measures of the 1930s. Far more disconcerting is the very similar "Bread and Circus ": Review Essay 151 wholesale surrender of its "free" world counterparts in the name of equally unproven, politically inspired cultural and specifically racial theories. At the very least, one may expect anyone judging events in Nazi Germany from the comforts of his or her AmeriCan scholarly glass house not to cast self~righteous stones indiscriminately at individuals and institutions whose noncompliance would have invoked the merciless wrath of an ideologically driven militaristic dictatorship with punishments ranging all the way from quick dismissal or permanent Verbat to public ostracism and, especially after 1940, imprisonment, ifnot death. How many ofus would have resisted quietly, let alone openly, under such inhuman conditions? "Inner immigration," not to speak of actual physical emigration, was hardly a general alternative. Indeed, readily available evidence reveals beyond the shadow of a doubt that, faced with an uncertain future, quite a few famous artists did everything possible to assert their steadfast loyalty and/or Aryan descent before seeking and fmding fame and fortune abroad, which they did only after the gates of professional opportunity in Germany closed for them officially once and for all. During the regime's early years many a "racially questionable" individual doggedly pursued his or her path as if nothing had happened. And the same held even more so for those whose Jewish spouse caused them to be classified asjudisch versippt. But even Jews, especially some decorated for bravery during World War I, kept believing that the nightmare would soon pass. In fact, the spiritual head of the Berlin Jewish community, Rabbi Leo Baeck, speaking in the FasanenstraBe Synagogue one Friday night in the wake ofthe deceptive breathing spell just before and during the 1936 Summer Olympics, declared his unshaken belief that "the grey clouds obscuring our blue skies" were surely but passing clouds bound to vanish soon. And to his everlasting honor Rabbi Baeck himself refused to leave and eventually still offered solace in Theresienstadt. Professor Kater's very first paragraph offers...

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