Musik im Exil: Folgen des Nazismus für die internationale Musikkultur (review)

Book Reviews 143 The authors argue thatJapanese antisemitism clouds its understanding of its relationship with the United States, the Middle East, and other nations and stood in the way of a coherent response to the GulfWar. They conclude by saying that Japan must deal with its ethnic hatreds and fears in order to be able to make intelligent foreign policy. "In the post-Cold War era, when the successful management of international relations will increasingly depend upon the ability to deal with the volatile forces of race, ethnicity, and religion, Japanese antisemitism and the cultural contradictions it reifies will continue to impede Japan's ability to contrib· ute effectively to international society." Jews in the Japanese Mind deserves a wide readership, not only among those concerned with international antisemitism, but among those seeking to understand core problems of Japanese national identity and .foreign relations. Mark Tilton Department of Political Science Purdue University Musik im Exit: FoIgen des Nazismus fUr die internationale Musikkultur , edited by Hanns-Werner Heister, Claudia Zenk, and Peter Petersen. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993. 523 pp. DM 29.90. For many years now German musicology has earnestly tried to come to grips with the Nazi era from any number of perspectives but stressing in particular the personal and artistic fortunes of the many musicians among the hundreds of thousands who were forced to leave the land of their birth and/or professional attachment, whether for racial or political reasons or both, as was the case with Hanns Eisler. Several pertinent books have been based on the proceedings of scholarly conferences or symposia attended very specially by a younger generation anxious to learn more about what exactly caused their immediate ancestors to remain at best silent on the sidelines and at worst to lend a willing hand, whether for ideological or purely mercenary reasons. At the same time, however, many born well after it all happened want to find out about those willful cultural losses ofGermany that turned into her eventual enemies' rich gains. In the process, Exit has assumed a generic meaning covering any involuntary move abroad, whether the individuals ever hoped to return or not. Actually, few Jewish refugees had any such intention in contrast to those 144 SHOFAR Summer 1996 Vol. 14, No.4 men and women who were sure, for the most part on strictly political grounds, that the "true" Gennany would in the end carry the day. Like several other Gennan publications devoted to music and/or musicians banned by the Third Reich on racial, political or, indeed, purely stylistic grounds, Musik im Exit presents a number of essays by different authors, a total of 22 in this case, who broach the general subject in tenns of individual experiences of the nature and fate of a given work or group of works, as a rule with extensive references to the specific conditions encountered in the country or region concerned. That any such collection will and should reflect a rich diversity of attitudes and approaches goes without saying. But the same inevitably pertains also to levels of quality which in the present instance encompasses the full range from in-depth miniature studies of the first order to journalistic exercises of decidedly peripheral value. Thus, Yves Lenoir's discussion of Bela Bartok's final years in the United States is marred not only by its irritating use of Hungarian first names even for some longtime proud Americans, including the late great musicologist Paul Henry Lang, but also by numerous unsupported, if not flagrantly incorrect, statements and, incomprehensibly considering the subject matter, its evident disregard of virtually all relevant American sources. While Hanns-Werner Heister, the principal moving force behind the entire project, can hardly be accused of anything like these disconcerting failings, his sizable essay -,on Kurt Weill and the American musical theater for its part suffers, many an astute observation notwithstanding, from ideologically "correct" fonnulations that do injustice to his unquestioned intelligence as much as to a well disposed reader's legitimate expectations. His concluding remark that Weill was "in exile in the most emphatic sense an alien" amounts to an outright falsification of well documented fact. Albrecht Diimling's astute sampling...