OPINION
Clashing ideals: Keeping politics out of art
or keeping faith with the Holocaust martyrs.
ortik ph;
Hear No Evil On Stage
Jews Should Remember
NOAM M.M. NEUSNER
ALAN HITSKY
D
aniel Barenboim,
conductor of the
Israel Philharmonic
Orchestra, pointed out re-
cently that no self-respecting
orchestra can afford not to
play Richard Wagner's
music. Many Holocaust sur-
vivors say no self-respecting
Jew would.
Wagner, anti-Semite and
Teutonophile, wrote some of
history's greatest musical
works. Most of them were
hardly disguised as nation-
alistic.
So, for the past 50 years or
so, the Israel Philharmonic
Orchestra has not played his
music. Once, when then-
conductor Zubin Mehta had
the orchestra play a Wagner
Credit the
musicians, for they
understand the
real issue at hand:
Can you have
culturally safe art?
overture as an encore, most
of the audience walked out.
Last month, the orchestra
members voted to run the
blockade but scurried back.
The symphony's 35,000
ticket subscribers will
decide.
As this case illustrates, in
the world of cultural politics,
art does not exclude the ar-
tist.
While most of Wagner is
brilliant, his art is tortured
by his politics. Some say you
can't separate the music
from the message. The musi-
cians say shove it: Wagner
by any other name is
Mahler.
Credit the musicians, for
they understand the real
issue at hand: Can you have
culturally safe art?
For the Holocaust sur-
vivor, there are many endur-
ing symbols of Nazi terror.
Perhaps it is the cattle car.
Or Der Uber Alles. No one
can predict the visceral
flashpoints for an individual
survivor. And no one should
try.
So if Richard Wagner
disturbs a survivor or the
soul of the nation, perhaps it
is not the music at all.
Wagner is known to most
music lovers for his music.
True, he was an anti-Semite.
But to judge him solely on
the basis of his politics, and
not his music, smacks of
cultural benightedness. If
Israeli audiences want
culturally safe music, they
can listen to Judas Mac-
cabeus week after week.
There is nothing obscene
about Die Walkerie, except
perhaps its length. Should
Hitler have favored Mozart,
instead of Wagner, would we
have relegated The Magic
Flute to the dustbin of histo-
ry?
Music, after all, is a
medium devoid of rhetorical
politics. Adolf Hitler may
have admired Wagner, but
he never quoted the operas
in his speeches. Why should
Wagner's politics make a
difference?
Culturally safe art does
not exist, nor should it. But
when the artist superim-
poses his work, it is the au-
dience that suffers. Then,
the "genius" of a composer is
judged on his looks, his pri-
vate life or his politics.
Hitler extolled Wagner's
music for his politics. We
should not condemn it for
the same reason.
If symphonies are required
to master Wagner for the
sake of musical literacy, his-
tory should not hold them
back. It would be Hitler's
victory, after all, if Jews
were so restricted by
memory that they could not
listen to, or play, his favorite
music. ❑
H
undreds of Mercedes
taxis ply the streets
of Israel. I'm sure
there are Krupp scales and,
on Israeli store shelves,
dozens of other products
from the new Germany that
are purchased every day in
the Jewish state.
So why the continued fuss
about playing Wagner?
Didn't Daimler-Benz and
Krupp use Jews as slave
labor to help the Nazi cause?
Didn't thousands die in
these companies' efforts to
be the arsenal of fascism?
Why attack one symbol of
Nazism when there are so
many others we have
forgiven through our pur-
chase of German. products?
Maybe poor old Richard
Wagner has just been caught
in a tangled net, a symbol of
a hate-filled era that led to
the deaths of nearly 30 mill-
ion individuals, including
the six million who were put
to death simply because they
were Jews.
If Wagner remains as the
one symbol of Nazi Germany
that we continue to hate, so
be it. What does it hurt? And
there are certainly good
reasons to continue our an-
tipathy.
There are many in the
Jewish community who were
alive at the time of World
War II who continue a per-
sonal boycott of German
products. It can be argued
that this boycott is a con-
demnation of the future ge-
nerations, not of the guilty
parties. Despite the res-
urgence of neo-Nazism in
reunited Germany, there are
no indications that a par-
ticular company is behind
such actions.
Ford Motor Co. has been
forgiven by most Jews for
the anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi
actions of its founder. It took
the efforts and generosity of
Henry Ford's grandson,
Henry Ford II, to win over
the Jewish community.
Germany has tried to do the
same thing by paying
reparations to survivors and
to the State of Israel. Jewish
communal forgiveness of
Ford Motor Co. and reluc-
tance to forgive Germany
may be tied to the fact that
Ford was not the cause of
millions of deaths, despite
his abhorrent views.
The same can not be said
for Wagner. A virulent anti-
Semite, he was, for at least
one columnist, the philo-
sophical and artistic pillar of
the Third Reich, despite his
having died in 1883. To
quote Lucy S. Dawidowicz,
Wagner developed "in his
music and journalism the
idea of a de-Judaized, hence
de-Christianized, Germanic
religion, in which the pagan
Teutonic elements merged
with, or displaced, the Chris-
tian ones."
To quote an editorial in the
Baltimore Jewish Times,
If Wagner remains
as the one symbol
of Nazi Germany
that we continue
to hate, so be it.
"We champion placing as
few bounds as possible on
the performance or the ex-
hibit or the publication of
any art form. But one
criteria for placing art off-
limits is obscenity. And
Wagner's music, while,
perhaps, aurally pleasing, is
ideologically obscene and
abhorrent to the intellect."
There are thousands of
composers in the world's col-
lected repertoire —including
hundreds from Germany. A
Jewish orchestra should be
able to find one that does not
bring to the stage the philo-
sophical nightmare of a
Richard Wagner.
❑