[Music, Life & Death under the Third Reich] Furtwängler, Wilhelm. (1886-1954)

"Gespräche über Musik" - SIGNED

Zürich: Atlantis Musikbücherei. 1953. 12mo. 138 pp. Boldly signed in blue ink by the influential conductor on the half-title. Ownership signature on first free endpage, otherwise in very fine condition.

Furtwangler “was never remotely an adherent of the Hitler regime, and he dissociated himself from it and opposed it in all kinds of ways, great and small: for example, by always refusing to give the obligatory Nazi salute at public concerts, even when Hitler was present, by constantly using his influence to save the lives of Jewish musicians, obscure as well as famous, by rejecting numerous commands to conduct in occupied countries during the war, and by speaking his mind quite openly. In 1934, when Hindemith’s opera Mathis der Maler was banned, Furtwängler resigned all his posts and, though wooed by the Nazis, never resumed them. All this required courage, even in a man of Furtwängler’s eminence. Indeed, when he finally escaped to Switzerland in January 1945 he was within a few hours of being arrested. He could have emigrated long before, as many non-Jewish German musicians did; it would certainly have made life easier for him. But he thought that art could be kept apart from politics, and he saw it as his responsibility to stay. There were those who felt he was right to do so: Arnold Schoenberg, for instance (‘You must stay, and conduct good music’), or the Jewish theatre director Max Reinhardt: ‘People like Furtwängler must stay, if Germany is to survive’.” (David Cairns, Grove Online) (6795)

Signed Document/Item Classical Music