As with Steve and Leon, I think that rushing too fast to judgement without
seeking out facts is unwise: that's what "they" did and we don't want
to be even remotely like "them".  (but I know from experience Robert has
a good and true heart).

One day I was working in the archives and keyed in a wrong search number.
To my amazement out popped Furtwangler's original file from 1945/6 which
gave details of his denazification trial, evidence pro and con.  The
enquiries were extensive but he was cleared.  After all, he had stood
up to Goebbels and gone into temporary internal exile.  A less famous
figure would have ended up dead.  In the file I came across a letter
from an ordinary music lover, who had no time for the nazis but for
whatever reason was stuck in Berlin through those years.  What he said
moved me so much that I would like to share it.

"Never shall I forget how, on the entry of the famous conductor the
audience which filled the hall to the last seat, stood up as one man and
as if on a signal, instead of the usual appleause, which did not seem
even to leave the workmen clearing away the instruments unimpressed:
they looked in wonderment at the man standing alone on the platform and
at the enthusiastic people in the hall.  Why all this and why just at
this moment?  Was it in order to pay homage to Furtwangler the National
Socialist?  I hardly think so.  I had the definite impression that at
this moment the audience in the hall felt itself one with the man who
had managed to resist for once the usual pressure and threats conming
from above At the same time they wished to expresss their gratitude that
the conductor in spite of it all was not lost to the public.  ......in
general, it was not an audience of NS who attended the Philharmonic
concerts, for most of the people who went to them, the concerts became
the time for celebration (der Bescucher zu einer Feierstunde) that
provided themselves an opportunity to lift themselves above the artisitic
emptiness that the nazis had conjured up.  We Germans had become so poor
in art theatre literature and films, our wings were clipped in the choice
of artists and of material.  Yet music contained so much that just cannot
be falsified or forbidden".

He added trhat he did not know Furtwangler personally, but that he
imagined that "this artist considered it his duty to give the public the
benefit of his abilities because so many others had gone or had to
go.....I cannot see how one can oput out Nazi propaganda through a
Beethoven concert....but I believe that Furtwangler through the medium
of his music freed his audience from the constricted ideas of national
socialism than he carried on propaganda for that system".

Personally I believe that music comes from a deeper place in the human
psyche, deeper even than the consciousness of the composer or performer,
whatever his or her political stance might be, and certainly deeper than
whatever label might be assigned to it by later generations.

Anne
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