Deryk Barker wrote:

>Mitch Friedfeld ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
>
>>I can't produce his party card.  I believe that Norman Lebrecht in one of
>>his books contends that Karajan joined the party twice.  And he underwent
>>de-Nazification after the war, didn't he? That's pretty good proof for
>>me....

S. Shirakawa's book The Devil's Music Master, a biography of Furtwaengler,
has this statement about HvK:

   "...Karajan was a full-fledged, card-carrying member of the Nazi
   Party, having joined twice inside the space of one month, first on
   8 April 1933 in Salzburg (Austria, Party Number: 1 607 525) and
   again on 1 May in Ulm (Germany, Party Number: 3 430 914), long before
   membership became 'strongly advised' for aspiring new arrivals in
   any field." (p.  241).

Although the author cites no reference for this statement, it has the
appearance of fact.

However, the much-maligned (in this forum) Norman Lebrecht corroborates the
above statement including card numbers, and writes that "[Karajan's] Party
card and file in NSDAP archives were captured by US forces and preserved at
the Document Center of the US Mission in Berlin.  They were reproduced in
facsimile in 1982, despite legal threats by the conductor who claimed they
were fake."

Apparently joining in 1933 would have been more incriminating to
Karajan--Lebrecht states that "[he] consistently maintained that he
enlisted only in 1935 in order to become music director at Aachen..." He
goes on to say that K.  said he only joined out of necessity in order to
further his career.  (The Maestro Myth, pp.  103-104)

While I agree that both books have substantial problems, on this point they
seem to agree, suggesting that evidence to the contrary would have to be
pretty convincing.

Chris Bonds