Iain Simons wrote:

>Hello all, Correct me if I'm wrong and I really don't won't to continue the
>Karajan/Nazi discussion any further; but I believe somebody mentioned that
>Richard Strauss was also a member of the party.  It was my understanding
>that he remained neutral, as it were.  Due to this, however, he spent the
>majority of the post-war days in Switzerland.
>
>It's really a pity that individuals who can create such beauty can be
>associated with insane political ideology.

It was all so easy when I was a boy here in the USA during WWII.
The prominent artists who stayed in Germany or German occupied Europe,
Furtwaengler, Flagstad, Strauss, Mengelberg, Gieseking, Cortot...Nazis all.
(I don't recall knowing about the others like Karajan or Knappertsbusch or
Lubin.)

As late as now, people will have to make their judgment about them
according to their own standards.  There were no heroes among those
who stayed and survived.  There were only degrees of complicity and
condonation.  But during WWII, we here didn't know of Furtwaengler's
refusal to join the party or give the Hitler salute, or play in occupied
countries during WWII (w/ one exception in Denmark), nor of his efforts at
assisting in the escape of Jewish musicians.  We didn't know that Karajan
had married a non-Aryan wife, after the "final solution" had been declared
national policy.

And we, at least, didn't know that Strauss, who had collaborated on his
operas w/ non-Aryans like Stefan Zweig and Hugo von Hofmannsthal had a
Jewish daughter in law and "mongrel" grandchildren, whom he was shielding
while pathetically trying to do the same for the rest of their family...to
no avail.

Strauss had indeed accepted long coveted honors from the Nazis in the
beginning of their rule, and had been relieved of them when he did not
prove sufficiently compliant.

Walter Meyer