Steve Schwartz:

>I want to address mainly one point he made: that Furtwaengler, Orff,
>and Strauss could "easily" have emigrated.  I really don't know how
>easy it would have been.  I don't have the facts for that time.

My historical knowledge on this is sketchy also, but in the February
2005 issue of Gramophone, Rob Cowan says that in 1936 Furtwaengler was
invited to become Toscanini's successor at the New York Philharmonic (he
had conducted there in the 1920's) but "local protests made him withdraw."
1936 was pretty early as far as both Nazi horrors and attempted emigration
was concerned.  No doubt he could have gotten out of Germany at least,
without great difficulty at that time, but surely he could have made a
moral claim to continue working in his own country (as one of the great
conductors of all time, after all) rather than feel obliged to abandon
his native home.  If we are to judge him now we would have to show the
kind of collaboration that harmed people--but as I understand, he protected
Jewish musicians as much as he could.  And he survived the denazification
program after all.

Getting out of Germany after the war started was a lot harder, and
sometimes at least involved being interned as an enemy alien no matter
what you had or had not done.  Some, even Jews, did manage it.  Wasn't
it Freud who, to be allowed to go to England in 1940, had to sign a
paper indicating he had not been mistreated by the Gestapo.  (He added
sardonically that he would recommend the Gestapo to anyone.) Alma Mahler,
though, had a harder time: she described in her memoirs a trek on foot
over the mountains (through Spain to Lisbon, as I recall.) that she and
Franz Werfel made.

Jim Tobin