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