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Karl Straube (1873–1950)
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Eastman Studies in Music Ralph P. Locke, Senior Editor Eastman School of Music Additional Titles of Interest Anton Heiller: Organist, Composer, Conductor Peter Planyavsky Bach and the Pedal Clavichord: An Organist’s Guide Joel Speerstra Dieterich Buxtehude: Organist in Lübeck Kerala J. Snyder Lies and Epiphanies: Composers and Their Inspiration from Wagner to Berg Chris Walton Mendelssohn, the Organ, and the Music of the Past Edited by Jürgen Thym Narratives of Identity in Alban Berg’s “Lulu” Silvio dos Santos Opera and Ideology in Prague: Polemics and Practice at the National Theater, 1900–1938 Brian S. Locke Pierre Cochereau: Organist of Notre-Dame Anthony Hammond Widor: A Life beyond the Toccata John R. Near Widor on Organ Performance Practice and Technique John R. Near
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Karl Straube (1873–1950)
Germany’s Master Organist in Turbulent Times
Christopher Anderson
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The University of Rochester Press gratefully acknowledges generous support from the General Publications Fund of the American Musicological Society, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Copyright © 2022 Christopher Anderson All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2022 University of Rochester Press 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA www.urpress.com and Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydellandbrewer.com ISBN-13: 978-1-64825-038-5 (hardback) ISBN-13: 978-1-80010-470-9 (ePDF) ISSN: 1071-9989 ; v. 182 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Anderson, Christopher, 1966 July 13– author. Title: Karl Straube (1873–1950) : Germany's master organist in turbulent times / by Christopher Anderson. Other titles: Eastman studies in music ; 182. Description: Rochester : University of Rochester Press, 2022. | Series: Eastman studies in music, 10719989 ; 182 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021047942 (print) | LCCN 2021047943 (ebook) | ISBN 9781648250385 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800104709 (ebook other) | ISBN 9781800104716 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Straube, Karl, 1873–1950. | Organists—Germany—Biography. Classification: LCC ML416.S78 A67 2022 (print) | LCC ML416.S78 (ebook) | DDC 339.7/622338209758724—dc24 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047942 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047943 Cover image: Portrait of Karl Straube by Walter Tiemann (1940), oil on canvas. Reproduced with permission from the Thomasschule Leipzig.
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To Christoph Krummacher, in gratitude and friendship
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Contents Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations
xi
Introduction 1 Part I. Berlin 1873–1897 1 Headwaters 2 Mentors 3 Liftoff
7 17 31 Part II. Wesel 1897–1902
4 New Beginnings 5 Reger 6 “I’d like finally to get on with it!”
49 59 75
Part III. Leipzig 1903–1918 7 8 9 10 11 12
A Berliner in (Little) Paris Off the Organ Bench Trouble in Paradise “In my naïveté” Emmi Leisner Deaths and Transfigurations
91 106 119 132 149 157
Part IV. Intermezzo: Leipzig 1918–1920 13 Decision Point 14 Portraits in Ambivalence
173 189
Part V. Leipzig 1920–1929 15 On the Road and at the Negotiating Table 16 Politics I 17 “When the days of darkness come”
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209 222 232
viii ❧ contents
18 Colleagues 19 The Treadmill 20 Movements in Time 21 “God preserve Karl Straube”
242 253 266 278
Part VI. Leipzig 1930–1939 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
Bach on Air 291 Politics II 303 Praeceptor Germaniae 325 The Spring of Our Discontent 339 Beyond the Rhine 355 Deceptive Cadence 368 Tempelreinigung 384 Part VII. Leipzig 1940–1950
29 The Franciscan Way 30 Perils 31 Götterdämmerung 1943 32 Gone with the Wind 33 Reckonings 34 “Like sand through the fingers”
415 430 443 459 478 500
Epilogue: Musical Offering
523
Bibliography 529 Index 543
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Acknowledgments This book punctuates a project begun about thirteen years ago, over which time I have benefited from the goodwill and expertise of many persons. Chief among these are the dedicatee Christoph Krummacher, former director of the Kirchenmusikalisches Institut (Leipzig); Stefan Altner, former managing director and historian of the Thomanerchor (Leipzig); and Maren Goltz, former librarian and archivist at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” (Leipzig). For generous access to the sources, I am grateful to the several libraries and archives listed elsewhere, especially those on which I inflicted myself for long periods: the Bach-Archiv, Sächisches Staatsarchiv, and Stadtarchiv (Leipzig); the Bachhaus (Eisenach), and the Staatsbibliothek (Berlin). Thanks also to the virtuosic interlibrary loan department at Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University (Dallas), for having acted so promptly upon my requests for sometimes exotic materials, and to my research assistants, Christopher Rios and Daniela Müller, for their industry and insights. Stephen Palmer (Sydney) deserves particular recognition for remarkable research into his family’s history and his generosity in sharing it. Like him, others with direct connections to the Straube narrative have dedicated much energy in invaluable dialogue with me, often for hours at a time, in person and in correspondence. These have included Dieter Ramin (Ingelheim), Prof. Heinrich Fleischer (Minneapolis), and Ursula Thomm (Leipzig), all now deceased. For countless wide-ranging conversations extending deep into the night, fueled by wine and sheer passion for the topic, I will always remember gratefully David Backus (Schwangau), likewise since deceased. For their kindnesses, insights, and encouragements I thank Jürgen Schaarwächter and the staff of the Max-Reger-Institut (Karlsruhe), Michael Marissen (New York), David Rumsey (Basel), and Peter Williams (Gloucester), the latter two deceased. And I owe much to the staying power of the University of Rochester Press, particularly Sonia Kane and Ralph Locke, for having put up with me over the long arc of this project. The keen insights of my copy editor, Ingalo Thomson, have led to invaluable improvements in the text.
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x ❧ acknowledgments
Finally and most fundamentally, the work would not be conceivable without the unwavering support of my wife Lisa and our daughter Erica, who have repeatedly rearranged their lives to accommodate mine. If this book can be viewed as a collaborative project, it is with them as partners.
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List of Abbreviations BAK
Bundesarchiv Koblenz
BAL
Bach-Archiv Leipzig
BhAE
Bachhaus Archiv Eisenach
BStBM
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München
CSLJ
Conrad Schick Library, Christ Church Jerusalem
DLAM
Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach
EZA/ELAB
Evangelisches Zentralarchiv/Evangelisches Landeskirchliches Archiv Berlin
GdMAW
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Archiv Wien
HMTLA
Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig, Bibliothek Bereich Archiv
MRIK
Max-Reger-Institut Karlsruhe
OeNB
Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek Wien
RCOLB
Library of the Royal College of Organists Birmingham
SäStAL
Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Leipzig
StAF
Stadtarchiv Flensburg
StAL
Stadtarchiv Leipzig
StBBPK
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz
StBL
Stadtbibliothek Leipzig
ThSAL
Thomasschule Archiv Leipzig
ThüStAM
Thüringisches Staatsarchiv Meiningen
UBL
Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig
ZbZ
Zentralbibliothek Zürich
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Introduction It is our duty on this earth to develop our talents to good account and to work as long as the day lasts, because the day is coming when no one can work. —Straube to Ludwig Doormann, December 7, 19441
About three kilometers southeast of Leipzig’s center lies a botanical garden of nearly two hundred acres, a haven amid what is today an energetic modern European city. This verdant ground hosts the Leipzig South Cemetery, opened in 1886 on a bold plan by the architect Hugo Licht and the Leipzig landscape gardener Otto Wittenberg. The concept of the Südfriedhof—the integration of a civic burial ground and a planned green space resembling an English garden—was relatively new at the time, modeled on similar projects elsewhere.2 Its creation speaks to the rapid expansion of Leipzig’s population, as rural Germans increasingly turned to industrialized urban environments, and cities continued to absorb the villages that had grown up around their medieval walls. But there is more than pragmatism here. The cemetery’s remarkable aesthetic betrays a restless optimism anchored ultimately in Bismarck’s unification of the Reich in 1871, and in a collective sense that the city Goethe had once cited in Faust for its educated citizenry was rising to realize a grand cultural mission. Entering at the east gate and turning right off the central promenade at the first opportunity, one soon emerges in a small clearing, the meeting of several pathways that marks the eastern end of the cemetery’s eleventh partition. There, adjoining a corner grove of evergreen, stands the stone that marks the resting place of Karl Straube, his wife Hertha, and their daughter Elisabet. By the standards of this cemetery’s grand monuments, artworks in their own right created by the likes of Klinger and Seffner, this one is modest, easy to miss were it not for its relatively isolated position at this peaceful crossing of ways. The three names appear in equal lettering, none larger than 1 2
Letter, December 7, 1944, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 7, 28. Löffler, Schöpa, and Sprinz, Der Leipziger Südfriedhof, 12.
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2 ❧ introduction
the other, in the order of their passing: Elisabet (1904–1924), Karl (1873– 1950), and Hertha (1876–1974). The only additional piece of information appears under the second of these: Thomaskantor 1918–1939. It is my purpose to chip away at this unexceptional monument, thus to sculpt the profile of an exceptional existence which, like the stone itself, is in some sense conditioned by the crossroads where it stands. These crossroads are many, and from them can be read the powerful upheaval of their origins. It is impossible to imagine that anyone living within German borders between the time of the Kaiserreich and Soviet occupation had an uneventful life. At Straube’s birth, the unification of the German territories under Bismarck’s “blood and iron” policies still counted as a current event. The new Germany faced its first real domestic crisis precipitated by the Viennese stock market crash of May 1873, from which followed the Gründerkrise, the pernicious economic depression that defined the boy’s formative years. Not eighty years later, only a few months before Straube’s death, the German Democratic Republic had emerged as a discrete state of Stalinist communism on the basis of the Allied partitions adopted at Yalta. Between these two markers stand the unprecedented destruction of two world wars, the democratic experiment of Weimar, the brutal dictatorships of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, and all the breathtaking societal disruption framed by and flowing from these. On another front, Straube stepped onto the stage at a time when Wagner’s Ring operas and Brahms’s Second Symphony represented the musical avant-garde. By 1950 the language of art music had overflowed its banks well beyond the tonal paradigm, the discipline of musicology had come into its own, and popular musics asserted themselves on the landscape, as did the recording industry and film music. And there is yet another crossroads, more deep-rooted and perhaps more consequential than the rest. Born to an English mother and a German father, growing up in a bilingual household, Karl Straube straddled two cultures in blood during an era when it was not fashionable to do so in politics. Although the mother was his favored parent, he kept his English heritage in the shadows of a carefully constructed image forged in the fires of German nationalism. The international nature of the boy’s home environment, reinforced by its location in the imperial city of Berlin, contributed substantively to his lively interests in world history and politics. But it was Bismarck, not Gladstone or Lloyd George, who would inspire Straube’s intense lifelong admiration. The frequently conflicted dynamic between German- and English-speaking cultures remains one of the most pervasive yet least explored aspects of Straube’s biography, largely absent from the timeworn narrative still rehearsed in the literature.
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introduction ❧ 3
Like many such self-generated portraits, that narrative offers on the surface more shadow than light, but it likewise invites potentially constructive questions about why it is put together just the way it is, what it underscores and to what effect, what it shrouds and to what end. I offer here not merely a recounting of Straube’s life, then, but also an explicit reading of it. That reading derives not only from an examination of the convoluted external conjunctures he faced at one time or another— the study also takes into account the texture of the man’s character, habits of thought and action manifested over long periods, anchored either in the broad customs of the culture or in the several idiosyncrasies of his personality. I draw heavily on a disparate body of primary source material, much of which comes to light here for the first time. Where it proves helpful, secondary literature claims a voice too, particularly the substantial corpus that has evaluated Straube’s person and work beginning as early as the first decade of the twentieth century, and that accordingly has played a key part in constructing the image this book seeks to refine. In virtually all public discourse through the 1970s, that image did not diverge meaningfully from Gustav Robert-Tornow’s portrait of 1907, which lauded its protagonist as “a scholarly intelligence, . . . the product of a comprehensive formation, principally a historian, although not only one concerned with art, but rather at home in all the experiences of many peoples and times, as well as any amateur possibly could be.”3 In sum, Straube was the Great Man of his time: a poised, self-educated, incorruptible, revolutionary, genial artist and inerrant pedagogue who had rescued church music from irrelevance and spawned an entire generation of elite musicians, to whom he had given the mandate to go and do likewise. The image is awe-inspiring if implausible in its one-dimensionality. Surely there was more to Karl Straube than this marble statue constructed of adoring words and high-minded Geistigkeit. Already in 1973 Wolfgang Stockmeier had used the occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary of Max Reger’s birth to pose questions about Straube’s understanding of the composer’s organ music.4 One of the first broad demurrals was dispatched soon thereafter in the form of a chatty article by Johannes Piersig, one-time cantor of the Leipzig Nikolaikirche and a pupil of Straube’s from 1926 to 1932. Weaving together several colorful anecdotes about life at the Leipzig Conservatory, and surely not without the kind of embellishment that accrues with time, he described something 3 Robert-Tornow, Max Reger und Karl Straube, 24–25. 4 Stockmeier, “Karl Straube als Reger-Interpret.”
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4 ❧ introduction
approaching a love-hate relationship with a flawed Straube, whose attention to detail could be experienced as unjustified pedantry, whose formal nature underscored an occasionally stifling hierarchy of authority, whose teaching was driven by personality rather than pedagogy, and whose music-making was not as thoroughly unassailable as printed recollections had suggested. “Shadow serves to enhance the effect of light,” wrote Piersig, problematizing the popular image. “But someday, someday, polite historiography will have to be corrected with reference to those parts of the Urtext that remain unknown.”5 He unapologetically lamented that the usual encomia were deceptive, stemming from the fact “that actual Straube research has not yet gotten going.”6 “Polite historiography” had to yield to more open attitudes and critical methodologies. And yield it did. “Polite” interventions were swept away with Günter Hartmann’s controversial monograph of 1991, which rightly identified “the problem for all future Straube researchers, namely to lay a foundation for the geographical, temporal, and intellectual structures of Straube’s life and work on the basis of the often wavering assertions of certain evidently reliable sources.”7 Writing in a sharply polemical and frequently overwrought tone, Hartmann did not hesitate to cast aspersions on virtually every parameter of Straube’s life in an attempt to expose an oppressive power structure and a tightly controlled propaganda in service to the illusion of the Great Man. He unleashed an impressive instrumentarium of source citations—not infrequently taken out of context, it should be said—to paint Straube as an intimate, all-too-willing player in the cultural politics of Nazi Germany. His assertion that the Thomaskantor had joined the National Socialist party in 1926 rather than at the widely accepted date in 1933 occasioned another short but no less provocative book seeking to defend that claim against the headwinds of criticism.8 Hartmann’s position has been met by a bastion of further writing, much of it more impassioned than methodical. Yet Hartmann’s work (as opposed to his confrontationalism) surely has some value, if only to call attention to the fact that Straube and his environment amount to something more problematic than the monolithic narrative originating with those closest to him. It is to an illumination of these dissonances that this study is dedicated. 5 Piersig, “So ging es allenfalls,” 119. 6 Ibid., 113. 7 Hartmann, Karl Straube und seine Schule, 12. 8 Hartmann, Karl Straube–ein “Altgardist der NSDAP.”
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Part I
Berlin 1873–1897 Zwo Musici wandern vom Saalestrand,
Two musicians travel from the Saale’s banks,
Ein Sternlein führt sie zum Spreenland.
a little star leads them to the land of the Spree River.
In Potsdam fragten den Schupo die zwei,
In Potsdam the two asked the policeman,
Wo der neugeborene Orgler sei?
“Where is the newborn organist?”
Des Schupos Auge gab hellen Schein,
The policeman’s eye lit up brightly,
Er wies das Paar nach Berlin hinein.
he pointed the pair toward Berlin.
Im Stalle zwar nicht, doch in Windeln fein
Not exactly in a stable, but in fine diapers
Fanden sie dorten das Knäbelein.
they found there the little boy.
Dasselbe nach acht Tagen ward gen Jerusalem
After eight days the boy was not immediately
Zwar nicht sogleich getragen zum Judentempel hin:
carried to the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem:
Es kam vielmehr zu Reimann in feste Orgelfaust instead,
he came under Reimann’s firm hand at the organ
Und ward zu einem Manne, dem höchster Beifall braust.
and became a man who garnered the greatest applause.
—Adolf Wieber and Erich Schröter, birthday poem to Straube, January 5, 1928; typescript ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube
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Chapter One
Headwaters Epiphany is among the most ancient of Christian holidays, marking the end of the twelve days of Christmastide and, for western Christians, celebrating the Magi who discovered the infant Jesus by following the eastern star. Later in life, Karl Straube would refer to this day as “C+M+B Tag,” recalling Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, the traditional names of the Eastern sages who appeared at Christ’s manger. In the German lands, a number of folk traditions had grown up around the festival, including door-to-door singing and a three-kings-cake. These activities would have been no less in evidence in 1873, when Epiphany fell on a Monday. But on that day, January 6, the Berlin home of Johannes and Sarah Palmer Straube was consumed with a matter of greater urgency, the birth of the couple’s second and last child, a boy given the name Carl Mondgomery Rufus Siegfried and baptized on February 18.1 His older brother, William Carl Johannes Bertram, had arrived on June 10, 1871. The Straube family resided at Wilhelmstraße 29 in central Berlin, not far from the Tiergarten and what later became the famous Checkpoint Charlie, on the prestigious street that hosted the offices of the imperial government, foreign embassies, and other administrative entities. The house at number 29 served as the parsonage for the nearby Bohemian-Lutheran Bethlehemskirche, no longer extant. The paternal heritage emphasized music and theology: Karl and William’s great-great-grandfather Johann Augustin Straube (1725–1802) had been a noted instrument builder esteemed by Forkel, E. L. Gerber, and Kirnberger, originating from Alt-Brandenburg and active in Berlin by the mid-eighteenth century.2 By 1786 he lived in the
1 Baptismal certificate, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 2 Boalch, Makers of the Harpsichord, 186.
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8 ❧ chapter one
Mohrenstraße, near the Wilhelmstraße.3 J. A. Straube’s son Carl Augustin Friedrich was the Lutheran superintendent-provost in Mittenwalde, a town in the Spreewald south of Berlin. His marriage to Dorothea Knak in 1806 produced a son, Carl Augustin Friedrich Victor, Karl’s grandfather (1807– 1881).4 Ordained in 1835, he became pastor first in Werder, near Potsdam, then in 1856 in Falkenhagen, east of Berlin near Frankfurt (Oder). In Werder he founded a pietistic “Bible Reading Association” and a “Bible Society,” for which he edited an annual comprehensive index of biblical passages for the liturgical year.5 Wolgast undoubtedly repeats Karl’s own recollections in referring to the paternal grandfather as “likewise a theologian and orthodox Lutheran by conviction, admittedly with a strongly romantic-pietistic element.”6 But grandfather Straube was also a musician. An 1894 biographical essay cites him as “the cousin, fellow student, and heartfelt friend of the well-known Berlin preacher and hymn writer Gustav Knak, with whom he belonged together ‘like text and melody,’ and to whose spiritual texts he sang a number of tunes, which together became familiar in pietistic circles and are preserved in their song collections.” Likewise, “he served willingly with his excellent organ playing at Christian gatherings, pastoral conferences, and the like.”7 The intertwining of the Straube and Knak families proceeded not only from the marriage of Superintendent Straube and Dorothea Knak, but also from the mirror-image union of the former’s sister Friederike Straube with Ludwig Knak, a justice commissioner in the Prussian War Ministry. From that marriage issued the “well-known Berlin preacher and hymn writer” Gustav Knak (1806–1878), a pupil of Schleiermacher. Upon Ludwig’s death in 1819, Gustav lived with his uncle, aunt, and cousin Carl. These two theologians and first cousins—Carl Straube and Gustav Knak, who moved prominently in evangelical circles of nineteenth-century Berlin—were the paternal grandfathers of Karl Straube and Siegfried Knak respectively. Like them, Karl and Siegfried grew up under the same roof and would remain lifelong friends. The latter, following his grandfather’s lead, chose the path 3 Heyde, Musikinstrumentenbau, 289. 4 EZAB/ELAB 14/24.441, Acta personalia des Carl Augustin Friedrich Victor Straube. 5 Verzeichnis der Bibelstellen des Werder’schen Bibel-Lese-Vereins, the so-called Bibellesezettel. 6 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 3. 7 Kümmerle, Encyklopädie, 551–52.
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Figure 1.1. Carl (Augustin Friedrich Victor) Straube, Reiseharfe title page (1853, here 4th edition 1878). Reproduced with permission from the Evangelical and Reformed Historical Society, Lancaster, PA.
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10 ❧ chapter one
of theology to become an important voice in Lutheran foreign mission. In 1950 he would deliver the eulogy at the Thomaskantor’s burial. The elder pastor Carl Straube would marry twice, the first union of 1835 producing two sons, the second of 1845 a further son and two daughters. Johannes Straube, father of Karl, was the second of these five children (1843– 1913).8 He would not follow the theological lead of his father and grandfather, instead adopting the two other professions nourished in the Straube family, those of instrument maker and musician. An archival file for the Berlin churches lists him simply as “organist” and “music teacher.”9 Educated at Berlin’s Institute for Church Music, he later became organist of the Heilig-Kreuz-Gemeinde. His harmonium workshop at Schönebergerstraße 27 is advertised in an 1897 address book as “the only specialty shop for harmoniums: Straube’s Harmonium Building Institute.” Johannes’s business must have met with some success: he was awarded the State Medal for Commerical Services and appointed Court Instrument Builder to Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia.10 In his 1946 Lebenslauf or vita directed at the Soviet authorities, Straube cited his father simply as “organist of the Heilig Kreuz Kirche–Berlin” and “son of a Lutheran clergyman,” his mother as “daughter of an affluent merchant in London.”11 Wolgast in 1928 would report similarly that Straube’s mother “descended from an old family of the English gentry.”12 These latter remarks, though fleeting, open a window onto the extraordinary web of blood associations that distinguish Straube’s maternal family. The “affluent merchant” was Straube’s maternal grandfather William Henry Palmer (1789–1861), born in Topsham, Devon. Palmer worked as a grocer and tea dealer in nearby Exeter, then in Islington and the City of London, where he traded as an East India agent in the prosperous firm of Heath, Palmer, and Beatson.13 Two of his brothers, Samuel and James, partnered as corn and flour merchants, likewise in London. Samuel was politically active as a 8
EZA/ELAB 14/24.441, Acta personalia des Carl Augustin Friedrich Victor Straube. 9 Ibid. 10 Hinze, “Leben und Werk,” 9–10; Ahrens and Klinke, eds., Das Harmonium, 239. 11 BAL Nachlass Straube, 81. 12 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 4. 13 Much of what follows is owed to the work of Stephen Palmer, great-grandson of Sarah Palmer’s brother William Henry Palmer the younger.
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headwaters ❧ 11
magistrate and deputy lieutenant of Surrey, and he involved himself in the reform movements that led to the establishment of the Liberal Party of Great Britain. His son John Hinde Palmer, Karl’s first cousin once removed, would become a Queen’s Counsel, a Liberal MP in Gladstone’s government, and husband to Clara Tennyson d’Eyncourt, a relative of the poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson. William Henry, Samuel, and James Palmer were sons of John Palmer and Joanna Veale, Karl Straube’s maternal great-grandparents. John had established a boarding school in Topsham during the late 1770s and was by training a writing master, a profession that grew up alongside Britain’s commercial enterprises and its attendant business needs of penmanship and cyphering.14 The distinctive handwriting of Karl and William Straube would later bear witness to the meticulous penmanship of the Palmer family. William Henry Palmer married twice, each union producing five children. Straube’s mother Sarah was the ninth of these, the fourth child of Palmer and his second wife Elizabeth Hutton. A point of Karl Straube’s later biography nevertheless requires an unlikely digression into an aspect of W. H. Palmer’s first marriage. Catherine Cleeve Palmer, the eldest daughter from Palmer’s earlier union with Catherine Cleeve, became the wife of Rev. Dietrich Hechler (1812–1878), an Anglican-educated German and an associate of the evangelical Church Missionary Society with a particular investment in Jewish mission. Their son William Henry Hechler (1845–1931), to whom Karl would later refer as “the favorite nephew of my mother,”15 would become tutor to the children of Archduke Friedrich I of Baden and chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna between 1885 and 1910. Moreover, William Hechler carried on the interests of his father in close association with Theodor Herzl, alongside whom he worked in the incipient cause of political Zionism, and for whom he opened avenues to the German Kaiser via the ducal house in Baden.16 Hechler thus became a notable figure who bridged British and German/Austro-Hungarian efforts in Jewish-Christian dialogue, an activist against a rising tide of anti-Semitism who viewed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine as a necessary stage on the road toward Christian conversion of the Jews. In 1896 Herzl himself cited him as “the most extraordinary character I have encountered in the movement. . . . He sang and played for me on the organ a Zionist song of his own 14 Palmer and Patrick, “Palmer’s Topsham Academy,” 8. 15 Letter to Hertha Straube, July 22, 1931, SBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 16 Goldman, Zeal for Zion, 102–4.
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composition.”17 Karl Straube would share with his older cousin not only a dual foothold in German and English culture, but also a robust interest in the implications of history for politics, aptitudes in languages and music, and connections to both academic theology and church work. The Hechler/ Palmer and Knak/Straube families likewise stood on the common ground of Christian foreign mission. In 1829 W. H. Palmer was married a second time, now to Elizabeth Hutton, daughter of the Oxford-educated Anglican clergyman Rev. James Harriman Hutton and Elizabeth Paddon. Paddon’s brother James, Karl Straube’s great-great-uncle, had been a pupil of William Jackson and organist of Exeter Cathedral from 1803 to 1835, and was thus the predecessor of Samuel Sebastian Wesley in that post. William Henry and Elizabeth’s first child, also William Henry, would emigrate to Australia and become a trading merchant, but also the organist of St. Philip’s Church, Sydney. There he married Hannah Hay Aldis, a pianist from one of Sydney’s oldest musical families. That union would produce five children, among them the noted pianist Gertrude Palmer, Karl’s first cousin, educated at the London Royal Academy. The family’s Hutton side was no less distinguished musically: over its blood lines, Gertrude was cousin to the Sterndale Bennett pupil Charles Steggall, the first organ professor of the Royal Academy of Music and musical editor of Hymns Ancient and Modern. Karl’s mother Sarah Palmer was born on November 23, 1835, at 46 Kings Square, London, the fourth child of W. H. Palmer the elder and Elizabeth Hutton. With her older and younger sisters, Maria and Emily respectively, Sarah came to run a small school for young ladies at Prudhoe House, Tottenham High Road, where their father quartered with them and died in 1861.18 She married Johannes Straube on May 13, 1869, at the Church of the Holy Trinity, Fareham, Hampshire, in a ceremony officiated by her uncle Rufus Hutton and witnessed by her cousin John Edward Paddon and sister Maria.19 Presumably a short time later, the couple moved to Berlin, he aged twenty-six, she thirty-three. The birth of their two boys followed in 1871 and 1873. Little else about Sarah is known beyond what Wolgast reported for public consumption in 1928: that “she was a highly educated and truly 17 Diary entry, March 16, 1896, cited ibid., 107–8. 18 Sarah became the executor of her father’s will, in which the three daughters of his second marriage were clearly favored. Stephen Palmer, email communication of October 29, 2013. 19 Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle, May 15, 1869.
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pious woman whom Karl Straube remembers with particular love and admiration,” that “she spoke fluent German, French, and Italian, and she read the Bible in the Greek and Hebrew originals,” that she had formed her children in “a strict religious upbringing,” that as a child she had studied music with Julius Benedict, that “it was the mother who carried responsibility for an excellent general education [Allgemeinbildung] of her children,” that she had pointed her youngest son “to the great poets of the past and awakened in him at an early stage an interest in intellectual matters [in den geistigen Dingen]. Likewise, much good music was made in his parents’ home, thereby awakening a sense for music in the child early on.”20 Probably the most important aspect of this sympathetic portrait is its origin much after the fact in the memory of her son Karl Straube, then aged fifty-five. The points concerning education and piety ring true, surely, given the circles in which generations of Palmers had moved. The impressive language skills are striking but not implausible, particularly considering the Palmer family’s contacts with missionaries. Further, Sarah seems not to have renounced teaching upon her move to Germany: a Berlin address book from 1897 cites her as a “language teacher.”21 Her supposed study with the German-Jewish composer and Weber protégé Julius Benedict, while confirmed in no other known source, was certainly possible in the London of Sarah’s youth and gives her an authoritative musical pedigree. The association with Benedict would speak further to the German-English links that brought her and Johannes together. But Wolgast’s pointed wording that “it was the mother,” thus not the father, who had seen to her children’s “Allgemeinbildung” seems to implicate Johannes Straube in indifference, or at least a certain lack of vigilance, the term meaning less vocational training in a trade like instrument building than basic formation “in den geistigen Dingen.” The remark corroborates an earlier one about Johannes, who according to Wolgast inherited his family’s musical tendencies, “not however the general intellectual qualities [die allgemein-geistigen Qualitäten],” as well as certain opinions that would surface sporadically in Karl’s correspondence.22 In 1937, for example, as Karl sought to confirm his “Aryan” bloodline for the Nazis, he wrote his brother William about their paternal “cobbler ancestors,” opining that “the Palmer family seems to me to present the nobler lineage,” and further that “I cannot say anything at all about my intellectual ancestry. Perhaps it was only 20 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 4. 21 Hinze, “Leben und Werk,” 10. 22 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 3.
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our mother.”23 More revealing lines surface in a letter from the following year, when he announced that he had come upon an early portrait of his mother, yet unmarried. “I find that this picture says much about the actual character of our mother, as simultaneously clever and graceful,” he imagined to William. “In a battle with the tribulations of an impossible marriage, these external qualities were submerged to allow greater things to grow in her essence, in the courage with which she fulfilled her responsibilities as a mother, willing only to look into the future.”24 This is a great deal to read from a photograph, and it thus reflects a construct born from experience and, probably, accumulated prejudice. But it is easy—perhaps too easy—to imagine that Johannes and Sarah, for whatever commonalities in their backgrounds, will have parted ways in their values, he toward the practical and she toward the “intellectual” or “geistig.” Much later at the end of his life, speaking of his years as a concert organist, Straube formulated the aphorism Virtuosität ist nicht Geistigkeit, loosely translated as“Virtuosity is not intellectuality,” leaving no doubt as to the relative value of handiwork (literally) over against the elusive German quality of Bildung, the formation of mind and character.25 Clearly, the juxtaposition of the two crystallized early on, forged in the home environment and the perception of his parents’ contrasting characters. The “impossible marriage” of Johannes and Sarah may have made for a disagreeable domestic life. If in fact Johannes’s psyche tended toward personal insecurity or an awareness of not quite living up to the theological pedigree of the Straube/Knak clan, he may have been intimidated by his wife’s impressive résumé, her family connections, or the not insubstantial portion of her father’s estate that came to her. Karl’s impression clearly was that Sarah gave up a great deal to live with his father, directing her considerable energies to the raising of the boys when such efforts were not forthcoming from Johannes. That Straube himself tended not to speak of his early years undoubtedly buttresses the carefully cultivated image of a self-made man, but this characteristic de-emphasis may have deeper, more sensitive roots. He may have found his home life not only irrelevant but also unpleasant to remember. When Wolgast remarked obliquely that “it was the artist [Willi] Döring who lovingly looked after the young Straube and helped him cope 23 Letter, February 12, 1937, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 10, 5–6. 24 Letter, June 12, 1938, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 102–3. 25 Interview, January 6, 1948, broadcast by the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, CD issue in Kunze and Lieberwirth, eds., Der Thomanerchor Leipzig.
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with all the emotional difficulties in these developmental years,” he surely hinted at one or another troubling aspect of life at Wilhelmstraße 29.26 These observations trigger the intriguing question of how an English woman of some means came to meet and then marry a German some seven years her junior. The point opens quickly onto a larger set of circumstances around the family of W. H. Palmer: four of his five daughters married Germans, and the fifth settled, unmarried, in Dresden. The explanation surely has to do with both interests and geography. Evidently, Sarah’s father had developed an early sympathy for British Christian mission. In 1818, already in his native Exeter, he had served as secretary to the local chapter of the ecumenical British and Foreign Bible Society, at the time a still relatively new association that distributed the Scriptures throughout the British Isles and beyond. At latest by the time of his move to Islington in London, he involved himself in the Church Missionary Society, subscribing to the Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East, 1819– 20. In its pages he will have absorbed writings intent to advance the credo of Christian colonialism, lamenting “the awful state of the Heathen” while rejoicing in God’s promise “that even these shall all know Him to be the Living and True God, and that His Name among them shall be glorious!”27 Such sentiments seem to illustrate well the missionary theology of the Knaks, the Hechlers, and others. They undoubtedly hint at the flavor of the “strict religious upbringing” Wolgast claimed as fundamental to Sarah’s raising of her children. And they will resurface, arguably transposed some one hundred years later into a nationalist framework, in Thomaskantor Straube’s missional zeal to bring the sacred choral tradition of Bach, and hence a German idealist Geistigkeit, to the nations. W. H. Palmer’s Islington residence at 7 Wells Row lay a short distance from the Church Missionary Society Training College in Upper Street. The piety of Islington in the years surrounding Sarah’s birth was permeated by the singular figure of Daniel Wilson, from 1824 evangelical vicar of St. Mary’s and later Bishop of Calcutta, who worked closely with the Society
26 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 4–5. Döring was a member of the Berliner Secession and a cousin of the family. 27 “Sermon, preached at the Parish Church of Saint Bride, Fleet Street, on Monday Evening May 1, 1820, before the Church Missionary Society, by the Rev. Benjamin Williams Mathias, M. A. of Trinity College, Dublin,” in Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society, 23–24.
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to transform Islington into a magnet for missionary activities.28 The Society maintained relationships with institutions in continental cities as well, Berlin foremost among them, with the result that a number of Germans came to study in Upper Street. These circumstances may suggest why the twenty-something Johannes Straube, who issued from the pietist Straube/ Knak household, found himself in the circles of Islington-based Anglican missionaries and their supporters at just the time of his courtship with and marriage to a daughter of William Henry Palmer. The rest remains a mystery.
28 Baker and Elington, eds., A History of the County of Middlesex Vol. 8, 88–99.
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Chapter Two
Mentors “Berolinum lumen orbi” (“Berlin, light of the world”)—so went the longstanding anagram that projected Prussian pride in Berlin. But the real metropolis of 1873 hardly corresponded to such grand idealism, caught as it was in a profoundly transformative period between the old city of the Enlightenment and the new industrialized center of a united German Empire. Berlin in 1850 had 412,000 residents. By 1871 it had 826,000; by 1910 2,071,000.1 This sort of meteoric growth, which reflected a larger migration toward the cities, articulated the transition to a modern, capitalist economy with its attendant socio-economic troubles. The Straube family was not immune to the crash of the German and Austrian markets in May 1873, with the ensuing recession and “great deflation” lasting well into the 1890s. Johannes surely felt the effects upon his instrument building business. More important, the dire financial crisis of 1873, accompanied by a similarly critical predicament in German agriculture, eroded the economic optimism that had fueled an investment boom in the years before unification and in its wake. The result was above all psychological, casting aspersions on “the culture of progress” that buoyed the new Reich.2 The mature Straube would develop a marked distaste for what he saw as the materialist values of the United States, Britain, and other European nations, in opposition to the immaterial verities of the German cultural tradition—the transient-superficial juxtaposed with the timeless primacy of the inner. That attitude represented an older stereotype perpetuated both inside and beyond German borders, hardly original to Straube’s generation. But Straube’s version of it undoubtedly was forged in the fires of imperial Germany’s shaken economic confidence during his early years. During the last decade of his life, he would maintain darkly that Berlin’s atmosphere had been no friend to his early formation in the priorities of a spiritual culture. “The effect of millions of people in the city was 1 Blackbourn, History of Germany, 152. 2 Ibid., 204–5.
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completely levelling,” he wrote. “We lived only for ourselves in a dismissive, smug manner. From these conditions arise the fact that a big-city dweller is an inwardly impoverished and therefore unproductive person, since he is completely unaware of life’s real powers. He adopts buzzwords. Intellectually he follows the latest fashion and, because he is hollow on the inside, is nothing more than ‘a gong and a clanging cymbal.’”3 These memories spoke not only to the dangers of an impersonal urban bustle. It is reasonable to read into them, too, the overtones of a troubled home life that had to be overcome. Either way, Straube would not remember fondly his early years in the imperial capital. In his 1948 interview for the Middle German Radio, the seventy-fiveyear-old cantor claimed that he was “in essence an autodidact.”4 The notion of the self-taught and self-reliant Straube had already established itself in the literature by this time, but it has tended to obscure the details of the boy’s upbringing and downplay the importance of his surroundings. As Wolgast implied, the domestic environment undoubtedly laid the foundations for his wider interests prior to his matriculation at the overwhelmingly Protestant Kaiser-Wilhelm-Realgymnasium around Easter 1882, when he was aged nine.5 The school stood in the nearby Friedrichstraße, an institution with eighteenth-century roots, a comprehensive curriculum, and a burgeoning student body that reflected the city’s population explosion. A yearbook for 1890, the last year of Straube’s study there, cites student numbers for 1889 at 585, for 1890 at 723.6 The boy attended classes in religion, history, geography, mathematics, physics, and chemistry, as well as language (German, French, English, Latin), singing, and gymnastics, all in preparation for a university education.7 Karl’s brother William, on the other hand, attended the Luisenstädtisches Realgymnasium north of the city center. Both boys broke 3 4 5
6 7
Letter to Elisabeth Haller, December 22, 1942, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 353, referring to I Corinthians 13:1. Interview, January 6, 1948, in Kunze and Lieberwirth, eds., Der Thomanerchor Leipzig. StAL Akten betr. den Professor Dr. phil. h.c. et theol. h.c. Karl Montgomery Rufus Siegfried Straube. Kantor an der Thomasschule. Am 31.12.39 in den Ruhestand. Rat der Stadt Leipzig. Schulamt 1918. Kap. II Nr. 89 Bd. 1 [hereafter Straube-Akten 1], Personalbogen, Bildungsgang, 2. In a Lebenslauf dated October 2, 1946, he gave the year of entrance as 1883. BAL Nachlass Straube 81. Königliche Realschule zu Berlin, 40. Ibid., 25.
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Figure 2.1. Straube, aged nine. Source unknown.
off their studies in 1890 without having completed the Abitur, or final exams, a change of course possibly occasioned by financial difficulties at home.8 Music came to hold a particular fascination for Karl during the 1880s, ultimately distracting him from his schoolwork, and it is safe to say that his earliest musical influences outside the home were in the churches of central Berlin. The theologian and Straube’s boyhood friend, Siegfried Knak, would single out the nearby Bethlehemskirche, the parsonage of which served as the home of both the Straubes and the Knaks. “From these parishioners, made up of dislodged Bohemian Protestants and served by men like [Johannes] Jänicke, [Johannes Evangelista] Goßner, and Gustav Knak, he took strong impressions of a really vital congregation,” Knak remembered. “The rich liturgical life here, which my father brought to light from the forgotten treasures of the Lutheran Church, sharpened his sense for services richly endowed
8
Hinze, “Leben und Werk,” 13–14.
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with music.”9 The “really vital congregation” of the Bethlehemskirche, established in 1737, eventually split into three entities—a group of the Herrnhut Brüdergemeine alongside Reformed and Lutheran congregations, the latter two of which continued to use the building until its destruction in 1943. Presumably Straube would have experienced both Reformed and Lutheran worship life here, but Knak pointed to the Lutheran flock and its pastors, all of whom became important voices in evangelical and missional circles. The original modest organ of one manual and no pedal (eight stops on 4′ principal basis) had been built by the Joachim Wagner pupil Johann Peter Migendt in 1753.10 By 1854 that instrument had given way to a larger one of two manuals, pedal, and seventeen stops, possibly but not demonstrably built by Hermann Teschner of Fürstenwalde.11 This organ, the disposition of which is not known, was perhaps the first the young Straube ever encountered, though in what condition it is unclear, as is how it would have participated in “[bringing] to light the forgotten treasures of the Lutheran Church” he is supposed to have experienced. In the earliest published account of Straube’s Berlin years, Walter Fischer likely echoed Straube’s own stance in the straightforward assertion that his first musical instruction came from his father, and that his interest in a musical career grew during the 1880s while studying at the Realgymnasium.12 Karl Hasse, among Straube’s first Leipzig organ students, later related that his teacher had been introduced to pedal playing on the pedal harmoniums in his father’s instrument shop.13 Wolgast claimed further that “he soon began to play piano and harmonium, so that he was allowed at age eleven to play his first service, heart pounding.”14 Exactly where and on what organ Straube would have debuted as a service player in 1884 is a good question. Although his father at some point assumed duties at the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche, it is not clear whether he did so before or after the building of the new church in the Zossenerstraße, consecrated in 1888.15 Neither the relevant employment records nor the details of an organ in the older facility, which had stood at 9 Knak, “Mein Freund,” 2. 10 Kirchner, “Der Berliner Orgelbauer Johann Peter Migendt,” 301–2. 11 Schwarz, ed., 500 Jahre Orgeln, 121. 12 Fischer, “Karl Straube,” 701. 13 Karl Hasse, “Karl Straube als Orgelkünstler,” in Gaben, 153. 14 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 5. 15 Thanks to Matthias Schmelmer, cantor of the Heilig-Kreuz-Gemeinde, for clarifying this point. Email communication, June 3, 2016.
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the same location, are extant. It is possible, too, that Johannes served other Berlin parishes prior to Heilig-Kreuz, but this likewise is not demonstrable. Perhaps he worked for a time as organist of the Bethlehemsgemeinde, since his family shared a house with its Lutheran pastor, and since Siegfried Knak, the son of that pastor, clearly tied the young Straube to its “rich liturgical life.” For Wolgast in 1928, in any case, Fischer’s much-earlier remark that Straube had his initial music lessons with his father was too clear-cut, granting Johannes an unjustified agency in his son’s formation. Wolgast was willing to say only that the boy “had learned the rudiments of organ playing by observing and listening to his father.” He pressed the point. “An example: the father was practicing a larger prelude for a festive service. The son watched closely as he practiced. After the service and the prelude learned for it had gone well, the son sat himself on the organ bench during the children’s service and played the same prelude. After this, the father forbade him in the future to play the same pieces that he himself was practicing.”16 This intriguing tale, surely gotten from Straube himself, has much of the anecdotal about it, sharing certain features with the posthumous report of the young J. S. Bach having been forbidden access to his older brother’s music cabinet, and with Mainwaring’s Handel. Such stories bear witness to a boy’s brilliance and industry in the face of roadblocks put up by an intolerant or short-sighted relative. Whether or not something like this encounter between father and son actually happened, the motif of accomplishing extraordinary things on one’s own merits in the face of adversity would return as a significant element in his story. And again, particularly in Wolgast’s narrative, one is afforded a glimpse into what the son clearly took as Johannes’s narrower mind and more limited talent, over against Sarah’s “clever and graceful” personage. Despite these vagaries, Straube himself was precise about what he wanted understood as the elements of his training. In his 1946 Lebenslauf he recorded, “Musical education received from the following men: Professor Dr. Heinrich Reimann (organ), Professor Albert Becker Director of the Royal Cathedral Choir (counterpoint, fugue, and choral conducting), Professor Philipp Rüfer, Senator of the Academy of the Arts (composition), Professor Wilhelm Leipholz (piano). Alongside this, independent studies in music history in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek (music department), beginning with the lute tablatures of the Renaissance era through Bruckner, Brahms, and
16 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 5–6.
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Richard Strauss.”17 The quartet of mentors evoked here—Reimann, Becker, Rüfer, Leipholz—had appeared in published sources before, the biographical essays of Fischer and Wolgast included. It is striking that Straube omitted the study of orchestral conducting in his self-assembled résumé, since Fischer in 1904 had claimed for it a decisive role. The boy’s “path led him to the Philharmonie,” where he first encountered Reimann and “zealously studied Hans von Bülow’s consummate way of handling the baton.” Presumably these experiences led him to sign on as a conducting pupil of Heinrich Kahl “immediately after his departure from the Gymnasium,” although that work was terminated “after only a year” at Kahl’s death. “Subsequently he turned entirely to Heinrich Reimann, became his student in organ performance, and completed his general musical education with Rüfer (composition), A. Becker (counterpoint), and Leipholz (piano).”18 By the time Straube encountered him in 1890 or 1891, Kahl was Kapellmeister of the Berlin Royal Opera. That the boy, then aged sixteen or seventeen, would undertake serious study with him belies an interest cultivated in the big musical institutions of the city, the Philharmonic and the Opera foremost among them. Perhaps it is true that Straube would have continued down this path had Kahl not died in August 1892, as Fischer appears to say. Fischer’s narrative is valuable not least because it suggests, as no other source does, that the young Straube came to intensive organ studies with Reimann, and to “his general musical education,” at earliest in late 1892, and only as a result of Kahl’s death.19 It is hard to overestimate the towering figure of Bülow, who had stood at the helm of the Philharmonic since 1887, and whose musicality Straube would fiercely admire throughout his life. Wolgast singles out Bülow’s “most exacting precision in technique, logical phrasing in the greatest detail, balanced dynamics, a shaping of the musical architecture based in the most assiduous analysis, [and] well considered and strictly executed tempi. . . . From 1889 on, Straube attended every concert that presented the opportunity to learn from Hans von Bülow.”20 In Wolgast’s telling, then, it was less Bülow’s “way of handling the baton” than his considered musical approach that caught Straube’s attention. And if Wolgast was right about 17 BAL Nachlass Straube, 81. 18 Fischer, “Karl Straube,” 701. 19 Wolgast maintained that studies with Reimann began in 1888. Karl Straube, 6. 20 Ibid., 10.
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the young man’s devotion to the Philharmonic, then Straube likely would have attended the legendary concert of March 28, 1892, when Bülow put in a much-anticipated final appearance as artistic director of that orchestra. In what would become a full-blown scandal, the combative Bülow used the occasion of a valedictory speech to slight the Kaiser and glorify Otto von Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor” whom Wilhelm had dismissed from service two years earlier. Even if the nineteen-year-old Straube himself did not witness that concert and its chaotic aftermath, Bülow’s seditious exit from Berlin doubtless resonated powerfully with him. Bülow and Bismarck would become, with Bach, Straube’s personal version of the “three Bs.” And when, about seven years later, Max Reger would pronounce Straube “the ‘Bülow’ of the organ,” he surely meant to evoke more than a particular constellation of performance practices: “Bülow” above all stood for the politically and socially engaged artist, willing to step out defiantly for the noble German character against whatever headwinds of opposition.21 The daring way Bülow had harnessed the great music of the German tradition to make a point about the unyielding character of the nation would not be lost on the future Thomaskantor. Straube found another link to Bülow in his piano study with Wilhelm Leipholz around this time. Leipholz himself had been a pupil of Bülow’s and later taught at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin, established in 1893. How the connection to Leipholz was achieved remains unclear. Maybe this was the work of Sarah Palmer Straube, who by all accounts had advanced piano study during her London youth. If Leipholz taught the Bülow style, though, this likely would have been a less conservative sort of pianism from that learned by Sarah in her work with Benedict around 1860. Either way, the boy clearly valued his piano study, which Wolgast seems to say fell in two periods, the second between 1895 and 1897. The resulting keyboard facility had real consequences for his organ technique. Undoubtedly because Straube told him so, Wolgast wrote that “he first studied thoroughly with Leipholz on the piano all the organ works that he played in concerts during these years. He owes to Leipholz his consummate manual technique, the precision of the execution, the crystalline clarity of the passagework.”22 Not insignificantly, in the late 1890s when Straube already had launched a modest organ performing career in Berlin and elsewhere, he 21 Letter to Hugo Riemann, March 18, 1899, in Popp, ed., Der junge Reger, 400–401. 22 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 11.
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continued to study the piano for a time. His habit of learning organ works at the piano conditioned his interpretation and amounted to something of a necessity, since Straube—who was still in his first post at Wesel—would preside at an organ with manually pumped wind. The pianist and composer Philipp Bartholomé Rüfer, with whom Straube claimed to have studied composition, taught piano and score reading at the prestigious Stern Conservatory, where Bülow himself had taught between 1855 and 1864, and which stood in the Wilhelmstraße, just down from the Straube home. The young man would have known him as the composer of Merlin, op. 35, premiered at the Royal Opera in 1887. With Heinrich Reimann he would study Rüfer’s organ Sonata in G Minor, op. 16. Given that Straube chose not to pursue composition later on, despite church positions in Wesel and Leipzig where it would have been natural, it would be of great interest to know more about this dark area of his education—all the more so, since questions about work with Rüfer apply also to his studies with Albert Becker, presumably undertaken around the same time. Becker taught composition at the Scharwenka Conservatory, a predecessor to the institution where Leipholz was active, and in 1889 became the director of the Berlin Cathedral Choir. Straube would advocate for Becker’s organ works, too, performing the Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor, op. 52, as late as 1903 in the liturgical concerts (Motetten) of the Leipzig Thomaskirche. Moreover, the Straube-Becker relationship manifested a fortuitous crossing of paths in that Becker would apply to the post of Leipzig Thomaskantor, first unsuccessfully in 1880, then again in 1892, around the time Straube must have studied with him. On the second try he rose to the top of a slate that included Hugo Riemann, Gustav Schreck, and Alfred Richter.23 Becker’s high standing as a composer and choral conductor is confirmed not only by his selection in Leipzig, but by the intervening request, submitted by the Prussian Director-General in the name of the Kaiser, that Becker be allowed to remain in Berlin, where his professional situation was improved. The young Straube likely took note of these proceedings, unaware that he himself would accede to the Leipzig cantorate some twenty-six years later. One should pause over Straube’s significant claim of personal study in music history at the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, “tablatures through Strauss” as he put it. At the time, the music division of the State Library was well on its way to developing the largest music and music-related holdings in Germany. Much later he would recall having sat for long hours in the Staatsbibliothek 23 Altner, Das Thomaskantorat, 70–74, 88–100.
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comparing manuscripts of Bach’s organ music in preparation for his 1913 edition with Peters.24 This activity, carried out more than a decade after he had left his hometown, must have been preceded by the youthful habit of study in the library’s well-endowed music division, which, if his list is credible, was not at all limited to organ or church music. It will have stimulated his mind in the direction of historical repertories, which played a significant role in his recitals and Alte Meister editions. Ultimately it would be the church and its instrument that beckoned him, though this was hardly inevitable. In his 1948 radio interview, Straube remarked that “it was clear from the outset that I would follow in my father’s steps.” But as a result of an essentially self-guided education, he had “traversed very many routes and detours . . . that perhaps have lent my work an especially personal character.”25 Those highways and byways are reasonably clear, even as they present far from an orderly picture of a boy embarked single-mindedly upon a vocational path. They more nearly suggest a bright teenager stimulated by the totality of a rich cultural environment, dipping his toe into several career options. His path was shaped, too, by unexpected twists of fortune. A number of what-if questions arise: What would have happened if the Straube boys had not abandoned the Abitur in 1890, motivated by financial exigencies or otherwise? How would Karl Straube have developed if his orchestral conducting studies had not been broken off in 1892 at the death of Kapellmeister Kahl? What if his home life had been sunnier, his relationship with his father less clouded? Straube probably carried these and other uncertainties with him into the ensuing decades, even as the public narrative that crystallized around him presented a much less troubled picture. Wolgast, for instance, would open his 1928 appraisal by comparing Straube to “mountain hikers who walk always restlessly forward, their gaze fixed only on the peak that lies before them as the goal of their journey.”26 And in 1976 Christoph Held was writing anecdotally, “When asked as a schoolboy what profession he wanted to pursue, Straube answered spontaneously: ‘Professor of Sacred Music.’”27 Straube himself corroborated these sentiments in his 1948 broadcast reminiscences. 24 Letter to Hans Klotz, April 28, 1944, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 11–12. 25 Interview, January 6, 1948, in Kunze and Lieberwirth, eds., Der Thomanerchor Leipzig. 26 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 1. 27 “Karl Straubes Lebensstationen,” in Held, eds., Karl Straube, 9.
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The private picture, though, was more conflicted and less predestined, intertwined with the self-doubt that occasionally bubbled to the surface as one of the defining features of Straube’s psyche. In 1937 he would turn to his brother William to lament a lack of “conscious artistic will” owing to insufficient musical talent. Nonetheless he had tried, “to the best of my knowledge and conscience, to solve every task that presented itself,” to take up “things that came my way, always at ‘servant rank.’” Perhaps he should have chosen an academic path, though “whether I really could have been a significant historian, as I sometimes told myself in vain hours, is however highly doubtful, since I never tried. I’m only astounded that I, almost completely without musical talent, nevertheless brought my career as far as Thomaskantor, which I never would have believed if it had been prophesied to me.”28 Such personal confessions became more melancholic as the years advanced, even as they exposed regrets at roads not taken. The telling language of being cast about by fate—“every task that presented itself to me,” “things that came my way”—illumines a reality more complicated than the received surface image. In 1943 Straube would confide further to his brother that “if I had not gone to Wesel in 1897, I had decided to bid farewell to the musician’s path and would have picked up our father’s so-called harmonium building institute as a field of activity. I thought I could trust my energies enough to make something useful out of this rat-hole.”29 All of this hints at an atmosphere of doubt, if not outright despair and cynicism, that threatened to engulf him in the 1880s and early 1890s, an ambitious young man in some sense adrift, resentful of domestic life, unsure of professional possibilities. It appears all the more urgent, then, to sense something of the crisis atmosphere of these years as backdrop to Straube’s gradual engagement with the organ, the instrument on which he would achieve virtuosity and international fame. He came to Otto Dienel sometime during the 1880s for his first instruction beyond that of his father. Though Straube evidently did not consider him significant enough to warrant mention in his 1946 Lebenslauf, Dienel was no wallflower figure in the world of Protestant church music. Organist of the prestigious Lutheran Marienkirche, he boasted a busy career as composer, touring organ virtuoso, consultant for important organ building projects, and from 1881, around the time the boy would have gotten to know him, Royal Music Director. Among his teachers had been August Wilhelm Bach, erstwhile mentor to Mendelssohn and Dienel’s predecessor at 28 Letter, February 12, 1937, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 10, 5–6. 29 Letter, March 1, 1943, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 143.
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the Marienkirche. In the 1870s and 1880s, Dienel would travel to England, Italy, and France, where he absorbed elements of foreign style and observed innovations in the various national schools of organ building. He thus developed progressive opinions about organ construction and the instrument’s contribution to Protestant worship, set out in his Die Stellung der modernen Orgel zu Seb. Bach’s Orgelmusik of 1889, revised and expanded in 1891 as Die moderne Orgel. The teenaged Straube studied with Dienel during his most impressionable Gymnasium years in the 1880s. The connection might reasonably have been made through Johannes: Dienel engaged intensively with the harmonium as a performer and composer, and he would have known and played the instruments of his young pupil’s father. When and why this study was discontinued is unclear. Perhaps personality issues or musical differences arose between the two. It is in any case striking that Straube, who later performed organ music composed by his other teachers, seems to have bestowed no such favor on Dienel’s considerable corpus for the instrument. The reason may lie with the influence of his next teacher, Heinrich Reimann, who had pronounced reservations about Dienel and his music. One need not guess at what set of attitudes the young man encountered in Dienel, who synopsized his artistic credo in 1886, probably while Straube worked with him. He aimed expressly “to generate appreciation for an organ music which, built on classical foundations, should be understandable and interesting not only to the musician and Bach connoisseur, but also to the layman.” Composers were enjoined to produce works that were “rhythmically and melodically interesting and comprehensible,” subject to “transparent” and colorful treatment in performance. As a corollary, “I here oppose the almost entirely conventional, dreary, monotonous, so-called learned organ playing, but I must defend myself from the view that in so doing, I aim to undermine the properly classical foundations of organ music.”30 Dienel’s position, then, mixed a distinctly populist element with the desire not to throw out the baby with the bathwater when it came to the “classical foundations” of organ music, that is, proper counterpoint and a solid principal chorus on which to play it. By 1891 Dienel had expanded these positions into a ninety-page treatise that embraced the application of the newest technologies to the organ, as well as the organist’s purposeful exploitation of them, particularly with respect to Bach’s music and the instrument’s liturgical function. He wrote of a modern, 30 Letter, November 3, 1886, cited in Christiane Dienel, “Otto Dienel (1839–1905).”
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“refined musical sense that has opposed above all the abrupt, sudden sound of the mixtures,” as well as of attempts to render the organ stops more similar to current orchestral instruments. “A complete redesign of the old organ” had been the result of “far-reaching inventions and improvements over the last decades in the areas of organ building technique and intonation.”31 Such an instrument, with its weightier tonal concept, pneumatic key action, and abundance of registration aids, would have to find its proper place not only in the concert hall, but also in the church. Dienel argued against those who perceived in the unchanging dynamic and monotone sound palette of old organs an objectivity appropriate to meditation on divine things. He mocked the idea that “Master Bach,” who in his sacred music exploited the dramatic and emotional potential of the texts, should “require only monotone, wearisome tranquility” in his organ works. Dienel expressed his concern that organ music not be taken as an academic or abstract pursuit by drawing a comparison with contemporary preaching. “We organists,” he asserted, “do not wish to take as a model the monotone sound from the pulpit, customary in earlier times but which now, thank God, is gradually disappearing from the sermon. Rather, we want to attempt to lead the congregation . . . to an animated feeling, thinking, willing, and doing.” That objective, Dienel believed, was attainable with the lively timbral possibilities of a modern instrument. “But, one says, playing with changing sound color is unchurch-like! Does the essence of the ecclesial lie in the eternally monotone, in the tedious?”32 Straube’s parents shared backgrounds in evangelical awakening movements and missional theology, and thus they would have immediately identified with his teacher’s analogy to homiletic style. The evangelically minded clans of Straube/Knak and Palmer/Hechler/Hutton were associated with anything but a “monotone sound from the pulpit.” Like the pietists of his day, Dienel sought to preach fervent conversion, not dry doctrine, from the organ bench. The young pupil, too, would follow this progressive musical path, and with decisive consequences for his career. For Dienel, overcoming the “monotone” nature of old organs meant a richly varied approach to touch, in no way ruled out by the new pneumatic key actions.33 This interpretive priority, whereby contrapuntal texture could be rendered distinct and expressiveness heightened, would emerge intensified in Straube’s own playing and editions in the following decades. Straube later 31 Dienel, Die moderne Orgel, 1. 32 Ibid., 52–3. 33 Ibid., 57.
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would attribute his treatment of organ sound to Reimann and his sense of musical line to Joachim. But it seems that the foundations for his approach were laid with Dienel’s ideas, supplemented by his piano studies and his observation of Bülow’s exacting interpretation. Dienel’s standpoint, in effect a polemic against Berlin’s more conservative organ circles around figures like Carl August Haupt, is indicative of the optimism embodied in the “culture of progress,” having sought to apply the technological advances of industrialism to a distinctively modern instrument, and thus to make the music of a Great German Past (Bach foremost) relevant to a Great German Future. These ideas were part of a larger, multivalent discourse that involved, on various levels, the metaphysical priorities of musical romanticism, the nationalist values of Protestantism, and the work of organ builders like Schlag, Sauer, Walcker, and Weigle. Likewise of essence is the way industrial development in Germany was linked particularly with Protestant areas like Berlin, a reflection of Bismarck’s domestic policy, such that the progressive ideals of cultural Protestantism ascended even as church attendance among middle-class urban dwellers declined.34 Dienel’s evangelically tinged insistence that church organists engage the spirits of their congregations in up-to-date music-making on up-to-date instruments arose from precisely this nexus of concerns. His motivations lay not merely in the aesthetic sphere, but also in nationalist-political, socio-economic, and religious ones. So too would Straube’s. Paradoxically, in light of the broader phenomenon of secularization and an attendant dwindling number of the faithful at services, Straube and his Berlin contemporaries would witness both the building of magnificent new churches to keep up with the population explosion, and the renovation of older organs. The Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, associated with Johannes Straube and Heinrich Reimann respectively, were instances of the former. An example of the latter was the historic Wagner organ of Dienel’s Marienkirche, which already had a turbulent history by the time Straube got to it. Completed in 1723, the organ had been “simplified” in 1800 by the iconoclastic Abbé Vogler. Carl August Buchholz corrected this situation in another renovation from 1829, adding a Swell chamber and several ranks that replaced stops from Wagner’s disposition. This was the instrument that would have been the site of Straube’s lessons, which included “a few things of Joh. Christ. Heinr. Rinck as well as easier works of 34 Evans, Rethinking German History, 147–53; Blackbourn, History of Germany, 219–23.
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Bach,” and surely improvisation as well.35 The young organist experienced here the most “classical” organ with which he would come into regular contact. Viewing Buchholz’s 1829 solution as too old-fashioned, Dienel presided over a more drastic renovation in 1894 executed by Schlag & Söhne, well after Straube’s period of study with him. By 1888 Schlag had built the organ at the Philharmonie, featuring among other things electropneumatic action, a set of free combinations, and stops on high wind pressure, the whole organ behind screens. That highly visible civic project stood likewise under Dienel’s consultation as an early turning point toward modernism in Berlin organ building, which must have been followed closely by Straube.36 In 1894 the Marienkirche organ received a thorough modernization with a new console, a partially pneumatic key action (Manual III/Solowerk and four Pedal stops on high wind), an elaborate combination action, pneumatic stop action, two Swell boxes, crescendo mechanism, and no fewer than eleven stops on high pressure, all the while retaining thirty-three Wagner ranks in whole or part.37 All of this and more corresponded to Dienel’s aesthetic developed in Die moderne Orgel. It is reasonable to suppose that Straube, who by then was performing his first public recitals, returned to try out the “modernized” instrument.
35 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 6. See further Steves, “Der Orgelbauer Joachim Wagner,” 321–58. 36 Schwarz, ed., 500 Jahre Orgeln, 217–18, 224. 37 Fidom, “Diversity in Unity,” 47, 272, 295; Schwarz, ed., 500 Jahre Orgeln, 83–93.
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Chapter Three
Liftoff It is unclear when and under what circumstances Straube met Heinrich Reimann. It seems likely the connection was made over the younger man’s regular attendance at concerts of the Philharmonic, which Reimann served as organist and program-note writer. Probably reproducing Straube’s own conflicting recollections made at different points in his life, Wolgast put the date at 1888, Fischer at 1892.1 Like Dienel, Reimann had come to Berlin from elsewhere, the former as a student in 1863, the latter as a grammar school teacher in 1879 and, after time away, again in 1887. Reimann had come from Catholic Lower Silesia, an area with eighteenth-century ties to Prussia, absorbed into the new Reich in 1871. Son of the prolific church music composer Ignaz Reimann, he had earned a philology degree at Breslau in 1875, laying the foundations for a career as a serious writer on musical topics from Byzantium to Brahms. He likewise had studied organ playing with the Breslau cathedral organist, composer, and Royal Music Director Moritz Brosig, himself a writer on historical Catholic music. By the time Reimann moved permanently to Berlin in 1887, he had converted to Protestantism, no doubt largely under patriotic fervor for the new imperial culture. When Straube crossed paths with him shortly thereafter, Reimann’s extraordinarily varied career was in ascendancy as a composer, critic, organist, and librarian at the Staatsbibliothek, where he would become a curator in 1893, and where he equally could have met the young man. For a brief time thereafter, he taught organ and theory at the new Klindworth-Schaarwenka Conservatory, where Straube’s piano teacher Leipholz served on faculty. As an organist, Reimann stood at least superficially in Dienel’s camp, positioned against conservative voices like Haupt—organ professor and later director of the Berlin Church Music Institute, and probably teacher to Johannes Straube during his time there—and Salamon Kümmerle, both of whom cautioned against the newfangled technologies and shallow effects of 1 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 6; Fischer, “Karl Straube,” 701.
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the “modern organ.”2 The Schlag Philharmonie organ of 1888, over which Reimann presided as organist to the orchestra through late 1896, and on which Straube perhaps had lessons with him, generally would have suited his purposes, with its two Swell chambers, electropneumatic action, variable wind pressures, a proliferation of registration aids, and more. Still, Reimann voiced concerns about the justification for and reliability of certain mechanisms on this instrument, exposing aesthetic differences with Dienel, who had consulted on the organ.3 Like his pupil Straube, Reimann ultimately would come to favor the organs of Wilhelm Sauer, over whose new instrument at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche Reimann held sway from 1895. At the end of his life, Straube remembered Reimann as “a smart and vivacious artistic personality,” an advocate of the New Germans around Liszt and Wagner who took up cudgels against the pro-forma Bach playing of the traditionalists. He described a signature technique of crescendo and accelerando which, when applied to Bach’s fugues, drove to a thrilling close, full organ at double tempo. Straube recalled particularly the C-major Fugue from BWV 564 to illustrate “how dogmatically [Reimann] designed this basic scheme. . . . Since the fugue ends with a downward figuration that reduces to a single voice, intercepted only in the last measure by a short chord, he filled out the last measures with many voices so as to end fortissimo.”4 This free approach, borrowing the technique of the accelerando fugue from Mendelssohn and Schumann, and exploiting the smooth crescendo of which the newer instruments were capable, must have mightily impressed a teenaged pupil. But an up-to-date playing style cannot be the only thing that attracted the young man. After all, Dienel had represented the progressive camp as well, albeit more with the zeal of a preacher than the apparent rigor of a scholar. Straube surely perceived in Reimann’s pronounced academic bent, and in his insistence that organists must have a deep grasp of the history in which their instrument was embedded, something attractive and affirming of the intellectual priorities gleaned from his mother. The older man did not hesitate to object in print to the faltering education of organists in the schools, reduced to little more than mere vocational training void of wider concerns in history and theory. “Their knowledge of music is limited chiefly to the organ repertory that happens to fall into their hands,” he complained. “Many good, honorable men are among them, conscientious and competent in their work, but 2 3 4
Busch, “Entwicklungslinien des Bach-Spiels,” 392–98. Reimann, “Noch einmal,” 172–73. Straube, “Rückblick,” 10–11.
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almost none are thoroughly formed musicians [durchgebildete Musiker]. But in my opinion, everything depends above all precisely on this latter quality.”5 Straube’s own mature view would align strikingly with this position. If the pupil had come to Reimann still considering the possibility of further study at one of the city’s conservatories, the latter well may have advised him to steer away from institutional education and instead to explore the deeper and wider world of the “durchgebildete Musiker” on his own in the library. And if Straube really saw in his own father the shortsightedness of the merely “conscientious and competent” musician, as he seems to have done, then Reimann, twenty-three years Karl Straube’s senior, might have functioned as a father figure on some emotional level. Reimann is never absent from any account Straube offered of his early years, which cannot be said of any other figure outside his own home with whom he was personally acquainted. Yet another feature may have galvanized the bond between Straube and his mentor. Reimann had come to Berlin from Silesia, one of the Catholic fringe territories taken into the Reich and subsequently targeted by Bismarck’s Kulturkampf. The area had a long history of governance by the more aggressive powers around it, most recently from 1742, when Frederick the Great seized Silesia from the Habsburg Empire in the War of Austrian Succession. Assimilating into a dominant culture, Reimann signed on to the zealous nationalism of the German Empire’s early years, in some sense probably born of a need to demonstrate the purity of his patriotism in the capital’s politically charged environment. He shed his Catholicism and began to write music criticism driven by a xenophobic cultural chauvinism. The half-German, half-English Straube, too, occupied an outlying cultural position and soon would develop a similarly intense set of nationalist motivations and ideologies—not identical with Reimann’s, but nationalist nonetheless— that colored his politics and aesthetics in the coming decades. It is in the writings of Straube’s mentor from around the time of the young man’s study that a sharply critical stance toward modern organ composition emerged, an intensity of judgment from which the pupil took much. Illustrative of that stance is a series of essays Reimann published in autumn 1894 concerning the contemporary state of the organ sonata. In the context of a preliminary discussion of the various historical sonata genres, he singled out Mendelssohn as the progenitor of the modern organ sonata. Reimann acknowledged Mendelssohn’s workmanship but denied him the kind of 5
Reimann, “Orgel-Sonaten,” 543.
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genius that would lift the music to the level of real significance. He declared that the organ “is and must remain a church instrument, even when it stands in a concert hall. Compositional style for the organ must be . . . more dignified and serious [than that of secular music].”6 The classical sonata form was not appropriate to the organ, Reimann maintained, because the instrument by its nature accommodated strictly contrapuntal procedures and “serious” affects largely foreign to the secular form. A stark nationalist commitment demanded further that “we Germans judge more strictly in these matters than our Romanic neighbors. Only we have a right and responsibility to do this, since Bach was a German.”7 Reimann proceeded to order the music of some thirty contemporary composers into an aesthetic caste system based on his stringent and often aggressively chauvinist standards. France, America, and England—nations which largely had turned their organs into proxies for the orchestra—predicatably came out on bottom. By contrast, the best creative minds would “unite a thorough, general music education with the specialist training that every organist and particularly every organ composer must have enjoyed.” Such professional formation would not address merely the technical aspects of playing and the comprehensive knowledge of the instrument’s capabilities, but rather its “principal object . . . must issue from total immersion in the only true and correct organ style, that of Johann Sebastian Bach. Outside this style there is no salvation!”8 The most exalted figure in Reimann’s pantheon so defined was the Catholic Franz Liszt, whose “organ compositions stand in all essence completely on the holy ground of Bach,” and to whom Reimann would dedicate an essay two years later to mark the tenth anniversary of Liszt’s death.9 In both 1894 and 1896, the BACH Fantasy and the Variations on “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen” came in for particularly high praise, as works which “have lifted organ music from the base, gloomy atmosphere into which it was banned as if in a dungeon, to the high, ethereal regions of light and pure art”—wordsmithing worthy of Liszt himself.10 Accordingly, when Straube began editing organ music after the turn of the century, he focused his first efforts on Liszt.
6 Ibid., 517. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., 559. 9 Ibid., 560. 10 Reimann, “Bach und Liszt,” 433.
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Reimann closed his 1894 essay series with a reprise of his credo that “the organ does not wish to be what it cannot: the great circle of ‘feelings’—to speak with Schiller—over which it is master is just as decisively attuned to the religious tone as that of secular music is to subjective feeling, which finds its most natural expression in the word ‘love.’” Moreover, “there is a transcendental, seraphic ‘love’ also in the realm of religion, and for it Francis of Assisi has found the most eloquent words, Franz Liszt the most impressive tones, also on the organ.”11 A xenophobic cadence railed against “foreign domination” in organ music and sharply lamented Anglo-French bias in the domestic music industry. “Let us not lose faith in ourselves and our better judgment!” he concluded. “Let us act as befits German organists, for whom there is a name under which all unite, in whom and through whom all recognize themselves, and outside of whom is no salvation: the name: Johann Sebastian Bach.”12 That narrow-minded paroxysm was typical of the conservative right during a period of threats to German markets by an incurring internationalist economy. With respect to the young Straube, the first thing to notice about these pronouncements is not so much their content or even their subcutaneous socio-political and aesthetic motivations, but rather the articulate, self-assured personality from which they issued, a character that surely attracted and challenged a pupil searching for a professional direction. Under Reimann’s guidance the curious Straube will have encountered an expansive repertory, historic and modern. Still, Wolgast, as ever pursuing the portrait of the self-made man, offered only a short list of pieces he studied during these years: the Bach free works BWV 574, 538, 532, 543, and 541; Rheinberger’s Sonata No. 15 in D Major, op. 168; Philipp Rüfer’s Sonata in G Minor, op. 16; Guilmant’s Sonata No. 5 in C Minor, op. 80; Muffat’s Passacaglia (from the Apparatus); Pachelbel’s Chaconne in D Minor (Dorian); and Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on BACH.13 Regardless of whether this represented a complete picture of Straube’s work with Reimann in the years around 1890 (it likely does not), the repertory certainly reflected the older man’s canon: works from the German heritage alongside contemporary composition (even across French borders), all orbiting around the “holy ground” of Bach. From Reimann, then, Straube took a sharply critical eye to contemporary music, later exercised in traffic with Reger and others. If the young man had 11 Ibid., 603. 12 Ibid., 604. Emphases original. 13 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 6–7.
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come to him from Rüfer and Becker still harboring any notions of composing, it is not difficult to imagine those ambitions quelled under the weight of Reimann’s severe opinions. On the other hand, the evidence gives every indication that the pupil fed off the energy, passion, and comprehensive intellect of his mentor, throwing himself now headlong into the organ and its music. “When the author of these lines asked Karl Straube what he had played of modern music,” wrote Wolgast in 1928, “he answered laconically: ‘Everything!’”14 He would have made the same outsized claim for Bach and earlier repertories, an attitude informed by the fiery ambition stoked in his time with Reimann. Straube had been searching for his way, and in the organ he was finding it. At Epiphany 1893 he celebrated his twentieth birthday. Without his knowing it yet, this pivotal year would set in motion a chain of events later converging in the great collaboration of his career. His conducting studies with Kahl had met an unexpected end with the latter’s death the previous August. And according to Fischer, he had “turned entirely to Heinrich Reimann” as a result, now intent on conquering the organ. Already in late winter 1893 Straube and his mentor must have felt sufficiently confident of his progress that he participated in a public concert on Friday, March 3, 1893, at the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche, where Johannes Straube likely still served as organist. This effectively marked his debut as a performing artist. Like the Memorial Church to Wilhelm I with which Straube later was associated through Reimann, the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche, too, had direct ties to the Kaiser, whose nominally Protestant government it served as a symbol in central Berlin. Its altar had been donated by the Queen of Prussia, Auguste Victoria. The new church’s organ, on which Straube must have gained a wealth of experience through his father’s connection, was built with the edifice in 1888 by the Berlin firm of Oswald and Paul Dinse at the same time that Schlag was completing the iconic instrument at the Philharmonie. Dinse, who enjoyed a fine reputation in Berlin on par with Sauer and Schlag, would build the organ of the Singakademie that same year. With forty-five stops on three manuals and pedal, Johannes Straube’s Heilig-Kreuz organ boasted a thoroughly modern design, appropriate to a space taken to reflect the grandeur of the Empire. Among its progressive features were electropneumatic action, eight combination pistons, a Rollschweller, a 16′ coupler for manuals I and II, and “a keyboard on which one can play the pedal stops with the
14 Ibid., 12–13.
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hand.”15 Straube, aged fifteen when the organ was completed, must have experimented a great deal with its effects in the magnificent new space, perhaps variously under the guidance of Reimann, Dienel, and his father. The concert on March 3, 1893, was no student recital. Straube’s partners that Friday were older, seasoned musicians, including Waldemar Meyer, erstwhile member of the Berlin Court Orchestra who by the 1890s enjoyed a considerable international career as a violin recitalist and leader of an important Berlin quartet. Likewise on the program was an a cappella choir led by Hermann Putsch, cantor of the nearby Friedrichwerdersche Kirche, Royal Music Director, and singing teacher at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Realgymnasium where the young Straube had studied a few years earlier. The young organist performed Rheinberger’s Sonata in D Major, op. 168, as well as two smaller works of Liszt given as Ave Maria (almost certainly the Ave Maria von Arcadelt in the 1865 edition of Körner) and Trauerode (possibly the pair of works, Introitus and Les Morts—Oraison, published in 1890 by Siegel under this title). Straube surely was daunted by Meyer and Putsch, the former a pupil of his idol Joachim, the latter an authority figure from his Gymnasium days. The musicologist Max Seiffert was on hand to review the event in a short essay that bypassed the other participants to concentrate on the young organist’s contribution. In a nod to his colleague Reimann’s teaching, he observed that “one could soon hear that Herr Straube has pursued sound study under wise leadership.” It went downhill from there. Seiffert charged a lack of “rhythmic exactitude” and occasional awkwardness in manual changes, the latter “perhaps due to his inexperience with nerves.” Moreover, Straube’s use of the Rollschweller lacked discipline. “Just as he sometimes employed it to beautiful effect, at other times its rushed and exaggerated use was quite disturbing. The polyphonic web would lie transparent before us and then thundering waves of sound would suddenly pour over it, violently drawing the previously beautiful musical picture into the maelstrom of the unintelligible.”16 Even though Seiffert maintained an altogether reasonable tone, finding the positive where he could, this did not turn out as the triumphant debut for which the ambitious student must have hoped. Nerves certainly played a part, but probably so did Straube’s penchant for the shaping of localized musical detail, learned from observing Bülow and others but translated 15 Schwarz, ed., 500 Jahre Orgeln, 222. 16 Max Seiffert, Review of Straube at the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche, March 3, 1893, Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung 20/10 (10 March 1893): 143.
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through inexperience into the rhythmic irregularities and lack of forward motion Seiffert noticed. Straube would struggle with this in his playing for some time. For now, though, he absorbed both the experience and the criticism, and he went back to work. Meanwhile, across the country in Wiesbaden, an ambitious student of the theorist Hugo Riemann had withdrawn from the city’s Conservatory only a few weeks earlier, having felt too hemmed in by his mentor’s conservative musical direction. He had been born on March 19, 1873, seventy-two days after Karl Straube, in circumstances as different as imaginable from the latter. Whereas Straube had grown up in the cultural and industrial center of a new imperial Germany, a world city equal to Vienna and London, Riemann’s pupil had come from a tiny village in the Bavarian Oberpfalz. Whereas Straube’s household was bicultural, bilingual, and Protestant, his was provincial and zealously Catholic. His name was Max Reger, and since coming to Riemann in 1890, he had proven himself a star student intent on a career in composition. Already by late 1892 Reger had produced his first nine opus numbers under Riemann’s Brahmsian influence, and, via the latter’s contact, all of it had found or would find publication with the London press of George Augener. By early 1893 the Violin Sonata in D Minor, op. 1, dedicated to Riemann, had been the subject of a lukewarm review in Augener’s magazine The Monthly Musical Record. Around this time in spring 1893, Riemann had turned to his Berlin colleague Reimann to secure a major review of the young composer’s early works. The outspoken nationalist Reimann would have been sensitive to the fact that a German composer writing in German idioms had found some reception on foreign soil but not in his homeland. Reimann and Riemann represented starkly different aesthetic camps—the former an acolyte of the Liszt-Wagner direction, the latter an apologist for Brahms—but they shared an interest in older musics, a distrust of modern vocational education, and a correspondingly high ideal of the “durchgebildete Musiker,” to return to Reimann’s term. It is a measure of the élan with which the young Reger negotiated conservative and progressive styles in his early music that both these men came to place hope in him. Ever ready to train a critical eye on the newest music, Reimann wrote Riemann in May 1893 of “an extraordinarily intense musical nature that may give headaches to some! . . . One can certainly expect, after some things have been clarified and objectified in him, that his original artistic individuality will emerge still more definitively and
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clearly than it already does.”17 The review in the Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung, the first for any of Reger’s compositions in Germany, was not long in coming, appearing on July 7 and examining opp. 1–4 and 6. Here Reimann evoked Schumann’s prophetic review of Brahms from 1853 and framed the young Reger as “full of plans to conquer the world until he came to Hugo Riemann’s theory school, observing and learning there how necessary ‘one, two, three’ is to composition.” To both his credit and his disadvantage, the yet-to-be-formed composer labored under an “unusually stark” creativity, “a musical soul brimming over” with a wealth of ideas that “he cannot . . . ward off.” The dangers were clear in Reimann’s judgment. The fact that Reger “does not allow the main motives to achieve steady, full development . . . impedes not only one’s overall view and therefore grasp of the composition. It also leads to an all too pronounced fragmentation and disintegration of the whole into small pieces. . . . This further engenders a certain disquiet that one could interpret as nervousness.”18 These perceived weaknesses—lack of linear development on the musical surface, fragmentation, agitation where calm should prevail—are the ones that Reimann would have pointed out to his pupil Straube at latest by 1896, and they are indeed the ones that the mature Straube later sought to minimize in his performances and, in collaboration with Reger, to deflect in the process of composition. Straube, who in summer 1893 was busy honing his keyboard technique, seems to have taken no notice of his mentor’s review of Reger, although one cannot know whether he and Reimann spoke about it. Whatever the case, it would not have occurred to an informed observer at the time that Reger would turn to the organ in any significant way, but rather only that here was a young composer intent on following the lead of Brahms in chamber music. Consequently, the young Straube was by no means the first Berlin musician to show an active interest in promoting Reger’s works. That distinction goes instead to the violinist Waldemar Meyer, who had appeared with the Straube in March at the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche. Meyer promptly arranged an October recital for himself and Reger in Danzig, and on the way, the composer made a stop in Berlin to meet Otto Lessmann, the editor of the Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung Reimann’s reviews had appeared. That meeting in turn led to Reger’s association with Lessmann’s paper as a critic, to the publication in its pages of the organ Chorale Prelude “O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid” 17 Postcard, May 17, 1893, in Popp, ed., Der junge Reger, 147–48. Emphasis original. 18 Reimann, “Vom Musikalienmarkt,” 375–76.
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WoO IV/2 in February of the following year, and to the composer’s return to Berlin for a concert of his music that same February, an event that generated some notice in the local press.19 There is no indication that any of this made it onto Straube’s radar, even though Reger’s concert on February 14, 1894, had taken place at the Singakademie, a relatively short walk from the Straube home. The aspiring organist, after all, was consumed with his own pursuits. Not a week after Reger’s appearance in Berlin, Straube returned to Heilig-Kreuz on February 20, this time assisted by the cellist Heinrich Grünfeld and the alto Katharina Zimdars. The latter performed songs from Peter Cornelius’s Vater unser, op. 2, the former “two smaller pieces” by Liszt, all accompanied by Straube. These items were supplemented by four organ works: J. S. Bach’s Fugue in G Major BWV 541 (with prelude?), the Sonata in G Minor, op. 16, of Straube’s composition teacher Rüfer, Liszt’s Ave Maria (repeated from the previous year), and his BACH Fantasy (surely with fugue). Seiffert was again on hand to evaluate the proceedings. The nervous student of 1893 had become “the young organ virtuoso” who “has lately perfected himself extraordinarily.” Now, Seiffert wrote with enthusiasm concerning “how reasoned and aware of the artistic aim” Straube was in the use of the organ’s expressive means. His collaboration with his fellow artists, too, showed “mature understanding.”20 Straube would come to regard this event as the launch of his artistic independence. Wolgast cited it as “the first concert,” and even Straube’s Leipzig personnel file later recorded 1894 as the end date of his “private studies with various professors in Berlin.”21 Further recitals would follow in the next years, primarily in the great churches of central Berlin with progressive organs like the Alte Garnisonkirche (Sauer 1892 in a 1726 Wagner case), and evidently also in Halle. He frequently offered historic programs designed to lead audiences through organ repertory from the early seventeenth century through to the present. That approach to programming reflected the concerns of Straube’s mentor Reimann, for whom competence in the whole sweep of history, particularly German history, was paramount. The pupil in fact would continue to work with Reimann and Leipholz on aspects of interpretation and technique, but he clearly had begun to find his own way. 19 Popp, ed., Der junge Reger, 158–62 and 171–77. 20 Max Seiffert, Review of Straube at the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche Berlin, February 20, 1894, Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung 21/9 (March 2, 1894): 129. 21 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 11; StAL Straube-Akten 1, Personalbogen, Bildungsgang, 2. The latter gives the entire period of study as 1890–94.
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Other developments were afoot in the city. Construction on the elaborate neo-Romanesque Memorial Church to Wilhelm I had begun in 1891, an initiative that reflected the same imperially sanctioned Protestant optimism that had erected the resplendent Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche between 1885 and 1888. Reimann himself stepped into the position at the Gedächtniskirche upon its consecration in September 1895, bringing the twenty-two-year-old Straube as his deputy beginning the following summer. Under Reimann’s guidance, Sauer had built for the new church the firm’s largest and most magnificent instrument to date, op. 660, with eighty stops on three manuals and pedal, a realization of everything Reimann found most enlightened and excellent in modern organ design. The instrument united traditional elements (full principal choruses on all manuals, generous mutations throughout) with progressive ones (six free combinations and other registration aids, tubular pneumatic action, color stops) in a tonal concept of extraordinary gravity and magnificence (pedal at 32′, at least two 16′ stops on each manual, proliferation of 8′ stops). Only two years later in 1897, not yet quite satisfied, Reimann would occasion a few changes and additions to the existing divisions, as well as a new ten-stop Fernwerk on a fourth manual placed on high wind pressure behind two sets of Swell shades.22 By the time Straube left Berlin in 1897, he stood strongly under the impression of this instrument, particularly its original, three-manual incarnation, on which he played regularly in concerts and liturgies. Upon assumption of his duties, Reimann instituted a weekly series of Thursday evening organ recitals, providing a counterweight to the regular Wednesday programs that had taken place at the Marienkirche since the time of A. W. Bach.23 Straube would have had ample opportunity to involve himself. He remembered years later, through Wolgast, that the Gedächtniskirche Sauer and the Schlag organ at the Philharmonie constituted for him “the ideal sound world” at the outset of his virtuoso years.24 By 1896, when he joined his mentor at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in an auxiliary capacity, Straube had established himself in the metropolis as an ambitious organist of some ability, but his professional future was probably not yet clear to him. Would he search out a major church position? Did he seriously contemplate pursuing a concert career parallel to taking over the family harmonium business? Was there a viable future at all 22 Schwarz, ed., 500 Jahre Orgeln, 242–45. 23 Dorfmüller, Heinrich Reimann, 71. 24 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 8.
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in the capital’s crowded cultural landscape? As Karl pondered these questions, Gertrude Palmer presented herself on the doorstep of Wilhelmstraße 29. His mother’s Australian niece had traveled from Sydney, arriving that April in London to study piano with Walter Cecil Macfarren at the Royal Academy.25 After a successful recital in July, she had crossed the Channel to visit her German relatives. At this point in late summer, Straube heard news from the English and Australian branches of his family, and he witnessed his cousin’s impressive aspirations and curiosity that had taken her far from home. Comparisons were inevitable. Was he destined to remain in Berlin, or would he, like his musical cousin, look outwards? He needed a monumental project to focus his energies and lend direction. And at just this point emerged a pivotal if anecdotal exchange that later would become a standard piece of Straube’s biography. As with so many other details from these early years, it appeared first in Wolgast’s 1928 account: “In fall 1896, Reimann showed Straube the four-movement Suite in E Minor, op. 16, of Reger, remarking that this work was so difficult as to be completely unplayable. This opinion stimulated Straube’s virtuoso ambition, so that he set out to tackle the piece with steely energy. He found himself confronted with quite new technical problems, and in March 1897 he was the first to bring the first big organ work of Reger before the public.”26 Still living in Wiesbaden, Reger had completed his second organ opus in July of the previous year, dedicating it “to the manes of Johann Sebastian Bach” and dispatching copies to no less than Richard Strauss and Johannes Brahms as his most successful work. It seems that Reimann, too, took notice of the piece, its four demanding movements requiring the better part of an hour to perform. Indeed, Straube did premiere the Suite in a recital at the Dreifaltigkeitskirche on March 3, 1897, on what he apparently remembered as “an unfortunately insufficient organ.”27 The church claimed a distinguished history that would not have been lost on him: here Schleiermacher had preached until his death in 1834, and here Bismarck had been confirmed in 1831. The organ, perched in the top gallery directly above the chancel, was originally the work of Ernst Marx from 1775. But in 1896 Sauer had delivered a new organ housed in the Marx case with thirty-seven stops on three
25 Meyer, “Karl Straube,” 42–43. 26 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 12. 27 Ibid.
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manuals and pedal.28 Why Straube would have chosen an organ whose tonal resources impressed him as too limited for an important premiere is unclear. Perhaps he simply wanted to show off Sauer’s latest work, which admittedly offered a stoplist a fraction of the size of the Gedächtniskirche. Or maybe he wanted to parallel the qualities he saw in Reger’s op. 16—a modern musical language cast in traditional forms—with a new organ in an old case and historic building. Whatever the exact circumstances, Wolgast’s tale of gauntlet thrown down and taken up speaks to the spirited drive of a twenty-threeyear-old looking to prove himself. The “quite new technical problems” of op. 16 are evident in the tangled counterpoint of its prolix opening fugue, the illumination of the three Protestant chorales that drive its dense Adagio, and the sustained virtuosity required by the closing Passacaglia’s twenty-nine variations. The work’s monumental dimensions surpassed anything Straube had tackled to that point, to say nothing of its undomesticated chromatic harmony. Regardless of whether the exchange with Reimann happened just the way Wolgast reports, what is certain is that this supposed initial direct engagement with Reger’s music gave the young man both a novel goal and a brand. Advocacy for a much-discussed new composer could distinguish him from a crowded pack of organists in Berlin and beyond. And distinguish him it did. The composer-critic Max Loewengardt complained of “polyphony that never finds a harmonic resting place,” a poverty of invention and rhythm, a “pretentious” harmony of “superfluous cacophonies” and “likewise superfluous parallel fifths. An unpleasant music, more unpleasant than music.”29 As would become typical, Loewengardt’s review, which did not escape a pretension of its own, found no fault with Straube’s playing, rather only with Reger’s music. With his extremist aesthetic that sought to upend contemporary musical culture, Reger promptly earned a comparison with the Social Democrats, whose leftist ideologies stood in stark opposition to the Kaiser’s domestic policy. At home, too, Straube encountered resistance: Sarah, enlightened but essentially conservative in matters of art, was horrified that her son found himself at the center of a firestorm of the avant-garde.30 Perhaps Johannes felt the same.
28 Schwarz, ed., 500 Jahre Orgeln, 138. 29 Max Loewengardt, Review of Straube at the Dreifaltigkeitskirche Berlin, March 3, 1897, Berliner Börsen-Zeitung 111, March 7, 1897, cited in Popp, ed., Der junge Reger, 294. 30 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 12.
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But in the meantime, Straube had achieved something beyond an abstract relationship to this “unpleasant” music. He had set out on a starkly personal mission. Not long after he acquired the score of Reger’s Suite in autumn 1896, he took the extra step of initiating contact with the composer. His Berlin friend and housemate Siegfried Knak recalled in 1950 “how one day he spoke to me with such excitement about Reger. When he wrote the man a letter, having not yet met him, and then discovered that the young Reger was fulfilling his year of military service at the time and felt miserable . . . [Straube] initially arranged for ‘care packages’ [‘Freßpakete’].”31 These details prove useful in establishing a credible order of events, since Reger entered military service on October 1, 1896, the same autumn that Straube came in contact with the Suite. The young composer’s encounter with the armed forces was an unmitigated disaster, and from mid-October until well into November Reger found himself out of commission in the camp hospital. This regrettable state of affairs fits well with Knak’s recollection that Reger “felt miserable,” as well as with Straube’s own claim, made to Fritz Stein in 1942, that his file of Reger’s correspondence had begun with a letter from December 1896, presumably Reger’s reply to a contact initiated from Berlin.32 That Straube would take it upon himself to write the composer directly is perhaps the most compelling witness to his keen interest in the music—that is, not merely in winning the technical challenge his mentor is supposed to have issued him. A personal meeting between the two would have to wait until spring 1898, but in the intervening period there must have arisen a lively exchange of letters, not least concerning matters of interpretation. By the time Straube unleashed Reger on his unsuspecting audience at the Dreifaltigkeitskirche, he could regard the event not only as a showcase for his hard-won technical dexterity, but also as artistic activism on behalf of a contemporary who, not at all unlike himself, was struggling to find his way. When Straube awoke on the morning of March 4, 1897, the day after the exhilarating events at the Dreifaltigkeitskirche, he may well have reflected on his life to that point. Over the last seven years, roughly from the time he and his brother broke off Gymnasium studies, he had explored the musical universe through contacts with the city’s most distinguished musicians. His elder brother William had gone a more formal route, as a student at the 31 Knak, “Mein Freund,” 2. Freßpakete indicates parcels of food. 32 In a letter of June 8, 1942, Straube would admit to Stein that he had “destroyed the earlier correspondence from 1896 (December), as agreed with Reger.” StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann, Sig. 9, 96–97.
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Royal School of Art and now at the prestigious Academy of Arts for advanced training as an artist and drawing teacher. He would vacate Berlin for Koblenz the following year. Meanwhile, possessed of an independent streak, Karl had studied music history on his own initiative, exercised himself in composition and conducting, and now driven his keyboard technique to a level he himself probably had not anticipated even a year or two earlier. Through his association with Reimann, he had available to him Sauer’s fine new instrument at the Gedächtniskirche, situated in the ever-evolving organ landscape of the imperial metropolis. What he did not have was steady work. Neither did he display a sure sense of whether to remain in Berlin or to venture away. All of this was about to change, and quickly. Across the country, about 500 kilometers west on the Rhine River near the Dutch border, an attractive position was opening in Wesel.
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Part II
Wesel 1897–1902 I remember a comment of Max Reger, expressed to me on the first day of our personal acquaintance . . . in Frankfurt am Main: “If someone just shows an impulse to compose, then these efforts should be supported. No one knows what might erupt [hervorbrechen] from such a talent.” —Karl Straube to Hans Jakob Haller, May 15, 1946; Letter, May 15, 1946, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 7, 63–65
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Chapter Four
New Beginnings “You aren’t able to accompany a chorale!” Reimann exclaimed to him one day.1 The older man well may have been justified in his criticism concerning a skill he must have observed when Straube deputized at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. After all, during the mid-1890s Straube seems to have concentrated on technique and repertory, not necessarily on service playing and its attendant proficiencies. Writing much after the fact, Wolgast would capture something of the young man’s thinking when he remarked that church and organ music since Bach’s death “had slept the deepest sleep,” and that “the stature of the organist had lost more and more credibility.” But the way back to that credibility did not run through the church. Rehabilitation was “possible only in connection and on the same front with the other arts, but detached from all ecclesial actualities. The organ had to be lifted from the constrictions of epigonic church art and placed as a concert instrument on the front lines of a vibrant musical life.”2 This is a striking position for a young man whose family claimed such deep roots in theology and evangelical religion. If Wolgast got it right, though, the attitude goes some way to explaining why Straube may have neglected the cultivation of liturgical skills in favor of repertory playing. Furthermore, the framing of one’s task as the liberation of the organ from the church, however backward-looking the environment, could have amounted to a rebellion against a religiously conservative home life. In any case, this had been neither Reimann’s nor Dienel’s position. Both believed that the organ, even in modernized guise, was by its nature an instrument that enabled religious devotion, that led a congregation “to an animated thinking, feeling, willing, and doing,” to return to Dienel’s words. Despite the brand of secular idealism Wolgast proffered, ultimately the organ would not be disentangled from the church environment, and neither 1 Knak, “Mein Freund,” 2. 2 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 7–8.
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would Straube. If he was going to realize his mission of renovating “the stature of the organist,” of clothing Bach and others in compelling up-to-date form, and of attracting the musical avant-garde to this ancient instrument, he was going to have to do it from inside the church out, not the other way around. What is more, there is something of a straw-man argument in Straube’s crusade against “the fetters of a didactic conservatism” and the low popular regard of the organ in Berlin.3 Whereas this surely obtained on some level, the city’s organ performance landscape was by no means as monolithic as the remark might suggest. The regular recitals of both Dienel and Reimann were popular and evidently generated excitement about the kind of music that progressive instruments and open-minded organists could make. Straube was stepping onto an already crowded stage of concert organists in Germany and elsewhere, of which his mentors were but two examples: Guilmant’s international stature, for instance, was well known. The twenty-something Straube did not have to invent the modern organ virtuoso, but he clearly wanted to emerge at the front of the pack. These issues must have weighed on his mind when, in spring 1897, he decided on an eleventh-hour application to a church position in Wesel on the Rhine. In 1950 his cousin Knak remembered the episode, when Straube took the “bold step” to pursue the post. “The last day for applications was the same day Straube noticed the advertisement,” Knak wrote. “He ventured an application in an extremely lengthy telegram,” hence a “conspicuous submission” that resulted in an invitation to Wesel. “When he, as the last of many applicants, began his improvisation on the first lines of ‘Sollt ich meinem Gott nicht singen,’ all the listeners knew that the prize would fall to him.”4 The garrison city of Wesel sits at the confluence of the Lippe and Rhine rivers, a strategic geography since Carolingian times, occupied variously by Spain, France, the Netherlands, and, primarily since the seventeenth century, Prussia, for which it served as an armed outpost on the kingdom’s western front. Wesel had embraced Protestantism already in 1540, quickly becoming a gathering point for Flemish and Wallonian refugees. The great Gothic cathedral of St. Willibrord on the Marktplatz had a rich history from its original construction in the eleventh century through its completion in the sixteenth, when the Reformation came to the city. By 1874 the resplendent five-naved edifice had fallen into such disrepair that it was closed, prompting a campaign that resulted in the building’s elevation to the status of a 3 4
Straube, “Rückblick,” 9. Knak, “Mein Freund,” 2.
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national monument. Buoyed by civic pride and costing well over a million gold marks, thoroughgoing renovations began in 1883, transforming St. Willibrord into a shining example of the neo-Gothic style then popular. By mid-1896 that work had been completed, with the sumptuous dedication of the renewed church on August 7 in the presence of members of the Prussian royal family.5 Undoubtedly, the Kaiser and others would have received the whole initiative as a symbol of a mighty nation under God, albeit the Protestant God, indicative of the same energies that had recently carried out the constructions of the Gedächtniskirche and the new Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche in the imperial capital. Included in the renovation efforts was the building of a new organ high in the west gallery, replacing the 1645 Bader instrument that had been located in the north transept. In 1892 the contract had gone to Sauer, who three years later relocated the Bader casework to the west end, engineering in it an elaborate instrument of eighty stops on three manuals and pedal with a tonal concept similar to the firm’s Kaiser Wilhelm organ. The entire project of church and organ exuded the spirit of optimism appropriate to new beginnings. Thus the two consultants for the organ argued in their report upon the instrument’s completion that the Presbytery “should entrust this, the largest organ in western Germany, to a worthy, artistically schooled personality for the blessing of the Protestant congregation of Wesel and the benefit of German music.”6 By December 1895 the church had pegged its man in the figure of the composer, organist, and Royal Music Director Friedrich Reinbrecht, a product of the Berlin Institute of Church Music, protégé of Carl Reinecke in Leipzig, and at the time organist of the St. Benedicti-Kirche in Quedlinburg. But the restless Reinbrecht, it turned out, was merely a passer-through. Already by October 1896 he had secured a position at the Hamburg Nikolaikirche, where he would likewise remain only a year before becoming University Music Director in Greifswald. Reinbrecht’s contract in Wesel terminated on March 1, 1897, and presumably by this time the Presbytery had once again gone public to advertise the position. Perhaps Straube really had not been aware of Reinbrecht’s departure for Hamburg and the unlikely reopening of the Wesel post, or perhaps he had 5 6
Karl Dreimüller, “Die Sauer-Orgel von 1895,” in Kirch, ed., Die Orgeln der Willibrordikirche, 23–24. See also Dreimüller, “Karl Straubes Sauer-Orgel in Wesel.” Inspection report, May 13 and 14, 1895, cited in Funk-Hennings, “Karl Straubes Berufung,” 69.
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waffled about whether to abandon Berlin and embrace a full-time church job after all. Maybe it was the organ that attracted him, essentially a sister instrument to Reimann’s Sauer on which he deputized.7 Whatever the case, Straube managed to argue his candidacy successfully, presumably at the last minute, perhaps with supporting references from Reimann and others. On May 12 he was the last of four candidates (not “many,” as Knak remembered) to audition for a committee chaired by the now former cantor Reinbrecht. Among the first three was the composer-organist Paul Gerhardt, who the following year was appointed organist at the Marienkirche in Zwickau. In 1902 and 1918 Gerhardt would again be one of Straube’s competitors for the posts of organist and cantor of St. Thomas, Leipzig, respectively. The audition requirements give a fair picture of expectations for high-level service players in the period, emphasizing text-based improvisation skills. From each candidate the committee heard a “festival prelude” upon the first line of “Sollt ich meinem Gott nicht singen”; a four-voice accompaniment for congregational singing of the same chorale’s first strophe in its canonic key of C minor, followed by an interlude that led to the singing of the third strophe in C-sharp minor; a prelude on another chorale, “Sei Lob und Ehr dem höchsten Gut,” to the tune of “Mein Herzens Jesu, meine Lust,” with the tune in the tenor and the affect taken from the fourth strophe; and “a classical work freely chosen.”8 The committee will have placed the greatest importance on the candidates’ sensitivity to the organ’s tonal palette and on their ability to capture the requisite chorale texts in introductions and accompaniment. The auditions were anonymous. Reinbrecht’s report on the fourth player affords a rare glimpse of the young Straube as a liturgical organist. In preluding the chorale, he “proves himself a skilled player.” The chorale accompaniment likewise succeeded “except for a few mistakes in the harmony. I emphasize the correct performance of the interlude and the intensification of the chorale (C-sharp minor, strophe III).” The second chorale prelude evidently revealed the weak point in that it “does not sufficiently take into consideration the fourth strophe. (The full organ is predominant and only later gives way to soft playing.) The development was not entirely free of mistakes.” On the other hand, Straube’s Bach playing was judged effective on account of “the rich shading and sure command 7 8
This is the possibility suggested by Wolgast, Karl Straube, 13. “Bericht über das am heutigen Tage, dem 12. Mai 1897, in Willibrordi stattgefundene Organisten-Probespiel,” cited in Funk-Hennings, “Karl Straubes Berufung,” 70.
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of the organ.” The revealing result: “No. IV brings forward the composition as well as the organ in [Bach] and shows much skill also in [the first prelude], but he should have better honored the churchly character in his improvisation. . . . Nos. I and IV have best absolved the given tasks. Of these two, no. IV is preferred.”9 This was a fine accomplishment for an organist who, in his teacher’s judgment, could not manage a chorale a relatively short time before. Reinbrecht’s description of Straube’s Bach playing corresponds to contemporary reviews, which frequently cite effective use of the organ’s tonal resources (“rich shading”) and authoritative performance. Concerning the rest, the examiner’s reservations dwelt on a lack of sensitivity to the chorale texts, undoubtedly chosen in the first place to give the candidates ample license for contrast. Maybe this is the deficiency Reimann had pointed out to his pupil back in Berlin. That a professional organist drew attention to it in 1897 is particularly striking in retrospect, since Straube and Reger not a year later would forge a close personal collaboration giving rise to a series of virtuosic fantasies on Protestant chorales, works that turn precisely on a nuanced feel for text-music relationships. Two days later, on May 14, Straube was elected unanimously to the Wesel position, with a contract beginning on June 1 and a yearly wage of 2,400 marks, an amount corresponding exactly to the older and more experienced Reinbrecht’s salary upon the latter’s departure.10 Tellingly, the Presbytery granted its up-and-coming organist the additional yearly sum of 240 marks for the engagement of a bellows pumper outside the services, that is, for his practice.11 At fully a tenth of Straube’s salary, that generous line item perhaps reflected his employer’s awareness of the young man’s extensive practice requirements as he expressed them up front. Following on Reinbrecht’s remarks at the audition, the Wesel Presbytery probably set Straube thinking about how to harness the still-new Sauer organ to the benefit of the chorale texts. However, his duties encompassed a good deal more than organ playing, as spelled out in the congregation’s records: I. You must play the organ a. in all regular and exceptional services of the congregation within the city; b. at congregational celebrations and church concerts, which occur at the determination of the Presbytery;
9 Ibid., 71. 10 Ibid., 71–72; Plato, Aus dem Musikleben, 23. 11 Dreimüller, “Die Sauer-Orgel von 1895,” 31.
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54 ❧ chapter four c. at church weddings as needed. There is a fixed compensation of 10 marks per wedding, from which you must also pay the bellows pumper. II. You must attend to the tuning of the reed ranks. III. You have the musical leadership of the church choir and consult with the church choir council in matters of the choir; possibly you also will have a children’s choir to conduct. IV. The Presbytery president can grant a one-week vacation. You must obtain the authorization of the Presbytery for a longer period and arrange for a substitute.12
Back in Berlin, Straube quickly set his affairs in order and prepared to move across the country. There were farewells to family, to Knak and other friends, to Reimann and other mentors. A door had swung open quickly onto a new life elsewhere, with all its fresh possibilities and pressing responsibilities. He was twenty-four years old. Whether or not he had seen it coming in just this way, he was now a church musician of the first order, never having studied church music formally, having not so much as the Abitur in hand. Moreover, he was free from the bustling German axis mundi and its distractions. Despite ample opportunity, he would never return to live in Berlin. It must have been an ebullient Straube who now took up new quarters in Wesel, first in the Hohe Straße and later in the Ritterstraße, both addresses only a short walk from the Willibrordikirche that would serve as the center of his musical operations. He did not sit idle, entirely prepared to go above and beyond the conditions of his contract. He promptly announced that he would tune not only the organ’s reeds, but also the entire instrument himself.13 Already in July he proposed to the Presbytery a regular series of Tuesday recitals, obviously wishing to transplant the traditions he had learned from Dienel and Reimann. And prefiguring things to come in Leipzig, he immediately spread his influence over the musical life of the area as the resident generalist. He arranged and participated in civic chamber music concerts. He resurrected the passion for conducting he had set aside five years before and began to give concerts with the city’s military bands and orchestras. With the church choir he mounted programs sacred and secular, with orchestra and a cappella. He led the Wesel Liedertafel Concordia and gave music lessons at the local Gymnasium.14 Much later he would recall having been commissioned to set chorales for wind band for the funerals of 12 Cited in Funk-Hennings, “Karl Straubes Berufung,” 72. 13 Ibid., 73. 14 Plato, Aus dem Musikleben, 30.
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the garrison’s military officers.15 Above all, he practiced like a man possessed. Remembering these years in 1946, Straube listed his activities in a Lebenslauf that hinted at the unleashing of the enormous energy of a youthful musician who finally had seized his freedom: of organ music, he had performed “the entire literature for this instrument from Samuel Scheidt through Max Reger”; of chamber music, programs of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Draesecke, Saint-Saëns, Franck, Busoni, and Reger; of the symphonic repertory, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Strauss; on the choral front, “worthwhile sacred choral music a cappella from the works of masters of Protestant church music.”16 This ticking off of repertory made clear his interest in the whole breadth of music, and, for the officials of the new Soviet government to whom the document was directed in 1946, that was probably the point. The “entire literature” for the organ is hyperbole, nevertheless bespeaking a high-minded zealot on an even higher-minded mission. The nature of that mission came into ever clearer focus upon Straube’s reading of Heinrich von Treitschke’s five-volume Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert in his first year at Wesel, a project likely prompted by the historian’s death in spring 1896.17 Treitschke—avid nationalist, social Darwinist, aggressive anti-Semite—had lived in Berlin since the 1860s, where he pursued a political career that followed Bismarck’s turn to conservative protectionism. His vast study was left unfinished at his death, leaving off at the March Revolution of 1848. Later in life, Straube would develop a consequential friendship with Treitschke’s pupil, the nationalist historian Johannes Haller, whose work he regarded in continuity with the older scholar.18 Always polemical, Treitschke wrote from the perspective of German expansionism and racial superiority. The newly united nation, he pointed out, had not had time to develop a correspondingly united consciousness with respect to a common political history. But the true German spirit had long manifested itself in spheres other than politics. “That unanimous feeling of happy gratitude older nations show to their political heroes,” he maintained, “we Germans harbor only for the great names of our art and science.”19 Hence 15 Max Martin Stein, “Erinnerungen,” 36. 16 BAL Nachlass Straube, 81. 17 Plato, Aus dem Musikleben, 26. 18 Letter to Johannes Haller, July 30, 1942, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 347. 19 Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte Erster Teil, vii.
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Treitschke underscored the intellectual and artistic achievements of the Germanic peoples as a witness to the common German spirit finally coalescing around Bismarck. Perched on the leading edge of his career, the young Straube would have read with engagement not only Treitschke’s analysis of the European political situation out of which a Prussian-led Germany had emerged victorious, but also the assessment of music’s essential position in the collective cultural consciousness. “It has always stood closest to the German genius,” Treitschke proclaimed of Straube’s art. “Music unified, to a degree greater than literature, everything of German blood to a common joy.”20 There is a good deal more musical populism in this view than inevitably would be accepted by the mature Straube, but the Wesel organist would have found Treitschke’s claims concerning the national character of German music compelling and consonant with his mentor Reimann’s position.21 The notion of a musical inheritance around which the nation could identify both itself and its cultural mission would soon become a guiding principle for him. Inevitably, Straube’s insatiable curiosity about modern music led to personal relations with contemporary composers and sympathy for their causes. This orientation was at least encouraged in his initial face-to-face conversations with Max Reger in 1898. But he also began to communicate with Busoni and Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari during his Wesel years, as he did with the aged Rheinberger. His interest in and performance of the choral music of Arnold Mendelssohn, son to a second cousin of Felix Mendelssohn, would soon lead to a vibrant friendship. While in Wesel he encouraged Busoni and Wolf-Ferrari to write for the organ (without result) and took up the music of both composers. Busoni, seven years Straube’s senior, had settled in Berlin in 1894, and the two probably met before the organist’s move west. Straube undoubtedly made the acquaintance of Wolf-Ferrari, three years his junior, in Munich, where the young composer was living and where Straube appeared in a series of highly visible organ recitals in 1899. Reimann had pursued a laser-sharp if highly patriotic music criticism in the Berlin press during Straube’s years of study with him, and now the pupil began to exercise similar muscles on the music of his contemporaries. With freedom from home and a professional raison d’être came the critical self-assurance that would play into Straube’s personality from now on. In a lively exchange from late 1901 and 1902, Wolf-Ferrari praised him revealingly, “I cannot tell you how 20 Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte Zweiter Teil, 53. 21 Ibid., 54–55.
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good it is that you have not suffocated the possibility of believing in yourself, that even living (that is, not yet dead or crazy) people—musically—can have an opinion.”22 Indeed, Straube would dispense countless influential opinions about modern composition in conversation with composers, especially contemporary or younger ones. The case of Reger offers but the most obvious and hence most discussed example. Straube had matured in an environment informed by the zeal of Christian mission. Now coming into his own, he too stepped into the role of missionary—performing, advising, and networking on behalf of those composers whose works he felt merited attention, perhaps to compensate vicariously for his own retreat from composition. That he did not escape the self-conscious nationalism of Reimann and Treitschke, even while casting his net widely, is evident from an exchange with Busoni late in 1902. In October that year, Straube had approached the composer concerning the works of Wolf-Ferrari, “one of your nearer countrymen, who moreover is similar to you in that he is the son of a German father and an Italian mother.” He had followed the cantata La vita nuova, op. 9, through its manuscript stages. “A great, healthy, and strong talent,” in Straube’s estimation, though “one should not forget that he remains thoroughly Italian in all his creations!” And he could not resist appending his own concert plans: “In April I’m coming to Berlin to give three solo recitals: evening 1: Bach, evening 2: Buxtehude and W. H. Dayas, evening 3: Max Reger!”23 The perceptive Busoni wasted no time in exposing the subtext he sensed in these remarks. “The most compelling thing about your characterization of Wolf-Ferrari is that he remains ‘Italian,’ despite that you add this on as a sort of misgiving,” he ventured. “We have all become too one-sidedly German (I am on the way to liberation), and therein lies the danger that the newest art will not conquer the world. Humanity knows no national limitations, and a purely national feeling naturally contains a latent hostility toward the other races.” It was a mistake to assume that Germany had cornered the market of aesthetic legitimacy. “And so,” Busoni concluded, “it would be worrisome if W.-F. were only Italian.” Even in Straube’s announcement of his recitals Busoni suspected misplaced bias. “You put . . . an exclamation point after ‘Max Reger’ (not so with Bach and Buxtehude)—how is this to be understood? Generally, how is all of this to be understood? Have I
22 Letter, January 29, 1902, in “Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari,” 339. Emphasis original. 23 Letter, October 21, 1902, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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already wandered too far southward on my path to re-Italianization?”24 It would be good to know how Straube responded to this prescient warning about assigning too much significance to national characteristics in art à la Treitschke, coming from a colleague of mixed blood like himself. By this time, the Tuscan-born Busoni had already lived in Austria, Germany, Russia, Finland, and the United States, and he had married a Swede. Straube could not and would never claim such extravagant internationalism, and it is therefore not surprising that he encountered in Busoni less outright sympathy for his aesthetic orientation than a line of reasoning calculated to question it. Besides, if he wanted to strike a narrower, more patriotically motivated path in the name of the German nation’s artistic future, he had already found his man several years earlier.
24 Letter, October 24, 1902, in “Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari,” 492. Emphases original.
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Chapter Five
Reger The splendidly decorated rooms of Frankfurt’s Café Bauer served as a favorite meeting place for the city’s residents and visitors alike. Centrally located around the corner from the stock market, the Bauer occupied the first two floors of a monumental structure completed in 1885 on the site of the old Bavaria brewery. The building exuded the expansionist spirit of optimism and progress typical of the Reich and the pulsing financial center of Frankfurt. Besides its dining and drinking spaces, it offered a capacious reading room as well as dedicated rooms for billiards and cards. If ever a modern Reger enthusiast would wish to have been a fly on the wall somewhere during the years of the composer’s development, it would have been here, late on Tuesday evening, March 29, 1898, when Karl Straube and Max Reger enjoyed a long anticipated first meeting into the early hours of the following morning. The rendezvous was surely prearranged in correspondence now lost and lubricated by generous portions of Pilsner. In one of his first outward engagements during his Wesel tenure, Straube had come to Frankfurt to perform a series of three recitals in the nearby Paulskirche on March 29, April 1, and April 5. The church itself was a national symbol, having been selected as the site of the first assembly to elect a German parliament in the wake of the March Revolution of 1848. The organ, built by a young E. F. Walcker for the new edifice between 1829 and 1833, claimed a no less significant position in the history of German organ building. Erected directly above the chancel in an oval sanctuary, it offered a progressive disposition which emphasized gravity and fundamental tone in three manual and two pedal divisions, the latter played from two pedalboards and featuring a pair of open 32′ flue stops. The success achieved by this instrument, a consequential early step in the direction of nineteenth-century tonal concepts, launched its builder’s career. Now the organ would play a key role in the advancement of Straube’s own. The connections that brought him to Frankfurt are not known, but a highly
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publicized series of solo recitals in a historic venue was clearly no businessas-usual affair. Reger, who journeyed the short distance from Wiesbaden, found himself at just this time in full physical and psychological crisis.1 He had continued to eke out the most meager of livings in Wiesbaden after Riemann had left for a new position in Leipzig in autumn 1895. He had produced next to nothing since then, he enjoyed very few advocates for his music, and rejections from publisher after publisher had embittered him. Those close to him described a plunge into alcoholism, chain smoking, irrational behavior, and unpredictable outbursts of rage at a world that did not understand him. Mounting debts added to the dire situation, as did a painful, untreated infection on his neck that worsened by the day. His fragile condition was surely not helped by the fact that his family mistook his failures as evidence of laziness, to which they responded with the moralizing tone of conservative Catholicism. But in this state—insolvent, disheveled, resentful, nicotine-soaked, and probably with an alarming blood-alcohol content—he set course for Frankfurt to hear and meet a rare up-and-coming musician who was interested in his music. Straube’s recital that Tuesday amounted to a remarkable international walk through the organ repertory up to J. S. Bach: Frescobaldi, Scheidt, Schmidt, Byrd, Dandrieu, Buxtehude, Muffat, Pachelbel, culminating in the Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor BWV 542. After this marathon, the two men repaired to the Café Bauer, where one can only imagine the topics of their conversation. Ultimately it matters little. What is clear is that Straube would have noticed immediately that he was not dealing here with a healthy, balanced person, if he was not already aware from correspondence that Reger was perched on the precipice of a serious breakdown. The encounter with the struggling composer made a lasting impression: still in 1946 he recalled the evening vividly.2 The two had a number of important things in common. Both had matured in unhappy home environments colored by conservative religion, neither had completed a formal education, both were ardent nationalists intent on advancing the mission of great German music, both had Herculean work ethics, both were night owls, and both had wandered through valleys of self-doubt. Their differences would likewise have been on display. Reger’s natural proclivity to ribald humor and self-conscious unsophistication, magnified by his desperate circumstances, would have confronted Straube’s considered and well-spoken manner in a way that might 1 Popp, Max Reger, 108–15. 2 See epigraph to Part II, p. 47.
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have given the latter pause. The organist certainly had the advantage. He commanded a respectable income, a fine instrument that corresponded to his artistic aims, and evidently an appreciative congregation willing to allow him the freedom to concertize widely. His star was ascending. Whatever the differences in their sensibilities and situations, the force of their common aspirations outweighed them. According to one early Reger biographer, an “animated” Straube told him that the conversation abandoned the German formal second-person pronoun Sie for Du after only half an hour.3 Three days later, on Friday, April 1, Straube followed with a second recital in the Paulskirche, continuing the trek through music history he had initiated on Tuesday, now in an exclusively Germanic direction. The program began with Bach’s monumental Passacaglia BWV 582, continuing with the Concerto in D Minor after Vivaldi BWV 596, the Fantasy, op. 6, of Moritz Brosig, the virtuosic “Weinen, Klagen” Variations of Liszt, an Adagio in A Minor of Albert Becker, closing with the Adagio, Introduction, and Passacaglia from Reger’s Suite, op. 16. The meticulous rhetoric of this symmetrical programming—three big pieces on ground basses at beginning, middle, and end, the latter two composed in explicit homage to Bach— positioned the young Reger as the next figure in the canonic Bach-to-Liszt lineage that Straube had learned from Reimann. Undoubtedly there were further conversations at the Bauer. But by the time Straube performed his final recital the following Tuesday, Reger had left town, unable to sustain his stay any longer owing to his compromised health and finances. The Frankfurt encounter had been exhilarating for both men. Straube believed in Reger and committed himself to the composer’s rehabilitation. Beyond any personal sympathies, if Reger could write the kind of substantive music Straube thought he could, his own career as a concert organist would surely benefit. In an industrial age bent on the notion of musical progress, he needed the next step after Liszt, and he believed he had found it. For Reger, the heady days in Frankfurt had amounted to a ray of light in the abyss, a brief calm before the devastating storm that followed. In the gravitas of Walcker’s magnificent Paulskirche organ under Straube’s hands, and in the smoky rooms of the Café Bauer, he had found the conviction that he was advancing in the right direction. If he left Straube in Frankfurt with the intention of returning home to compose big organ pieces, this was not immediately evident. Reger was busy with other things. One would like to believe a report from the young man’s 3 Bagier, Max Reger, 47.
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landlady, written to his mother in the days immediately following his return to Wiesbaden, that he was drinking less and his condition was improving. Before coming to Frankfurt, he had attempted an application to a civic Kapellmeister post in Heidelberg. Now there was a similar attempt directed at Bonn. Working under the impression of his encounter with Straube, he completed the Two Spiritual Songs, op. 19, for organ and mezzo-soprano or baritone, on April 29, followed by some piano pieces in early May.4 But from a series of urgent letters dispatched by Reger’s parents in May and June, it is more than clear that his condition quickly deteriorated at every level—mental, physical, and financial. By the end of May, Reger’s landlady had threatened to summon the police to set him out on the street in response to threats against her person. On June 8 Reger’s sister Emma journeyed to Wiesbaden and eleven days later succeeded in getting her brother on a train to Weiden.5 It is uncertain when and to what extent Straube was aware of these events at the time. Reger’s well-being would surely have been a matter of immediate concern for him after Frankfurt. Many years later, in the 1940s, the composer’s sister, who stood in the middle of the entire unsavory episode, would write Straube on his seventieth birthday of “an endless debt” owed “to your self-sacrificing advocacy for Max’s organ music, particularly in the first years of Max’s artistic career. Who [else] at the time would have ventured into the difficult organ music of the unknown ‘Reger’!”6 Of course, at the very nadir of Reger’s crisis in 1898 there were as yet no substantial organ works beyond op. 16. They were to come, and soon. But Emma was justified in her appeal to the notion of Straube’s self-sacrifice. When he took the first step to write the young composer late in 1896, Straube had found him in crisis, out of commission in a military hospital. At their personal acquaintance in 1898, Reger again was locked in a battle with his personal demons, this one more desperate than before. In 1896 Straube had responded with the dispatch of care packages. In 1898 he responded with his programming, face-to-face encouragement, and possibly more. Considering Reger’s bleak financial circumstances, the organist might well have contributed to his friend’s expenses in Frankfurt. Whatever the case, Straube eventually came to equate Reger’s image with the notion of crisis itself. In 1927 he would recall “that there was always chaos and disarray, first with his peers in Wiesbaden, then in his parents’ house, then in his marriage, then with some 4 5 6
Ibid., 48. Popp, ed., Der junge Reger, 300–327. Letter, January 4, 1943, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube.
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of his colleagues.” He had been unable to overcome this unenviable quality. “A ‘muddle’ [‘Kuddelmuddel’], to speak with Arthur Nikisch, is part of who he was and results perhaps from the small-minded personal conditions out of which he had to grow. . . . He proved himself prone to regard small things as large. He lost sight of the big picture and suddenly fell into chaos that could be resolved only by force.”7 This candid standpoint, heavily colored over time, became a corollary to Straube’s view of Reger’s artistic project as standing essentially outside history: the composer experienced such conflicts with material things because his musical thinking concerned itself so exclusively with spiritual matters. Straube thus came to insist on a strict division between Reger’s music and his life, two autonomous regions that had essentially nothing to do with one another. This surely played a part in his eventual destruction of Reger’s early correspondence. “All these questions actually concern only us, who are his friends and were close to him,” he continued in 1927. “Posterity has to do only with the great creative artist, and only his work has meaning, worth, and essence.”8 The consequential circumstances in the early years of the collaboration encouraged gratitude and trust, particularly on the composer’s part. Straube would act on that trust to steer his friend’s music even in its earliest compositional stages. His initiative would not always find a sympathetic audience, and it would complicate significantly the relationship in the years to come, to say nothing of the eventually tense relations between Reger’s widow and Straube’s influential circle. In the end, Emma Reger seems to have gotten it just about right from her vantage point in the 1940s. Who else would have believed in the music of this difficult, upstart composer? There were not many, the violinist Waldemar Meyer having proved himself a notable exception. But it was no violinist, pianist, or singer who would emerge ultimately as the high priest of the Reger congregation. However unlikely, that role was going to an organist, and it would be with organ music that Reger achieved a breakthrough into the highest echelons of contemporary musical culture. Reger’s muse has long been framed in geophysical terms, both positively and negatively, a way of speaking that has tried to capture the expressive immediacy and monumentality of the music. It is fair to ask whether he really used the evocative verb hervorbrechen (to break forth or erupt) or a similar expression in his conversation with Straube in 1898—“No one 7 8
Letter to Fritz Stein, July 21, 1927, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 72–73. Ibid., 72.
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knows what might erupt [hervorbrechen] from such a talent”—or whether Straube found that word in 1946 to illustrate what actually happened once a defeated Reger returned to his parents’ modest home in Weiden. The concentrated energy summoned by the composer beginning in summer 1898 in fact has been compared repeatedly to the eruption of a volatile force. After the August appearance of the Fantasy on the Chorale “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott,” op. 27, a host of organ works quickly followed, large and small, relatively easy and wickedly difficult, for concert and liturgical use, housed under no fewer than fifteen opus numbers. All of it issued from Reger’s tireless pen during the years before Straube departed Wesel for Leipzig. And it was not as if the composer directed his undivided attention to organ music. On the contrary, generous harvests of Lieder, piano works, choruses, and chamber music also populated an ever-burgeoning catalog. In Weiden and then in Munich, where Reger moved with his family in autumn 1901, he overcame his personal and professional crises, engaged publishers and performers, and launched himself as a composer who had something important to say about the future of German music. From this chain of events has often followed the assumption that Straube initiated Reger’s intensive engagement with the organ in autumn 1898. This is probably true for the most part, but anyone who wants to demonstrate it will cast about in vain for direct evidence. What was surely an animated correspondence between the two in the critical period before and after Frankfurt was destroyed. It would be misguided to imagine that performer and composer from the beginning did not exchange ideas about the organ and the status of its repertory in modern concert life. Still, these men’s interests were markedly more catholic than the confines of organ music, and certainly church music, would accommodate. Straube conducted Brahms and Strauss in Wesel while serving as a chamber pianist, all alongside his activities as organist. When he encouraged Reger to compose, whether in correspondence or over beer in Frankfurt, that encouragement by no means would have come exclusively from the specialized perspective of the organ. The composer’s works catalog bears this out. Back in Wesel, Straube threw himself into the lava flows of new music that began to come his way from Reger’s desk. Until the composition of the Symphonic Fantasy and Fugue, op. 57, in 1901, the composer prepared a discrete autograph manuscript of every major work for Straube’s critique and performance, from which arose a fair copy that served the published version. This belies the dynamic relationship that now unfolded between the two, a situation of implied mutual respect and trust arising from a common
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purpose. Clearly, Straube experienced his own eruption of unbounded energy. In autumn 1898 alone, he learned and mounted the premieres of the two Chorale Fantasies, opp. 27 and 30, and the Fantasy and Fugue in C Minor, op. 29, the former two dedicated “to his dear friend Karl Straube,” the last “with greatest admiration to Richard Strauss,” who in the meantime had opened doors for Reger to the publishers Aibl and Forberg. The introduction of op. 27 in the vast Gothic space of St. Willibrord on September 20 at one of Straube’s Tuesday recitals was so well received that he repeated it in a second concert one week later. Both performances bore witness to a deliberate, perceptive approach to programming. Each began with Bach (BWV 542 and one of the Preludes and Fugues in C Major, respectively), continued to a Rheinberger sonata (op. 175 and op. 168 respectively) and a non-German work (pieces by Ravanello and Saint-Saëns respectively), closing with Reger’s sensational “Ein’ feste Burg.” At the end of his life Straube would reminisce that only he, Reger, and the Lutheran pastor Johannes Schober from nearby Hamminkeln had believed in the potency of Reger’s work.9 That view certainly resonated with the text of Luther’s iconic chorale, portraying the struggle of the Christian against injustice, steeled by an unflinching faith. The anonymous reviews of the two recitals, perhaps by Schober, moved quickly through the other repertory to lavish praise on op. 27, which extracted from Luther’s text “revelations that only a divinely graced, powerful genius can give us,” that furthermore was “a work that places the means of art at the service of ideas.”10 Concerning the performer, the first writer fell back on a review from one of Straube’s Frankfurt recitals. “He proved anew [that] ‘he is the greatest living master of the instrument, at least with respect to technique. . . . He does not register, as is the term among organists, but rather uses the sound colors of the modern organ. That is, he does not draw but rather paints. He offers a rich painting lustrous in colorful splendor.’”11 Straube’s artist brother William would have been delighted with that assessment. The excitement generated by the first program must have spilled over into the town and possibly further, since the second program was unusually
9 Letter to Walter Kunze, September 22, 1948, ibid., 238. 10 Reviews of Straube at St. Willibrord on September 20, 1898, Generalanzeiger für Wesel 219/2, September 24, 1898; and on September 27, 1898, Weseler Zeitung 228, September 29, 1898, cited in Popp, ed., Der junge Reger, 342– 43, 344–46. 11 Popp, ed., Der junge Reger, 342–43.
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well attended, as its reviewer reported.12 Reger recorded Straube’s own opinion of op. 27 as “a colossal work, the most ingenious setting of this chorale ever to appear.” He pressed on to claim that “it is the best thing I’ve yet written. Straube played it last Tuesday in a concert two times (as the first—and then the last number).”13 It is possible that Reger confused the fact that Straube programmed op. 27 on two successive Tuesday recitals in Wesel rather than twice at a single sitting. Either way, this sort of didactic approach, which reflects the zeal of a crusader offering listeners maximum opportunity to absorb a dense work in a challenging modern idiom, was by no means beyond him. In 1905 Straube would introduce Reger’s transcendentally demanding Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme, op. 73, to a Leipzig audience by playing the whole work two times through, exactly in the manner Reger had described: as the first and last item, sandwiching smaller but by no means insubstantial pieces between. Straube indeed prized Reger’s op. 27 highly—in part for its musical construction, in part for the ur-Protestant/nationalist ideals it represented, and in part because it was the first piece of what would become a long and remarkable collaboration. He would return to it repeatedly in his recitals and publish an edition of the work in 1938. If Straube was exhausted by the rousing events of 1898, he did not show it in 1899, which began with a much-anticipated series of five recitals on the new Walcker organ of the Munich Kaimsaal between February 27 and March 20. Preparations must have occupied him intensively over the busy Christmas and Epiphany seasons. The project amounted to an ambitious advance on the Frankfurt series of the previous year, with enormous programs designed to lead audiences through music from Frescobaldi and Lebègue to Reger and Widor. As in Frankfurt, he presented himself as the comprehensive organist, master of the entire repertory and, significantly, not too one-sidedly Germanic. The final program on March 20 centered exclusively on the “French school” of Widor (Symphonie gothique, op. 70), Saint-Saëns (three big pieces), Guilmant (including excerpts from the Sonata, op. 80, he had studied with Reimann), and Franck (Final, op. 21). On the Teutonic side, he served up generous portions of Rheinberger (including the Sonatas opp. 154 and 188), Reimann’s “Morgenstern,” op. 25, and Reubke’s Sonata on the 94th Psalm. Alongside there appeared no fewer than three pieces of 12 Ibid., 344–45. 13 Letter of uncertain date (late September 1898?) to Cäsar Hochstetter, ibid., 347. Emphases original.
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Figure 5.1. Straube during his Wesel years. Reproduced with permission from the Max-Reger-Institut Karlsruhe.
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Frescobaldi, four each of Buxtehude and Liszt, and six of Bach, all of them major works. A Munich critic noted that the performance of Liszt’s BACH had to be repeated by wish of the audience.14 Reger was represented with a single work: the Strauss-dedicated op. 29. The result was mixed but largely positive. Heinrich Porges rhapsodized over Straube’s amalgam of brilliant virtuosity and interpretive sensitivity. “Difficulties appear not to exist for him. He performs the most intricate passages in a speed that one would not have thought possible on the organ.” And beyond mere execution there was “the grand line that pervades his performance,” abetted by an almost magical approach to registration that “render[s] the rigidity of organ tone almost impalpable.” Still further, “the essential feature of Straube’s music-making is a youthful liveliness of expression,” and even if “his overly strong temperament carries him away somewhat too far at times,” the musical result was so satisfying that it left little to complain about.15 This and other reviews from these years thus bear witness to an extraordinary advance on the organist who had appeared in the Berlin Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche in 1893. Evidently, Straube had taken seriously Seiffert’s criticism from that year about the lack of musical unity caused by an exaggerated use of the Rollschweller. Only six years later he had mastered this, even if Porges agreed with Seiffert’s view that the young man could at times devolve into fits of unchecked emotion—a musical disposition that resonated with Reger’s new explosive style. The musicologist Theodor Kroyer was less generous, citing “a lack of historical understanding” in the first evening’s program, and declaring that the third recital, which had included Reimann and Reger alongside Liszt, Rheinberger, and others, was “superfluous” and “should have been dedicated entirely to Liszt.”16 The fruit of these supererogatory exertions in Munich would not be measured only by the spread of Straube’s name in the press of another major city. He made strategic personal connections as well, none of them more respectable than with Joseph Rheinberger, a constant presence at the Munich Conservatory since 1859, and at the time of Straube’s recitals at work on his Sonata in G Minor, op. 193, to be dedicated to Reimann. Rheinberger 14 Karl Pottgiesser, Review of Straube at the Munich Kaimsaal, February–March 1899, Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung 26/14 (April 7, 1899): 219. 15 Review of Straube at the Munich Kaimsaal, March 8, 1899, Münchner Neueste Nachrichten 52/115, March 10, 1899, cited in Popp, ed., Der junge Reger, 397. 16 Review of Straube at the Munich Kaimsaal, February–March 1899, Allgemeine Zeitung München 81, March 22, 1899, ibid.
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probably attended at least the programs featuring his music on March 8 and 13, and apparently he presented the performer with a gift as a sign of his appreciation. Straube departed Munich for Wesel immediately after his final appearance on the 20th, and once home, he wasted no time in composing a flattering letter to the elder composer in which he brought the full weight of his crafted wordsmithing to bear. “For a long time I have admired and revered you as the sole German master of the organ,” he enthused, “whose works will extend into future centuries as a sign of German art and German work from an era that unfortunately must be designated as a time of decay in this area. For me, [your] gift is to be a stimulus to use my little talent to good account, in order to help our royal instrument to achieve the status due its majesty!”17 It is unknown how Rheinberger responded to this effusive credo, conceived in the overwrought style then common. In it emerged an early instance of a key Leitmotiv that would return frequently in the years of Straube’s maturity, namely the biblical responsibility of putting modest talent to wise use, in Straube’s case directed toward the great mission of German art as outlined by Treitschke and others, the comprehensive raison d’être of his career. In the apt words of one of Straube’s Wesel critics, he would now “place the means of art at the service of ideas.” Accompanied by his sister Emma, Reger had made the journey to Munich to hear his op. 29 included in Straube’s series, having just completed the organ Sonata in F-sharp Minor, op. 33. That new work stood clearly under the influence of Reimann’s aesthetics, and Straube himself had involved himself extensively in the compositional process.18 On June 14 he premiered op. 33 on the new Sauer organ of the Kreuzeskirche in Essen, just southeast of Wesel, on the occasion of an organists’ conference for the Rhine-Westphalia region. As in op. 16, the work closes with a virtuosic Passacaglia, this one with twenty variations, the penultimate one relaxing back into an idyllic pppp before bursting forth for the final chorale-like iteration at fff. At some point after the sonata’s publication with Aibl, Reger took the unusual step of adding five variations to be inserted between the final two (“composed extra for Herr Karl Straube,” as reads the manuscript), the purpose of which was to facilitate a gradual crescendo bridging the startling dynamic gap in the original. Straube shared the recital in Essen with other area organists, drawing a
17 Letter of March 23, 1899, BStBM, Teilnachlass Karl Straube, Rheinbergeriana II. Emphasis original. 18 Lindner, Max Reger, 155–59.
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review that singled out op. 33’s “labored” modulations and “restless” chromaticism, nonetheless mastered in an exemplary way by the performer.19 He took op. 33 home and promptly programmed it in his Tuesday recital series, which persisted relentlessly with big eclectic programs virtually every week. By now it was absolutely clear to Reger that he had secured a virtuoso for his organ works in the north Rhine city of Wesel—and not only a performer, but also a critical conversation partner in matters of composition. Advocacy was by no means a one-way street, either. In these early years Straube’s name appeared frequently in the composer’s letters and in printed discussions of his music, a fact which surely did much to spread the organist’s reputation. In August 1899 Reger appealed to his erstwhile mentor Riemann to create an entry for Straube in the new fifth edition of his Musik-Lexicon.20 Appearing in 1900, that entry constituted the first printed biography of Karl Straube, reflecting those features he found particularly important at this early stage in his career: “pupil of Heinrich Reimann (organ), Ph. Rüfer, and Alb. Becker, concertizes since 1894 with great success as an impressive organ virtuoso with historic programming. . . . Alongside old masters (Frescobaldi) Straube gives the first performances of Max Reger’s significant organ compositions, among others.”21 Assuming that Straube himself had a say in the content, he clearly wished to convey the distinctive breadth of his musical interests—strikingly delineated by a seventeenth-century Italian composer with no mention of Bach—and his particular advocacy for Reger. This was the Wesel organist’s brand at the turn of the century. After having rendezvoused with Straube again in Munich that March, Reger had now turned to the chorale Reimann had used for his own Fantasy, op. 25, completing his op. 40, no. 1, on Nicolai’s “Morgenstern” by early October. In 1944 Straube would remember the intimate collaboration that by this time had blossomed between Wesel and Weiden. He revealed that Reger originally had composed a “third strophe” (actually second) that outfitted the chorale tune in the pedal with “an extremely insignificant succession of harmonies in three parts.” But once the autograph reached Wesel, “I wrote him my opinion and at the same time proposed that he add a melismatic variation. He acted on this suggestion in such a masterful way that no one would recognize this passage as a compositional afterthought. . . . Reger 19 Review of Straube at the Kreuzeskirche Essen, June 14, 1899, Urania 57 (1900), 49–50. 20 Popp, ed., Der junge Reger, 421. 21 Riemann, Musik-Lexicon, 1097.
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had already used this form of variation in op. 30, ‘Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele,’ so that my role in the ‘Morgenstern’ is sincerely insignificant.”22 The sources largely bear out this recollection. It hardly counted as an “insignificant” contribution on his part, but that attitude does harmonize with his conviction, expressed to Stein in 1927, that “posterity has to do only with the great creative artist.” What went on behind the scenes was no one else’s business. The premiere of Reger’s “Morgenstern” came on October 24 in Wesel, programmed alongside Bach’s Fantasy and Fugue in C Minor BWV 537, Rheinberger’s Sonata in A-flat Major, op. 65, and character pieces by the Hamburg composer Theodor Kirchner. Two weeks later, on November 7, came the premiere of Rheinberger’s latest organ work, the Sonata in G Minor, op. 193, with its historicizing second movement based on a lai by Machaut. Straube preceded it with his signature BWV 542, likewise in G minor, and Samuel de Lange’s solo arrangement of a Handel organ concerto. All this was followed by a revival of Reger’s op. 27. One week later, on November 14, a package from Rheinberger’s Munich address appeared on Straube’s doorstep, an inscribed copy of the elder composer’s op. 193. In the meantime, Reger had begun entertaining the thought of an academic post, confiding to A. W. Gottschalg that the Munich Academy would be out of the question because “everything in Munich goes through the hands of Herr Rheinberger, and I do not believe that he is sympathetic to me.”23 Reger would have expressed similar sentiments in correspondence with Straube. In this conjuncture Straube saw an opening to pursue his missionary work, and he responded immediately to Rheinberger, resuming his correspondence from earlier that year and now unfolding his musical views. “The gracious words of the creator of this sonata . . . are for me a sign that, in the limited perimeter of my ability, I do not work in vain, but rather possess at least the goodwill of the greatest of our living masters,” he wrote, pressing on to report the reception of op. 193 in Wesel, and to venture an evaluation. “It is not to be counted among those Sonatas, for example nos. 8, 9, 12, and 13, that reach a heroic height or a subjective depth of expression. Rather, it extends a hand to its sister Sonata in A Major [no. 18, op. 188], to an enchanting idyll which admittedly strikes an austere, heavy tone in its first movement.” He had gone as far as to enclose recent program sheets that demonstrated his 22 Letter to Hans Klotz, June 28, 1944, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 13–14. 23 Letter, November 1, 1899, in Popp, ed., Der junge Reger, 456–57. Emphases original.
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fealty to Rheinberger’s sonatas. “The one that stands highest in my estimation is that in F Minor op. 127 [no. 7], a masterpiece in every movement. The mood of Sonata No. 14 [in C Major, op. 165], in its luminous splendor, is more foreign to me. Personally, I prefer the former work’s indefinable half-light.” Having thus prepared the ground, he moved on to assume the role of publicity agent for Reger, whose chorale fantasies he praised. The up-and-coming composer was “a Catholic in name” and “always intuitive in the development of this ecclesial-Protestant form,” inherited from old masters like Scheidt. “His compositional technique points to Bach as the fountainhead of all organ art. I concede that his works are immensely difficult, technically as well as intellectually, but absolutely achievable through deep study. Likewise, I concede the many overwrought passages [Überladungen] and great pathos as deficiencies,” he now confessed to the conservative Rheinberger. To the latter at least, Straube was willing to write off the weak or unattractive points as “hyperbole” in which was to be found “that passionate fervor, that exuberance of youthful feeling that I always find so arresting in the young Bach and in the aged Romantic Dietrich [sic] Buxtehude. If it would pique your interest to get to know his works in this area, I would be delighted to present them to you.”24 This remarkable missive manages to distill the foundations of Straube’s musical worldview around the turn of the century: “the limited perimeter of my ability,” disingenuous but resonating with his insistent invocation of the Parable of the Talents; a fondness for the “half-light” of F minor over the “luminous splendor” of C major, shared with Reger’s aesthetic; a liking for romantic-poetic imagery when speaking of musical affect, an approach that would resurface particularly in the 1913 Bach edition; an insistence upon Bach as “the fountainhead” of organ music, furthering the Reimann doctrine; a certain emphasis placed on ethnic differences like religion, which troubled “humanitarian” musicians like Busoni; and misgivings about the more extreme tendencies of Reger’s musical language, all the while affirming the composer’s historical significance and Buxtehude-like “passionate fervor.” The last point is particularly noteworthy, since the letter to Rheinberger constitutes Straube’s earliest-known evaluation of Reger, formulated only about a year and a half after his first face-to-face meeting. In years to come he would repeatedly express discomfort with Überladungen and excess in this music, whether with respect to form, texture, tempo, or other parameters, 24 Letter, November 14, 1899, BStBM, Teilnachlass Karl Straube, Rheinbergeriana II.
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both publicly and privately. That discomfort worked itself out not only in his distinctive interpretation of the organ works, designed to temper what he saw as its occasionally unjustified hard edges, but also by direct intervention in the compositional process. Rheinberger knew Reger’s name before this point, of course. Straube had performed the younger composer’s op. 29 together with Rheinberger’s op. 154 in his Munich series earlier that year, probably with Rheinberger in attendance. Further, Reger himself had submitted some of his early work to Rheinberger in 1889 for his evaluation, exploring the possibility of studying with him instead of Riemann. Rheinberger’s reply to Straube’s November epistle is not known, but the latter probably gave Reger the green light to write to Munich himself. On January 7, 1900, Reger accordingly sent Rheinberger, at this point the author of nineteen organ sonatas, a copy of his own Sonata, op. 33, with the typically cynical request for “your kind perusal of this my newest crime against harmony and counterpoint etc. etc.” Reger expressed, more succinctly and with less poised rhetoric than had his Wesel colleague, “my sincere admiration for your grandiose organ sonatas and other organ works” and requested permission to dedicate a new piece to the Munich master.25 The result was the monumental Fantasy and Fugue on BACH, op. 46, the pendant to Liszt’s work on the same cipher, promptly given its first hearing at Wesel in summer 1900. It would become one of the staples of Straube’s repertory, according to Lindner a Gothic cathedral constructed by its composer as “an apotheosis worthy of the holy name.”26 In the meantime, Reger had birthed yet another chorale-based fantasy, this one on a seventeenth-century paraphrase of Psalm 6, “Straf ’ mich nicht in deinem Zorn,” paired with the “Morgenstern” under the umbrella op. 40. In a sign that the composer’s music was taking on a larger life, op. 40, no. 2, would be Reger’s first major organ work not premiered by Straube himself, rather by the virtuoso organist Otto Burkert in Brünn. Further, the composer dedicated “Straf ’ mich nicht” to Paul Gerhardt, the Zwickau organist who had been Straube’s competitor for the Wesel post. Yet Reger continued to regard his organ works within the framework of the unique relationship built with Straube. In the case of op. 40, no. 2, he supplied his friend with an autograph copy, this time with the tongue-in-cheek note at the end “Have a good time, dear Karl!” Other such glosses on Straube’s personal manuscripts would follow, none more clever than the one appended to his manuscript 25 Letter, January 7, 1900, cited in Busch, ed., Zur Interpretation, 79. 26 Lindner, Max Reger, 196.
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of the Fantasy on the [death] Chorale “Alle Menschen müssen sterben,” op. 52, no. 1, composed in autumn 1900: “Have a sincere good time, dear Carl! In case deaths should occur due to the hearing of this ‘crime,’ I will assume the burial costs.” Evident in these fun-loving memoranda is the dynamic of a technical-musical challenge repeatedly issued by a composer and conquered by a performer, a characteristic of the Reger-Straube relationship noted in the literature from the beginning.
Figure 5.2. Max Reger, Chorale Fantasy, op. 52, no. 1, Straube’s autograph p. 18, MRIK Mus. Ms. 010, fol. 10v. Reproduced with permission from the Max-RegerInstitut Karlsruhe.
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Chapter Six
“I’d like finally to get on with it!” Straube met the new century and his twenty-seventh birthday at full steam. His organ recitals continued unabated with music new and old. South in Weiden, Reger continued to hemorrhage music, including the minor explosion of three new Chorale Fantasies, op. 52. The autograph materials for nos. 2 and 3, based on the chorales “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” and “Halleluja! Gott zu loben, bleibe meine Seelenfreud!” respectively, hint at a move toward independence from Straube’s influence in the compositional process. In earlier instances, Reger had prepared his fair copies for the engraver only after his autographs for Straube, and this after the experience of the first performances. With “Wachet auf ” and “Halleluja,” though, the composer had already submitted his Reinschrift weeks before he dispatched Straube’s personal copies to Wesel on October 22. Futhermore, both the latter manuscripts are incomplete, the “Halleluja” fugue trailing off into a sketch and then drying up altogether seven bars from the end with the note “from here composed directly into the printer’s copy. This original manuscript is the property of Herr Karl Straube. Max Reger.” Op. 52, no. 3, thus presented him with a document insufficient to realize a complete performance. All three works would have to wait until mid- to late 1901 for their first airings, all by Straube. Admittedly, there were a great many competing claims on Straube’s time, outside the sheer number of practice hours required to negotiate the imposing solo programs to which he had accustomed himself by now. May 1900 brought Wesel’s annual Lower Rhine Festival, and Straube had managed to secure a big commission for Reger to compose incidental music to Johanna Baltz’s text “Castra vetera,” the name of an ancient Roman encampment nearby. Straube conducted the resulting work for chorus and orchestra at the Wesel Schützenhaus on May 6. It seems that the composer, who at the
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time had little experience in writing for orchestra, took on the project only as a personal favor to Straube, and that the subject matter did not engage him. Reger cited the piece to Gottschalg as a “hopeless work,” and it would remain his only foray into the genre of incidental music.1 More consequential matters were on Straube’s mind. Fueled by his favorable reception in Frankfurt and Munich and the spread of his name by Reger and others, he began now to stoke the fires of his ambition, casting his eye around to consider his next move. By mid-1900 he had been in his first post for three years, probably long enough to escape the impression that he had used Wesel as a steppingstone to a more prestigious position, as had his predecessor Reinbrecht. He took notice when an ailing Julius Otto Grimm announced his retirement as civic music director just to the northeast in Münster. Grimm had occupied the post for forty years and brought to it considerable prestige, not least through his close friendships with Clara Schumann, Brahms, and Joachim. Press announcements inviting applications were posted at the end of July, and by the mid-August deadline the committee had seventy-four candidates, Straube among them.2 That he would show interest in the job is striking in hindsight, since the duties did not involve organ playing, but rather orchestral and choral conducting and chamber music. Still, he must have convinced himself he had decent chances, in part because he had built a record as conductor and pianist at Wesel, and in part because he felt he could count on the backing of Hermann Siemon. Since 1890 among the most influential voices in Münster’s cultural life, associate of Grimm, vice-chair of the Musikverein, a respectable organist, and an admirer of both Straube and Reger, Siemon was an inside man, part of a support network Straube had fostered in Westphalia over the previous three years. Münster’s most immediate advantage, as Straube may have reasoned, was that he would be able to manage his solo career alongside civic duties, much as in Wesel, absent the week-to-week liturgical responsibilities. Or perhaps he considered the possibility of curtailing his organ playing career to pursue conducting more single-mindedly. His application to Münster in August apparently was buttressed by Reger’s imprimatur in the form of two letters to Siemon, the second of which
1 2
Letter, November 1, 1899, in Popp., ed., Der junge Reger, 456. “Jahresbericht des Musikvereins zu Münster über das Konzertjahr 1900–1901, erstattet von Schriftführer des Vereins,” in Jahresbericht des Westfälischen Provinzial-Vereins, 143.
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survives.3 On September 19, the committee issued invitations to three finalists: Straube, Arno Schütze from Recklinghausen, and Wilhelm Niessen, at the time conductor of a prominent Singakademie in Glogau, Lower Silesia. Straube was first in line, assigned to conduct a program on October 11 with the local pianist Johanna Uhlmann, the well-known Leipzig soprano Helene Staegemann, a chorus of 200 singers, and the orchestra of the Münster Musikverein, made up of members of the local military Kapelle and freelancers.4 The evening began with the Academic Festival Overture of Brahms, continuing through solos from Mozart’s Idomeneo, the Piano Concerto and two Lieder of Schumann, a Nocturne and Scherzo of Chopin, Mozart’s “Laudate Dominum” from the Vespers K. 339, concluding with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. Straube accompanied Staegemann in the Schumann Lieder.5 “To be sure, one notices that the conductor is thoroughly engaged and wants optimally to facilitate the task of each member of the orchestra by his gestures,” reported the critic, wanting to be generous. “But this effort sometimes has a confusing effect, namely where the chorus joins in. The latter . . . did not demonstrate the usual confidence.”6 Straube had returned to orchestral conducting in the late 1890s after having broken off his relatively cursory studies in 1892. The technique he brought to Münster thus grew largely out of practical experience with local groups in Wesel, and it is easy to imagine that he had developed an idiosyncratic style that lacked clarity, as the reviewer seems to say. In later years, and probably already in Wesel, Straube pursued a way of training instrumental and choral groups that appears to have depended less on response to in-the-moment gesture and more on rote learning of pitches and interpretation. That approach could achieve results with ensembles trained over long periods with a single conductor, but it would have proven less effective when meeting an unfamiliar group in a limited timeframe, in this case the two rehearsals granted by the search committee.7 By the time the committee met on the 29th to make a final decision, though, Straube had submitted a letter withdrawing his candidacy. Of the 3 4 5 6 7
Letter, September 5, 1900, cited in Blindow, “Regers und Straubes Beziehungen zu Münster,” 131. “Jahresbericht des Musikvereins zu Münster,” 145. Reproduction of the discrete programs of all three candidates, ibid., 144–45. Cited in Blindow, “Regers und Straubes Beziehungen zu Münster,” 132. “Jahresbericht des Musikvereins zu Münster,” 143.
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two remaining contenders, Niessen was tapped.8 It seems clear enough that Straube, who had invested significant time and energy in his bid for the position, would not have backpedaled so abruptly if the evening of October 11 had gone better. Undoubtedly, he either was informed of the situation by Siemon, read the press review for himself, or simply exercised his usual rigorous self-criticism. He had not been turned down before, and he would not begin now. More than a decade later in 1916, when he returned to Münster to play at the Erlöserkirche during the city’s Handel Festival, Straube claimed to a local organist that he had reversed course over dissatisfaction with the church’s new Furtwängler organ.9 This is unlikely. Even though he would have needed access to a good instrument to maintain his concert career, it is doubtful that he would on that account abandon the position to which he had applied, which in any case did not involve organ duties. During the 1920s, self-conscious as ever and intent upon constructing a portrait of a career in steady ascent, he floated a different story to Wolgast, telling him that “his already established selection had to be rescinded for confessional reasons.”10 The “Jahresbericht” itself speaks against this, since the documentation is unequivocal that the choice of Niessen arose only after the committee had received Straube’s letter of withdrawal. The selection committee was heavily Protestant besides, including Siemon and Grimm.11 But still many years later, Straube would double down on this position when he placed the Münster episode in a wider frame, writing to Oskar Söhngen that he had conducted his virtuoso career from a church organ gallery as “proof ” that church musicians need not be second-class citizens in the world of art music. He confessed that “in those days I didn’t consider myself a church musician in the real sense of the term.” Instead, “my ambitions at the time were directed toward the conducting podium.” He went on to claim that he had been selected unanimously, but that “for confessional reasons, the governor of Westphalia stepped in and declared my election unacceptable for the provincial capital of Münster.” This had led to the “fortunate coincidence” of his eventual Leipzig appointment and the vocational clarity it had yielded. “Only later did I become conscious of my identity as a church musician, when I was called to the post of Thomaskantor.”12 In the end the details mat8 Ibid., 145. 9 Cited in Blindow, “Regers und Straubes Beziehungen zu Münster,” 131. 10 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 14. 11 Blindow, “Regers und Straubes Beziehungen zu Münster,” 131. 12 Letter, November 16, 1943, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 75–76.
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ter less than the outcome. The Münster episode had thrown up a roadblock to any designs he might have had upon a secular career. Straube went back to Wesel, took the outcome to heart, and once again set his nose to the grindstone. He was not easily discouraged, and his concert career continued unabated. On October 31 he returned to the scene of the crime in Münster to test and dedicate the organ of the city’s new Erlöserkirche.13 The experience with the Musikverein seems only to have fueled his determination to establish his name as widely as possible. After the busy Advent and Christmas seasons, he was back in his old venue of the Munich Kaimsaal on March 5, 1901, to offer his audience an exclusive diet of Reger: the Sonata, op. 33, the Chorale Fantasies, opp. 27 and 40, and BACH, op. 46. In February he had turned to Busoni for advice, full of new plans. “I’ve been thinking about giving three organ recitals in the Berlin Matthaeikirche” in early May, he pondered on paper. “Organ of 42 ranks, 3 manuals & completely modern. Hence suitable for my purposes. Program: evening 1 older masters, evening 2 Buxtehude—Bach—Liszt, evening 3 César Franck C. V. Alkan Max Reger. Do you think this is a good plan?” And there were further ambitions: “In October I want to give a modern symphony concert with the Philharmonic. Program: Anton Bruckner Eighth Symphony, Hans Huber Boecklin Symph. Would you advise me to do this? I’d like finally to get on with it!”14 Over the previous year, Dinse had completed the “completely modern” organ of the St. Matthäus-Kirche, outfitted with pneumatic action and replacing the 1845 organ of Johann Friedrich Schulze.15 No doubt Straube wanted to stage a triumphant ritorno in patria and test the instrument with a version of his by-now signature “historical” recital series. Evidently he failed to realize these plans, but on May 12 he did perform at the Alte Garnisonkirche, where in 1892 Sauer had built a big new instrument of seventy stops in the 1724 Joachim Wagner case.16 Just as Straube was attracted to Dinse’s new work at St. Matthäus, he probably was curious to see the results of Sauer’s revisions to the Garnison instrument completed early in 1901, an ambitious project that had included the moving of the organ to a new position in the room. Here, he offered a characteristically demanding recital that amounted to an amalgam of the second and third programs 13 14 15 16
Blindow, “Regers und Straubes Beziehungen zu Münster,” 132. Letter, February 2, 1901, StBBPK N. Mus. Nach. 12. Schwarz, ed., 500 Jahre Orgeln, 205, 479. Ibid., 100, 447.
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described to Busoni that February: Alkan’s Preludes, op. 66, then Bach’s Passacaglia and the first airing of Reger’s Chorale Fantasy, op. 52, no. 2— the first of the three op. 52 Fantasies premiered that year, and the only one dedicated to him. Two further Reger works followed: the flagship “Ein’ feste Burg,” op. 27 and BACH, op. 46. Surely Straube’s parents and mentors attended.17 The influential critic Otto Lessmann gushed superlatives about “a personality who actually only now steps before the Berlin public in full artistic maturity. . . . Alongside an absolutely extraordinary technical security and bravura as I have seldom seen—perhaps only with Saint-Saëns—Herr Straube exercises an admirable sensitivity for aural effects and musical declamation.” Alkan’s op. 66 had been executed “with such perfect phrasing and with such expression arising from brilliant stop combinations as I have seldom heard from organists,” despite what Lessmann judged a less-than-perfect instrument.18 He went on to express misgivings about Reger’s new “Wachet auf ” Fantasy, which he claimed lacked clarity of architecture, clear thematic development, and a feeling for the character of Nicolai’s chorale. But the following works, opp. 27 and 46, made up for this in his view: “These are two masterworks that make enormous demands on the intelligence and technical facility of the player. Herr Straube satisfied these demands to the fullest measure, and I don’t believe I exaggerate by counting him among the most excellent organists of our time.”19 As gratifying as these kinds of triumphs must have been for him—and particularly his May visit to Berlin, where he could demonstrate firsthand to family and friends the results of his intense labors on the Rhine—they clearly were not enough, as the correspondence with Busoni in February intimated. First, he was not willing to give up on orchestral conducting, lobbying for an evening with no less than the Berlin Philharmonic in October, in vain as it turned out. Second and even more consequentially, he wanted out of Wesel. There lurked in the revealing aside “I’d like finally to get on with it!” [Ich möchte endlich weiter kommen!] not only an impatience with the limitations of his surroundings but also a restless conviction that the organ somehow did not represent a sufficient horizon. Reger for his part certainly did not think it did, continuing as before to engage fruitfully with the wider musical world. 17 Letter from Reger to Straube, May 7, 1901, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 21. 18 Review of Straube at the Alte Garnisonkirche Berlin, May 12, 1901, Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung 28/20 (May 17, 1901): 337–38. 19 Ibid., 338.
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And perhaps the figure of Bülow, who had pursued parallel careers as pianist and conductor with equal brilliance, still hung at the back of Straube’s mind. By no means did his ambition limit itself to performance, either. He had decided to pick up a pen as well—and fortunately so, since Straube’s writings at the turn of the century offer a good window into his musically and historically oriented mind. At latest by 1900 he had opened a channel to Breitkopf & Härtel, requesting copies of works from its catalog so that he could write “a larger essay on modern oratorio composition.”20 The article appeared that November, but on the subject of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century music instead. Straube praised the new complete works editions as models of musicological rigor but pointed out that they were beyond the means of most musicians, particularly church musicians, who “are no ‘Rothchilds.’” Further, “the works of a Schütz and an Orlando Lasso, even in these magnificent publications, may seem like stillborn characters to the average practical musician. For them to sound in a fresh manner, they must be made clear, rewritten. Perhaps an altered accompaniment adapted to the modern orchestra, or maybe even a newly created one has to be added. All of these things are difficulties that hinder the popularization of these beautiful editions.”21 This concern about the “popularization” of older repertories plainly echoed the efforts of Dienel and Reimann, and it applied equally to Straube’s own interpretative approach. Spurred by the missional conviction that music must be dressed in up-to-date style and thus made accessible to common audiences, he would soon try his own hand at editing. Straube pressed on to commend the “practical editions” of works by Bach, Palestrina, Schütz, and Sweelinck that had already appeared with Breitkopf as a counterweight to the “objective” work of musicology. Then, after an extended narrative about choral and keyboard music from the Middle Ages through the early seventeenth century, he added a telling credo. “If we want to have vital church art, then above all the entire domain of modern music must be made to serve that goal. We must not distinguish between churchly and unchurchly means of musical expression. . . . Protestant church music can regain great art when it proceeds artistically and religiously from modern sensibilities!”22 This position was the one Straube carried into his study, for example, of Reger’s adventurous fantasies on Protestant chorales, and it recalls his stance favoring
20 Letter, February 22, 1900, SäStAL Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel Nr. 3056. 21 Straube, “Tonwerke,” 1112–15. 22 Ibid., 1115.
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the “detaching” of the organ “from all ecclesial actualities” to integrate it into mainstream concert culture. He tried to pursue further work with Breitkopf during his Wesel years. In September 1900 he revealed that the Internationale Musikgesellschaft had asked him to write a “critical essay on the state of modern organ composition,” an effort that evidently did not materialize, perhaps swallowed up in his preparations for the Münster audition that October.23 The following April while busy planning his return to Berlin, he proposed to the publisher a collection of Bach cantata arias edited for organ accompaniment. He explained “the pressing need” involved. “Unfortunately, the average German organist is hardly equipped and sufficiently educated to reproduce from the score a correct picture of the instrumental garb. Therefore, I really believe that my modest work might be a small expedient to the renaissance of Bach’s art.”24 Here again emerged the great cultural mission of “renaissance” couched in the practice of church music. The initiative, which echoed contemporary efforts by Busoni and Reger to transcribe Bach’s organ music for piano, appears to have been abandoned. “I find that the two of us advertise far too little—because we are too respectable,” Reger remarked to Straube in 1901.25 Nevertheless, in the meantime Straube had signed on as a foot-soldier in Reger’s propaganda force, beginning to publish essays that would not only acquaint the public with the composer’s music and its perceived significance in the grand sweep of western history, but also inevitably “advertise” the authority of his own name. Already in 1900 there had appeared his review of Reger’s life and works in the Neue Musik-Zeitung, in which Straube held up as models particularly the Lieder (“As far as concerns the depth of feeling and wealth of poetic insight, it appears to me that Reger often surpasses [Strauss]”) and the organ music (“If one wishes to find serious works of similar significance, only the creations of the mighty Thomaskantor come into question!”).26 Yet more effusive was Straube’s extensive review that same year of the Chorale Fantasies, op. 40, set up by a discussion of the chorale-based works of Buxtehude and Pachelbel, whose “aesthetic” and “ethical” natures respectively are synthesized in the Parnassus figure of Bach. He went on to relate how Italian influence on German composition caused the great composers of 23 24 25 26
Letter, September 7, 1900, SäStAL Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel Nr. 3056. Letter, April 23, 1901, SäStAL Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel Nr. 3056. Letter, May 7, 1901, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 20–21. Straube, “Max Reger,” Neue Musik-Zeitung 21/22 (1900): 267–68.
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the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to lose sight of what was possible when genius applied itself to the Protestant chorale, so that “simple organists and teachers were the ones who tried to immerse themselves in the depths of genius.” In his view, this dire situation was attenuated by Mendelssohn, whose organ Sonatas, op. 65, nevertheless betrayed his superficial feeling for the chorale and for idiomatic organ composition in general. Straube continued through other composers: Brahms, Herzogenberg, Forchhammer, Brosig, Philipp and Karl Wolfrum, Reimann—the last five representing “the New German school,” in other words, an approach that exploited the chorale texts programmatically. Upon this scene—which amounted to a climb toward and fall from Bach, with an upturn in the last few decades—entered Reger, who “intuits text and melody of the chorale as an inseparable artistic unity.” As such he shared with Bach the use of all available modern expressive means, and with Strauss an approach analogous to the symphonic poem. Most important, Reger’s greatness lay in his transcendence of culturally received categories delineating the sacred and the secular. “He takes the affective content not in its quality as the bearer of ecclesial institutions, but rather text and melody are to him the expressive means of a purely individual emotional life,” Straube maintained. “With this, we have found musical expression for our modern Christianity, which actually is not ‘churchly,’ but rather all the more ‘personal.’”27 His appeal to the extra-institutional, subjectively based piety of “our modern Christianity” in the shadow of Schleiermacher resonated strongly with his family’s religious background, and with his insistence that the authentic artist stands above the sacred-secular distinction. Straube then turned to the Chorale Fantasies, opp. 30 and 40, in vivid language brimming with extra-musical imagery. His closing gesture cites “the moral earnestness of [Reger’s] religious art, standing apart from all formal play. . . . We hope and expect that the great beginning of this career sees a continuation equivalent to Max Reger’s genius, so that later generations will count this name among the great masters!”28 That last sentence echoed Reimann’s own momentous review from 1893. This would be the first of many accounts of Reger’s pivotal position in Straube’s historical narrative. Characteristically, he was not content to discuss the quality of the music on its own terms, but rather as couched in a much broader context, itself shaped (it cannot be emphasized enough) by his work with Reimann, his reading of cultural 27 Straube, Review of Max Reger, Op. 40, 212. 28 Ibid., 213.
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history generally, and the stark nationalist impulses arising from his bicultural upbringing in the imperial capital. The inkpot was not dry. There followed another article in the Monatschrift für Gottesdienst und kirchliche Kunst early in 1901, this one evaluating Reger’s Bach arrangements in the tradition of Liszt, Tausig, d’Albert, and Busoni, then the BACH Fantasy, op. 46 (“an organ symphony in two movements”), the Six Trios, op. 47 (“we almost breathe the air of the Rococo era”), and two choral collections composed in 1900, the Seven Spiritual Folksongs and the Twelve German Spiritual Songs, WoO VI/14 and 13, the latter dedicated to Straube and his Wesel church choir.29 Then in 1902 he produced an article of thirteen pages that brought Reger’s whole oeuvre into conversation with Brahms and Bruckner on the one hand and Scarlatti and Bach on the other. Here as before, he targeted particularly the Lieder and the organ works for the highest praise. He “seems to be one of the rare artistic instances who carries unconsciously in himself cultural elements of earlier times, awakening these to new life in artistic form under the influence of contemporary questions and views.”30 In the years to come, Straube would expand upon this essentially atavistic claim to underscore the composer’s significance to music and the cultural history of the German nation. In all this and more, he was egged on in a stream of cards and letters from Reger, maniacally concerned to organize his image in the press. Alongside these literary efforts, Straube refused to let his organ playing relax into anything less than fifth gear. In spring 1901 he had appeared at another gathering of colleagues, this one the thirty-seventh annual meeting of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein in Heidelberg. He collaborated on the conference’s fifth and final concert on June 4 in the University Church of St. Peter, a program dedicated to the music of Liszt and Bach, and which he closed with Reger’s op. 46. This was probably his first encounter with Fritz Stein, a young man who at the time was reading theology at Heidelberg, and who soon would become his private organ pupil at Leipzig. Stein would emerge as one of the most zealous leaders of the Reger congregation, the composer’s biographer, and eventually director of the Berlin Staatliche Hochschule. For now, he recorded his impressions of Reger’s “highly significant but hardly playable” op. 46, which Straube “performed
29 Straube, “Max Regers Orgelkompositionen und Bearbeitungen,” 210–12. 30 Straube, “Max Reger,” Die Gesellschaft, 180–81.
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with perfect mastery, although the choice of a too rapid tempo unfortunately hindered the establishment of a unified, grand effect.”31 Further demanding premieres of Reger’s organ works followed: the Fantasy on “Alle Menschen müssen sterben,” op. 52, no. 1, heard first at Wesel that same summer; the sister Fantasy on “Halleluja! Gott zu loben,” op. 52, no. 3, and four smaller works from the new Twelve Pieces, op. 59, embedded in yet another all-Reger program at the Munich Kaimsaal in November; and the unveiling of the fiendishly difficult Symphonic Fantasy and Fugue, op. 57, in Berlin on February 20, 1902, at the Garnisonkirche for an audience estimated at between five and six hundred.32 A cascade of letters from the composer’s one-man propaganda office arrived in Wesel, advising Straube con molto passione on all sorts of matters, recommending that he play this rather than that work, in this rather than that city, in this rather than that tempo; asking that he search out this or that text for potential musical setting; that he write an article; that he write or speak personally to this or that key figure regarding his music. If that were not enough, by 1902 Reger was itching to realize a project he had carried in his head since 1900, namely the composition of a pedal method in the form of organ trios. In search of a collaborator, he had first approached Gustav Beckmann, without success. Two years later, he evidently had extracted a commitment from Straube himself, and by mid-September he was breathing down his friend’s neck to send his “methodically examined materials” by the end of October.33 By mid-1902 Straube’s relationship with Reger had reached a new intensity. Although he easily could have allowed virtually his entire existence to be swallowed up by his inexhaustible and exhausting friend to the south, he somehow erected a firewall and remained focused, undoubtedly appealing to his considerable diplomatic skills. Amid the practicing, traveling, performing, and proselytizing, he needed a calm oasis to center his energies. He found this in his abiding love of reading and hiking the outdoors. But fortuitously, he also found it just a short walk west of the Willibrordikirche 31 Fritz Stein, Review of XXXVII. Tonkünstler-Versammlung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Musikvereins, June 1–4, 1901, in Oskar Fleischer and Hermann Abert, eds., Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft Zweiter Jahrgang 1900–1901 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1901), 349. 32 Theodor Krause, Review of Straube at the Alte Garnisonkirche Berlin, February 20, 1902, cited in Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau 23/9 (December 21, 1902): 231. 33 Letters, September 12, November 8, November 19, December 2, and December 8, 1902, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 24, 27–28, 31, 39.
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over the Marktplatz, at one of Wesel’s most renowned meeting places, the Hotel Dornbusch in the Brückstraße. Recommended in travel guidebooks of the period and locally famous as the place where members of the Prussian royal house stayed on visits to the city, the Dornbusch was a spacious inn owned and operated during Straube’s time by Bernhard Küchel. Küchel had come to Wesel from Butzbach in Hessen and in 1871 married Getrud Sels, the daughter of a local medical doctor.34 The Küchel-Sels household was bi-confessional, he Protestant and she Catholic, the union producing five children between 1872 and 1885. The second of these was a daughter born on July 4, 1876, Christine Josefine Johanna. Late in life she would recall that “my father was not pleased that Johanna could be changed into so many forms, and one day he announced that the child would now be called Hertha.”35 Exactly when and under what circumstances Hertha Küchel encountered the energetic organist of St. Willibrord is not known. All his life Straube was disposed to nocturnal roundtables with friends and colleagues, and he likely found early on that the dining rooms of the Dornbusch suited his purposes. One eyewitness remembered his frequenting the inn beginning between 10:00 p.m. and midnight “for hours-long conversations,” sessions that began late “because Straube was occupied with his bride during the evening hours.”36 Bernhard’s five children may have done their share to help run the family business, so that it is easy to imagine that Hertha and Karl met there. Straube’s application to Münster in 1900 likewise may have been motivated in part by his courtship with her, as he searched for a fixed income favorable to starting a family.37 In any case, by early September 1902 he had told Reger that he was obliged to look for new work because of his plans to marry Hertha.38 This new development in his personal affairs presented yet another commonality with Reger, whose life was likewise changing rapidly. The composer had moved with his parents and sister to Munich in autumn 1901, and the following August he became engaged to Elsa von Bercken, a 34 StAL, Akten, den Professor Dr. phil. h.c. et th.h.c. Karl Straube, Kantor an der Thomasschule. Rat der Stadt Leipzig. Schulamt 1934. Kap. II St. 89 Bd. 2 [hereafter Straube-Akten 2], 5: Anzeige über Verheiratung, August 26, 1937. 35 Letter to Ursula Thomm, February 9, 1974, cited in Thomm, “Gedenken an Hertha Straube,” in Held and Held, eds., Karl Straube, 212. 36 Plato, Aus dem Musikleben, 30. 37 This is Plato’s position, ibid., 31. 38 Letter, September 12, 1902 in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 23.
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divorced Protestant, precipitating a scandal in Reger’s conservative Catholic family and the Bavarian church. Hertha Küchel had taken her mother’s Catholicism and now found herself in love with a Protestant organist. The two were destined for a long life together, by no means uniformly blissful. She would outlive him by almost a quarter century. But for now, there could be no thought of marriage until Straube secured a new post. He surely had been burned from his experience at Münster and now carefully stretched out his feelers. There was talk of having a go at another civic position in Saarbrücken, where the composer-conductor Karl Hallwachs—“a musician of the 37th class” in Reger’s colorful estimation— was the Director of the local Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.39 It had crossed his mind to return to Berlin, where he was a known quantity. His artist brother William had since taken a teaching position in Koblenz, though, and by 1901 had relocated to Paris, where he would have first contact with Matisse. Comparisons to his sibling’s aspirations were probably unavoidable. By mid-1902 Karl had lived in Wesel five years and had considerable success to show for it, at least as an organist. His remark to Busoni early in 1901—“Ich möchte endlich weiter kommen!”—must still have rung in his ears. And with good reason: he was nearing thirty at a time when average life expectancy for German males of his generation stood at around sixty-one.40 He was no longer a young man. Straube’s consideration of Saarbrücken that autumn of 1902 suggests that he had not yet made peace with the idea of pursuing another church job. It is not clear that he ever submitted an application. However, by this time an important door in Saxony had opened when Carl Piutti, since 1880 organist of the revered Leipzig Thomaskirche, died on June 17, aged fifty-six. Circumstances conspired: it was Straube’s ticket. And on January 1, 1903, just a few days shy of his thirtieth birthday and not quite ten years after he had made his first tentative appearance as an organist in Berlin, Karl Straube would find himself seated on the German Empire’s premier organ bench in the iconic workplace of Johann Sebastian Bach.
39 Ibid. 40 Hohorst, Kocka, and Ritter, Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch, 33–35.
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Part III
Leipzig 1903–1918 [St. Thomas Church] is almost as it was about a generation ago, when, up at the organ that he had outfitted by his own means, Karl Straube performed during the night hours for a small host of delighted and musically enthusiastic students, playing the great organ works of the venerable Johann Sebastian and putting forth, virginally so to speak, the newest thing that Max Reger had just written. Then, only the quivering strips of the streetlamps scampered over the windows, and the only light glowed overwhelmingly from the organ console, amplified by the white pages of the score. But in the darkness of the nave’s high arches, all the good spirits were awake. —Franz Adam Beyerlein, “Verdunkelte Motette,” ca. 1940; StAL Thomasschule 21, undated memoir appended to Marie Luise Fischer, “Singet dem Herrn. Annalen und Chronik von St. Thomae nach vorhandenen Urkunden bearbeitet” (typescript, October 1935), 278
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Chapter Seven
A Berliner in (Little) Paris Leipzig sits at the south end of the North German Plain, about 150 kilometers south of Berlin and nearly 500 kilometers east of Wesel. Few German cities have cultivated a relationship to their pasts as consistently and selfconsciously as this one, whose history extends to about 800 CE. In the era of industrialization and urbanization, Leipzig had begun to absorb the villages around its medieval walls, which already in the late eighteenth century were being removed. A massive infrastructure expansion ensued to accommodate a burgeoning citizenry. Between 1850 and 1870 the population ballooned from 63,000 to 107,000. By 1910 679,000 people lived in Leipzig, a staggering surge in excess of 600% over just four decades that made it the Reich’s third-most-populous city, behind only Berlin and Hamburg.1 The civic response was everywhere in evidence in countless ongoing construction projects. The rail network metastasized, grand factories and business complexes arose, and the ambitious South Cemetery opened on the southeast perimeter. The city proudly maintained a lively musical culture, stretching back over Wagner (whose hometown it was), the Schumanns, Mendelssohn, Bach, Telemann, and beyond. Felix Mendelssohn had served as Gewandhaus Kapellmeister from 1835, and in 1843 he had founded the Leipzig Conservatory on the model of Paris, the first such institution on German soil. Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf had opened his music publishing firm here in 1719, Carl Friedrich Peters his Bureau de Musique in 1814. Alongside Gewandhaus, Opera, and Conservatory stood a pair of august institutions with a pedigree older than all of these: the Church and School of St. Thomas, stemming from the Augustinian monastery established on 1 Blackbourn, History of Germany, 152; competing statistics at Hohorst, Kocka, and Ritter, eds., Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch, 45–46.
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the same site in 1212. Johann Sebastian Bach had served as cantor of the Thomasschule between 1723 and 1750, commonly regarded as the high point in its long musical history. The Gothic hall church, modest by the standards of the great European cathedral churches like St. Willibrord, had undergone extensive renovations completed at Pentecost 1889, transforming the baroque interior of Bach’s time into a modish neo-Gothic guise, with a new three-manual organ in the west gallery by Wilhelm Sauer, op. 501. When Karl Straube relocated to Leipzig late in 1902, he surely was struck by this city’s amalgam of tradition and innovation, the old and hallowed standing alongside the new and progressive. In 1884, the same year in which renovations were launched at the Thomaskirche, the magnificent new Gewandhaus with its Walcker organ had opened in the Beethovenstraße. The new quarters of the Royal Conservatory in the Grassistraße followed in 1887, the grand edifice of the University Library in 1892, and, in 1897, the Albertinum of the University on the Augustusplatz. In some cases, buildings of historical significance fell victim to the outsized optimism of progress: in 1902, the year before Straube assumed his duties, the old Thomasschule in which Bach had lived and composed, built in 1553 and enlarged between 1731 and 1732, was removed in favor of a new structure housing the diocesan administration. The school itself had already defected to outlying quarters in the late 1870s. Straube thus stepped into a vigorous urban atmosphere in 1903, a place swelling with civic pride and a sense that Leipzig was embracing its destiny as a great center of culture and learning. The city Goethe famously had called “little Paris” was ascendant, or at least so was the prevailing mood. But what confluence of circumstances opened the position of St. Thomas organist to Straube? At least as far back as the tenure of Christian August Pohlenz (1821–43), the organists of the Thomaskirche hailed from the overwhelmingly Lutheran Saxon and Thuringian territories, most with some previous professional contact to Leipzig, most active as composers. Straube, who had constructed a respectable résumé only over the last five years in a remote Rhine town on the Dutch border, ticked none of these boxes. He was a Berliner of English-German birth, an aspiring conductor with modest experience and little training, an up-and-coming concert artist who did not compose, an unknown quantity to Leipzig audiences. His calculating nature must have realized this, and he undoubtedly weighed the pros and cons of throwing his hat in the ring in faraway Saxony. He did not want to encounter a dead end as in Münster. On the one hand, Leipzig presented another church position, not that of a civic Kapellmeister, though without
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the time-consuming choral responsibilities of Wesel. If he wanted to conduct regularly, he would have to find an outlet outside the Thomanerchor, which stood under the direction of its cantor, Gustav Schreck. On the other hand, this was the iconic “Bach church,” offering him another modern instrument by a favored builder. At sixty-three stops, it was smaller than his Wesel organ and an older example of Sauer’s work. Here he would be vested with an internationally recognized imprimatur of considerable authority. Further, Straube had already dipped his toe into the world of publishing and editing, and a position in Leipzig would make possible a close working relationship with the big houses of Peters and Breitkopf. With Leipzig he could reinstall himself in a multifarious, energetic musical culture. Subsequent to Piutti’s death on June 17, 1902, Straube immediately prevailed upon Reger to direct a superlative recommendation to Leipzig. Reger announced “an organist of the very first rank” who “probably possesses at the moment the most significant technique” which he “places . . . only in the service of the artwork.” The composer went on to cite Straube’s “spirited, deeply felt performance of all the great organ works from Frescobaldi through the most recent time, in recitals and [other] performances in Munich, Berlin, Schwerin, Koblenz, Krefeld, Wesel, Frankfurt a.M., Halle, Elberfeld, and Heidelberg, all of them praised most highly by critics as well as the public.”2 This assessment, valuable not least for its (likely comprehensive) inventory of Straube’s organ engagements to date, iterated the “brand” established in Riemann’s 1900 Lexicon entry, Frescobaldi through the avant-garde, here avoiding direct mention of the pivotal role Straube played in Reger’s own music. For a further recommendation Straube appealed to the Swiss composer Hans Huber, “actually the great spokesman of our generation,” as Straube flattered him.3 Busoni had also been enlisted to put in a good word with Arthur Nikisch, probably the single most influential point man in Leipzig as Gewandhaus Kapellmeister and Conservatory director, and with whom Straube had corresponded at latest since autumn 1901. He was right to perceive that he could use all the leverage possible to muster. He had nine competitors, including Paul Gerhardt of the Zwickau Marienkirche, who had auditioned with him at Wesel in 1897, and Friedrich Reinbrecht, University Music Director in Greifswald, his predecessor at St. Willibrord. There were 2 3
Letter to the search committee of the St. Thomas congregation, June 25, 1902, cited in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 22. Letter, June 27, 1902, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 17.
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four Leipzigers on the candidate list as well, and others from Saxony and Thuringia.4 There were no guarantees here. As summer wore into autumn, there was apparently little to hear from Leipzig. Straube was considering a post in Saarbrücken as well, a sign that he was by no means overconfident about his chances.5 “Concerning Leipzig you have good, very good prospects! Hopefully something will come of it,” Reger tried to assure him by early October.6 But he was not content to sit on his hands. Determined to be proactive in making a good impression, Straube personally sent Nikisch tickets to a series of his organ recitals around this time, only to receive the disappointing answer that the conductor’s schedule did not allow him to attend.7 On the 21st, he turned to Busoni to express appreciation for his efforts with Nikisch. “I always hesitated to thank you for this, since I hoped that it would be possible to inform you of a result as to this whole affair. Such a result has not yet appeared,” he wrote, his hopes perhaps on the wane.8 But in early November the result did appear. He was summoned to Leipzig, and by the time he returned home, Straube knew he had a new position and a new future in his pocket. “No one is more delighted than I at the outcome of your trip,” Reger exulted. “Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!”9 There was one dissenting vote and, astonishingly, no formal audition, although Straube surely tried out the church’s Sauer organ in the presence of the committee. In 1928 Wolgast reported Straube’s testimony that “he was appointed at Leipzig on the basis of his reputation as an excellent organist, but also by splendid recommendations.”10 Huber, Busoni, and Reger surely had not been the only voices on Straube’s team. By this time he had built a potentially influential network of support on which he could have drawn—like Seiffert, Reimann, and his confidante the Austrian composer Siegmund von Hausegger. 4
Herbert Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas: Aus Briefen und Dokumenten des Archivs der Thomaskirche,” in Held and Held, eds., Karl Straube, 131. 5 Letter from Reger to Straube, September 12, 1902, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 23. 6 Letter, October 3, 1902, ibid., 26. 7 Letter, October 6, 1902, BStBM, Straubeana. 8 Letter, October 21, 1902, StBBPK Teilnachlass Straube. 9 Letter, November 19, 1902, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 28. Emphasis original. 10 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 16.
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The official notice of appointment came on November 25 from the Leipzig City Council, acting on the recommendation of the St. Thomas congregation. The evening before, Straube had performed one of his valedictory chamber concerts at the Wesel Gymnasium, a recital with the Meiningen violinist Carl Wendling showcasing Busoni’s Violin Sonata No. 2, op. 36a, alongside Brahms’s opp. 78 and 100.11 The next day, the Tuesday before the first Sunday of Advent, he sat at his desk to compose several important letters. One was directed to Oskar Pank, since 1884 Superintendent of Leipzig and principal pastor of the Thomaskirche, an acknowledgment of gratitude for this turn of fortune. “I know how much I owe to the goodness and interest which Your Grace has bestowed upon my person,” Straube wrote. Pank evidently had asked him to clarify the timing of his move, the earlier the better. “I can report happily that little will stand in the way of my coming at Christmas. But I will have definitive news only next week, at which time a meeting of the Presbytery has been scheduled to receive my resignation.”12 The reference to the “goodness and interest . . . bestowed upon my person” suggests that Pank had been particularly swayed by his candidacy, perhaps exercising his considerable influence upon the outcome.13 In later correspondence Straube would go so far as to speak of his superior as “my benefactor,” or Gönner.14 The two certainly had common interests. Pank, thirty-five years Straube’s senior, had come to Leipzig from Berlin, where he had served at the Dreifaltigkeitskirche and as Superintendent of the Friedrichswerder diocese from 1878 through 1882, thus during the boy’s formative years. Whether or not Straube would have crossed paths with him at the time, he would have known that Pank had been Bismarck’s personal confessor, and that he had authored a popular biography marking the Iron Chancellor’s seventieth birthday, the Bismarckbüchlein. In its final chapter Pank had explored the integral role of faith in Bismarck’s mighty accomplishments, painting his hero as the ideal embodiment of the Protestant values of courage, responsibility, enlightened tolerance, and anti-materialism. The Kulturkampf policies 11 Straube posted the program to the composer at an unknown date. StBBPK Nachlass Straube. 12 Letter, November 25, 1902, cited in Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas,” 132. 13 Ibid., 132–34. 14 Letter to Max Hehemann, October 20, 1905, Nachlass Erich Hermann Müller von Asow, OeNB Autogr. 950/69-2 Han.
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against the Empire’s Catholic populations were “forced upon him” by the Roman clergy’s support of Poland over Germany.15 But the Reich had realized its potential for greatness because of the unbending Protestant ideals that saturated its culture and the character of its leader. “Take this faith from me, and you take from me the fatherland,” as Pank quoted Bismarck.16 The integrity of the fatherland was precisely what was at stake for Pank. “The days are over when Germany was the Cinderella of the nations,” he declared. “It has become the leading power among the peoples and now joins in the great task of spreading Christian civilization among the heathen populations.”17 Pank delivered this amalgam of religion and patriotic hubris with the passion of an evangelical missionary, a posture hardly foreign to Straube. Whatever musical tastes the two may have shared, their common nationalism rooted in Bismarck’s ideals would strengthen their bonds and focus their energies in the service of the German Protestant God. A second letter that Tuesday in November went to the Wesel church authorities, from whom Straube requested release on December 22, the fourth Sunday of Advent. He expressed his “most dutiful thanks for the abundant support presented to me in my official activities during these five years. I am very aware that, if I as an organist have been able to assume an outstanding place among German artists, I owe this in essence to the benevolent liberality my superiors have shown me.”18 He was keen to get on with his move to Leipzig, willing to petition release on a month’s notice during one of the busiest seasons of the church year. It was a risky request, but he had done his homework with the local Gymnasium teacher Paul Wolff, with whom he had formed a friendship that would be lifelong, and who on his instigation now would assume interim duties. Wolff was possibly his very first organ student, having been repeatedly entrusted to deputize over the last years of Straube’s travels.19 The church leaders, aware of the extraordinary talent and vaulted ambitions of their music director, had been willing to grant him an unusual freedom to develop, surely in hopes that this would reflect well on Wesel and St. Willibrord in the long run. They likewise appreciated his sustained attention to keeping the organ in top condition, a source 15 Pank, Bismarckbüchlein, 107. 16 Ibid., 106. 17 Ibid., 77. 18 Letter, November 25, 1902, facsimile in Dreimüller, “Karl Straubes SauerOrgel in Wesel,” 65–66. 19 Plato, Aus dem Musikleben, 30.
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of civic pride.20 There is an undeniably genuine quality to Straube’s letter, with its underscoring of “abundant support” and “benevolent liberality,” and indeed in later years he would repeatedly recall his tenure on the Rhine with fondness, returning to the city periodically on visits to his in-laws. Likewise striking is the absolutely deliberate choice of words, “as an organist I have been able to assume an outstanding place among German artists”—not the narrower “among German organists”—a way of framing his self-image that resonated with his explicit mission to reinsert the organ into the mainstream of serious music-making. There were more personal affairs that demanded his attention, too. He and Hertha could now announce their formal engagement. Reger immediately fired off his congratulations, followed by the remark, “Since your father-in-law himself is Protestant and your fiancée . . . agrees completely with you, it is to be hoped that you will not have the difficulties we had”—a reference to the scandal of the composer’s own interconfessional marriage, and to the couple’s decision to be wed in a Protestant ceremony.21 The official announcements were mailed a few days later. Among the more clever, if chauvinist, replies came from a delighted Wolf-Ferrari. “It was really ‘lieblich Gedacht’ [charmingly intended] of you to join yourself to a fine ‘vox humana’ [human voice] in the ‘unda maris’ [sea wave] of life,” he wrote, drawing upon common organ stop names to make his point. Concerning how a proper husbandly authority should be asserted: “Should you get angry you only need . . . to call out, go and fetch yourself a 64-foot . . . and announce your opinion through this mighty pipe with an enviably authoritative voice, so that the walls shake. What will the [gentle string rank] ‘Aeoline’ of your wife be able to put up against you, so outfitted? But up close, when the 64-foot is silenced, she will be able to bring about your submissiveness all the more insistently.”22 This deft wordplay had some truth in it. Hertha would be a quiet, constant, and indeed “insistent” presence in Karl’s life from now on. That relatively little is known about her is due to the fact that she played her part in the domestic wings of a life framed overwhelmingly by a professional image in the public arena, the Aeoline to his Posaune. Likewise, nothing is known of what Straube’s own family thought of the union, or, for that
20 That gratitude was shared by Wilhelm Sauer himself. See the latter’s letter, December 8, 1902, cited in Funk-Hennings, “Karl Straubes Berufung,” 74. 21 Letter, November 26, 1902, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 29. 22 Letter, December 1, 1902, BStBM Teilnachlass Karl Straube A/66/1160.
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Figure 7.1. Karl and Hertha Straube, undated photo around the time of their wedding. Reproduced with permission from the Meininger Museen, Sammlung Musikgeschichte/Max-Reger-Archiv.
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matter, of his career move to Leipzig. Hertha and Karl would be married in Wesel on May 5, 1903. But the wedding bells still lay in the future. Just as with his relatively abrupt move from the parental nest in Berlin to new independence in Wesel some five years earlier, he again found himself faced with a relocation across the country in a few short weeks. Straube had to find new quarters in Leipzig, this time not only for himself, but also for his incipient family. He eventually chose an apartment on the Dorotheenplatz, a short walk southwest of the Thomaskirche. Meanwhile, the Wesel Presbytery had denied Straube’s request for release at the end of Advent, reasonably requiring his presence through the Christmas services. “Now I will arrive [in Leipzig] on Monday evening the 29th,” he reported to Pank on December 5. “I can assume my duties at the services for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.”23 This plan, too, for all its eagerness, seems to have been thwarted. Later, Straube would remember having played his first service at the Thomaskirche on his thirtieth birthday, Epiphany 1903. “At the center of this service stood a sermon,” reported Wolgast, “delivered from the high chancel by the then-Superintendent Dr. Pank, who, after the presentation in the Temple went on movingly to illustrate human development from childhood through old age. As a Protestant minister, he interpreted in a religious-Christian sense the ancient thought of Cicero concerning the advantages of age.”24 That Straube would have recalled the event so vividly some twenty-five years on evinces his enduring high regard for Pank and the enormous impression that this arrival point in his life made upon him. It was perhaps the highest plateau of undiluted optimism he would ever reach. But that Epiphany he could not have known quite how decisive a beginning this cold winter day in Leipzig was. Despite personal and professional disappointments, countless draining battles with the authorities, the forging of alliances and making of enemies, and many attractive offers elsewhere, Karl had found his home for life, and Hertha hers until June 1966, when she would relocate to Hamburg sixteen years after her husband’s death. “If I were you I would put on scads of organ recitals,” Reger wrote with typical hyperbole as Straube prepared his move, “to show the Leipzigers what organ playing means after the grandiose slacker Homeyer has put everything into a sweet sleep! I would of course be enormously thankful if you would 23 Letter, December 5, 1902, cited in Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas,” 132. 24 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 16‒17.
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play a Reger organ recital there!”25 Probably more so than anyone else, Reger saw his friend’s advent in Leipzig as a musical coup, an incursion of modern sensibilities onto the territory of the Leipzig-educated organist Paul Homeyer, to whom Reger had recently dedicated the first six of his Twelve Pieces, op. 65. Homeyer had taught organ and theory at the Conservatory since 1885, and had recently assumed the recently deceased Piutti’s post in liturgical organ playing. It would turn out that Straube himself would have to wait until 1907 for a place on the Conservatory faculty, although his two most recent predecessors had been active as teachers there during their tenures as St. Thomas organist. Undoubtedly this disconnect began to irk him early on.26 Soon, however, he would be able to exploit an opportunity that opened a door to Mendelssohn’s storied institution. For the time being he followed Reger’s advice and made the west gallery of the Thomaskirche his base of operations. Late in 1902 Sauer’s op. 501 had been subject to “a thorough cleaning, repair, and renovation,” when the organ received an electric blower, pneumatic key and stop action, and an additional two stops to its original disposition.27 The conversion to pneumatics evidently was made necessary by corrosion issues arising from the gallery’s gas lighting and heating. Straube himself perhaps was able to exercise eleventh-hour influence over these plans during negotiations that led to his hiring. Either way, the renovations after Piutti’s long tenure signaled a fresh beginning, and Straube would have been delighted that he now held sway over an instrument with electric winding, a modernization he had been unable to effect in Wesel. In Leipzig he could afford to spend long hours at the organ console experimenting with timbre, untethered from his usual collaboration with calcants. Over the next decade and a half, Straube’s regular practice sessions at St. Thomas became legendary, attended at his invitation by students and friends. The artist Hans Domizlaff abandoned himself to flights of fancy by recalling one morning in December 1914 when his presence was requested at the empty church to hear Bach. “I was seized overwhelmingly by a longing for timelessness in the eternal” once the music began, he recalled. “Each tempo and each beat seemed to me too limited and too mundane. The loneliness of the vast church and the incredibly small 25 Letter, November 26, 1902, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 30. Emphases original. 26 To Reger he had spoken of a possible appointment in a letter, March 16, 1903, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 46. 27 Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau 23/9 (December 21, 1902): 229.
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light on the score at the console, as the point of origin of a cosmic event, furthered the expanse of earthly space, so that it cost me time and effort to find an answer to Straube’s occasional questions.”28 Karl Hasse, among his first private students during the early Leipzig years, remembered that Straube spent long hours at the organ experimenting with details of registration, phrasing, touch, and rubato, and that his “nocturnal practice . . . once even caused the fire department to be summoned when the light from the console was noticed from outdoors.”29 No less colorful was Straube’s anecdotal remark many years later that his wife had “complained that I often came home with the seat of my pants either threadbare or frayed” over this period. “Organists must have a leather insert knit into their trousers,” he continued, “like the kind [horse] riders wear. That would last from the Orgelbüchlein through [Reger’s] BACH.”30 The iron self-discipline and uncompromising musicianship communicated through comments like these are perhaps best captured in Max Martin Stein’s telling of a legend around one of Straube’s Scandinavian recitals, received second-hand and much after the fact. “Once in Copenhagen he determined that a crucial stop needed for the left hand was present only in the Pedal division. He locked himself in the church for eight hours and practiced so intensively that, on the same evening, he could play the considerably difficult piece with reversed roles (left hand and pedal), yielding the musical effect he intended. He himself confirmed this story to me.”31 Whether such spectacular tales were literally true is beside the point. Though hardly objective, and enhanced from the distance of many years, they speak directly to a maniacal rigor and an elusive ability to grip listeners in a sound world experienced as unique and thoroughly compelling. It was not as if his appointment went unnoticed. The writer who had reported the St. Thomas organ’s renovations in December 1902 continued in the same article to announce the imminent arrival in Leipzig of “Herr Carl Straube, a son of the Court Instrument Maker Johannes Straube in
28 Domizlaff, Nachdenkliche Wanderschaft, 377. 29 Karl Hasse, “Karl Straube als Orgelkünstler,” in Gaben, 157. The role played by electric lighting in such recollections suggests how unusual Straube’s practice sessions were. 30 Recalled by Wolfgang Semrau, cited in Held and Held, eds., Karl Straube, 35. 31 Max Martin Stein, “Erinnerungen,” 37. The same essay appeared in the Rheinische Post, May 2, 1950, and in an expanded version in Held and Held, eds., Karl Straube, 66–70.
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Berlin.”32 He went on to reprint portions of a review by Theodor Krause of Straube’s sensational recital in Berlin’s Garnisonkirche the previous February, in which an enthusiastic Krause had written that “no one today can doubt any longer that Carl Straube counts among the world’s leading organists, and that in Germany he certainly is the greatest.” There was a striking qualification, nonetheless. “I do not say that he is fully formed. Nor do I believe that the grandson of the editor of the Missionsharfe [recte Reiseharfe], named ‘Brother Jonathan’ by the venerable [Gustav] Knak, believes himself to be fully formed. But I am sure that a noble, great artist will emerge from the processes of fermentation and purification, called to help the organ gain higher prestige.” As if in answer to these quoted remarks of Krause’s, the anonymous article author maintained “that the young artist has now found at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig a fitting sphere of activity.”33 The Leipzigers did not have to wait long to find out what sort of organist they had hired. On three successive Wednesdays beginning in mid-February and straddling the beginning of Lent, Straube offered audiences at the Thomaskirche a trio of demanding programs that encapsulated his sense of the repertory: on February 18, all Bach; on February 25 (Ash Wednesday), five big free works of Buxtehude, followed by the “Weinen, Klagen” and BACH of Liszt; and on March 4, all Reger, including the Sonata No. 2, op. 60; the Introduction and Passacaglia from op. 63; the Chorale Fantasies opp. 27 and 52, no. 2; smaller works from the Ten Pieces, op. 69; and the BACH, op. 46. The latter performance constituted the first major airing of Reger’s organ music in Leipzig. On that occasion Straube was able to meet Reger’s wife Elsa, who had made the trip from Munich with her husband. For them he played a private performance of op. 57, a work he did not program on March 4.34 Together with his own recent pair of Leipzig Lieder recitals, Reger regarded Straube’s thoughtful programs, which situated his work as the culmination of a tradition running from Buxtehude and Bach through Liszt, as the planting of his flag in important new territory. “Now finally at home,” Reger wrote effusively once back in Munich, “I hurry to say again many, many, many most beautiful thanks, the best, most heartfelt thanks 32 Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau 23/9 (December 21, 1902): 229. 33 Ibid., 231. Krause’s reference to Straube’s organ-playing grandfather, Carl Augustin Friedrich Victor, suggests that Berlin audiences still may have identified him that way. 34 Letter from Reger to Straube, January 11, 1903, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 41.
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from my wife and me for the Reger organ concert, in which you once again have documented yourself as our by far most significant organ virtuoso, and I declare myself in every respect completely in agreement with your interpretation!”35 This fulsome praise—colored by the nature of a mutually beneficial and productive friendship, and by the powerful impression Reger must have carried away upon hearing his music in the church of Johann Sebastian Bach—became the basis of a virtually unchallenged authority in matters of Reger interpretation that Straube carried with him for life. Others were not as unconditionally enthusiastic, or at least they represented more nuanced views. The American composer Vernon Spencer responded to Straube’s recitals with an intriguing survey of the state of organ playing in the mainstream musical and religious cultures of America, England, France, and Germany. In the former three, Spencer claimed, organ technique was already markedly advanced owing to the relative lack of good orchestras, whereas “in Germany the blossoming of the orchestra has necessitated a retreat in organ playing, and gradually a complete lack of interest among the people for the latter has become apparent.”36 Religion had abetted this situation: French Catholicism and the “countless sects” of American and English Protestantism had provided fertile soil for fresh thinking among organists. But “Germany has experienced few innovations in church since Luther, and the people evince a formal apathy in religious matters.” Spencer went on to remark that the German Empire’s conservatism had isolated it from the artistic activities of its neighbors. “For most people, organ playing means a mixture of music, hubbub, sensationalist claptrap, and tricks, but—not pure music.”37 Into this situation now had stepped Karl Straube, who “has shown that he intends to break fresh ground.” But despite a “phenomenal technique” and a big repertory, Spencer noted, the newcomer had to offer more. First, “he must emphasize the musical to yet a greater degree, since mere organ playing interests just as little as does purely technical piano playing.” Second, “the program must be considered, which, to the detriment of ‘solidity,’ would nevertheless attract general interest if it were more eclectic, and if works by French, English, and American composers were included.” For a sympathetic American, at least, Straube’s “solid” programming habits simply presented too stout a cocktail. “Not everyone can follow an entire evening of Bach and Reger, or an hour-long sequence of Buxtehude 35 Letter, March 10, 1903, ibid., 42. 36 Spencer, “Einiges über das Orgelspiel in Deutschland,” 230. 37 Ibid., 231.
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and Liszt. The inclusion of other artists, for instance violinists and singers, is likewise desirable.”38 Straube’s signature approach on Busoni’s model—a series of undiluted “historic” recitals conceived more as a quasi-systematic showcasing of the repertory than as entertainment—doubtless was received as an excessive demand on the public’s attention, and not only by Spencer. And of course, the ambitious concept forced comparisons. “Even if he does not possess the high art and taste of a Guilmant,” opined Spencer in a backhanded compliment, “we can be very thankful that he offers us something new.”39 Something new it certainly was, a brand of daring playing that continued to amass passionate supporters and vehement detractors alike. There was ample opportunity to hear him, not only in the services, but also in the regular Saturday afternoon liturgical concerts or Motetten featuring the Thomanerchor. Whereas Straube’s predecessor Piutti had improvised more or less modest preludes for these occasions, Straube immediately set about including major repertory pieces in the programs, having the titles printed along with the choral offerings. There were many more recitals over the next intensive years, “scads” in fact. After his wedding in early May and his wife’s move to Leipzig, he set out for Basel to play Reger for the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein, as he had done in 1901 in Heidelberg. As winter approached, he unleashed a second recital series at the Thomaskirche, this one with four performances from November 6 through March 4, 1904, the latter a year to the day of his first all-Reger recital in Leipzig. Still following the “historic” model, Straube now took the audience through music that included France (Saint-Saëns), Italy (Frescobaldi, Banchieri), and the United States (Dayas). As he pursued his career relentlessly now, Straube and his organ playing would rise to an almost mythical status, not only among students and critics, but also in the wider public imagination. In her 1916 novel Schicksal, the German-Jewish writer Elisabeth (Lizzie) Landau follows the path of her main character Gerda as she studies piano at the Leipzig Conservatory. Shortly after arriving there, she meets Ralph, a fellow student who invites her to a St. Thomas Motette where Straube will play. He tells her that “I find Karl Straube actually too modern. He absolutely amazes at first with his brilliant technique.” [Gerda:] “I thought that the organ by definition requires a more solemn style.” [Ralph:] “Certainly, but the new school has already 38 Ibid., 232. 39 Ibid.
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introduced a high virtuosity, in which precisely Straube excels especially. He’s a brilliant musician and at the moment wants to blaze new, impressionistic paths.” They meet at the church, where they hear the A-minor Fugue and “a cantata sung by the Thomaner, accompanied by Straube so magnificently that it appeared to her that the old master Bach himself was performing his office again, lifting humanity out of its wretchedness into the realm of the beautiful and the exalted.” Landau pauses over the “misty, almost unearthly luster” of Ralph’s eyes in the aftermath, and over “Gerda’s soul, inebriated with music and in need of affection.” He leads her away. “Outside he let go of her hand and said gently, ‘We should walk slowly so that you can regain your senses!’”40 In the fictional world as in the real one, such was the intense impression left upon at least some of Straube’s auditors, as the organist drew from his traditionally “solemn” instrument an “impressionistic” language perceived as shockingly new. A few years after Landau’s novel, another Jewish voice, the Kafka confidant Max Brod, would capture these sentiments by comparing Straube with the Talmud, which “contains every human tone, and its authors draw every stop. Like Straube—yes, here I have to think of this organ virtuoso, who has charmed me so, who has rescued me from melancholy and despair.” His artistry was nothing short of revelatory. “He played, and the organ of the concert hall sounded unchurch-like, infinite as life itself, a pulsating, wise, delicate, and turbulent holiness, unsettling through to the solar plexus. The Talmud is like this.”41 Clearly, the Leipzigers had bought into a musician of daring, one who had no use for business as usual, one able to lift his most sympathetic listeners into states of almost mystical rapture. Detractors and supporters would agree that here was no mere organ grinder.
40 Landau, “Roman-Beilage Schicksal,” 111. The episode occurs in chapter 10. 41 Brod, “Ueber den Talmud,” 445; republished in Brod, Heidentum, II/343.
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Chapter Eight
Off the Organ Bench There was a great deal more than organ playing going on. On April 4, 1904, a daughter was born to Karl and Hertha, “opus 1,” as Reger affectionately called her.1 Elisabet Straube’s life began in the tide of optimism brought on by marriage and the move east. For whatever reason, further children were not in the couple’s future, though there is evidence that at least Karl had hoped for a boy as a second child.2 For now, though, the clan of three on the Dorotheenplatz was happy and Karl was immersed in his work. He had a family and a prestigious position. He got on well with Pastor Pank and Thomaskantor Schreck. The letters from Reger arrived regularly, and Straube continued to write essays on behalf of the composer. And even with the new baby, Hertha helped with her husband’s burgeoning correspondence and managed the family finances.3 In her study of the Leipzig Conservatory during the Nazi era, Maren Goltz has proposed the term “Straube system” for the tight nexus of influence Straube cultivated over Leipzig’s art culture by the 1930s.4 If anything, that notion can be expanded. It is true that, in the decades following his move to Leipzig, he steadily worked his way into the sinews of the city’s musical institutions, over which he projected a more or less unified cultural vision with explicit elements of religion, Darwinist history, and politics—a vision that in some sense may be described as Kunstreligion, as Goltz does. Straube’s influence came to extend well beyond the official capacities he exercised at any one time to close relationships with other key cultural actors and students. But Leipzig was not the only site where Straube’s monopolization of influence played itself out. This way of operating had been foreshadowed 1
Letter to Straube, ca. September 17, 1908, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 156. 2 Letter from Reger to Straube, June 25, 1904, ibid., 59. 3 Letter, June 26, 1907, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510. 4 Goltz, Musikstudium, 218‒19.
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in his dealings with Wesel, where he had rapidly branched out of his organ loft to integrate himself into that city’s musical life. In Leipzig as in Wesel, the organ would not present a sufficient horizon for him. For his part, Straube was hyperaware of his stature and ever-accumulating authority, which he sometimes expressed in a tone that could be heard as pretentious by those who felt unjustly disenfranchised. Perhaps this personality streak was encouraged by the fact that he had struggled to rise above a troubled family background he considered unworthy of his aspirations. Or maybe it was his self-conscious Prussian nature that played the greater part, for example causing him privately to refer to his competition as “vermin” (“Gesindel”), as he evidently had written Reger early in 1903.5 During the 1930s he directed a similarly dismissive remark toward “the little stars in the heavens of the Conservatory.”6 The trait uneasily coexisted with a frequently expressed modesty about his talent sometimes received as disingenuous. Already in these first Leipzig years he struck Domizlaff as “a broody and ponderous person” who “did not believe in himself and his ability. He always doubted his accomplishments, as so often is the sign of great artistry, allowing giftedness to degenerate into torment.”7 On the other hand, what appeared to the artist but non-musician Domizlaff as an inevitable mark of greatness was experienced by an inner-circle student like Johannes Piersig as something more complex. “I have never understood,” Piersig confessed impatiently in 1978, “how the whole world could skate over his perpetual . . . ‘I am not primarily musical’ with euphemistic expressions or a shrug of the shoulders.”8 The “Straube system” would be constructed painstakingly over decades, and its architect immediately set about the task. Not long after he had assumed duties at St. Thomas, Straube fell into an association with Henri Hinrichsen, who in 1900 had followed his uncle Max Abraham as the chief executive of C. F. Peters. Their acquaintance would blossom into a productive liaison over the next decades, marked by mutual admiration, support, and evident trust. By July 1903 he had an advance honorarium of 120 marks in his pocket following on a contract to edit selected organ works of Liszt for the Peters catalog.9 That volume appeared shortly thereafter, with detailed 5 Letter, January 11, 1903, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 40. 6 Letter to Hertha Straube, July 31, 1934, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 7 Domizlaff, Nachdenkliche Wanderschaft, 377. 8 Piersig, “So ging es allenfalls,” 117. 9 Letter from Straube to C. F. Peters, July 1, 1903, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2151.
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registration indications based on the Sauer organ type and a preface that quoted explicitly from Reimann’s foreword to his op. 25.10 The Liszt collection, which amounted to Straube’s real debut as an editor on the authority of his Leipzig position, was followed almost immediately by a second volume, this one with the unwieldy title Alte Meister: Eine Sammlung deutscher Orgelkompositionen aus dem XVII und XVIII Jahrhundert für den praktischen Gebrauch bearbeitet von Karl Straube and dedicated with rhetorical flourish “to the young master Max Reger.” It offered fourteen works, chorale-based and free, governed by an editorial approach modeled largely on the Liszt edition—registrations for the Sauer organ, Walze stages, pedantically worked-out phrasing and articulation—all of it consciously avoiding any hint of academic “authenticity.” Instead, Straube brought a different sort of authority to the Alte Meister, which according to his compact preface “does not wish to serve history.” Rather, he aimed “to stimulate a more thorough engagement with the great art of the eternally young old masters,” a goal “not possible without a strong element of subjective feeling. . . . ‘As I see it’—to this, each of the fourteen arrangements brought together in the following pages bears witness. . . . As a person of the present day, I have not hesitated to call upon all the expressive means of the modern organ to facilitate an ‘affect’-based musical interpretation.”11 In closing, he singled out Max Seiffert “for the abundance of rich suggestions with which he crucially supported the preparation of this edition,” thus establishing an explicit link to the academic community nonetheless. The whole project, for which Straube earned 500 marks in July 1904, served to document and justify his signature romantic approach to old music.12 In his avowed non-academic mission to “resurrect” forgotten repertories in modern guise, the overtones of his Berlin teachers Dienel and Reimann continued to sound. And of course, the dedication to Reger was both an in-kind thanks to the composer and a way to demonstrate the supposed mirror image of the “young master” over against the “eternally young old masters.” In fact, Reger could claim a silent hand in the Alte Meister, since Straube expanded the first of Georg Böhm’s Chorale Variations on “Christe, der du bist Tag und Licht” from bicinium to trio. During the summer before publication 10 Orgelkompositionen von Franz Liszt herausgegeben von Karl Straube, Edition Peters EP 3084. 11 Vorwort to Alte Meister, Edition Peters EP 8989 (1904). 12 Letter from Straube to C. F. Peters, July 16, 1904, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2151.
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he asked Hinrichsen to delay the engraving “because I have ‘composed along’ [‘hinzucomponirt’] this alto-clef voice (how proud this sounds!) and have sent Reger a copy for his appraisal.”13 Reger’s answer does not survive, but Straube betrayed significant discomfort in a compositional role (“how proud this sounds!”) and thus turned to his friend for counsel, leaving the new three-voice variation as a silent edit in the print. “Should the collection be a key gem in this autumn’s new publications, I would of course be very proud of that,” Straube wrote Hinrichsen on July 16 from Wesel while visiting his in-laws. “I fear, however, that in your friendly kindness you have overestimated the accomplishment. For next to Mahler’s Symphony [No. 5] and Reger’s organ compositions, the volume surely has only a modest look.”14 The old humility was at work, one of many such tacit acknowledgments of his own lack of compositional capacity. Straube would go on to recommend his Alte Meister to students, and to offer further installments of the Germanic pre-Bach organ repertory “as I see it.” Even as work with Hinrichsen’s firm blossomed, Straube was busy maintaining the bridge he earlier had built to Breitkopf. Already in 1903 there were plans to work out organ parts for a collection of twelve Bach arias edited by the Dutch singer Anton Sistermans. He fished for ever greater involvement, making clear that he was “otherwise completely at your service for arrangements in the area of organ music,” obviously willing to be engaged simultaneously by Peters and Breitkopf.15 He was careful to inform the latter of his work with the former: when the Alte Meister came on the market in autumn 1904, Hertha wrote Breitkopf to say so.16 When Spitta and Seiffert’s edition of Buxtehude’s organ music appeared with Breitkopf in 1904, the publisher turned to Straube to write an authoritative statement for use in the marketing.17 All this and much more stoked a steady correspondence with the Breitkopf firm in the next decades, alongside the same sort of private advice dispensed to Peters concerning the quality of composers’ works. Into this already complicated counterpoint entered a third factor in the form of a relationship with the novice publishing concern of Carl Lauterbach and Max Kuhn. In 1902 Reger had begun a correspondence with the firm that led to a productive if uneasy collaboration. Kuhn happened to be the 13 14 15 16 17
Letter, July 13, 1904, ibid. Letter of July 16, 1904, ibid. Letter, December 4, 1903, SäStAL Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel Nr. 3056. Postcard, September 22, 1904, ibid. Letter, June 12, 1904, ibid.
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Straubes’ neighbor on the Dorotheenplatz, so that close proximity encouraged daily interaction. Countless pieces of correspondence from Reger to the publishing pair bear witness not only to the former’s relentless tempo of composing and self-propaganda, but also to Straube’s behind-the-scenes role as oracle, pronouncing on which of Reger’s works to accept and which to reject. Straube, intensely occupied with his new duties in 1903, sometimes did not respond to Reger’s always urgent letters, to the evident annoyance of the latter. Accordingly, circumstances conspired to expose fault lines in the seemingly sunny relationship between organist and composer during Straube’s first Leipzig years. Reger’s pet project of an organ pedal method, aimed as a collaboration with Straube and originally destined for Hug & Co., was eventually redirected as a proposal to Lauterbach. Straube apparently did not like such tutors, dragging his feet so that Reger reconceived the work as an arrangement of Bach’s two-part Inventions for organ trio, the original bass assigned to the feet and a left-hand part newly composed.18 But even before he had seen Reger’s work, Straube advised Lauterbach against publishing it. He issued similarly negative evaluations about other projects, too, including the Gesang der Verklärten, op. 71 (eventually appearing with Siegel), and the Beiträge zur Modulationslehre (Reger’s idiosyncratic treatise on harmony, eventually appearing with Kahnt). It was a mark of the complex symbiosis that had developed in the Reger-Straube relationship over the previous years that the composer, normally hypersensitive even to the most constructive criticism, did not react dismissively or with open anger to Straube’s assessments. On the contrary, he had grown accustomed to this dynamic since the first days of their collaboration. Thus, when Lauterbach and Kuhn informed Reger in autumn 1903 that they would solicit the opinion of outside referents before accepting his Gesang der Verklärten and the Violin Sonata, op. 72, he received that stance as an insult, even while adding, “I stress emphatically that it is agreeable to me only when Herr Straube scrutinizes the works!”19 Old habits die hard. Undoubtedly owing in part to a suave diplomacy on Straube’s side of 18 Straube later would confess to Niels-Otto Raasted, “On the whole I’m very much prejudiced against ‘organ methods.’ The path can be curtailed starkly if it may be presupposed that the pupil is a really capable pianist.” Letter, January 30, 1920, BhAE Nachlass Raasted. But in 1907 he would undertake a revision of Julius Schneider’s pedal etudes, opp. 48 and 67. 19 Letter, October 5, 1903, in Popp, ed., Briefe an die Verleger Lauterbach & Kuhn, 216‒17. Emphasis original.
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the equation, the mutual trust between a high-maintenance composer and a sharply critical performer was secure, at least for the time being. Moreover, by the time Straube had arrived in Leipzig, the liaison had been galvanized not least by the feeling of a shared noble struggle against philistine opposition. “I know that Herr K. Str. had and has such an invidious counterparty,” confided Reger in 1903 to Edmund Rochlich, composer and editor of the Neue Zeitschrift, responding to what Rochlich must have told him. “I deeply regret that difficulties have presented themselves through Herr K. Str. of all people,” he went on. “But console yourself with me: the way they scheme against me here in Munich, this is simply divine.”20 No matter their differences, composer at least clearly stood ready to close ranks with performer as a co-revolutionary. Within a few months of his arrival in Leipzig, Straube had managed to nurture energetic relationships with the city’s major music publishing interests. These liaisons would serve him well in the coming decades, by no means only with respect to Reger’s fortunes and his own work as an editor. They likewise granted him an influential yet largely silent hand in publishing programs that shaped the German music industry over the first half of the century. But publishing was not the only avenue that drew Straube out of his St. Thomas organ loft. So did choral music, and the Bach-Verein was going to be his point of entry. “Why shouldn’t it work?” With this succinct rhetorical question, anecdotally thrown out by Philipp Spitta in 1874 among friends, the door had opened to a new choral organization in Leipzig. Its purpose would be the creation of a venue for the performance of Bach’s cantatas along something like historically authentic norms. The Bach-Verein, founded in part as a counterweight to Leipzig’s established civic choruses, especially the Riedel-Verein, was led at first by the composer Alfred Volkland, then briefly by Hermann Kretzschmar, followed by Heinrich von Herzogenberg, and finally, since 1885, by the violinist Hans Sitt. By the time Sitt retired from the position early in 1903, the organization faced a serious crisis brought on by accumulated lack of interest and dwindling financial support. Spitta’s “Why shouldn’t it work?” had become a question of urgency, no longer merely rhetorical. The natural choice to follow Sitt was Thomaskantor Schreck, whose healthy interest in the Bach cantatas had led him to study these works with the Thomanerchor more frequently than had his predecessors. But Schreck 20 Letter, May 19, 1903, UBL Kurt-Taut-Sammlung Kurt-Taut-Slg./5/ Plai-Reus/R/165.
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turned down the offer of the position, igniting an internal debate about whether to dismantle the Bach-Verein altogether. The good working relationship Straube enjoyed with Schreck during his first months on the job now bore fruit. Straube would have been attentive to these rapidly unfolding events and may well have expressed interest in taking on the organization as a maverick. He had no previous association with Leipzig and no academic credentials whatsoever, something that set him apart from the previous four conductors. His choral experience, too, was comparatively limited and not particularly distinguished. Still, Schreck recommended him to the Bach-Verein administration, chaired since 1899 by Reinhold Anschütz, an influential voice in Leipzig’s cultural life who would become a critical supporter of both Straube and Reger. In solemn tone Anschütz wrote the members of the Verein in autumn 1903 to propose Straube as director, hence reason for fresh hopes. Nevertheless, “whether these hopes will be justified is another question.” Membership roles and ledger books painted an ominous picture. “These and other considerations have placed your executive board before the question whether it would be more advisable to recommend to you the dissolution of the Verein. Better an end with horror than a horror without end.” Yet “we have to be clear that the Bach-Verein does not exist on account of its members, but rather that [it] has other, higher goals to fulfill.”21 These sobering lines hardly constituted a glowing recommendation for the new St. Thomas organist, completely untested as far as the Leipzigers were concerned, hence tapped as a last resort. Wolgast later would report that Schreck “offered [Straube] . . . the direction of the Verein with the paternal, clearly well-intended admonition to relinquish the post immediately if he felt that he could not accomplish great things.”22 For the effort he was offered a token honorarium of 300 marks annually.23 Sensing the opportunity, Straube threw himself into the task with characteristic missional fervor. From the outset he shared Anschütz’s view that the organization served “higher goals” than those of a garden-variety Singkreis. Years later Fritz Mehrbach would touch on Straube’s own frame of reference when he wrote that “it is to [his] credit that the city of Leipzig became conscious of its moral obligation as a Bach city and was in a position to fulfill 21 Letter, October 1903, cited in Hübner, “Bach-Verein,” 106. 22 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 25‒26. 23 Letter from Straube to Hans Pflugbeil, November 20, 1946, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 96–99. He claimed further that the salary was raised to 1,000 marks in 1913.
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that obligation.”24 Adherence to supposed moral obligations, of course, has a way of turning questions like “Why shouldn’t it work?” into affirmative statements like “It has to work.” Straube immediately set about rallying his musicians around the great cultural undertaking that was theirs, instilling in them the ethos of the Parable of the Talents, the responsibility to use their gifts optimally toward higher ends. They were to be crusaders, their audience a congregation. “The work of the Bach-Verein is not accomplished for external approbation,” professed one chorister in 1912. “We all go home inwardly enriched after each rehearsal. Then, each member is well aware of having done his small part in collaborating selflessly on a great cultural mission.”25 Such evangelical fervor—one part nationalism, one part religious ethics, one part historicism—gave the Bach-Verein the cohesion it needed to avert the crisis Anschütz foresaw, and Straube the authority of a preacher before his flock. Though he likely would not have seen it that way, his Berlin family roots in Christian mission were never far from the surface. He did not begin modestly. His first concert with the Verein in the Thomaskirche on January 26, 1904, featured three cantatas in succession, BWV 93, 81, and 70, thus returning the organization to its original modus operandi of presenting Bach’s choral works in undiluted fashion after a lack of focus had crept in during Sitt’s tenure.26 Cantatas 81 and 70 were new to the Verein. For Cantata 93 “Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten,” Straube used the version Reger had published with Lauterbach that same year, thus finding yet another way to introduce his composer friend to Leipzig audiences. This was followed by the St. John Passion on March 29, the Tuesday of Holy Week, delivering a counterweight to Nikisch’s annual Good Friday performance of the St. Matthew Passion. At the end of his life Straube still recalled the watershed moment of this concert, in which the Bach-Verein presented the St. John Passion in an “affect-charged” style, “a romantic Bach that I offered an era intoxicated by a romantic liberation of feeling.”27 His approach attested a remarkable amalgam of quasi-historical awareness and unapologetic subjectivism, received by some as disturbing, by others as revelatory. But everyone agreed that something entirely new was afoot in Leipzig. 24 Mehrbach, “Karl Straubes fünfundzwanzigjährige Tätigkeit,” in Feier zu Ehren, 10. 25 Anon., Bach-Verein zu Leipzig. Berlin 16.–18. März 1912 (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1912), no. 4. BAL Sig. SM 2008‒117. 26 Hübner, “Bach-Verein,” 104‒5. 27 Straube, “Rückblick,” 14‒15.
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As spring turned to summer 1904, Straube could claim that he had accomplished an enormous amount. His family of two had grown to three. He had become a published editor with the esteemed Peters firm. He had given a second round of “historic” organ recitals at St. Thomas, and he had managed a resurrection of the Bach-Verein. But there was no time to relax. The Neue Bachgesellschaft (NBG) had chosen Leipzig as the site of its second German Bachfest slated for October. When Kretzschmar withdrew as music director due to scheduling and health issues, Straube stepped up, leading three substantial performances in as many days in addition to fulfilling his organ duties in the Motette and liturgies at St. Thomas.28 “I would like very much for the Bachfest to be made as interesting as possible!—A propos. Joachim is playing!” Straube reported to Hinrichsen in August, unable to conceal his delight that the legendary violinist was going to participate.29 He now found himself in the fortuitous if stressful position of rehearsing, facilitating, and performing a great deal of music in a concentrated period. On top of this he was not well, having contracted a type of neuralgia over the summer.30 The festival began on the afternoon of Saturday, October 1, with a Motette at which Straube offered the big free organ works BWV 552 and 564. Following that evening was a concert with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, concluding with the secular Cantata 201 performed by the Bach-Verein. Sunday brought the normal liturgical schedule in the morning, then a chamber music concert at 11:00 that presented works by Telemann, Handel, Bach, and others, concluding with the “Coffee Cantata.” In the evening came a festival service with the Thomaner, at which Straube contributed organ works by Pachelbel and Bach. The Bachfest concluded on Monday with a concert in the Thomaskirche that presented four church cantatas (105, 81, 70, and 66) with the forces of the Bach-Verein and the Thomanerchor, among others.31 By the festival’s closing cadence, Straube had demonstrated not only his musicianship but also, for the first time, his ability to organize and execute a complex, high-level event that reflected the city’s prestige. And there 28 UBL Archivbestand Neue Bachgesellschaft, Akten I 1897–1907, Handakten des Kirchenmusikdirektors Professor Bernhard Friedrich Richter Rep. VI fols. 16–18, communication of Georg Rietschel, July 1904. 29 Letter, July 16, 1904, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2151. 30 Letter from Reger to Straube, August 1904 (?), in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 62. 31 UBL Archivbestand Neue Bachgesellschaft, Programmheft II. Bachfest in Leipzig vom 1. bis 3. Oktober.
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was one further reward. At the meeting of the Gesellschaft’s directors on October 1, Straube was elected unanimously to the single open seat on the Board. He was by far the youngest member of an august body composed of Thomaskantor Schreck, the theologians Georg Rietschel and Friedrich Spitta, the Breitkopf executive Oskar von Hase, the revered violinist Joseph Joachim, and the choral conductor Siegfried Ochs, the latter two among the idols of Straube’s youth.32 It would be the beginning of a lifelong association with the Neue Bachgesellschaft, for which he eventually would become the influential senior statesman. Many festivals would follow, too, including the Leipzig events independent of those administered by the NBG, the first mounted in 1908 on the occasion of the dedication of Seffner’s Bach monument on the south side of the Thomaskirche. They continued in 1911, 1914, 1920, and beyond, all under Straube’s direction. But all this lay in the future. Despite the spotlight it had garnered in Straube’s short tenure, the Bach-Verein was not financially sound and did not enjoy regular grant monies from the city, as did competing choruses. As Anschütz had observed, donor support was down and had to be cultivated. So Straube drew on his connections, Hinrichsen prominent among them. Nevertheless, he would have to wait until 1909 for consistent support from the City Council, where pockets of suspicion about a “Bach cult” festered.33 It would be a mistake to assume that Straube’s distinctive approach to old music, choral and otherwise, met with anything like uniform approval. The superficial collegiality among the directors of the NBG in fact masked deep divisions and resentments that became more acute with time. Straube had little patience for conservative or “academic” performance approaches, and as a progressive musician of the younger generation with ties to Reger among others, he was an easy target for the old guard. Accordingly, he accrued enemies early on. One critic recalled that the “wild cider” and “madness” of Straube’s conceptions in the 1904 Bachfest could drive wedges between him and even the most revered figures of his youth: “The painful agitation of the venerable Joachim at the disturbing of his most holy one remains unforgettable.”34 Despite Straube’s lifelong invocation of Joachim as the principal inspiration for his own attention to polyphonic lyricism, the rift was mutual. In 32 UBL Archivbestand Neue Bachgesellschaft, minutes of the meeting of the Board of Directors and the Festival Committee of the Leipzig Bachfest, October 1, 1904. 33 Hübner, “Bach-Verein,” 109. 34 Voigt, Betrachtungen, 4.
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autumn 1906, when Hinrichsen asked him to evaluate the chamber music of the recently deceased Hamburg composer Max Lewandowski, Straube dismissed these works, pegging Lewandowski as “all-in-all talented, technically immature, eclectic in his creativity, not a musician of the future, but surely a genius for Josef Joachim & Co.”35 Perhaps not surprisingly, then, by the time the NBG produced its third festival in Eisenach in May 1907, Straube was not invited to participate, a fact that roiled Reger, who promptly boycotted the event. “I find it scandalous that Straube was not invited to play there,” he seethed to Hinrichsen. “Straube has the indisputable reputation as Germany’s premier organist. Only muttonheads don’t recognize this pre-eminent position of Straube!”36 It could well be that such disagreements on artistic and personal levels contributed to the eventual launch of the autonomous Leipzig Bach festivals in 1908. Straube would recall much later that when he had led the Matthew Passion at the first Leipzig Bachfest in 1908, where he had conceived the opening double chorus as a long-breathed escalation of dynamic and emotion, Siegfried Ochs and Georg Schumann walked out in protest.37 Straube learned quickly to rise above these would-be debacles, although they undoubtedly irritated him, causing him to blow off steam in private. When the Bach-Verein’s 1904 performance of the Christmas Oratorio did not get the critical reception that he had hoped, he complained to Reger, who tried to reassure him: “That the critics grumbled about your Christmas Oratorio performance—how can this hurt you? Lord God! You and I—our characters are too decent even to acknowledge all the secret paths that the honorable critics wander!”38 Would that the hypersensitive composer, who counseled his friend to regard attacks as free advertisement, had taken his own advice. But Straube had the courage of his convictions, and those convictions extended well beyond questions of mere musical interpretation to the well-being of German culture at large. Perhaps the most egregious example of the passionate debate that Straube’s Bach-Verein performances could awaken comes from the chorus’s first outward engagement, where on the fourth Sunday in Lent, March 17, 1912, it 35 Letter, November 26, 1906, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2151. 36 Letter, June 9, 1907, in Popp and Shigihara, eds., Briefwechsel mit dem Verlag C. F. Peters, 151. Emphases original. 37 Letter to Michael Schneider, February 27, 1943, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 230. 38 Letter, December 26, 1904, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 75.
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presented the St. John Passion at Berlin’s Garnisonkirche. In the wake of this outing, Breitkopf published a series of critical reactions assembled from the press, introduced with the pragmatic rationale that “all members . . . keep their eyes open in their own circles for vocally talented women and men, and . . . recruit for the Verein. . . . Precisely to the advantage of such recruitment activities should this collection of reviews be employed.”39 This “the-morethe-better” approach had already by 1910 resulted in a chorus of about 125 singers, presumably around the number Straube took to Berlin two years later.40 The Verein’s passionate director, who otherwise feared that criticism would erode the morale of his chorus members, here had identified a way to harness the firestorm in the press to the advantage of the organization.41 The reactions to the 1912 St. John reflect the opinions that arose around Straube’s musicianship generally in this period, stoked now by the factor of Berlin civic pride encountering a foreign chorus on its turf. In an article aptly titled “Gegen den Strom” (“Against the Current”), the critic Leopold Schmidt groused in the influential Berliner Tageblatt that Straube had “coarsened the latent drama of the material and paid homage to a misappropriated realism. The employed means of significantly rushed tempi in the Jewish choruses, heavy accents, and snapped-off final syllables resulted in yet another evil: the text became unintelligible, and the church’s acoustics rendered the solo voices of the chorus and orchestra as a compact, not always soluble mass.”42 One reviewer for the Tägliche Rundschau cited as failed “the numerous ritardandi in the final cadences, the saccharine distortions of the recitatives into arioso, the unstable treatment of the suspensions, [and] a few all-too lively tempi in the choruses.”43 And there was the withering assessment in the Vossischse Zeitung, which called out the “brusqueness” in Straube’s approach to the choruses, some of which “suffered from great unrest and noticeable tempo shifts.” The verdict: “Opinions concerning how far one may ‘modernize’ Bach will always differ. . . . But never should a chorus be so agitated that the whole emerges only as a wild orgy of sound, and that was repeatedly the case here. . . . A church or a concert hall is not a theater in which realism may 39 Bach-Verein zu Leipzig, 3. 40 Letter from Straube to Johannes Haller, November 16, 1944, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 181. 41 Mehrbach, “Karl Straubes fünfundzwanzigjährige Tätigkeit,” in Feier zu Ehren, 6. 42 Reproduced in Bach-Verein zu Leipzig, 8–9. 43 Reproduced ibid., 12.
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be honored, and there is a great difference between a Bach Passion and the Jewish quintet in Strauss’ Salome.”44 Other, more sympathetic voices rejoiced in the revelatory passion Straube brought to Bach. Some compared the concept to his organ playing, while others grumbled about ragged entrances. Some praised him as a Bach expert whereas opponents derided him as a Reger apostle. One Berlin critic exposed the undercurrent of Prussian-vs.Saxon loyalism: Straube was “a strongly idiosyncratic conductor who admittedly is more concerned to work out superficial sound effects that do not accord with the deep subjectivity of Bach. We prefer our Professor Siegfried Ochs as a Bach conductor.”45 Straube, who did not have the volatile temperament either of a Bülow or a Reger, tended to meet this kind of opposition with a cool head, alive to the ways such circumstances could be turned to his professional advantage. Despite a tendency toward false modesty and the occasional bout of insecurity, he considered himself a diplomat, well-read, cultured, attentive to big-picture issues, not easily distracted from his overall war plans by the outcome of this or that battle. But he also had been taught from the beginning that music was supposed to connect with real people, that its message was to be delivered with the fervor of the sermons he knew from childhood, not with the arid tone of university lectures. He was an iconoclast, but a phlegmatic one with a rationale, and one who was not going to self-destruct in tirades against his enemies.
44 F.v.H., reproduced ibid., 17–18. 45 Anonymous review in Die Post, reproduced ibid., 13.
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Chapter Nine
Trouble in Paradise Critical reception, however acerbic, was the least of Straube’s problems as he settled into life in Leipzig. On the surface, things continued on an upward trajectory, molto energico. In 1905 his solo career was busier than ever, with important appearances in Strassburg, the premiere of Reger’s op. 73 at Leipzig, and, at Reger’s instigation, the high-profile dedication recitals for the Walcker organ of the Munich Odeon that November. Subsequent years looked much the same, taking him as far as Riga. With the Bach-Verein, he studied not only a steady stream of cantatas and Bach’s big choral works, but also the oratorios of Handel in two-year intervals: Saul (1906), Samson (1908), Belshazzar (1910), and Judas Maccabaeus (1912). Moreover, in 1908 Nikisch relinquished the annual St. Matthew Passion on Good Friday, and it was Straube, not Schreck, who assumed that duty. Between 1903 and 1907 he had cultivated a small but loyal circle of private organ students, some destined for prominent careers themselves. But on Straube’s completion of one season with the Bach-Verein and two years at St. Thomas, a restless dissatisfaction brewed just out of sight. In spring 1905, still saddled with the financial and artistic problems of the Bach-Verein, Straube confided to Reger that he was looking beyond Leipzig to possible positions in Berlin or Koblenz.1 Either city would have offered proximity to family: his parents still lived in Berlin, whereas his brother William had taught in Koblenz since 1898. The aversion to being pigeonholed as an organist continued to eat at him, and he now was casting about in hopes of broadening his horizons. When he told Hausegger that he was considering a Kapellmeister position in Koblenz, his friend replied with encouraging yet qualified words. On the one hand, he would make “an excellent orchestra conductor” with some experience. But Straube must have called organ playing a “speciality,” and Hausegger reacted. “In no case should 1
See Reger’s postcards, May 30 and June 20, 1905, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 89–90.
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you give up or even neglect the organ,” he admonished. “For you this is more than a mere specialty: in it a good portion of your personality is rooted. Your organ playing is about something entirely new. It is destined to allot to the organ a completely new standing.” And there was a practical corollary. “I would leave Leipzig only when every prospect of beneficial work has disappeared,” he cautioned. “There, you have achieved a decisive position in the shortest time, and I think that it is more advantageous to be among the greatest artistic personalities in Leipzig than to be the greatest in Koblenz.”2 This was dispassionate and measured advice, the sort of thinking Straube respected. Certainly, Hausegger’s point about one’s obligation not to hide talent under a bushel spoke to Straube’s ethics. Perhaps it was enough to sway him from an application. Despite his restive habit of looking beyond the organ gallery to the secular mainstream, the organ was indeed “more than a mere specialty.” And so it would remain, at least for a while. At the same time other developments were afoot, including a confluence of opportunities involving his hometown that would have swift and decisive consequences. In early May 1906 Straube set out to give a pair of recitals at Berlin’s Alte Garnisonkirche, where he offered a by-now familiar diet of Buxtehude, Bach, Liszt, and Reger. Back in Leipzig he reported to Hinrichsen, “I think the recitals were just right. It is always difficult to find the right moment in such things, but this time it appears I have found it.”3 If Hinrichsen knew how to read this otherwise cryptic remark, there is no indication. Straube likely could not have known that on the very day he penned these lines, May 24, 1906, his old mentor Reimann had suffered a massive stroke and passed away, aged fifty-six.4 He was now faced with the opening of the prestigious position at the Gedächtniskirche, for which he, as hometown boy and Reimann’s star pupil, was a logical choice. Wilhelm Sauer, who had come to regard Straube as an optimal artistic spokesman for his work, threw his support behind the Leipzig organist, even though Reimann’s widow voiced what was presumably her deceased husband’s wish that the current deputy, Richard Rössler, be granted the position.5 Straube turned straightaway to Reger in Munich, who just as promptly fired off a vehemently negative (and anti-Jewish) reaction. “Do not go to 2 3
Letter, June 14, 1905, BStBM. Letter, May 24, 1906, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2151. The recitals had run a 650-mark deficit, covered by Hinrichsen. 4 Dorfmüller, Heinrich Reimann, 88–89. 5 Ibid., 89.
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Berlin!” scribbled the composer in his usual pyromaniacal style. “You would only feel unwell in this financial bustle—only financial bustle—and in Berlin you would have to deal with many more cabals and much more backstabbing than in Leipzig. Besides, in Berlin you would never have such a lovely sphere of activity as in Leipzig (Bachverein!!!!)! For Berlin the main point is lacking: you are not a Jew!”6 At least in one point Reger may well have been right, since much of the opposition to Straube’s choral approach came from the Berlin members of the Neue Bachgesellschaft. But the calculating Straube saw the opening as a way to improve his professional standing in Leipzig, a situation that had been a source of mounting frustration for him. There were those who felt he was neglecting his liturgical obligations in favor of his concert career. Such accusations caused him to react aggressively to Pastor Pank in mid-July, arguing not only for his fealty to the position and the rectitude of numerous absences, but also the philosophical point “that for the great organ position of St. Thomas, an artist of the most far-reaching reputation” was more than appropriate.7 In his opinion, if they wanted a first-class artist, they had to give him some elbow room. He had grown accustomed to such freedom in Wesel. Moreover, tensions had arisen with Nikisch, whose own favored organist Alfred Sittard (“the king of organ players”) the conductor would recommend in 1908 to fill the spot of an ailing Homeyer at the Gewandhaus.8 These and other frictions undoubtedly stoked the fires of perceived cultural differences, too, making life less than comfortable in “little Paris.” It is easy to imagine that Straube had already formed an opinion about stereotypically Saxon characteristics, expressed much later to his Rhenish wife through the lens of his own self-consciously guarded nature. “The Saxons are peculiar people,” he would confide to her in 1930, then after many years of accumulated bitterness. “They can’t be alone and must always disclose to each other the depths and shoals of their emotional lives.”9 Sooner or later, the sort of resistance Straube encountered in his first Leipzig years would teach him to believe that “all the middle Germans (Thuringians, Saxons) are biased and therefore hostile to everything really great. They preferred Mendelssohn to 6 7 8 9
Letter, May 31, 1906, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 112–13. Emphases original. Letter, July 15, 1906, in Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas,” 145. Ferdinand Pfohl, “Arthur Nikisch,” in Chevalley, ed., Arthur Nikisch, 121; Heinrich Zöllner, “Persönliche Erinnerungen an Arthur Nikisch,” ibid., 191–92. Letter, July 24, 1930, SBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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Wagner, Doles to Bach, Nikisch to Furtwängler.”10 And already in 1905, his Austrian confidant Hausegger, fresh from his own disappointments in Saxony, had warned him that “one must beware of disclosing one’s inner self in tones to that unsurpassably dimwitted rabble that calls itself the Leipzig concert-going public.”11 Hertha, too, intimated something of these discontents when she later recalled of her time in Leipzig that “it was very hard for me after my carefree Rhenish youth. But no one knows this.”12 Late in July 1906, amid these rough seas, Straube alerted Pank to the imminent possibility of a Berlin appointment. During the week of August 20 he was back in Berlin at one of his old haunts, the music division of the Staatsbibliothek, evaluating works for inclusion in a new collection of “old masters” he was to publish with Peters. By the following weekend, Straube was ready to write Pank again. He now launched a sprawling epistle that underscored the urgency of the situation upon high-level meetings with Superintendent David Henning Paul Koehler and Ernst Freiherr von Mirbach, administrative secretary to the queen and liaison between the royal house and the Reich’s ecclesial affairs. “I had not traveled to Berlin on account of these discussions, but rather for study at the Royal Library. There, Exc. Mirbach’s long arm reached me. The state of affairs is now such that, if I were to write to Berlin today: ‘I’m coming,’ my appointment would be a fact, the reality of which probably would take effect in November.” As organist he would earn a guaranteed life’s salary of 6,000 marks annually, with the promise of a portfolio eventually expanded to choral and orchestral leadership. And whether or not it was true, Straube wanted Pank to believe that Berlin’s express strategy was “to win in matters of church music a similarly dominating position to the one the Thomaskirche has long held traditionally.” He revealed likewise that he was pursuing a parallel appointment as head of Berlin’s “Academic Institute for Church Music,” and that he had extracted from Mirbach a commitment to exert his considerable influence to that end. With respect to Pank, Straube was careful to acknowledge the “ties of personal affection and admiration” that he stood to lose in a move. It was not sufficient to deter him. “Unfortunately, since I am an artist, and since the breadth of my personal sphere of influence is above all decisive in my choice of a working environment, I do not believe myself to be in a position to 10 Letter to Hertha Straube, July 29, 1938, ibid. 11 Letter, 20 May 1905, BStBM. 12 Letter to Ursula Thomm, December 21, 1972, “Gedenken an Hertha Straube,” in Held and Held, eds., Karl Straube, 211.
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turn down the Berlin offer outright.” He deftly ticked off the advantages: more students, access to “an international musical life,” the support of the Prussian court, a superior instrument he already knew intimately, a higher salary. Then, just as deftly, he rolled out four conditions for staying put. First, the St. Thomas organ had to be enlarged on par with the instrument in the Nikolaikirche. Second, the City Council had to commit the Thomanerchor to collaboration with his Bach-Verein, “namely not only in [all] the concerts, but also beforehand in a studio rehearsal and then in the dress rehearsal.” This would replace an arrangement that until then had been tenuous and piecemeal. Third, he demanded an annual salary of 5,000 marks, still a full 1,000 marks below the Berlin offer. Finally, “not for the sake of small-minded vanity, but rather for the enhancement of my authority,” a Conservatory professorship, the post that had eluded him since his arrival in Leipzig. A long-breathed postlude to the entire missive drove home that he himself had done nothing to advance these developments, that “in June, I declared to my propaganda agents in Berlin my intention not to come, but the two decisive personalities approached me on their own accord and initiative. . . . Incidentally, everything that plays an organ in Germany has tried for this position. I am the only wretched person who has not participated in this race.”13 But circumstances had conspired so that the top brass in Berlin were requesting a decision sooner than later. This was checkmate, admirably played. To Pank, for whom the Berlin negotiations came as no surprise, Straube had now lifted the curtain on everything he wanted. It was time to take Goltz’s “Straube system” to a new level, or, in his trenchant words, to augment “the breadth of my personal sphere of influence.” The “personal affection and admiration” professed toward Pank was genuine, although Pank surely sensed an equally genuine willingness on Straube’s part to pull out after only three and a half years on the job, incidentally about the same amount of time he would have spent in Wesel if the Münster position had come through in 1900. Although the story of being spontaneously sought out in the Staatsbibliothek sounds disingenuous, Straube’s aim in offering it is clear. To Pank he presented himself as desirable goods, as nevertheless resistant and loyal to Leipzig, the victim of a conjuncture not of his making. It would be far from the last time a silver tongue, unflappable patience, and a shrewd nature worked to his advantage.
13 Letter, August 26, 1906, in Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas,” 134–37.
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The immediacy of the reaction to this bold maneuver reflected Straube’s reputation and influence to that point. The chair of the parish council warned of a looming “irreplaceable loss not only for the Thomaskirche, but also for the whole of Leipzig and furthermore for Saxony.”14 Concerning the organ, Straube was asked to present what he had in mind, which he did just five days later: a new console with a manual compass extended to a3 to accommodate the modern French and German repertories, and an addition of ten to fifteen stops, all with the estimated price tag of 10,000 to 12,000 marks.15 The church council at once approached the substantial civic trust fund of Ferdinand Rhode (7,500 marks), members of the Bach-Verein (2,300 marks), the Leipzig Association of Lutheran Congregations (1,700 marks), as well as other trust funds and private benefactors, cobbling together in record time an amount that exceeded Straube’s original estimate. This energetic financing effort counters the unlikely myth that an altruistic Straube had “covered the greater part of the costs out of his own pocket,” or, as Beyerlein asserted, that “he had outfitted [the organ] by his own means.”16 By autumn 1908 Straube had his refurbished organ, now with eighty-eight stops that did “somewhat more justice to the musical reputation of the Thomaskirche,” and at which he had his portrait taken, leaning in to the console, exuding characteristic vigor and, it appears, more than a little pride in the victory. Concerning the relationship of the St. Thomas choral establishment to the Bach-Verein, Straube now had achieved a formal professional liaison with the Thomanerchor that would play a crucial role for him about a decade later when the post of Thomaskantor opened up. Almost simultaneously, once Nikisch abandoned the annual Matthew Passion to the Bach-Verein in 1908, Straube realized a more robust relationship with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, whose pension fund directly benefited from the income of the Good Friday performances.17 Yet further, when the position of Gewandhaus organist was vacated in spring 1908, Straube was chosen, at least in part because Reger had exercised his now considerable influence to thwart the outward appointment of Sittard.18 He first appeared on the Gewandhaus concerts on October 22, 1908, playing the organ part in Liszt’s Faust Symphony on 14 Letter from Dr. Freiesleben to the Rhode-Stiftung, September 1, 1906, ibid., 140–41. 15 Letter to Oskar Pank, August 31, 1906, ibid., 138–39. 16 Beyerlein, “Karl Straube,” 892. 17 Nösselt, Das Gewandhausorchester, 206. 18 Letter to Straube, March 30, 1908, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 148.
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Figure 9.1. Straube at the Sauer organ of the Leipzig Thomaskirche, 1908. Source unknown.
an all-Liszt program that featured the first Piano Concerto performed by his friend Busoni.19 Straube would waste no time here either: just as at St. Thomas, he campaigned for Sauer’s thorough overhaul of the organ including conversion to pneumatics, accomplished posthaste in 1909. The church council immediately addressed the less complicated matter of Straube’s salary, approved on September 6, 1906, not even two weeks after his bombshell letter to Pank. Finally, the wheels began to turn toward his Conservatory professorship. Reger moved to Leipzig in March 1907 to take an appointment there, so that the composer surely exerted internal pressure. Homeyer himself wrote a favorable letter, and in the Board meeting of May 30, 1907, it was decided to approach Straube for a post as teacher of organ. By July 1 when the Board reconvened, a unanimous vote approved his hire “with a per-lesson wage of 5 marks, and subsequent to the future departure from the Conservatory of Professor Homeyer, 7.50 marks; likewise the assumption of some of Herr Music Director Heynsen’s organ lessons 19 Forner, ed., Die Gewandhauskonzerte, 36.
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with an honorarium of 5 marks.”20 This was a relatively modest beginning, but at least he finally had his foot in the door at the institution where he would enjoy the longest single professional liaison of his career. As early as November, in yet another move to support Straube, Reger put in a personal appearance with the Saxon Minister of Culture in Dresden to argue for a professorship for his friend.21 Reger joined the St. Thomas parish council in this campaign, carrying the burden of proof as to why the St. Thomas organist should have earned the title of Royal Professor after such a short period of service in Saxony.22 The arguments worked, and on July 4, 1908, Hertha’s birthday, the Ministry of the Interior granted Straube his title.23 The result of these interlocking machinations was that Straube’s situation looked very different in mid-1908 from two years earlier. He had accurately calculated how to exploit the Berlin opening to maximum advantage, so that in the end he could recommend his friend and fellow Reimann protégé Walter Fischer to the Gedächtniskirche position.24 When the organ post at the Berlin Cathedral opened in 1909, he was tempted briefly again to look toward his hometown, but in the end, his newly enhanced circumstances in Leipzig were enough to hold him. It was not only on the professional front that things had changed. Two lights had gone out of his life in quick succession. The first was Reimann, whose death had precipitated the entire episode with Berlin in the first place. The second was his mother, that “clever and graceful” English woman who he clearly felt had been the anchor of his formative years and the foundation of his intellectual life. Sarah Palmer Straube died at the Elisabeth Clinic in Berlin on September 7, 1906, aged seventy.25 Nothing is known about the nature or length of her illness, which must have concerned both sons. Reger wrote him “of the so unexpected, sudden passing” of Sarah, “which 20 Minutes of the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Leipzig Conservatory on July 1, 1907, HMTLA Akten des König. Conservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig. Sitzungs-Protkolle, 21 September 1897–21 September 1915. The Nikolaikirche organist Carl Heynsen had taught since 1901. 21 Postcard, November 22, 1907, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 141. 22 Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas,” 142. 23 StAL Straube-Akten 1, Personalbogen, Verliehen erhaltene Ehrentitel: (u. Ehrenzeichen), 1. 24 Dorfmüller, Heinrich Reimann, 89. 25 Sterberegister der Berliner Standesämter 1874–1920, Landesarchiv Berlin, Ancestry.com.
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unsettles us all the more in that we knew nothing of your Frau mother’s illness,” suggesting that her decline was rapid, her death unanticipated.26 It is possible, even plausible, that Straube simply did not speak of Sarah’s health, and that part of his motivation for considering Berlin was to move closer to her. He must have struggled during this period with a confluence of events that tinged the triumphs of career advancement with the melancholy of deep personal loss. When Elsa Reger’s mother died about six months later, he confessed in a touching condolence, “Unfortunately I know from personal experience how irreplaceable this loss is for the future, and unfortunately I know as well how little comfort the words of another person afford in such a case.”27 Certainly this was the echo of closely guarded grief for an extraordinary woman. Other things were competing for his time. Reger was a constant presence, with a greater intensity than Straube likely would have preferred. Owing to the composer’s own extraordinary capacity for around-the-clock work and his ceaseless efforts at self-propaganda, his star had been ascending since the turn of the century. Straube was intimately involved, whether by offering suggestions for new works, causing changes to titles and effecting other details during composition, or obliging Reger by searching out texts for musical setting. In October 1905 he was in Essen for a Bach-Reger recital and the premiere of the Sinfonietta, op. 90, under Felix Mottl, an event documented by a photograph of Straube, Reger, and others posed around the score—remarkably, the only known photograph of the two together. Things were not always as sunny as they seemed. Privately, Straube expressed deep misgivings about Reger’s Bach interpretation, his approach to teaching, the direction of his composing, and his personal habits, which he regarded as unrefined, immature, and ultimately harmful. In the case of the Serenade, op. 95, he lamented that Reger’s attempts at simplification were robbing his art of its greatness. The musical substance had become “merely pleasant and smaller. With great [artists], simplicity and magnitude of content go hand in hand.”28 When the February 1906 Munich premiere of the Sinfonietta unleashed a sensation—in the form of first a negative review by Rudolf Louis, then a raucous caterwauling outside the critic’s house by 26 Undated letter, between September 10 and 14, 1906, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 123. 27 Letter, March 3, 1907, MRIK. 28 Letter to Karl Hasse, August 7, 1906, cited in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 113.
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Figure 9.2. (l. to r.) Max Hehemann, Theodor Müller-Reuter, Karl Straube, Max Reger, Elsa Reger, and Max Kuhn at the premiere of Reger’s Sinfonietta, op. 90, Essen 1905. Reproduced with permission from the Meininger Museen, Sammlung Musikgeschichte/Max-Reger-Archiv.
Reger’s defiant students, then a clever retort by Louis in the papers—Reger could not conceal his delight at the whole affair in correspondence with his Leipzig friend. Characteristically, Straube was not amused, finding the episode distasteful and counterproductive, unworthy of an artist of Reger’s stature. He divulged his feelings to Karl Hasse, his organ pupil who had gone to study with the composer at the Munich Academy. “With such means you certainly will not press his art through!” Straube wrote, craving grown-ups in the room. “For such a revolutionary artistic figure as Reger, street demonstrations are no good. They make the situation more complicated than it already is and benefit absolutely nothing!”29 This was the perspective of a diplomat
29 Letter, February 12, 1906, cited ibid., 107–8.
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who preferred patience and an even temper to Jacobin “street demonstrations” as means to his ends. Once Reger began making noises about quitting the Academy over such debacles, Straube jumped in, advising Hasse ultimately to withdraw from the composer’s orbit and begin studies with Hausegger that autumn. The cooler-headed, more calculating Straube increasingly regarded Reger as too impulsive, volatile, and lacking a cultured demeanor. Indeed, these were the traits he had encountered in his very first tête-à-tête with the nicotine- and alcohol-soaked composer at Frankfurt not ten years earlier. But the same personal tendencies that gave his eruptive music its distinctive stamp were, for Straube, a stumbling block to his professional advancement. “With Reger, you have stood under the beneficial influence of an inspired, instinctive nature,” he observed to the twenty-two-year-old Hasse. “Now change, go to Hausegger in order to have relations with a mind that is in fact a product of the highest intellectual culture.” Reger would not take the news well, Straube warned, because “H[ausegger] surpasses him on many levels, despite Reger’s much greater instinctive genius.” Straube also feared that Hasse’s development as an organist, carefully shaped in lessons with him between 1903 and 1905, would derail in the face of Reger’s less responsible teaching. “I regret Reger’s way of interpreting Bach’s organ works, because my personal artistic goals in this point could thereby be misunderstood as soon as Reger holds forth. I am very prejudiced against effects like those you have described to me.”30 An isolated hint as to such “effects” arises with the case of Jacques Handschin, who came to Leipzig in 1906 after a period of organ study with Reger. “He lists off to me a whole set of big Reger pieces but not a single thing of Bach he could have studied,” Straube grumbled indignantly to Hasse. “The meaning of organ playing cannot be grasped in the notion of a speed record, hare-brained nonsense.”31 The composer’s “instinctive” nature indeed had its drawbacks for an artist as considered as Straube. He knew well, too, that he had become so identified with Reger in the public imagination that Reger’s (likewise subjective and “modern”) approach to Bach might be assumed to agree with his. And he had a sufficient number of political minefields to navigate without being drawn into Reger’s own. Given Straube’s habit of mind, the difficulties transcended questions of composition, performance practice, and superficial differences in personality and lifestyle. Owing to his interests in history and probably also to his 30 Letter, March 12, 1906, cited ibid., 109. 31 Letter, June 30, 1906, cited ibid., 113.
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formation in proximity to theologians like the Knaks, things turned ultimately not on the triumphs or disappointments of day-to-day events, not on a puerile preoccupation with one’s detractors, not on the tsunami of correspondence that often poured from his composing friend, and not on Reger’s irritating habit of commanding the floor during social gatherings to run through a seemingly ceaseless string of rough-hewn jokes, an unfortunate quality he called (again to Hasse) “Reger’s Rederitis,” literally a “pathology of talking.”32 Now as later in life, Straube was more caught up in whether or not Reger was doing something that would last, that would lift him to the ranks of the “eternally young old masters” who, as Treitschke had claimed, supplied the cultural foundation on which the cohesion of the nation rested before formal unification, and whose spirit Reger’s music now purported to reclaim. It was under the influence of this high-minded idealism that he got to know the singular figure of Gustav Robert-Tornow, ten years his junior, a member of Fritz Stein’s circle he met in Heidelberg on a recital outing in summer 1905. “In my life I have never seen anyone so full of knowledge and sagacity,” he wrote to his wife admiringly. “Unfortunately, I fear that Robert-Tornow is what one calls ‘intellectually vain.’”33 For his part, the younger man was immediately impressed with Straube’s musicality and intellect. In 1909, recalling their first encounter, he gushed to Straube “that there are certain genres of composition that never will be played more convincingly than by you, so that, after you, I feel not the slightest desire even to listen to these things played by someone else.”34 Above all he meant Reger, whom he regarded as a noteworthy yet deeply problematic representative of musical modernism. During these years of tension in Straube’s relationship with the composer, Robert-Tornow must have struck him as a safe interlocutor, a person of wide interests who was neither student, colleague, nor musician. As a result of their relationship, Robert-Tornow produced two essays on Reger in 1907, the first an extended piece treating the composer in light of his principal interpreter and published as a freestanding pamphlet, the second much shorter, further developing the ideas of the former.35 In June of that year, he replied to a letter of Straube to express thanks “for your openness concerning the Reger issue. But I am happy that even you did not know how much I 32 Letter, February 21, 1909, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 20. 33 Letter, June 29, 1905, ibid., 18. 34 Letter, February 6, 1909, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 35 Robert-Tornow, Max Reger; “Zur Beurteilung.”
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have long shared your opinion!” He continued, quoting generously from his two essays. The twin issues of religion and religiosity weighed particularly on his mind. “I think that neither the Bible nor the church and dogma are necessary to piety, [even though] true religiosity often clothes itself, devoid of the appropriate vestments, most clumsily and naïvely in old church glitter. So it is with Reger.” Owing to the latter’s simplistic appeal to the trappings of religion, “his best self so seldom rises into his self-consciousness and of itself so little shapes his art. That is Reger’s shortcoming, simultaneously the shortcoming of the man, the artist, and his art.”36 It is unclear whether Straube shared or was swayed by Robert-Tornow’s opinion that Reger’s appropriation of old forms and musical gestures could only amount to, as he divulged somewhat further on, “a caricature of religion,” an “original sin” in the culture of secular modernity. But Robert-Tornow assured himself that “on the whole we are in agreement, and I ask you, if only for my part, to be silent about my view. It’s better.”37 The point about which the two were “on the whole” agreed was that Reger ran the danger of being inauthentic to himself. In conversation with the likes of Robert-Tornow, Straube’s natural critical tendency had grown into a conflicted view about Reger’s future and his part in it. The relationship had come a long way from its heady beginnings in Frankfurt in spring 1898.
36 Letter, June 24, 1907, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 37 Ibid.
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Chapter Ten
“In my naïveté” His immediate future in Leipzig assured, Straube sat down in autumn 1907 to write Henri and Martha Hinrichsen on the occasion of the birth of their son Walter, whose fate would intertwine with his own some four decades later. “You certainly are a good boy,” he began, “because you appeared so nice and punctually. Punctuality is half of life, and if you hold with that, you will be astounded at how much time you can gain for the completion of things. Just ask your father how he values and appreciates the composers who deliver on time.”1 These lines, signed “little Lisbet, Aunt and Uncle Straube,” bear witness to the warm ties that had developed between the Hinrichsen and Straube households. But Straube had another reason for crafting his congratulations in just this striking way, a little treatise on promptness, coded language that Hinrichsen perhaps was inclined to decipher. For Straube, whose work ethic had always rivaled Reger’s, was reaching the point that tested his self-prized ability to keep several balls in the air at once. Ground zero for this moment lay in the area of publishing, with consequences that would pursue him the rest of his life. At latest by 1906, at the height of dissatisfaction with his professional circumstances in Leipzig, Straube was at work on a new collection of organ pieces for Peters, this time an album of chorale preludes principally from the pre-Bach period. His earlier editions of Liszt and “old masters” had met a favorable market, helping to spread his name. The new work would appear the following year as Choralvorspiele alter Meister, offering forty-five pieces by German composers from Scheidt to Friedemann Bach, this time without registrations but with the chorale texts printed above the corresponding preludes. Other editorial interventions remained much the same as before, “as I see it.” The original concept was hardly this, however, floated in that long letter to Hinrichsen on May 24, 1906, the date of Reimann’s death. “I first thought about Bach’s model,” wrote Straube concerning the 1
Letter, September 24, 1907 (photocopy), private collection, USA.
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title, poised to derail into his typical self-criticism, “and in historic-romantic form enthused over: ‘Ein Orgelbüchlein.’ A Collection of Chorale Preludes of pre-Bach Masters.”2 But even as he articulated it, he abandoned this idea, announcing instead his intention for a volume of 100 to 200 pieces, shorter and longer, a more comprehensive survey than the Alte Meister had been. The work “is a more extensive task than I first believed in my naïveté. On the other hand, a castration of the collection is hardly possible. At best it would become fairly worthless, no more than a popular ‘album.’”3 By June 1 this ambitious plan had shrunk radically, probably at Hinrichsen’s urging. The title now would be the plainer “Orgelbuch,” not to exceed thirty pieces and chosen by considering “only the musical viability for our time. I have thrown overboard all the other ideas that at first filled my breast.” Concerning the deadline, Straube announced to Hinrichsen that he was having relevant manuscripts sent from the Berlin library “in about ten days,” and that perhaps he would have to journey again to Berlin “in order to inspect a volume at the Amelienbibliothek.” This was the fateful trip when the terms for a move to Reimann’s Gedächtniskirche were discussed. He proposed an outside delivery date of July 15, before which “I will play the whole collection to a collegium of laypersons . . . to try out the effect of the pieces so that a dull thing doesn’t emerge.”4 That rationale reflected the multifaceted nature of his thinking, which sought, as usual, to reconcile historical-academic considerations with practical ones, the marketing needs of Peters with his own interests, and the actual sound of the pieces with their appearance on the page. Straube was slowed by the meticulousness of his working method and the unrelenting questions he posed for himself. But he also hit a reef in the time-consuming negotiations between Leipzig and Berlin. His mother died in September, and the new concert season was upon him. He had shot spectacularly wide of his July deadline, and now the work drew into 1907. New commitments were made. In February Straube pivoted again to Hinrichsen with obvious frustration that he had completed to date only the first twenty pieces of his album. In his telling he had “done nothing other than work on this edition.” Now he wanted it off his desk in March, despite time-consuming preparations for the seasonal Passion performance on the 31st. “Since I know, unfortunately, how skeptical you are about the moral qualities of my, the artist’s, hand, I fear that you will not really believe my 2 Letter, May 24, 1906, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2151. 3 Ibid. 4 Letter, June 1, 1906, ibid. Emphasis original.
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communication concerning the work already accomplished. Therefore, namely as a demonstration of [my] rectitude, after much consideration I think it right to let you know that I have turned down two February recitals with respectable honoraria in order to keep my promise to you if at all possible.” This surely raised an eyebrow with Hinrichsen, but Straube pressed on in a by-now familiar tone. “In my naïveté I significantly underestimated the difficulty of the task.” And then, to iterate his untoward point: “Pardon me that I mentioned above my relinquishing of the recitals. I did it only to make clear to you my willingness to sacrifice. . . . Besides, I am very much aware that the publication of this volume in the Edition [Peters] is much more important for me than playing, even if in Dresden and Munich.”5 For one who rarely abandoned subtle diplomacy in correspondence, Straube’s approach was a bit too obviously manipulative and too prone to implausible hyperbole about “moral qualities” for Hinrichsen to have overlooked its clumsiness. He was backed into a corner. In August 1907 the task still was not completed, so that Straube had the correction proofs sent to him on vacation in Wesel, his nerves now frayed and his health weakened.6 By August 27 he had finally arrived at a title—Choralvorspiele alter Meister, evoking the sister collection—and a dedicatee, Max Seiffert, the Berlin Sweelinck scholar who had advised him on the 1904 Alte Meister and served as his “harpsichordist” (pianist) for the Bach-Verein.7 And so, about a month later, responding to the birth of Walter Hinrichsen, Straube wrote from the standpoint of his own stressful experience of having not met an important deadline, bumping up against the limits of his own capacities. Maybe the lightheartedness of the letter to baby Walter was his attempt to diffuse tensions. Maybe he had thought he could imitate Reger’s superhuman tempo. In any case he was not stupid, and one might expect that after the Choralvorspiele episode he would exercise more caution when trying to shoehorn the work of editing and arranging into his already crowded schedule of performing and teaching at the highest levels. This was not to be the case. By now, ties with Peters were too warm, and Straube’s authority amounted to too strong a market draw for the relationship to be abandoned over supposed skepticism concerning his commitment and industry. Even during the tense months of work on the Choralvorspiele, Hinrichsen continued to turn to Straube as an informal consultant. Also in 5 6 7
Letter, February 28, 1907, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510. Postcard to Paul Ollendorff, August 1, 1907, ibid. Letter to Ollendorff, August 27, 1907, ibid.
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1907 he received an honorarium of 200 marks for revising the Pedal Studies of Julius Schneider opp. 48 and 67.8 In 1909 he took on an edition of the Magnificat BWV 243, documenting his idiosyncratic approach with the Bach-Verein. That work, dedicated to Reger, earned him the handsome sum of 750 marks.9 But none of these projects could compare to the breathtaking plan that must have been hatched during 1907: an edition of Bach’s complete organ works in Straube’s modernizing guise, conceived as a counterweight to the critical edition of Griepenkerl and Roitzsch, also published by the Edition Peters. As 1907 drew to a close, Peters was ready to survey a number of key organists in Germany and abroad about how they would like such an edition to look. Would they find detailed registration suggestions useful, or general ones, or none?10 Walter Fischer, now Reimann’s successor in Berlin, argued for precise stop and Walze indications, namely because those “who are jealous of and begrudge Straube, they all—perhaps without admitting it after penance—will profit from Straube’s registrations and this noble art will become standard. . . . Everyone, even the biggest-mouthed anti-Straube critic, knows that he can only learn from him.”11 Paul Gerhardt largely echoed Fischer but pressed the point that not all organists had a copy of Sauer’s Thomaskirche instrument at their disposal.12 Wilhelm Mittelschulte, another Berlin-educated German organist living in Chicago, offered a cross-cultural argument for both general and specific approaches. The former would prove “instantly understandable” for a non-German clientele, and the latter, even though “so far there is no such thing as a normative organ,” would move Germans and non-Germans alike “to reflection and exacting study of Bach’s works. Straube’s original, ingenious way would be a good example.”13 The Guilmant protégé and New York organist William C. Carl countered that “the organs in America differ so much that it would be unwise to give the detailed indications. . . . I think also that only general indications in phrasing should be given—and not have the edition overphrased.”14
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Receipt, March 31, 1907, SäStBL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2151. Receipt, August 9, 1909, ibid. Questionnaire, December 7, 1907, SäStBL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510. Letter, December 12, 1907, ibid. Emphases original. Letter, December 30, 1907, ibid. Letter, December 30, 1907, ibid. Letter (English), January 2, 1908, ibid. Emphases original.
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Straube surely absorbed all this and more with great interest. By June 1908 he was at work transforming Griepenkerl’s volume 2 into versions that reflected his distinguished approach. He was confident that he would complete the manuscript by October 1 and wrote Hinrichsen to say so, thus making possible a January 1909 publication. Hinrichsen had offered him 500 marks for the single volume, followed by the offer of a raise. But Straube’s brooding self-criticism soon asserted itself. “500 marks . . . is an entirely sufficient honorarium for a work of questionable value, the success of which cannot be foreseen today,” he prophesied to Hinrichsen. “In my opinion, the edition will be attacked at first and will fail. We both will live to see this.” If his patron wanted to direct his money to maximum effect, he should support the Bach-Verein. “That is a project that benefits the general public and is of the greatest importance for Leipzig, more than the decorous Leipzigers suspect.”15 It is more than a little astounding that Straube would enter into such a vast project with this sort of pessimism, if indeed his feelings were genuine and not merely an instance of routine self-effacement. More consequentially, just as with the Choralvorspiele in 1906, he was spectacularly underestimating the time and energy necessary to accomplish the work at hand, to say nothing of the other volumes that would make up the complete edition. There would be no result that summer, no result the following year or the year after that. Straube’s version of “Peters II” appeared finally in 1913 and, despite repeated efforts to revisit the large-scale project, he would still be chipping away at it at his death in 1950—hampered over decades by the chaos of war, the various “authenticity” movements brought on by musicology, the always competing commitments of his schedule, and the demons of indecision. It would become the single undertaking that utterly defeated him. This defeat was, admittedly, largely of Straube’s own making. By the end of the new century’s first decade, he had installed himself so securely in so many circles of influence that some commitments had to yield sooner or later. The “Straube system” may have been effective, but it was not perfect. His personal makeup did not allow him to go about his work blindly or uncritically, at times “allowing giftedness to degenerate into torment,” as his friend Domizlaff had vividly remembered. There were many pressing demands on Straube’s time, any combination of which could easily have distracted him from his painstaking work on the ten big preludes and fugues in the first installment of his Gesamtausgabe. For one thing, his new position at 15 Letter, June 19, 1908, ibid.
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the Conservatory meant new students, new responsibilities, and new politics. With Homeyer out of the picture, Straube set his eye on the expansion and modernization of Walcker’s op. 491 in the concert hall, a counterpoint to a simultaneous project at the Gewandhaus likewise instigated by him. He moved quickly. In July 1908 Straube was awarded his professorship; that September, the minutes of the Conservatory’s Board elevated the organ’s renovation as “urgently necessary” and recorded the decision to approach Straube’s favored builder Sauer for an estimate; on January 19, 1909, Sauer’s proposal was accepted, resulting that year in an essentially new instrument that retained much of Walcker’s pipework, enlarged from thirty-seven to fifty-three stops, the old mechanical action converted to pneumatics, a generous six free combination pistons added.16 By the end of 1909, then, Straube had engineered the elaborate redesign of three key instruments in the city to his specifications: the Thomaskirche, Gewandhaus, and Conservatory organs now bore the unmistakable stamp of his aesthetic and Sauer’s workmanship. He was not finished. As soon as the Conservatory gave a green light to the work on the concert hall instrument, Straube proposed “that, after the rebuilding of the big organ, he be permitted to give his organ lessons on the same” and “to expand the teaching organ in Room 48 [Jahn, Dresden] by one manual, three combination pistons, and a Swell box,” the work likewise undertaken by Sauer.17 Straube was making a comfortable nest, and, obviously aiming to please him, the administration consented to relocate his teaching to the concert hall, even though at least two other organs had accommodated the bulk of instruction in the past.18 Already by the end of 1909 this new arrangement had become problematic, as had what was felt to be a disproportional presence of organ music in the student recitals. “Considering the fact that the organ in the large hall has been employed excessively to purposes of teaching,” read the Board minutes that December, “it has been decided to request of the relevant teachers that they limit their instruction on this organ to the utmost, and that they choose pieces as short as possible for
16 Minutes of the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Leipzig Conservatory on September 8, 1908, and January 19, 1909, HMTLA Akten des König. Conservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig. 17 Minutes of the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Leipzig Conservatory on March 30, 1909, ibid. 18 “Dispositionen,” 85–86.
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the student recitals.”19 This probably would not have sat well with the new professor, but if or how the issue was resolved is unclear. Whatever the case, he had concentrated his energies to create facilities appropriate to his pedagogical needs, a not insignificant accomplishment. Then there was the matter of his solo career. Much after the fact in 1928, Straube told Wolgast that he regarded 1908 as the conclusion of his virtuoso years, “because he was faced already with other tasks.”20 He probably learned in retrospect to recognize his Conservatory professorship and the escalation of his editing commitments as the beginning of the end for him as an active performer. Wolgast in fact said as much when he observed that “in subsequent years, the pedagogue increasingly replaced the virtuoso.”21 But at the time, Straube appeared not to have seen that transition coming, rather remaining confident that he could balance his now herculean schedule of playing, teaching, publishing, conducting, and administration. His name was tethered in the first place to the organ, and, even if he had always expressed a certain discomfort at being pegged a “mere” organist, he would not give up easily that which had been so hard won. In 1924, about six years into his tenure as Thomaskantor, he would refer privately to his organ playing as “a ruin of former glories,” an expression in which it is difficult to miss overtones of melancholic regret.22 For now, though, he showed no signs of reining in his recital schedule. To the contrary, he expanded it, notably with regular engagements in Vienna. In 1907 the Rieger firm had delivered a new organ for Vienna’s Musikverein, essentially replacing Ladegast’s 1872 instrument, the mechanism and tonal conception of which were considered outdated. The Bruckner protégé Ferdinand Löwe invited Reger to take part in the dedication of the “modernized” instrument the following March. As the composer seems routinely to have done, he replied with an energetic recommendation of Straube.23 Exhausted from the strenuous labors of spring and summer 1907, 19 Minutes of the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Leipzig Conservatory on December 7, 1909, HMTLA Akten des König. Conservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig. 20 Wolgast, Karl Straube, 22. 21 Ibid., 23. 22 Postcard to Julius Levin, March 20, 1924, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 44. 23 Postcards (2) from Reger to Straube, September 7, 1907, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 137.
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Straube seems to have passed on the engagement, but Reger had opened the door. When the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde approached him in 1909 with a renewed request, Reger again turned to his friend. In early 1910, then, Straube journeyed to Vienna for the first time for a pair of concerts on February 20 and 23, the first of them deftly combining Reger (opp. 46 and 52, no. 3) with Franck (A-minor Choral), Liszt (“Weinen, Klagen” Variations), and the house god Brahms (three chorales from op. post. 122); the second all Bach, together with a set of choruses for the women’s choir of Albine Mandyczewski, wife of the (still living) house god Eusebius Mandyczewski. The surviving correspondence around this entrée into the Habsburg capital offers a window into Straube’s meticulous working method as a concert artist at the height of his powers, but also an impression about what a high-profile debut in Vienna meant to him. By the beginning of February, he was corresponding with Rudolf von Seiller, a member of the GdM Board of Directors, to whom he announced his plans to arrive in Vienna on the 14th, nearly a full week before his first appearance. “Naturally I would like generous practice time at the organ, which is still foreign to me,” he wrote. “But any assigned time, day or night, will be fine with me.” In the same envelope were his program proposals—“preparation of the drafts have caused me headaches”—Straube having conceived two distinct versions of the first evening with a request that the Board choose the one “more suitable for Vienna.” He was unsure about his Bach choices. “The chorale preludes,” of which six had been submitted, “are popular in north Germany, but should one audition with such art in Vienna? The pieces are imbued with the same inner power of feeling and experience as, say, Goethe’s poetry, but like the latter, Bach’s chorale art demands an absolute commitment from the listeners. Perhaps Dr. Mandyczewski could advise here.”24 He wished to signal not only the primacy of the texts for his interpretation—in fact Straube had gone to the trouble of cutting out the relevant chorale strophes from old St. Thomas programs and gluing them in alongside the Bach titles of his otherwise handwritten proposal—but also the necessity of the audience’s “absolute commitment” to receive that interpretation, something he felt perhaps beyond Catholic Vienna. At the very least, it occurred to him that the invasion of Habsburg territory with overtly Protestant weaponry might be inappropriate for a debut. Likewise striking is the suggestion that the question be referred to the Brahms amanuensis Mandyczewski, who he must have felt had a better understanding of German Protestant culture. 24 Letter and attachments, February 4, 1910, GdMAW.
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Whether Mandyczewski or anyone else in the GdM orbit weighed in on these matters is not known. But Straube, sucked into overthinking the issue, reported back a week later from Leipzig that he had taken the initiative to play the entire program to a “Viennese acquaintance,” who “was of the opinion that in this case, four chorales are better than six,” and who suggested a musically effective ordering. Then, “I consider the printing of the chorale texts in the program to be most desirable. . . . I hope the Viennese will not be disappointed with my organ gimmickry [Orgelspielerei].”25 The program sheets themselves do not survive, but Straube presumably got his printed texts in the end. He set out to Vienna armed with, aside from the Romantics, a cornucopia of Bach: the Reger–Franck–Liszt–Brahms evening was but a prelude to the Bach recital, which framed the relatively innocent chorale sequence he had so fretted over (Orgelbüchlein and miscellaneous chorales) with BWV 548 on the one end, 564 and 582 on the other. Upon arrival he wasted no time. “Unfortunately, I don’t see much of beautiful women,” Straube jested to Hertha, “because I’m mostly occupied with the organ, which I now have in my power.” He continued, “On Friday [February 18] I played almost nine hours. . . . The organ is, by the way, tonally very beautiful. I have told this to everyone, because the Viennese in their conservatism regard the older and earlier as better. Will see what they say tonight. Well, anyhow, things might get comical—there are lots of voices against me. As always.”26 Vienna was no routine career step, in his view a modernist incursion on the backward tastes of a southern neighbor. At thirty-seven he still had the capacity for long hours of concentrated practice when it mattered, and he knew how to handle the big, modern organ of the Musikverein to optimal effect. He seems to have found a correspondingly positive reception and was able to meet Mandyczewski, who was “very nice to me” despite a more conservative bent. In one version of his 1946 Lebenslauf, he would note, “1910. First appearance in Vienna with rousing success.”27 Straube would return on an annual basis through the years of the Great War and beyond, playing all-Bach recitals for the most part timed around the composer’s birthday, sometimes in collaboration with choruses or vocal soloists. His schedule on this first foray to Vienna was informed by more than practicing and performing. Undoubtedly the beneficiary of Mandyczewski’s 25 Letter, February 11, 1910, to Rudolf von Seiller, ibid. 26 Letter, February 20, 1910, SBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. Emphasis original. 27 BAL Nachlass Straube 81b.
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hospitality, he studied with excitement the treasures of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, including Beethoven’s sketches and Schubert’s manuscript for the “Great” Symphony in C Major. Straube also had a relative in the city who had made an impact on him in his youth, his eccentric organ-playing maternal cousin William Henry Hechler, now at the end of a long tenure as chaplain to the British Embassy. The day before his first recital, Straube paid a visit to Hechler who was with one of his aunts, undoubtedly motivated by curiosity and the warm ties that had existed between his mother and Hechler. “Naturally we again had to go through intensive attempts at conversion of my person,” he informed his wife with annoyance. “Thank God that I remained quite cool during this. My aunt’s faith impresses me, but my cousin’s faith I call ignorance. He is a peculiar [merkwürdig] fellow. I think that his lack of knowledge of the most essential things in the history of the church and of dogma is hair-raising. But a nice fellow. A little bit too much ‘Dear God be merciful unto us,’ but that’s a matter of taste.”28 This is an extraordinary witness to the historically significant figure of Hechler, passionate international activist in Semitic and social justice causes, proto-Zionist, confidant to members of the German and British royal houses, linguist, pietist theologian, and amateur musician. Hechler’s apartment—lined floor-to-ceiling with his Bible collection, riddled with maps of Palestine and models of the Jerusalem Temple—will have elicited Straube’s description of him as “merkwürdig,” as will have his radical preoccupation with the precise calculation of timetables for Jewish restoration to the Holy Land and the second coming of Christ. Straube’s head-on encounter with the pious liberalism of the extended Palmer family elicited his clear distaste for emotion-laden religious movements he considered unmoored from rational discourse and historical propriety. In 1907 he had flatly confessed to Elsa Reger that he was not “devout.”29 More pointedly, later in life he is supposed to have warned that “all too close relations with dear God do the church musician no good,” a pronouncement surely shaped by the experiences of his youth.30 Now, confronted with his God-fearing elder cousin, he was decidedly not interested in his soul’s salvation, but it is clear that certain members of the Palmer clan were, and that he had been subjected to such episodes of proselytism before. 28 Letter to Hertha Straube, February 20, 1910, SBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. The aunt would have been one of Sarah’s full sisters, Emily or Maria. 29 Letter, March 3, 1907, MRIK. 30 Reported by Högner, “Persönliche Erinnerungen,” 166.
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And yet Straube’s remarks about his cousin’s “ignorance” in matters of dogma masked a deep fascination and admiration, candidly expressed to Hertha following Hechler’s death much later in 1931. “A figure has gone out of my life who namely in my youth made a great impression on me,” he wrote in a moment of rare candor about a family member. “The fiery impression of his personality has naturally faded somewhat. Nevertheless, I was really fond of him on account of his sincerity and comportment. Besides that he was ‘the’ favorite nephew of my mother, so that I regret that he is no longer with us.”31 The picture is one of an older cousin whose venturesome lifestyle and far-flung associations naturally “made a great impression” on a boy then approaching teenage years. If not his religion, then certainly Hechler’s linguistic skills (mirroring those of Sarah) and his bold involvement with big causes were sources of enduring esteem. It goes without saying, too, that if Hitler’s government had been aware that Thomaskantor Straube was a blood relative and admirer of one of Herzl’s principal Zionist apologists, his life would have taken a rather different turn after 1933. Beyond the time and energy required by high-profile recitals, and beyond the fresh obligations of Conservatory teaching, other matters pressed in. Once the Bach-Verein had developed into a sure-footed ensemble with sound financial backing, Straube was not content to limit its activities to old music or even to Leipzig. In 1910 he took on Reger’s difficult setting of Psalm 100, op. 106, and Krehl’s cantata Tröstung. By 1912 the choir began to take its missional fervor on the road, appearing in Berlin that year and again in 1914, and elsewhere later in the decade. Such tours presented considerable administrative and logistical tasks alongside the normal musical ones. There were the ongoing Bach festivals, both those organized by the NBG and those launched in Leipzig with the Bach-Verein. As a member of the NBG’s Board, Straube was involved in the planning and execution of that group’s festivals—Chemnitz (1908), Duisburg (1910), Breslau (1912), and so on—even if he did not participate as a performer. The complicated counterpoint between the national and the Leipzig Bach festivals inevitably gave rise to conflicts of interest, exacerbating tensions between Straube and the more conservative wing of the NBG’s leadership. One such situation arose late in 1913, when the society’s directors discovered that the third Leipzig Bachfest was being planned in close proximity to the German Bachfest, the latter slated for Vienna in spring 1914. A testy reprimand dispatched to Straube expressed “regret” at his lack of coordination, 31 Letter, July 22, 1931, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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“since you, as a member of the NBG’s Board of Directors, are aware of and participated in the decision that the seventh German Bachfest is projected for early next year in Vienna.” In the past the NBG had gone the extra mile to promote the Leipzig festivals alongside its own. “We would regret having to refrain from that this time.” Was it not possible to postpone Leipzig until the autumn, “for our common interest?”32 Straube summoned his full diplomatic powers in responding to what he could regard only as a spiteful threat of non-support. “Since in all these questions I possess no competence as a more or less extra-artistic nature [außerkünstlerische Natur],” he wrote in his maddeningly imperturbable way, “I have forwarded your letter to the Executive Committee of the Bach-Verein. . . . I am too much an ‘outsider’ in Leipzig’s musical life to be in a position to judge whether or not a postponement of the Leipzig festival is possible.”33 To claim little or no influence after a decade in residence was blatantly disingenuous, but of course it drove home the point that he was not willing to compromise the autonomy of his Bach-Verein. The Leipzig Bachfest followed on June 4–6, after the Vienna festival of May 9–11. He was anything but an “außerkünstlerische Natur,” as he would demonstrate repeatedly over years to come. Meanwhile, Peters was not the only publisher knocking at the door. Breitkopf had continued to draw on him in an advisory capacity, and in spring 1911, when the copyright restriction on Wagner’s works expired, the firm approached him to arrange several opera excerpts for organ solo, a project that did not at all speak to his tastes and which he promptly referred to Gerhardt in Zwickau.34 Besides, he surely was nervous. At just around this time, Peters had ramped up its publicity campaign for the anticipated Bach edition, collecting some 5,000 addresses of German organists and about 1,750 American ones to which the firm directed a circular offering subscriptions to the complete edition “in 9 bound volumes at 6 marks (at different intervals), the work to be completed in about three years.”35 Since Peters appears not to have issued a contract to Straube until October 1912, and then only for the delivery of volume 2, the whole ambitious plan presumably rode on little more than good faith. That path may have been warranted given the genuine personal relationships at work, but it proved disastrous 32 33 34 35
Letter, November 7, 1913, SäStBL Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel Nr. 3057. Letter, November 19, 1913, ibid. Letters to Straube, July 1 and 22, 1911, ibid. Letter (undated, English), 1911, SäStBL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2151.
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in practice. Not least owing to the host of issues and obligations enmeshing him, Straube was destined to repeat the episode of the 1907 Choralvorspiele, this time on a much grander scale. Astoundingly, instead of discerning the limits of his capacities and balancing realistically the demands of his schedule with new publishing commitments, Straube now resolved to take on more, not less. In the midst of ongoing deliberations concerning Bach’s organ works, he had decided to edit one of his signature pieces, the St. John Passion, and was seriously considering a parallel edition of St. Matthew. In autumn 1910, having already missed his original target date for the delivery of the organ volume 2, Straube announced to Hinrichsen his fulsome agenda for the next year. The John Passion would come by the middle of April 1911, volumes 1 and 2 of the organ works by that summer. His competitive nature betrayed a note of urgency concerning the latter, “since otherwise I am in danger that someone else . . . will bring out a selection [of works] on my principles in England or America.” He had decided on the methodology. “At the top, the musical text with phrasing, dynamics, agogic instructions, fingering; in the notes, general remarks and registration instructions. Peters continues to offer all the previous original volumes of Griepenkerl and Roitzsch, so that there is something for everyone, whether one wants the thing in its original form or à la Straube.”36 As far as the Matthew Passion was concerned, he claimed to be “undecided,” not because of workload, but rather owing to the many performance-related questions for which he as yet could offer no satisfactory answers. Then, a lapidary closing cadence, unmistakably “à la Straube”: “As you see, seemingly self-evident matters always have a catch, which compels even the intellectual day laborers, as I am in comparison to the great figures, to contemplation and humility.”37 It was a remarkable, impossibly bold scheme, born of confident optimism and destined to go nowhere. To most reasonable people, his plan of attack surely had begun to look like a suicide mission. By December, faced with the financial and administrative exigencies of the approaching second Leipzig Bachfest of 1911, Straube was ready to play hardball with Hinrichsen; he now had projected editions of the Christmas Oratorio and Handel’s Belshazzar added to his inbox, the latter studied with the Bach-Verein earlier that year. He remembered that two years earlier Hinrichsen had offered to raise his initial honorarium of 500 marks for the Bach organ volume 2, a circumstance 36 Letter, September 8, 1910, ibid. 37 Ibid.
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he had tried to steer to the advantage of the Bach-Verein. Now, in response to Hinrichsen’s apparent effort to accelerate the production of the organ edition to four volumes by spring 1911, he put his cards on the table, offering full delivery in exchange for the publisher’s financial backing of the Bachfest. “We are speaking of the high sum of 3,000 marks,” an amount that “surpasses only slightly the honorarium you had proposed.” Further, he “would be delighted to submit the scores of the Passions, the Christmas Oratorio, and Belshazzar, in case you would want the latter at all, for modest honoraria, perhaps 300 marks for each, plus the harpsichord [continuo] honorarium.”38 Clearly, Straube was desperate to achieve financial backing for his Bachfest, for which he had likewise applied to receive civic funds. Just as clearly, he was willing to use the full extent of his leverage to get it—hardly the strategy of a mere außerkünstlerische Natur devoid of influence. In return, he would commit himself to an array of publishing targets that he must have known were impossible to meet, or at least so it appears in retrospect. He pledged the Christmas Oratorio materials by January 1912, and, even if the city’s grant monies for the Bachfest did not come through, “I hope to have two volumes of organ works to you by May 1.”39 Accordingly, in January 1911, fresh from the exertions of the Christmas and Epiphany liturgies, Straube sat once again in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, studying “in quiet reverence” the autographs of the Bach Passions and the Trauerode BWV 198 for insights to incorporate in his projected editions. Grasping to find some justification for his pattern of deferment with Hinrichsen, Straube was struck by Bach’s tight schedule between the notation and performance of new works. He quipped to Hertha, “You see, even in the good old days things were sometimes done at the last minute.”40 Peters prepared to announce subscriptions for the organ works in Straube’s arrangement, now apparently convinced that he would hold to schedule. Subsequent correspondence shows how misplaced that conviction was. Target dates came and went even as new commitments were made. 1911 gave way to 1912 when, incredibly, an intervening project arose: Straube’s edition of Reger’s so-called Little Organ Mass, nos. 7–9 of the Twelve Pieces, op. 59, “edited in agreement with the composer” as its title page announced. The work occupied him in early February 1912 and appeared in print that July, an arrangement cut to the specifications of his St. Thomas organ and 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Letter, January 23, 1911, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 22.
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departing so starkly from Reger’s original score that it was to become a touchtone for criticism well into the late twentieth century and beyond.41 Whereas the chimera of the various Bach and Handel choral arrangements “à la Bach-Verein” seems to have been shelved, work on the Bach organ edition continued, itself now downsized to the more wieldy single volume. By autumn 1912 Straube could report that the elusive volume 2 was “essentially” complete, setting a final delivery date of September 23.42 This too proved overly optimistic, but on October 1 Hinrichsen read that “the work is just now finished. I will bring you the manuscript . . . tomorrow morning.” All in all, the result had required about five years of missed and renewed deadlines, surely testing Hinrichsen’s long-suffering generosity to the utmost. Now professing himself “flush with embarrassment,” Straube moved to broach the delicate issue of the honorarium. “I would like to ask for two thousand marks. Actually, I’m astounded that pen and ink can write such a figure so fluently. . . . I dare to formulate this request, first because it is commensurate to the time required for the labor, second because the sum of my entire artistic life’s work is set down in this volume, [and] third because I can discharge some of the pecuniary obligations that I have taken on for artistic reasons over the last years.” He assured his benefactor that he was presenting a one-time demand, “and therefore I ask you to be forbearing with me, a poor thief.”43 Straube surely was aware of how easily his request could be received as an importune advance on the patience and professional kindnesses of Hinrichsen’s firm throughout the ordeal, particularly since the timeline had grown to such dimensions due to the editor’s inability to manage his own bewildering thicket of obligations. Despite Straube’s claim of documenting his “entire artistic life’s work,” the result was markedly more modest than the time allotted, and, as with the earlier Choralvorspiele episode, he could not help but let Hinrichsen know that he had lost money in the process. His 1907 gratulatory letter at Walter’s birth must have rung in his ears. The contract for the publication that came to be known simply as “Peters volume 2” was issued on October 9 with an honorarium of 2,000 marks and a stipulation, reflecting the experience of the last years, that required Straube to accomplish any revisions within a month “without additions or 41 Letter from Straube to Hinrichsen, February 13, 1912, SäStBL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2151. 42 Letter to Hinrichsen, September 9, 1912, ibid. 43 Letter, October 1, 1912, ibid.
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changes.”44 The work appeared early the following year. In the end Straube had not heeded the advice of his international colleagues to be sparing with phrasing and general in registration indications, instead delivering a score overflowing with subjective detail, phrasing that aimed to demonstrate the radical independence of contrapuntal lines, and registrations—the word orchestration may be more apt—that hewed closely to the St. Thomas Sauer organ. In an approach dissimilar to that of his previous editions, a wealth of prose footnotes spoke to the character of the music, often couched in highly evocative language and laced with references to the Wagner and Brahms orchestras (BWV 545 and 534 respectively), Novalis (536), Rubens (547), Goethe (548), and others. Suggestive Italian tempo and affect indications, precise instructions as to touch, the performance of ornaments, the bending of the pulse, the playing on two manuals with a single hand, the manipulation of the dynamic scale, the psychology of the colors lent by the registrations, all of it advanced with an unapologetic subjectivity—with all this and much more, Straube documented the magic of his acclaimed Bach performances as exactly as the medium of notation allowed. It was the sort of laser-sharp attention to detail that must have been characteristic of his private teaching, delivered with all the conviction of a pietist preacher. In pursuing this strategy he may have sought to one-up not only his own previous editions of organ music, but also his idol Bülow’s edition of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, likewise outfitted with a host of clarifying performance notes. He would never again achieve such rich detail in print. It had been an exhausting effort, but his enthusiasm remained undampered. Somehow, Straube managed to bring out an edition of Handel’s Dettinger Te Deum in 1913, an arrangement reflecting his performance with the Bach-Verein that year.45 Furthermore, he wasted no time in announcing that he would begin work editing the St. Matthew Passion, a project like so many others never realized. That the chaotic path to the 1913 Bach edition appears not to have disturbed the warm relationship Straube enjoyed with Peters is surely a witness to Hinrichsen’s great respect for him on professional and personal levels.46 On the other hand, the sources hardly support the one-dimensional portrait advanced by traditional Straube 44 Contract, October 9, 1912, SäStBL VEB Edition Peters, Musikverlag Leipzig, Nr. 3366. 45 Straube remembered a performance in May 1912, but Hübner cites 1913 and a repeat in 1914. BAL Nachlass Straube 81a; Hübner, “Bach-Verein,” 111. 46 Lawford-Hinrichsen, Music Publishing, 83–85.
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hagiography of a consistently clear-headed artist who pursued his musical goals single-mindedly. The reality was messier and, for someone of lesser stature and diplomatic ability, could easily have ended badly. Still, the drawn-out negotiations with Hinrichsen would pale in comparison to the endlessly complicated dance initiated between Straube and the Leipzig City Council over matters of status, finances, and ideology during the years ahead. For now, though, discontents were brewing in an entirely different quarter.
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Chapter Eleven
Emmi Leisner Around 1910 the “Straube system” had yet to unfold to its full extent, but Straube already worked at a breathless pace on several fronts simultaneously, not without noticeable bumps along the way. One question naturally arising concerns family life on the Dorotheenplatz, which was intensely guarded at the time and only sporadically illumined in the surviving sources. Nevertheless, the dynamics of hearth and home unquestionably constituted another of the many balls Straube was trying to keep in the air. His marriage was seven years old in 1910, Elisabet aged six. The received picture has been one of an essentially sunny home life. But troubles in the marriage were going to arise, whatever their ultimate causes. Karl’s overblown schedule demanded a great deal of time away from home, in addition to long stretches of uninterrupted practice, study, score preparation, and correspondence. The interlocking of his many commitments and his stubbornly ambitious nature meant that dedicated vacation time, when it arose at all, was perpetually threatened. Hertha and Elisabet seem often to have traveled independently, leaving Karl with his work or to take his hiking holidays by himself. He had not experienced an ideal domestic environment in Berlin with his unengaged or perhaps even belligerent father, a circumstance that inevitably shaped the expectations he brought to his own home life. Now he was approaching forty, at the top of his game as an organist, thoroughly ensconced in a highcaliber musical culture. It would have been extraordinary if the stress of his professional life had not spilled over into the home. The trouble began innocently enough. In autumn 1909 Straube studied the Mass in B Minor with his Bach-Verein, mounting on November 15 what he recalled with pride as the “first uncut performance” in Leipzig.1 He had hired a new alto soloist called Emmi Leisner, a gifted student in Berlin and the daughter of a musical family in Flensburg on the Danish border. At twenty-four, she was twelve years his junior. Soon, Leisner would go on 1
BAL Nachlass Straube 81a.
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to a distinguished opera career, and in an unpublished biographical essay drafted much after the fact, she pegged Straube’s B-minor Mass performance as her professional departure point.2 He continued to follow her development sympathetically and indeed actively, engaging her again for the May 1911 Leipzig Bachfest as soloist in the St. John Passion. “In my opinion,” enthused one writer in a review of that event, “the alpha and omega in the art of performing religious music consists precisely in the cloaking of passionate excitement instead of recklessly putting it on parade. . . . Fräulein Leisner seems to me to have approached this ideal most closely.”3 Two months later she was back in Leipzig. Hertha and Elisabet were on holiday at the North Sea island resort of Norderney. Karl was occupied with preparations for his Bach organ edition and, if his communications with Hinrichsen can be believed, the St. John Passion and possibly a second organ volume. He had not yet left town for his own vacation in Garmisch. “Fräulein Leisner, the alto, is here to study Lieder with me,” he revealed to Ollendorff at Peters. “I understand absolutely nothing about this, but she imagines partout that she can learn something from me. Strange creatures, women. The older I get, the less I understand the ladies.” She would appear at the Straube apartment after hours, and Ollendorff was issued an invitation to join in. “For instance, would Saturday evening be alright with you? Let me know, since I have no idea what the young lady is doing otherwise and would have to inquire with her.”4 There was a touch of forced insincerity in the language, announcing a young woman showing up from out of town, ostensibly on her own initiative but surely not without Straube’s encouragement. A pressing workload just before a much-anticipated holiday hardly made for a natural environment to receive guests, let alone counterintuitive ones wanting a course in song interpretation. He was transparent with Hertha as well, at least on the surface. “As I wrote you, Emmichen has arrived here in the meantime,” he reported six days later, intent to put forward the image of a no-nonsense teacher. “I’ve had nothing but a big fuss with her. Naturally I have sharply criticized and groused, sometimes I commented on every note—she was ‘offended’—you know how young lady artists are. Today it went passably for the first time and she has gotten used to my tone. I just find it odd. If she comes to study with me, she surely can’t 2
Emmi Leisner, “Gesang ist Dasein,” typescript, StAF XII Ms E. Leisner 3118, 3. 3 Voigt, Betrachtungen, 13. 4 Letter, July 20, 1911, SäStBL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2151.
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expect praise. I don’t understand it.”5 But the two got on much better than that vignette seemed to claim, to the extent that, when word of the death of Emmi’s brother Edvard reached him in Garmisch, Straube penned a touching condolence letter, still using the German formal pronoun Sie. Plausibly echoing his own experience and closely guarded regrets, he observed, “This is then the most beautiful, I should say most human, task of art, to help us overcome life’s dissonances, to reveal new aspirations, to set new tasks beyond grief and pain in the creative work of the artist.”6 It was a moving postlude to their July encounter in Leipzig. Hertha likely had made Emmi’s acquaintance during her first professional appearances with the Bach-Verein. Several undated photographs reveal that Emmi and the Straubes were socially friendly. It is easy to imagine that Leisner looked up to Straube and his bold musicality as a source of authority. For his part Straube discovered the sophisticated musical partner his marriage had not given him. The liaison likewise presented a welcome opportunity to exercise himself as a pianist, as he had not done intensively since his Wesel years. The two eventually formed an unlikely duo, presenting hefty song recitals over the next decade, well into Straube’s tenure as Thomaskantor. In 1913 and again in 1914, he took her along for his annual recitals in Vienna. They began to appear in Berlin, Breslau, Dortmund, Oslo, Copenhagen, and other centers, not overlooking Emmi’s hometown of Flensburg. There, on February 2, 1913, Straube made his debut on the magnificent Maaß/Schnitger/Marcussen organ of the Nikolaikirche with signature pieces from his repertory in a program that included songs of Bach and Dvořák interpreted by Leisner. The more modest musical circles of faraway Flensburg were star-struck by a visit from no less than the organist of the Leipzig Thomaskirche, whom they had heard two nights before at the piano, accompanying the hometown girl in a demanding program of Schubert, Brahms, Strauss, and others. “As far as I can remember,” remarked one eyewitness, “it was the first time that a really great master of the organ has played for the Flensburg public.”7 Of course, not everyone was thrilled, and some were more than a little puzzled. By the century’s second decade, Straube’s reputation as a top-tier 5 6 7
Letter, July 26, 1911, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. Letter, August 12, 1911, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 6, 54–55. “Aus dem Musikleben: Kirchenkonzert Emmi Leisner–Prof. Straube,” review of Leisner and Straube at the Nikolaikirche, Flensburg, February 2, 1913, unknown newspaper and author, StAF XII Ms E. Leisner 3118.
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Figure 11.1. (l. to r.) Karl Straube, Hertha Straube, and Emmi Leisner, undated photo. Reproduced with permission from the Stadtarchiv Flensburg.
organist with modernist sensibilities and, to some extent, as a venturesome choral conductor was secure. The wider public generally did not know him as a pianist. So, when the virtuoso organist of the Thomaskirche began parading about the stages of middle Europe with Emmi Leisner, a singer installed in 1913 as one of the stars of the Berlin Royal Opera, heads understandably turned. His approach to the piano was as unconventional as his organ playing, anything but business as usual. One Flensburg writer cited the opinion of a frustrated Berlin critic that “one could not understand why Emmi Leisner had not rid herself long ago of this piano accompanist.”8 Others reported a pianism oriented to the extremes of overwrought restraint on the one hand and impulsive emotional outbursts on the other, a description redolent of Straube’s most controversial Bach-Verein performances, his organ interpretation, and, strikingly enough, the pianist Max Reger. A Viennese observer came close to alleging a kind of musical misogyny in remarking that, “even with all his mastery, Straube is a tyrant at the piano who 8
“Emmi-Leisner-Lieder-Abend,” review of Leisner and Straube at the Kolosseum Flensburg, February 20, 1918, unknown newspaper and author, StAF XII Ms E. Leisner 3118.
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Figure 11.2. Leisner and Straube at work, undated photo. Reproduced with permission from the Stadtarchiv Flensburg.
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roughhouses [hofmeistert] the singer and wrenches her to conform to his will, instead of proceeding with her in harmony as a unit.”9 And in response to a November 1917 performance of Brahms’s “Auf dem Kirchhofe,” op. 105, no. 4, in Danzig, a critic similarly grumbled about the “otherwise excellent piano accompanist Professor Karl Straube,” noting that one would have wished the prelude played in a character suggested by the text, “not thrown onto the piano in a rampage, so to speak.”10 Straube had much more to worry about, though, than the reservations of this or that critic. Given the nearly impossible highwire act that was his career and the attendant strains placed on his home life, the Leisner liaison was a powder keg, a disaster waiting to happen. The flashpoint came in mid-1915, when Straube’s relationship with the singer caused a break with Hertha. Straube confided in Georg Jäger, a doctoral student at the University of Leipzig with whom the family was friendly, and who eventually was put in the unenviable position of mediator between him and his wife. On August 3 Straube left Leipzig for a holiday in Eisenach, imploring Jäger to meet him there in order “to talk through the letter with you,” an apparent reference to a communication that disclosed the gravity of his domestic situation.11 Emmi likely rendezvoused with Straube in Eisenach as well, not least because the two were scheduled to present a song recital at the Stadttheater there on September 19. When Jäger’s reply was not forthcoming, Straube impatiently turned to him again on the 9th. Hertha likewise had gone silent. “This is surely quite understandable. The seriousness of the entire situation has probably just now become clear to her. Despite everything, if one would approach the matter with composure, calmly and simply, perhaps it could be resolved reassuringly even for her. Emmi Leisner sends you a thousand sincere greetings.”12 He thought perhaps he could get through to Hertha via Elisabet, writing his eleven-year-old daughter the same day to narrate a seemingly carefree
9
Review of Leisner and Straube at the Musikvereinssaal, Vienna, at an unknown date, unknown newspaper and author, StAF XII Ms E. Leisner 3118. 10 Prof. Dr. C. Fuchs, “Liederabend,” review of Leisner and Straube at the Sporthalle, Danzig, November 28, 1917, unknown newspaper, StAF XII Ms E. Leisner 3118. 11 Postcard, August 2, 1915, BhAE. 12 Letter, August 9, 1915, BhAE.
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holiday in Eisenach.13 Five days later, having received an acrimonious response from his wife and a concerned one from Jäger, and preparing to leave Eisenach for a stay in Berlin (where Leisner then lived), Straube wrote Jäger even more revealingly. Of Hertha, “she measures large values with small yardsticks and makes herself unhappy for the future, only because she trusts nothing to the momentum of the emotional capacities.” He now implored Jäger “to present things to my wife as you see them, and as they actually must be seen. It would surely be important if you should suggest to her, or even explain very clearly and explicitly, that my speaking about these matters is far removed from any animosity against her. Perhaps she would develop a greater trust toward our negotiations.” Whatever the substance of the latter, he pressed forward, underscoring his moral rectitude. “You are aware, are you not, that all the previous views my wife has heard second-hand about these great conflicts are informed by the notion that I am one of the most immoral, inferior people to roam under God’s sun. I think that at first she will be quite astounded that other people think and judge very differently.” Despite the difficulties, he let Jäger know that a ray of sunlight had pierced the darkness of his isolation. “The time here was as lovely as you can imagine. I will likely have the fortune of being able to spend the rest of the holiday with the woman who, more and more, means the world, the heavens, and everything to me.”14 The precise meaning of many points in this telltale letter are, and will remain, equivocal. It was the talk of a man whose marriage had been led to the brink, whose imbroglio had begun to leak to “second-hand” players, and who, at least as this moment, appeared to want out with an amicable settlement. Eleven days later he once again dispatched a letter to Jäger, now from Berlin, the situation having escalated. His free time nearly spent, Straube was returning to Leipzig in less than two weeks. Jäger, apparently hesitant to embroil himself in sensitive domestic affairs, had not yet opened a channel with Hertha, who with Elisabet was vacationing at the time in Thuringian Finsterbergen. “I hear nothing more at all from my wife, and unfortunately also not from Liese,” an exasperated Straube confessed. “I am mired in a chaos of feelings and stand directly before the weightiest decisions. I don’t believe that E. L. can be tied to me without being hurt inwardly. I will surely have the duty of searching out a husband for her who can make this
13 Letter, August 9, 1915, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 24–25. 14 Letter, August 14, 1915, BhAE.
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woman happy. She is really wonderful, both inwardly and outwardly.”15 On September 6 he was back in Leipzig, wrenching his concentration back to a necessary focus on his autumn duties, including a high-profile recital in Prague that October. Only three days later, the full weight of the affair bearing down on his conscience, Straube composed lines to his former Danish pupil Niels-Otto Raasted to congratulate him on his wedding. Only the initiated (Raasted not included) would have been sensitive to their overtones. “It is such an important matter,” he pondered on paper, “when two people finally come together to walk life’s paths joined in loyalty, that it is difficult to find the right words. But I hope that marriage will give both of you what it should, that you both will find, in commitment and devotion to each other, the true gain brought by an enhancement of your own spiritual personality.”16 Such otherwise benign turns-of-phrase like “finally come together” and “that marriage will give you both what it should” reflected their author’s own conflicted circumstances. Not two weeks later, Straube was back on the rails to Eisenach for his Lieder recital there with Leisner. The two had more on their minds than the generous servings of Schubert, Brahms, and Strauss on their program. Just how and when the indiscretion ended remains unclear. Back home after the recital, he pivoted again to Jäger, thanking him for communications that reached him in Eisenach and then in Leipzig. “The first came on a day that brought a high, the second at a moment of ruin. I am busily trying to attain some virtuosity on the resignation trumpet, but it’s a damned hard technique. Oh well.”17 It had not been a banner year for home life on the Dorotheenplatz. Nor was his collaboration with Leisner a thing of the past: the two would continue their concertizing for some time yet. The attitudes of his wife and daughter to this détente are unclear, but the marriage ultimately remained intact. The portrait of the ideal family was left unscathed in the pages of history, the tryst consigned to a dark closet forever sealed. After a long, celebrated career, Leisner would withdraw to Kampen on the island of Sylt just west of Flensburg and die there in 1958. She never married. Among her papers are several well-preserved photographs of Karl Straube, memories of better times.
15 Letter, August 25, 1915, ibid. 16 Letter, September 9, 1915, ibid. 17 Letter, September 27, 1915, ibid.
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Chapter Twelve
Deaths and Transfigurations At Epiphany 1913 Straube celebrated his fortieth birthday and his tenth anniversary in Leipzig. He had finally seen his “Peters II” edition into print, even if as a mere torso of a much more ambitious original plan. The coming months were to bring important recitals in Breslau and Copenhagen, the latter opening onto a long and productive relationship with the Scandinavian countries and a warm association with Carl Nielsen. Johannes Straube, the father with whom he evidently had maintained only the most distant of relationships, would die on September 7, 1913, aged seventy.1 Karl and William surely were struck by the extraordinary coincidence that their father’s death fell on the seventh anniversary of their mother’s own, and that she likewise had succumbed at seventy. Aside from what his father’s decline and death may or may not have meant to him, Straube in 1913 largely enjoyed the calm before the storm—not only with respect to the domestic tempest that would arise from the Leisner liaison, but on other fronts as well, and in even more disturbing ways. The gears of impending change did not turn slowly or elegantly. The most glaring example, of course, was going to be the great European conflagration unleashed by the assassination in Sarajevo of the heir to the Austrian throne on June 28, 1914. The German Empire under Wilhelm II—allied with Austria-Hungary, maniacally concerned with its newcomer status on the stage of European and colonial power and possessed of expansionist aims—had pursued policies that alienated it from Russia to the east and France and Britain to the west. By August 3, 1914, the “encircled” Germans were at war on both fronts, now marching through a neutral Belgium to France and into Russia to score important initial victories, fanning the flames of domestic patriotism and visions of an emergent world power in middle Europe. Political mechanics and rhetorical flourishes aside, arguably the most dangerous aspect of the 1
Sterberegister der Berliner Standesämter 1874–1920, Landesarchiv Berlin, Ancestry.com.
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conflict at its outset was a widespread failure to grasp what a different sort of war this was going to be. As attentive to political and cultural history as he was, Straube did not foresee one decisive and gruesome fact, namely, that the industrial know-how which had produced the modern hyper-expressive organ was the same force that would enable a sustained war of mechanized killing, issuing in unprecedented loss of life, societal disruption, and, in the end, a world fundamentally transfigured. Like many in the educated middle classes, Straube was immune neither to the wave of enthusiasm following the first offensives nor to the idea that the moment had come for Germany to seize its destiny of greatness. He at first was not called to serve and was left to ruminate on events from afar. When positions in Warsaw and Ivangorod fell to the Central Powers in August 1915, he wrote to his daughter with seeming lightheartedness, “Have you put out a flag? I hope so! Because I certainly have not, and one of us has to fulfill this responsibility!”2 Virtually at the same time he betrayed an optimism tinged with the realization that more was in store. “Do you see an end? I still don’t,” he confessed to Georg Jäger, venturing that “peace will come in autumn 1917, not earlier.” The German nation would triumph. “No sacrifice is too great so long as our people are preserved in their singularity and personality. The wholeness and strength of the people can of itself replace that which is lost, perhaps in individually different form, but qualitatively in the same potency, without doubt.”3 The goal was the staking out of a middle Europe under German dominance, from which could be defended the ideals of the German character against the materialism and barbarism of the encircling Entente powers. “The state is doing everything to preserve our artistic culture,” he had assured Raasted that summer, “insofar as this can be compatible with the greater task of the national defense.”4 Straube and his compatriots had only begun to witness what loss was going to look like and what kind of sacrifice loomed on the horizon in the name of “the greater task.” Already by 1915 there were food rations. The popular myth of national unity concealed intense malcontent particularly among the lower classes, a situation leading to an epidemic of disruptive labor strikes. Transportation became unreliable. Shortages of necessary goods like soap and coal coincided with the so-called Steckrübenwinter (“turnip winter”) of 1916–17 to bring down morale and grind any semblance of daily routine 2 3 4
Letter, August 9, 1915, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 25. Letter, September 27, 1915, BhAE. Letter, May 16, 1915, BhAE Nachlass Raasted.
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to a halt. Like many for whom the war was at first a faraway phenomenon, Straube eventually was confronted head-on by these swelling domestic difficulties. In summer 1915, perhaps as a distraction from the escalation of hostilities in both military and domestic arenas, he had decided to revisit his edition of Liszt’s organ music, expanding it now to a two-volume issue comprising what he regarded as the composer’s complete oeuvre for the instrument. In a by-now familiar development, the work dragged on far longer than projected, and in the bitter cold of February 1917 he had to report to Hinrichsen that his work on the correction proofs was being held up. “This must take place at the organ and it is so abysmally cold in the church that at the moment I am not able to undertake this thoroughly contemplative work. . . . Even the corrections belong to the chapter ‘coal shortage.’”5 Still, he was hopeful that 1917 would turn in the nation’s favor. “I belong among the few optimists still living today in the German lands,” he proclaimed to Elsa Reger that same winter.6 His optimism was misplaced. The human costs of the conflict were far greater than the tardiness of an organ arrangement. The war would drag on into the first months of Straube’s tenure as Thomaskantor, exacting 361 casualties alone from the faculty and students of the Thomasschule.7 In the end, ten million people lost their lives, with twice that returning home seriously wounded. 1917 indeed proved to be a watershed year, but not for reasons Straube had envisioned. On April 6 the United States entered the conflict, most immediately because of the German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare. Then came the pair of revolutions in Russia and the decisive rise of antiwar sentiment among the German population. Karl’s brother William had served in the Landsturm for a brief period from the beginning of the war through early 1915. Karl had been called to service by the end of 1914 and again in 1916, but in both instances he pursued and was granted deferments. Now, in the critical spring of 1917, his time was up. Straube was drafted with service beginning on June 1.8 “Men like you in leading positions belong neither in the trenches nor in the barrack yards,” Hausegger admonished him with some urgency. “Has everything been done, then, to get you out of it? . . . Your energetic nature will find an outlet in some things. But there are things that hellishly test the resolve of a cultured person. . . . When will 5 Letter, February 15, 1917, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2151. 6 Letter, January 4, 1917, MRIK. 7 Altner, Das Thomaskantorat, 115. 8 Conscription certificate, ZbZ Mus NL 117B1 (Varia) Nachl. Straube.
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the world emerge from this madhouse of human slaughter and mania for extermination? And what will be the end result of this gigantic struggle? The triumph of ‘aurea mediocritas’? That would be a shame for every shot of gunpowder.”9 This was surely not far removed from Straube’s own opinions. For reasons that remain unclear, his period of service in the weapons supply barracks of Field Artillery Regiment 77 lasted only through July 13.10 In an uncannily timed twist, the military ordered the removal of fifty-five façade pipes from his precious St. Thomas organ that July: organist and instrument had been conscripted simultaneously.11 Fresh from his duties, a strikingly cavalier Straube aired his views about military life to his erstwhile pupil Fritz Heitmann, professing that the whole experience had been “quite a pleasure,” but that a “one-sided and narrow” military life was not for him. He veered predictably into philosophical musings. “Even the most insignificant of procedures in daily barracks life is tailored for the great ultimate goal of a people in weapons. The danger arises that the strength of the individual will be weakened in the pursuit of this goal.” Whereas “culture in [the] large sense requires the whole range of the person,” the military ideal cultivates “only a fragment of his essence.” He had discovered that there was no “as I see it” in war discipline, no formation of the whole person. Furthermore, “the enormous squandering of time” built into the regimen had brought a certain focus to his life’s goals. “This realization will also cause me to continue work on my Bach edition, as well as the feeling that, after the medical results of my physical examination, I cannot know how long I’ll yet live. But I’d like to leave behind the essence of the Bach edition as a permanent witness to my artistic exertions.”12 Already he was feeling his mortality and beginning to think about his legacy. He would again engage intensively with his vision of a complete organ edition, but not until he found himself in the midst of yet another wrenching global conflict more than twenty years later. As was his habit in times of great stress, Straube threw himself into dense reading projects to gain perspective on events. In 1912, during the final desperate stages of the Bach organ edition, it had been Friedrich Gundolf ’s 9 Letter, June 3, 1917, BStBM. 10 StAL Straube-Akten 1, Personalbogen, Militär-Verhältnis, 2. Much later, in 1947, he would indicate the end of his service as July 30. Fragebogen Landesregierung Sachsen Personalamt Form.1.7500.1.47 Leipzig M104– 4090, StAL StVuR (1) 4540, 274. 11 Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas,” 146–47. 12 Letter, July 25, 1917, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 33–34.
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Shakespeare and the German Spirit.13 During the Leisner episode in summer 1915, he took up two hefty volumes on Hegel by Kuno Fischer.14 Now, as the war grew ever more miserable, he turned to Goethe’s letters and the complete Faust. The latter’s grand tale of redemption in the quest for transcendent knowledge, played out first in the earthly and finally in the cosmic dimension, underscored for Straube what he took to be the noble Germanic values rooted in anti-materialism, forbearance, and stoic long-suffering. Observed through a nationalist lens not uncommon among the middle classes, Germany was in the first place a victim to the petty ambitions of the surrounding nations. By the end of July the Americans had marched through Paris, Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg had resigned over a violently divided Reichstag, the war program was firmly in the hands of the hawkish Supreme Command, and civil unrest had escalated. Straube saw the world as he knew it coming apart. Speaking of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, he noted cynically to Heitmann, “Did you know that the English have named this concerto ‘The Emperor’? Maybe now they’ll call it the ‘Lloyd George,’ who knows!” He was in a dark mood, ready to prognosticate. “No matter how the war ends, Germany will emerge poor and will have to go through its entire development again from the beginning. I doubt that [former Chancellor Bernhard von] Bülow is right to ascribe to Germany’s intellectual culture and art the ability to work as a conciliatory force.” His earlier faith in the overriding potential of German art had eroded. “I don’t believe that foreign nations have ever shown a strong grasp of our character, and the little goodwill shown us has surely been sunk in the storms of the war. In future the German will have to live alone, whether as victor or vanquished.” Driven to introspection, the nation would have to discover “qualities . . . that lead beyond the melancholy of this loneliness. . . . The great model for us Germans is J. W. Goethe.”15 Certainly, this was a window onto the soul of a patriot, if one of mixed birth. These sentiments would come back to haunt Thomaskantor Straube in a post-war Germany shaped so decisively by the infamous Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles. Despite initial doubts, he would set out on a Faustian sort of quest that built musical bridges to the cultures he privately maligned, claiming the supposed role of the artist to mitigate the nation’s 13 Friedrich Gundolf, Shakespeare und der deutsche Geist vor dem Auftreten Lessings (Leipzig: Hesse & Becker, 1911). 14 Kuno Fischer, Hegels Leben, Werke und Lehre (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1901). 15 Letter, July 25, 1917, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 32–33.
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tragic isolation brought on by the transcendent greatness of its people. The not-so-subtle alchemy of chauvinism and xenophobic anxiety in this view was hardly atypical of an intellectual elite of which Straube imagined himself a part. The liberal ideals of a universal art that eschewed “a latent hostility to the other races,” a vision Busoni had preached to him all those years ago, seemed a world away. At the helm of one of Europe’s most historic choral establishments, he was going to enlist as a missionary for the high ideals of German culture, a voice of reconciliation that would plead the case for Germany’s position among the peoples in a fundamentally transformed global community. That orientation, dependent as it was on this unsettling conjuncture in modern political history, was eventually to have enormous consequences for the St. Thomas establishment. For now, Straube’s momentous cantorate lay in the future. But his role as a foot soldier for German foreign policy did not. Since February 1917, well before his brief tour of duty, he had been in negotiations with the imperial Foreign Ministry, developing plans to travel to neutral Sweden and Switzerland to give organ recitals as a cultural emissary. The courting of Sweden was of particular strategic importance to the German war effort owing to its control of maritime traffic between the Baltic and North Seas, and because of Germany’s use of Swedish telegraph cables for its overseas communications. The Kaiser and others envisioned an allied Nordic union as a component in a German-dominated middle European power bloc. “The Nordic peoples will discover that we not only had a great culture in the past, but rather that also in our time a great genius belonged to the German people,” a patriotic Straube trumpeted to Elsa Reger that February, speaking of her husband.16 And so, on October 5 he set off to Stockholm to do his bit as a cultural missionary. His Bach-Verein had already appeared with Nikisch’s Gewandhaus in Switzerland that April, performing Brahms’s German Requiem “to bear witness to German culture in the face of enemy slander,” as it was remembered some time later.17 In these years of international turmoil, Straube was faced with one more upheaval of a more localized and personal sort. It came at the height of the war effort, in the night between May 10 and 11, 1916, with the unexpected death of Max Reger. The two had maintained a productive if unsettled relationship during what turned out to be the latter’s final years. In 16 Letter, February 25, 1917, MRIK. 17 Mehrbach, “Karl Straubes fünfundzwanzigjährige Tätigkeit,” in Feier zu Ehren, 9.
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1911 the composer had moved from Leipzig to accept an appointment as Kapellmeister to the fabled Meiningen Court Orchestra. By 1914 that situation had soured, and Reger had resigned in the wake of a nervous collapse, relocating to Jena. All the while, he retained regular teaching duties at the Leipzig Conservatory, where he appeared once a week. Straube continued to advise him concerning new works, sometimes with devastating consequences (the unfinished Vater unser WoO VI/22 and Requiem WoO V/9), sometimes occasioning substantial revisions (first movement of the String Quartet, op. 121, the organ opp. 127 and 135b). Straube’s distaste for Reger’s signature interpretation of Bach had culminated in his stubborn opposition to the composer’s participation in the 1911 Leipzig Bachfest, an awkward difficulty surmounted in the end only through personal conversation.18 In the meantime, the composer’s urgent written appeals for meetings and advice did not abate even when Straube consistently ignored them. Such pleas only intensified once Reger left Leipzig. “You are really priceless,” read one card directed at Straube in spring 1911. “I write you one postcard after another and you wrap yourself in noble silence like the oracle of Delphi.”19 The cleavage between their two natures had never been on clearer display. One was a political tactician who expressed himself in considered, carefully wrought sentences, the other an unfiltered revolutionary barely capable of forming a thought requiring less than one exclamation mark. The latter’s correspondence burst with personality and the clutter of a room with too much furniture in it: a typical missive from December 1912 narrates a compositional rationale for the Ballett-Suite, op. 130, and urgently solicits titles for its five movements. “Please, duly exert your thinking box. Further: I have promised the Schubert Club in Vienna a new work for men’s chorus and orchestra, length 10 minutes. In contrast to the Römischer Triumphgesang [op. 126] I’d like to do something quite tender! I ask you to search me out a few texts; please, set yourself on your sitting organ and search and search and search!”20 And so on such epistles went. Straube seems to have satisfied Reger’s requests only in a fraction of instances, each time to the latter’s almost childlike glee. The composer experienced a debilitating nervous breakdown in February 1914, the effects of which made him only more dependent on his friend’s counsel, even though Reger’s ever-ascending position as a central 18 Letter from Reger to Philipp Wolfrum, December 23, 1910, cited in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 206. 19 Postcard, April 18, 1911, ibid., 209. 20 Letter, December 8, 1912, ibid., 224. Emphases original.
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figure in European musical life was unchallenged. When Reger invited him to attend his inaugural house concert in Jena on July 29, 1915, Straube made the short trip down from Leipzig—something he likely would not have worked into his schedule save for the need to relieve an unbearably tense domestic situation brought on by the Leisner affair, of which Reger appears to have known nothing. It was not as if his ongoing relationship with Reger lacked its rewards. Early in 1912 the still-new Meiningen Hofkapellmeister went to considerable lengths to have Straube decorated with the First Class Knight’s Cross of the Ernestine House on the occasion of the Duke of Meiningen’s birthday, April 2. This was to be Straube’s first medal, and a difficult one to push through the antiquated aristocratic bureaucracy, given that, as a Prussian citizen, he had no relationship to the Thuringian Duchy of Meiningen. Reger, good-willed but naïve in formal matters of state, approached Duke Georg that March, eventually fleshing out his superlative recommendation of Straube as “Germany’s greatest organist of the utmost significance for our time. . . . Our entire modern organ performance is based on Professor Straube’s model.”21 By the end of May, then, Straube had his ducal decoration by virtue of his position as “an epoch-making organist,” more a sign of Reger’s sustained personal esteem than that of the Meiningen court.22 “Now I have to write to the Meiningen Duke and everything will be in order,” Straube informed Hertha on the 26th. “On Thursday I met Reger-max, who told me about this and many other things and swims perpetually in bliss. That’s very good and of great worth for the further development of his personality.”23 The episode did no harm to the further development of Straube’s résumé, either. And two years later, when Georg acted on Reger’s advice to purchase a new Steinmeyer organ for the Meiningen Schützenhaus, Straube dedicated it in a recital on April 19, 1914, while the composer recovered from his recent nervous collapse at a sanatorium in Meran. Reger delivered two more big organ works in these years: in 1913, the Introduction, Passacaglia, and Fugue in E Minor, op. 127, a behemoth of chromatic harmony and counterpoint calculated to the similarly gargantuan dimensions of the Breslau Centennial Hall; and the Fantasy and Fugue in D 21 Letters, March 6 and April 29, 1912, in Mueller von Asow and Mueller von Asow, eds., Briefwechsel mit Herzog Georg II., 141, 205–6. 22 Memorandum of Georg II, May 17, 1912, ThüStAM Staatsministerium, Abt. Herzogliches Haus u. Äußeres Nr. 1292. 23 Letter, May 26, 1912, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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Minor, op. 135b, gestating over an unusually long period between 1914 and 1916. The former was dedicated to Straube, the latter to Strauss, presumably on the occasion of that composer’s fiftieth birthday. Straube was intimately involved in the composition of both works. To mixed reception, he premiered op. 127 at Breslau on September 24, thereby inaugurating a new 200-stop Sauer instrument, at the time the world’s largest organ and, like the 7,000-seat reinforced concrete hall in which it sat, a paroxysm of imperial hubris on the eve of the Great War. Neither composer nor performer knew that it would be Straube’s last premiere of a Reger work. His first personal encounter with this extraordinary composer had been at Frankfurt’s Café Bauer in 1898. Now, eighteen years later, Straube’s final evening with Reger was going to involve another such locale, the Leipzig Café Hannes, located just across from the Conservatory and the University Library. The Hannes was a bustling meeting place for the city’s artistic and intellectual circles, and one of Reger’s favored rendezvous points. As usual, he arrived in town in the early afternoon for his weekly obligations at the Conservatory, this time on Wednesday, May 10, 1916. Likewise as customary, Straube rehearsed his Bach-Verein that evening. Reger planned to stay the night in town and so requested, with typical urgency, a late-evening get-together with Straube and others at the Hannes beginning at 10:00 p.m. He taught through the early evening, had dinner with Hinrichsen at 8:00, and set out for Hannes at 9:45. Reger had announced to Straube that he was bringing “something very beautiful” along, almost certainly the incomplete Andante and Rondo Capriccioso in A Major, WoO I/10, for which he sought his friend’s commentary.24 Straube arrived around 11:00. Some two months later he told Wilibald Gurlitt that Reger “was already very sick” at that hour, and that a doctor had been summoned, who had diagnosed a gallstone colic and administered morphine. Straube had accompanied him to his hotel, the Hentschel near the Roßplatz, once the episode had passed. To Gurlitt he dismissed any role alcohol might have played, asserting that “Reger was completely sober,” and that he had been “calm and low-key the whole day through” (which, admittedly, he could not have known). Straube reported that he had helped his friend into bed. “He turned down my suggestion to remain with him. On the contrary, he wanted to read the newspapers, as was his custom to bring on sleep. I left him around 11:45 p.m., only to receive news of his death the following morning. The first medical
24 Postcards, May 8 and 9, 1916, in Popp, ed., Briefe an Karl Straube, 260.
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reports led to the conclusion that he must have died around 6:00 a.m.”25 And with that he was gone. Carl Seffner took the death mask on Straube’s commission.26 A cremation followed, the ashes removed to Jena. There was no autopsy. Most further accounts of Reger’s final hours rest with Straube’s story, since he was in fact the last person to see the composer alive. Both men were forty-three. Overcome with emotion at this abrupt close to such a momentous chapter in his own life, Straube could not help but evoke overtones of the Beethoven legend at seeing the corpse. “It is the most monumental countenance I have ever seen on a human face,” he continued to Gurlitt. “He must have seen tremendous apparitions on his way into the unknown land. Perhaps he even had mystical conversations with his God concerning the meaning and goal of life, and God recognized him as a faithful servant.” It had been Reger’s contribution to have perceived “what was actually valuable in the transcendent, spiritual things. The great values of his life were closely linked with the religious. Because this was so I think that Reger’s art will live yet a long time when much of what today is admired and valued has receded into oblivion.”27 That could have made a marvelous eulogy, the sentiments removed from earlier reservations about Reger’s shortcomings expressed in conversations with Robert-Tornow, Hasse, and others. A month after the passing, Straube confessed to Raasted, “The more time passes, the more weighty the loss. The reality at first had such an irrational effect that its severity and magnitude was not at all recognized.”28 But soon enough he would reclaim his more critical stance, given the right conversation partner. By 1920 he was holding forth to Raasted about perceived shortcomings in the latter’s compositions, particularly the lack of linear integrity in the counterpoint, which “for me is a severe deficiency. Of course you can invoke
25 Letter, July 19, 1916, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 26. Compare the slightly different version of events that Straube evidently related to Domizlaff, Nachdenkliche Wanderschaft, 387; and Beyerlein’s eyewitness account (mistakenly attributed to 1915) in his “Kleine Rückschau,” in Gaben, 144–45. 26 Straube told Elsa Reger that Max Klinger had been the first choice, though “it appears doubtful to me that Klinger really could have captured our Max.” Letter, February 18, 1917, to Elsa Reger, MRIK. 27 Letter, July 19, 1916, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 26–27. 28 Letter, June 11, 1916, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 100.
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Reger, but precisely in this point Reger’s art is ‘human–all too human’!”29 In 1916 such reservations were held at bay. As the years progressed, Straube would have much to say about Reger, this larger-than-life artist he considered so problematic yet so inspired at the same time. The stylistic weaknesses that had always bothered him were magnified as modernist impulses advanced in European music, creating an unfriendly environment for Reger’s overwrought chromatic style in the era of a streamlined neo-classicism. As Reger became a historical figure for a new generation of organists and church musicians raised on the various authenticity movements, Straube more and more was regarded as the authoritative link to his personality and legacy. In 1933 he would tell the composer’s pupil Joseph Haas that “Max Reger and I had always expected and hoped to grow old together,” an attitude that comes close to suggesting the intimacy of a married couple.30 And in fact the relationship could claim characteristics of a solid marriage—at times difficult, but ultimately productive and mutually beneficial, grounded in an enduring fondness at having helped each other along their respective paths. Now, new tasks called. For one thing, Straube fell into a fairly intensive correspondence with the composer’s widow Elsa. That relationship had grown tense over time, as she came to believe that his critical stance undermined her husband’s confidence. He found her imperious personality distasteful. Now a brief thaw arose. Back in 1911 he had pointed out to her in noble if contrived tone, “It has become your great destiny to be the life partner to the greatest of living artists. Here grows your life’s task, the fulfillment of which I know is a beautiful and holy duty to you.”31 Once Reger was dead, Elsa took up the cause of her husband’s legacy with the urgency such a “holy duty” imparted. Edith Mendelssohn Bartholdy, wife of Felix Mendelssohn’s grandson Ludwig and a close family friend, immediately initiated a movement to form a Max-Reger-Gesellschaft, an effort Elsa likewise joined. Straube was enlisted in the effort and began the time-consuming work of assembling an Executive Board, eventually winning Strauss as Honorary President, Abendroth as Executive Chair, and other prominent figures. He himself assumed the Vice-Chair. He advised Elsa on all sorts of 29 Letter, January 12, 1920, StAL Teichnachlass Hans-Olaf Hudemann Sig. 8, 102. Straube habitually evoked Nietzsche to argue the transience of deficient art. 30 Letter, January 27, 1933, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 233. 31 Letter, June 7, 1911, MRIK.
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matters, from questions of publication to her legal rights concerning ownership of Seffner’s death mask. He was as concerned as anyone about the Reger image that would form over the next years. When the critic Arthur Neisser brought up the possibility to Elsa of publishing her husband’s letters, Straube reacted predictably in the negative. “Should this idea at all be realized, then it would be your wish that Professor [Fritz] Stein and Straube together undertake the publication, since both men were particularly close to Reger as friends.”32 She sent him mementos, from manuscripts and scores to Reger’s well-worn cigar case, pieces of his clothing, and a lock of his hair. To the last of these: “Thank you . . . but that’s not at all for me. I don’t really like such cults of the past.”33 Added to these tasks were the several Reger memorial concerts in which Straube was a natural participant, from local events at Conservatory and Gewandhaus to outward commemorations in Cologne, Gera, Barmen, and Bielefeld. Amid preparations, he turned again to Elsa in tones of genuine lament for the bygone heady days of their young lives. “In the last few days, as I study anew his unspeakably beautiful organ compositions, I am moved to think of what a rich and beautiful time it was when one organ work after another arrived with me fifteen years ago, and what an energetic ‘organ life’ unfolded in that little town on the lower Rhine, when it was my wonderful task to solve the mysterious puzzle of this great art.”34 When Elsa began to plan her own Reger festivals in 1917, Straube took part and advised her on the content of the programs and the relationship of her events to the Reger-Gesellschaft. The latter issue would soon give rise to renewed frictions. In the immediate wake of Reger’s death, Straube approached Hinrichsen with a proposal for an ambitious new editing project in the spirit of his 1912 arrangements from op. 59. “Already for a long time,” he announced, “I have pondered whether it would not be very appropriate to publish Preludes and Fugues of Max Reger in a revised edition. The death of my friend and the wish to reinforce the vital power of his spiritual work causes me to submit this plan to you.”35 Drawing a favorable reaction, Straube spelled out his thoughts in detail: two volumes of fifty pages each, carrying works from opp. 59, 65, and 80, and the complete Four Preludes and Fugues, op. 85. He rejected Hinrichsen’s suggestion that the preludes might be separated from 32 33 34 35
Letter, September 24, 1916, ibid. Letter, February 25, 1917, ibid. Letter, September 9, 1916, ibid. Letter, June 27, 1916, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510.
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their fugues. “They are conceived by the composer as a unit, and the value of the edition will consist also in the clear working out and arrangement of this unity.”36 He would require five weeks, with the result that the engravers could have the manuscript by August 1. With a crystal-clear idea of what he wanted to accomplish, Straube struck while the iron was hot, so that by the end of July he could enthuse to Hertha that the work was complete.37 Perhaps it was wartime exigencies, perhaps the intervening Liszt edition, perhaps an administrative roadblock on the publisher’s end—the one-volume work appeared only in 1919 in the by-now familiar garb of a Straube organ edition: registrations for the Sauer organ type, precise manual distribution, detailed phrasing and articulation, tempo indications and metronome markings, all with the aim of demonstrating unity in the lavish diversity of Reger’s compositions, “as I see it.”38 With Reger gone and the war raging, Straube found himself busier than ever. After about a decade at the Conservatory, he commanded an impressive studio of capable young organists, not only from Germany and Austria-Hungary, but also England and the United States, Holland, Switzerland, Russia, and the Nordic lands. In 1914 a precociously talented sixteen-year-old pupil enrolled to concentrate in piano performance, eventually ending up in Straube’s studio. His name was Günther Ramin, the son of a Lutheran minister from Karlsruhe. His progress would be quick, interrupted only by his military service in 1917, and he was destined to have a long and complicated future with his mentor. The last thing Straube needed, it seemed, was more responsibility. It was coming his way, all the same. Gustav Schreck, Thomaskantor since 1893, fell ill in spring 1917. Straube had maintained warm relations with him, and Schreck in turn had supported Straube’s energetic expanding role in the city’s cultural life. Writing to Hertha in 1912, Straube had painted a sympathetic portrait of Schreck as “a splendid old man, still highly engaged and interested in his whole vocation. But he doesn’t at all like to stand out too much in public.”39 Maybe it was this essential introversion that had caused Schreck to turn down leadership of the Bach-Verein in 1903, recommending Straube instead. In any case, Straube owed the Thomaskantor a great deal 36 Letter, June 29, 1916, ibid. 37 Letter, July 26, 1916, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 10, 24. 38 Max Reger, Präludien und Fugen für die Orgel herausgegeben von Karl Straube, EP 10036. 39 Letter, May 26, 1912, SBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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of respect and gratitude for the role he had played in his own advancement. Now aged sixty-eight and ailing, Schreck required a deputy to assume his duties. For years Straube had flirted with the idea of succeeding him.40 As the tried-and-true leader of the Bach-Verein and organist of St. Thomas, he was the natural choice, stepping into the older man’s role in May 1917 amid the uncertainties of his own impending military conscription. He earned a monthly stipend of 100 marks for his services.41 He was confronted not only with the usual rehearsals and liturgical responsibilities. That September, as the Eisenach Bachfest celebrating the anniversary of the Reformation approached, the NBG’s Oskar von Hase dispatched an emergency telegram to Straube, at the time in Frankfurt for concerts: “Per medical advice Professor Schreck is not permitted to carry out the Bachfest. He asks you to carry out his duties.”42 A longer letter of explanation followed. That was the 11th, and the festival’s downbeat was two and a half weeks later on the 29th. On the evening of the 13th Straube was back in Leipzig, the preparations for three substantial events over two days having fallen in his lap. Eleventh-hour snags in the rehearsal schedule had to be solved, questions of the orchestral personnel clarified, programs altered. Straube’s cool head and organizational talents prevailed, a fitting show of gratitude to the incapacitated Schreck. By November, he had assumed the entire leadership of the Thomanerchor.43 As Christmas 1917 gave way to Epiphany 1918, Straube turned forty-five. It became clear that Schreck was not going to recover, a state of affairs cadencing with his death on January 22. Already before that date, Straube had been privy to discussions concerning possible succession. In the cold Leipzig winter of early 1918, as the Empire’s war effort cracked and copies of Wilson’s Fourteen Points fell behind German lines, he stood directly before the most momentous decision of his professional life.
40 Letter, January 23, 1911, to Hertha Straube, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 22. 41 StAL Straube-Akten 1, 47. 42 Telegram draft, September 11, 1917, SäStAL Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel Nr. 3057. 43 Altner, Das Thomaskantorat, 116.
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Part IV
Intermezzo: Leipzig 1918–1920 If one wants to reach a goal at all, one must be one-sided. Later the old love will break through again. —Straube to Emmy Neiendorff, September 1, 1919; postcard, September 1, 1919, StBBPK
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Chapter Thirteen
Decision Point The cantorate of the Thomasschule enjoys a distinguished history, reaching back to the first recorded holder of the post around 1295. Not a few figures important to the history of music and the church had acceded to its office: Rhau and Herrmann, Calvisius and Schein, Schelle and Kuhnau. It hardly need be said that Johann Sebastian Bach’s twenty-seven-year tenure would redefine the cantorate fundamentally for later generations, when the post continued now and again to host distinguished composing musicians. Last in that line had been Straube’s colleague Schreck, if not a model of great musical inspiration, certainly one of undisputed universal competence. Straube had used the last fifteen years to embed himself indelibly in the fabric of Leipzig’s musical life. He had built an international reputation on the back of the associations afforded him in this booming, tradition-laden city of music. He was possessed of an audacious musicality, politically shrewd and cool-headed when it counted most, and willing to apply an iron work ethic to any project that struck him as worthy. What he absolutely was not, however, was a composer. Implicit in the office of Thomaskantor was the assumption that the holder would enrich school and parish with original music. But for reasons that transcended the immediate strengths and weaknesses Straube brought to the table, that precedent was about to change. The position of the Thomasschule and Thomaskirche in the life of the city had sustained a number of seismic shifts over the previous century. The institution was subject like everything else to the currents of the time and thus forced to reimagine its role.1 Once Mendelssohn’s Conservatory opened in 1843, the Thomaskantor had assumed teaching duties there, a development that abetted a new disbursement of his commitments within the network of the Leipzig cultural institutions. And it was not as if the Thomanerchor was the only choral act in town. The Bach-Verein eventually led by Straube was but one of these, vying for public support on a crowded stage shared with 1 Altner, Das Thomaskantorat, 10–16.
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the Arion Chorus (1849), the Riedel-Verein (1854), and others. By 1877 the Thomasschule itself no longer made its home in the city center, having decamped west into the Hillerstraße. In 1902 its dilapidated historic quarters adjacent to the Thomaskirche had finally met the wrecking ball. Progressive forces of secularization and mechanization were plainly at work, posing questions about the relevance of an institution left over from the Middle Ages. Amid all these developments, the City Council in 1874 had earnestly debated the question of whether to withdraw altogether its time-honored patronage of the Thomanerchor, a move finally thwarted by Philipp Spitta and others. The picture was not entirely despondent. Recent cantors like Hauptmann and Schreck had built valuable bridges to the Gewandhaus Orchestra, which made high-level instrumental music available to the liturgical life of the principal churches. Early in his cantorate, Schreck had advanced a vigorous if largely symbolic argument to elevate the cantor’s status from the rank of first among “subordinate” teachers to a position just below the rector.2 Such questions of duty and status issued ultimately from the concerns of musical Romanticism, with its emphasis on history and heritage, particularly the burgeoning general interest in J. S. Bach, the production of the Bachgesellschaft’s complete edition, and the maturation of musicology. Even as the late nineteenth-century cantors continued to compose, they began to claim a curatorial role alongside the long-established creative one, charged with preserving and furthering the Bach legacy. If Thomaskantor Bach was, as Reger habitually had preached, the “Alpha and Omega of music,” then surely the office itself was due a certain reverence by virtue of his having occupied it, and on account of the masterworks he had produced in its service. In a rapidly changing world, herein lay a key to the future of the Thomanerchor and its leader. When Schreck died in January 1918, leaving his organist Straube in effect holding the baton, several questions immediately posed themselves. If Straube were elected, he surely would be unable to manage his organ playing alongside the cantorate, and Leipzig would lose its world-class organist. On the other hand, some were understandably reticent to break with the post’s hallowed tradition of composing. Straube was a tried and true Bach disciple, albeit an iconoclastic one who already enjoyed a warm, productive relationship with the Thomaner. In his day, Wilhelm Rust had also advanced to the cantorate from the St. Thomas organ bench, and Straube had served 2
Ibid., 104–7.
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Figure 13.1. Straube in his later organist years, undated photo. Reproduced with permission from the Stadtarchiv Flensburg.
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the organ position much longer than he. It will not have surprised Straube that the Leipzig officials turned to him first. His capacity for self-doubt now surfaced in the face of a consequential decision. The new mayor Karl Rothe requested a meeting with him on the morning of February 1, the agenda unspecified. Before setting out for the Rathaus that day, he crafted a letter to Elsa Reger in which he confided the dissonance of the situation as he saw it. Anticipating that the mayor wished to discuss the cantorate, he wrote that the appointment would be an honor, and that he could maintain his organ playing alongside it. “On the other hand I’m 45 years old—as an organist I’ve said what is actually of essence—I hardly will be able to exceed my high point any longer, because limits are imposed on everything human. So I would be quite happy to do as Franz Liszt did and bid farewell to the virtuoso life. But cannot a much more talented person be found for this office? This appears to me a big question.”3 He strode across town with these doubts weighing on his mind, and, according to the meeting’s minutes, Straube “declared at the end that he will apply for the . . . cantorate of the Thomasschule, . . . [and] that he will also arrange for his friend Dr. phil. Gerhard Keussler . . . to submit an application.”4 Both details are telling: he had to be persuaded, acquiescing only “at the end.” And even then, Straube wanted to make clear that he was not comfortable in the role of crown prince, instead asking that the Council consider Keußler, at the time Director of the German Singverein in Prague, a prolific composer whose music Straube respected, and holder of an earned doctorate from the University of Leipzig. Straube dispatched his own brief letter of application to Rothe about a week later. Aware of his status as favored son, he asked to be forgiven “if, after my many years of public service in Leipzig, I do not further support this application with recommendations from my well-known colleagues.”5 He was not going to do more legwork than was necessary. Though in the end Keußler declined to apply, Straube’s larger point that the civic authorities should consider more than one candidate was well-taken. Even with their organist’s statement of willingness in hand, the Council decided to advertise the position, both to avoid political minefields later on and to get a fair survey of the available talent pool. That move soon returned nineteen further applicants, including Straube’s former student Karl Hasse and his colleague Paul Gerhardt. The range of experience among the 3 4 5
Letter, February 1, 1918, MRIK. Minutes, February 1, 1918, cited in Altner, Das Thomaskantorat, 117. Letter, February 7, 1918, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 13.
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hopefuls was at least interesting. Fourteen had noteworthy pedigrees as composers; eleven had studied in Leipzig, three in Berlin, three in Dresden, and one in Munich, some with advanced university degrees alongside conservatory study; four worked in Leipzig at the time; and all of them had educational backgrounds that outstripped Straube’s ragtag assemblage of private Berlin teachers.6 There was much to consider here from the side of the decision makers, and accordingly there was no shortage of voices to be heard. Whereas the ultimate choice lay with the Council, the Schulamt (Department of Schools) had a voice in the proceedings, as did the St. Thomas congregation. The latter’s concerns were the least influential but among the most revealing, in that the church leadership had taken a dim view of what they perceived as the organist Straube’s disengagement with the services beyond his immediate responsibilities. His Christian commitment had been questioned at latest by 1906, when he was accused of cutting corners in his liturgical obligations in favor of his concert career. Straube had developed a reputation for ducking out of the building during the sermons, reflecting a larger tendency among the public and even the choir to depart the service after the principal music. Now, after the organist’s fifteen-year tenure, strained relations with a virtuoso regarded as too worldly hung in the air. Even as Straube had taken over from Schreck the previous November, an irritated congregational council had let him know that it regarded his “occasionally exotic harmonizations” and “stark differences in the choice of tempi” as inappropriate for the leading of chorale singing, an attempt to domesticate an artist perceived as too little concerned with the needs of a worshipful assembly.7 Hence, as the possibility of a Thomaskantor Straube loomed, the church council minced no words about the position’s necessary focus, particularly if the vote turned out as most thought it would. “We do not wish to raise concerns about [Straube’s] personality,” went the memo, going on to emphasize that whoever was elected must “be made especially aware that the choir pupils, as part of their formation, should be influenced by word and personal example with respect to external and internal participation in the entire service.” Further, the council wanted “assurance . . . against the impairment of 6 7
The full Council report on each of the twenty candidates appears in Altner, Das Thomaskantorat, 172–81. Letter from Superintendent Karl August Seth Cordes, November 16, 1917, cited in Stiller, “Johann Sebastian Bachs Kantaten,” 31. Cordes had succeeded Pank at St. Thomas in 1912.
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the choir’s church duties by concert tours or other such extra-ecclesial activities” and “the augmentation of the Thomanerchor with an assistant choir for both churches [St. Thomas and St. Nicholas], planned already before the outbreak of war.”8 The congregational leadership was concerned both to curb secularist tendencies and to tether cantor and choir as intimately as possible to the liturgical requirements that traditionally had been the choral establishment’s center of gravity. But of course, the Thomaner had long claimed an extra-liturgical presence as well, an arrangement encouraged by its association with the civic authority since the Reformation. In large part to recover income lost when it retreated from other activities over the last decades, the choir had begun to insert itself in concert life both in and beyond Leipzig. Its participation in the 1917 Eisenach Bachfest was a fresh example undoubtedly still on the minds of the more wary members of the parish leadership. Given these trends, the dynamics of the Bach revival, and the greater ambitions of St. Thomas’s virtuoso organist, some feared that the cantorate would become still further unmoored from its medieval origins in school and church, a dangerous path toward artistic autonomy. And with good reason. If worries about the cantor’s devotion to chancel and altar still carried some symbolic weight in pious circles, these concerns did not enter into discussion at the Rathaus, where other issues stood unchallenged at the top of the agenda. The question of salary and benefits was one of them. There was a general feeling that the post was financially uncompetitive, and that several potential candidates would be put off by any less-than-attractive offer. Further, the issue of qualifications and experience was subject to debate, as in the instructive exchange recorded between Councilor William Göhring and Mayor Rothe. Embracing the traditionalist view, Göhring stressed demonstrated ability in boy choral training and composition. Regarding the latter, “Professor Straube has not yet accomplished anything in this area.” But Rothe professed to rely on “the judgment of musical experts,” according to whom “one must put greater weight on the preservation of the Bach tradition. If one cannot get a significant composer, then it is better that the [cantor] not compose at all than to produce undistinguished music. . . . With Straube, who does not compose, the Bach tradition is secure.”9 Even Göhring’s more conservative argument harbored a 8 9
Letter from Cordes, representing the councils of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas, to the Leipzig City Council, March 27, 1918, cited in Altner, Das Thomaskantorat, 123–24. Emphasis original. Ibid. Emphasis original.
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tone of sympathetic optimism toward Straube, who had “not yet” awakened his compositional muse—but well might, given the right incentive. It was Rothe’s position that would win the day, though, and the advancement of the “Bach tradition” now would anchor the cantorate. By March 5, knowing well what leverage he commanded, Straube was ready to submit five shrewd requirements for acceptance of the position. His current annual income comprised 5,000 marks as St. Thomas organist, 1,200 marks as Gewandhaus organist, and 500 marks from the Bach-Verein.10 His Conservatory lessons were now pro-rated at 9 marks per hour, from which he had derived earnings of about 4,000 marks before the war, an amount diminished in recent years due to declining enrollments and a 25-percent belt-tightening reduction in faculty salaries. Added to these sources of income were his revenues as a concert artist. Now he demanded “a starting salary of 7,200 marks with a superannuation allowance of 500 marks every three years; in addition, 540 marks housing allowance for which half = 270 marks is pensionable income.” Second, Straube asked that the starting date counting toward retirement be set at June 1, 1897, when he had begun at Wesel with a pensionable salary. Third, he asked to retain his position with the Bach-Verein; fourth, either to be allowed to continue as organist of the Gewandhaus or to have the 1,200 marks he would lose added as a non-pensionable supplement to his salary. Finally, he requested “permission occasionally to accept and fulfill invitations for concerts outside and in Leipzig.”11 Straube was accustomed to thinking about the several moving parts of his financial situation in great detail, and, as he had in 1906, he now correctly surmised that the authorities would engage seriously with his demands for fear of losing him altogether. The official conversations continued through the critical days of March 1918, so that by the 18th, the Council had decided to pursue Straube exclusively. Doubts lingered nonetheless. Karl Tittel, St. Thomas rector since 1917, reported on the warm personal relations that had developed between Straube and the choir boys during the interim period: “He takes extraordinarily great care and works everything through in the smallest detail.” But for the rector, whose responsibility lay with the boys’ overall humanist education, this had its downside. “Admittedly,” Tittel continued to the Council, “he has the tendency to rehearse rather too much, 10 Minutes of the conversation between Ackermann and Straube, March 5, 1918, ibid., 125. 11 Ibid.
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which means greater exertion for the pupils and entails certain difficulties for their lessons. His enthusiasm in this direction therefore would need to be reined in somewhat.”12 Added to this was apprehension about Straube’s intentions concerning the maintenance of his organ career and the extent to which he would involve the choir pupils in concert travel, which had been the concern advanced by Superintendent Cordes on behalf of the church authorities. The airing of these many anxieties, opinions, and conditions was but a prelude to the final Council deliberations on March 27, a meeting that turned into anything but a formality. Misgivings surfaced that the congregation had not been granted a sufficient voice, that Straube really was an organist and not a choir trainer. Councilor Paul Merkel held out particularly conservative opposition, noting that Straube “trains the pupils more orchestrally than a cappella,” that “he fragments his activities to too great an extent,” that the office was a church position in the first place, and that the entire matter should be referred back to committee with the request to examine two further candidates. Other councilors were more generous, expressing doubts that Straube would remain in Leipzig if he were not chosen. Councilor Ackermann, a consistent advocate, was driven to the hyperbolic assertion that “a greater Bach expert does not exist and if only for this reason, one must retain him here.”13 At evening’s end, Karl Straube was elected Thomaskantor with four dissenting votes. The press announced his impending appointment two days later, rightly prophesying that the old institution was about to get an unorthodox injection of new blood. One report praised “the musician with the fiery disposition” who “only gradually has been able to accustom himself to the demands of ecclesial music-making”—a perspective that surely stoked the worst fears of the conservatives.14 Another ventured that the appointment would not cause the new cantor to withdraw as the supernova organist who now seemed a permanent part of the cultural landscape.15 The future would tell. Probably because of concerns about how the cantor-elect spent his “fragmented” time and that of the choir boys, an unprecedented decision was taken to draft a Dienstanweisung, a job description that defined the 12 13 14 15
Minutes of the Leipzig City Council, March 18, 1918, cited ibid., 126. Minutes of the Leipzig City Council, March 27, 1918, cited ibid., 126–27. “Der neue Thomaskantor,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, March 29, 1918. Notice without title, Leipziger Abend-Zeitung, March 29, 1918.
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parameters of the position as exactly as possible. First, though, Straube’s election had to be communicated through the proper channels of the Schulamt. The necessary approval of the Saxon Ministry of Culture would be a formality. Nevertheless, the complicated wheels of bureaucracy turned slowly, so that only on 22 April could the Schulamt finally direct its formal letter to Straube.16 The final version of the Dienstanweisung was hammered out almost literally in the eleventh hour, dated May 31 and summarizing the cantor’s responsibilities in eleven points. Such a document had never before existed, but, then again, a modern Council had never elected such an enterprising cantor, either. 1. The cantor is to lead the Thomanerchor and attend the musical formation of the pupils. 2. Regarding the school, he assumes the position immediately below the rector. 3. He carries full responsibility for the musical achievements of the Thomanerchor and is therefore authoritative in purely musical questions. 4. He is to give five singing practice periods per week and to hold rehearsal in the church on Fridays. The length of the practice periods and the [church] rehearsal as a rule shall not exceed one and one quarter hours daily for the individual singer. 5. It is incumbent on him to establish the performance schedule for the Motetten and the church music (about 40 per year). 6. He is to see to and lead the church music. 7. The cantor is bound to the weekly school schedule, which at the beginning of each semester is established by the rector in agreement with the cantor of the school. 8. Special performances of the Thomanerchor, or of part of the same, are subject to approval of the rector, who will consult with the cantor and, in important instances, will obtain a decision from the Leipzig City Council (Department of Schools). 9. The cantor shall administer the financial account of the Motetten, into which the revenue from the Motetten performances is deposited. Sums larger than 20 marks may not be paid out of this account without the rector’s approval, insofar as such transactions are not necessary for the regular performances of the Thomanerchor or the further musical formation of the pupils. 10. The cantor is to manage the music library of the Thomanerchor.
16 Letter, April 22, 1918, cited in Altner, Das Thomaskantorat, 128.
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182 ❧ chapter thirteen 11. Requests for vacation leave are to be directed to the rector, who can grant leave for up to a week. The approval of the City Council is required for longer or repeated vacation periods.17
The real sticking point was the fourth one concerning the permissible length of rehearsals. Straube undoubtedly would have preferred carte blanche in that respect, but the second sentence betrayed concerns voiced earlier by Rector Tittel about the collision of his “enthusiasm” with the school’s well-ordered schedule, to which point seven also spoke. The eighth point likewise sought to head off the new cantor’s ambitions with respect to involving the boys in time-consuming concert activities, particularly out-of-town engagements. These issues could have overwhelmed a person of lesser capacity, yet the possibility of the cantorate was by no means the only thing on Straube’s mind. For one thing, wartime exigencies seem not to have compromised his concertizing in early 1918. To the contrary, he managed the complex negotiations with Council and Thomasschule while devoting his considerable energies to a demanding performance schedule. The end of February found him on the road as pianist with Leisner, appearing in Flensburg on the 20th and in Dortmund on the 23rd, the latter to benefit the families of war prisoners. In early April he was off to Denmark, another neutral country important to German war policy, and on May 1 he gave his annual all-Bach recital in Vienna. In all the to and fro it surely occurred to Straube that he indeed had a great deal to lose by giving up what was still a robust concert career. Whether his hard-won international presence as a solo artist would have to be merely curbed or sacrificed outright was not yet clear to him. Though he had admitted to confidantes that he had nothing more of essence to say as a virtuoso, it was no easy matter to divorce himself from a life he had built so painstakingly. As Hausegger had observed years before, Straube’s personality was “rooted” in the organ, the instrument of his father and his father’s father, no matter how eager he had been through the years to establish himself as a choral and instrumental conductor of note. Still at the end of 1926 he would insist that organ playing was “really my most intimate domain.”18 Further, he believed that the question of his successor to the St. Thomas organ bench would bear directly upon his future as a soloist. He did not want to appear 17 “Dienstanweisung für den Kantor zu St. Thomae,” cited ibid., 131. 18 Letter to Johannes Haller, December 26, 1926, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 183.
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to compete for the spotlight as an organist in the eyes of the public and, depending on the abilities and ambitions of the newcomer, he pondered whether it would not be better to sacrifice the virtuoso role altogether. That spring, late in the game of his exchanges with the authorities, Straube presented himself on Domizlaff’s doorstep to talk over the impending decision point, the full weight of his innate self-doubt on display. Domizlaff recalled how the two wandered the streets of Leipzig between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m. in protracted debate. Straube “questioned the genuineness of his mastery and began again to chastise himself with unjustified self-criticism. He believed that several of his students could achieve just as much, and some of them even more than he. He thought primarily of his favorite pupil, the young Günther Ramin.” A question concerning the fate of his concert career “prompted the immediate response, ‘Of course I then cannot appear any longer as an organist, since that would be very disloyal to my successor!’ One can imagine how my great admiration of his organ playing degenerated into alarm, and how emphatic were my attempts to dissuade him from his doubts.” The issue of composing ultimately backed him into a corner. “‘Do you know of a qualified composer?’ Straube asked, shaking his head. The next day, he had decided.”19 Domizlaff recalled rightly that these wrenching nocturnal deliberations did little to mitigate Straube’s anxieties, which even after his acceptance of the new post would repeatedly surface. Well into 1919 he continued to seize on the fact that Keußler had not accepted his invitation also to apply for the cantorate. To Max Schneider he confessed dissatisfaction “that a greater person could not be found who was willing to take up Bach’s legacy. Now I’m left to see what can be carved out [herausgehauen] of my abilities.”20 That was a striking expression, one that reflected the inevitable difficulty of reinventing his artistic personality around the Thomanerchor. Likewise striking was his self-description to Georg Jäger during the same period as “actually a compromise cantor [ein Verlegenheitskantor].”21 Not two hundred years before, Bach likewise had been a Verlegenheitskandidat for the position, as Straube well knew, and that image arguably captured the irresolvable conflict of brooding self-doubt and tenacious ambition in his psyche. As the received Bach narrative had seemed to say, from the supposedly modest resources of the “compromise candidate” could arise the unanticipated force that turns the gears of music history. 19 Domizlaff, Nachdenkliche Wanderschaft, 379–80. 20 Letter, May 12, 1918, StBBPK. 21 Letter, June 22, 1918, BStBM.
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The point is worth emphasizing. Just beneath the cool surface of Straube’s finely wrought reflections on his proper place backstage in a theater crowded with the Great Men of history, there lurked a competitive willpower and an assured self-image of which he was never for a moment unaware. Unlike so many of his valued conversation partners, he was neither a composer nor a university man; despite his gift for crafted language and level-headedness, he never approached the position of the historians, diplomats, and politicians he so admired. But the drive was there, as was the feeling that he could play his cards in such a way to shape the grand arc of musical and hence cultural history. The same part of him that had engaged with such energy in Reger’s musical project, the part that had refashioned the Bach-Verein into a first-rate ensemble with a grand cultural mission—this part of him was possessed of an unbounded idealism and a self-consciously Prussian grit. Even during the last months of his life Straube would compose to his wife words saturated with Weltschmerz and the poised self-effacement behooving the biblical good servant. “If in my career I had been creative [schöpferisch, that is, a composer] . . . that would be a different picture,” he mused. “But I was merely a little, honest broker [ein kleiner ehrlicher Makler] who did his business with borrowed money.”22 The image of the ehrlicher Makler evoked the well-known moral tale of the servants entrusted with their master’s goods, but more immediately, and surely intentionally, it also invoked the ghost of Straube’s long-time hero Bismarck. In 1878 the Iron Chancellor had articulated his task among the European powers at the Berlin Congress as “one of an honest broker [die eines ehrlichen Maklers] who really wants to get business done,” that business having been the redrawing of the political map of the Balkans. In his popular Bismarck biography, Superintendent Pank had proffered the image when citing the Chancellor’s “honest and impartial posture,” by which he “openly and genuinely mediated between the parties and attempted to do business with them as an ‘honest broker’ [‘ehrlicher Makler’].”23 The vignette handily demonstrated Bismarck’s character as iconically German, going about great things in a modest way, eschewing ostentation and thus demonstrating the national virtues of fortitude, propriety, and moderation. It was to be Straube’s enduring model. In the 1918 negotiations there had been one aim voiced by the church authorities with which Straube was in full agreement, namely the augmentation of the Thomanerchor beyond its present ranks of about sixty singers. 22 Letter, August 26, 1949, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 23 Pank, Bismarckbüchlein, 74.
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If this were to prove a realizable objective, Straube knew that he needed to recruit a singing teacher devoted to the training of an enlarged choral force. Thinking strategically, he soon hit on the name of Max Fest, the Leipzig organist and vocal pedagogue who collaborated as a continuo player in his Bach-Verein. If he could win Fest as choral trainer and as St. Thomas organist simultaneously, two central issues might be solved with a single stroke. The day before he left for his Danish concerts in early April, he turned to Superintendent Cordes as the chair of the church council, the body with the decisive voice in the question of the organ post. “Either it will be viewed as important that the office retain the reputation it now has as absolutely the premier German organ position . . . or the question of the reorganization of the Thomanerchor will be given priority, and a man like Max Fest . . . will be called with the actual assignment of collaborating toward the enlargement of the choir.”24 The plan turned on not only the skill set but also the personality of the eventual organist, and Fest had settled into a career without aspirations to virtuoso stardom. The calculating Straube saw in this eventuality a stone that killed not two but three birds: while serving double duty on the organ bench and in the singing studio, Fest assumed a decidedly more modest position as a concert artist. That situation gave Straube a respectable way to salvage his own stature as a performer. If his new duties did not permit him to maintain his virtuosity at the old intensity, at least he would not have to sacrifice it categorically on the altar of the cantorate. He was convinced that the realization of such a strategy would come at the expense of the organ position’s “premier” reputation—a reputation owed solely to his authority as an artist, ehrlicher Makler or not—but this was an oblation he was willing to bring. The question was not resolved immediately. On May 2 Straube returned from Vienna, and on the following day he drafted his acceptance of the Council’s terms for the cantorate that had been dispatched to him on April 22. Despite the authorities’ request for a “prompt written reply,” he had made them wait ten days. “You know from me personally,” Straube brooded, “that I vacillate in my opinion as to whether I really could be the one suited to this great office.”25 Despite the hemming and hawing, though, he had decided: he was going to be the eleventh successor to J. S. Bach in the post. 24 Letter, April 3, 1918, cited in Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas,” 147–48. 25 Letter to Councilor Ackermann for the Leipzig City Council, Schulamt, May 3, 1918, cited in Altner, Das Thomaskantorat, 132.
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He swore his oath of office the same day, the organist question yet to be clarified. He had not gotten quite what he had wanted in terms of a starting salary—6,500 marks instead of his requested 7,200—but at least he could influence the outcome of the organist’s election. Or so he thought. On May 19, with his official starting date of June 1 looming and his mind trained on the organist issue, Straube again approached the authorities to elaborate the argument he had made over a month before. He adopted the strategy he had applied to his own election as cantor, suggesting a second name in order at least to create the impression of a choice: Karl Hoyer, the precocious organist and composer who had been among Straube’s first Conservatory class in 1907. Still, the new cantor made clear that Fest remained his first choice, since “he would be impartial in the event that my person would continue to be active as an organist.”26 He must have known that he was not going to get his way. For already in March, the St. Thomas Council had nominated another candidate, the nineteen-yearold Günther Ramin. Ramin had come to the Conservatory in spring 1914, having broken off his secondary studies at the Thomasschule to devote himself entirely to music, on Straube’s advice. He began piano study with Robert Teichmüller, receiving organ lessons in an unofficial capacity from Straube at St. Thomas. The young man’s extraordinary gifts were soon apparent, and he quickly joined other students in substitute duties at the Thomaskirche necessitated by Straube’s travel schedule. He doubtless was a “favorite pupil” of Straube, as Domizlaff remembered. At Reger’s death Hertha had accompanied the seventeen-year-old Ramin to view the body and lay roses, certainly a sign of the familial intimacy between teacher and student.27 That same autumn he was conscripted, carrying out military service in Leipzig and, beginning in August 1917, as a musician on the western front. Once Ramin was dispatched to France, Straube wasted no time in searching out his superior, alerting the latter to the boy’s unusual talent and sensitive constitution with an appeal to spare him the travails of the average foot-soldier. “His development as an organist gives rise to great expectations,” Straube had prophesied
26 Letter, May 19, 1918, cited in Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas,” 148–49. 27 Ramin related the episode in a letter of the same day (May 11, 1916) to an unknown recipient, preserved in partial photocopy among the papers of Diethard Hellmann, now in a private collection, USA.
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to the first lieutenant of Ramin’s company, “so that later on he may be counted among the most prominent names.”28 Teacher and student exchanged warm letters from the French front, Straube encouraging his young charge with his typically far-flung philosophical and historical musings. He reported to Ramin about his extracurricular reading, too, which in these critical months had turned to church history in the form of Karl von Hase’s Kirchengeschichte. That he found the book deficient did not deter him from extracting his own insights. “The important moments of Christianity lie in the first five centuries,” the young Ramin would read. “Everything else is a postlude, with the exception of humanism and the Reformation. . . . Otherwise, Catholicism as an entity has more style, since Protestantism is not at all a unity, but rather a transition to a dynamic thing that will never be.”29 That position, which regarded the open-ended diffuseness of the Protestant project as a weakness, was a curious one for the son of an extended family so immersed in mission and social causes. It would be good to know what Ramin, son of a Lutheran minister who never would develop his teacher’s pronounced intellectualizing tendencies, made of it. The operative expression in Straube’s letter to Ramin’s military superior had been “later on” or späterhin—“later on” he would develop into a first-rate artist, although as yet he was not fully formed. By contrast, Fest at forty-six and Hoyer at twenty-seven had in Straube’s view achieved the maturity appropriate to the St. Thomas position. Straube had taken the job as a thirty-year-old, whereas Ramin was nineteen, still a minor by law. But in the end, these considerations made no difference. On May 30, two days before he officially assumed the cantor’s chair, Straube chose his words carefully as he wrote to Ramin on the front. “I am to inform you, confidentially and unofficially, that the St. Thomas Church Council has selected you as my successor. I am to request that you prepare yourself to assume the office at war’s end, at first provisionally for about two years, then definitively.” And a telltale coda: “By the way, don’t waste any further time with words of thanks directed at me. You owe your election solely to the impression of your personal and artistic character. I had nothing to do with it.”30 This was an antiseptic honesty, and Straube knew how to wield it to make his position clear. Whether or not the news had come as a complete surprise to Ramin, as has 28 Undated letter (before mid-November 1917) cited in Charlotte Ramin, Günther Ramin, 30. 29 Letter, March 13, 1918, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 3. 30 Letter, May 30, 1918, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 4.
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been claimed, is beside the point.31 The fact was that the younger man had not arrived on the St. Thomas organ bench by Straube’s design, and the latter’s plan to install a new vocal coach for the choir was foiled thereby. The seeds of discord had been sown for what was to escalate, incrementally, into the most troubled professional relationship of Straube’s career. A middle-aged Straube assumed his duties on June 1, a young Ramin his on December 1. The transition to a new musical era at St. Thomas had been accomplished at the Empire’s bleakest moment. But the civic authorities did not yet quite realize what sort of person they had installed in the cantor’s office. The unrelentingly complicated dance between cantor and Council was just beginning.
31 Charlotte Ramin, Günther Ramin, 39; Ramin, Weggefährten, 22–24; Elisabeth Hasse, Erinnerungen, 38.
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Chapter Fourteen
Portraits in Ambivalence Contrary to Straube’s prediction, Germany was still very much at war in spring 1918. On March 3, just as negotiations around his candidacy were getting serious traction, the new Soviet Russian government had ceded the Baltic States in the harsh peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk imposed by the German and Austrian Empires. Now turning its full strategic attention to the western front, Germany launched a series of offensives through mid-July, when the Second Battle of the Marne turned the tides decisively in favor of the Allies. As May gave way to June in faraway Leipzig, there still seemed reason to imagine that the fatherland could prevail against its western enemies, even as the national resolve continued to be severely tested. These circumstances surely swirled in the minds of the faculty, students, and alumni of the Thomasschule as they gathered on Monday, June 3, to welcome the new cantor in a solemn but simple ceremony. At this moment, they stood on the unstable precipice not only of new political realities, but also of a Thomaskantor who manifestly was not going to conform to the time-honored mold. An alumni choir performed Schreck’s “Führe mich,” op. 33, no. 3, and his setting of Psalm 23, “Der Herr ist meine Hirte,” op. 42, memorializing Straube’s predecessor and, undoubtedly for some, recalling the fact that the cantorate until now had been a composing office. According to the press account, Rector Tittel welcomed Straube with the pointed wish, “May the assumption of the cantorate, which necessitates the grave relinquishment of certain cherished artistic activities, bring blessings and impart rich fulfillment”—a deliberate way of putting things that will not have escaped Straube’s attentive ears, and in which he could perceive the residues of concern over his hitherto “fragmented” schedule.1 In prepared remarks, the new cantor addressed the issue, at least obliquely, as well as the reservations of those who felt he was going to allow his artistic ambitions to override 1
Ht, “Einführung des neuen Thomaskantors,” Leipziger Tageblatt, June 5, 1918.
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the larger objective of the boys’ humanist education. “As little as he regards composition as the task that corresponds to his nature,” read the report that paraphrased Straube’s brief speech, “he will all the more take care to cultivate the formidable tradition of the past.” Calling on the choristers’ collaborative spirit, “he pointed out the unique asset of the Thomanerchor that justifies its preeminence: in it, musical and humanistic formation join together in the most beautiful harmony.”2 With these thoughts, he stepped into the office that would consume his energies for the next twenty-one years. He would prepare the future by curating the past. That strategy would have appeared more optimistic if the attendant socio-political realities had not reached their inevitable nadir. The quagmire of the western front dragged on through summer 1918, while the Empire’s domestic policy unraveled along with its war effort. In September Straube’s military service was again deferred, this time until March 31, 1919, “in the public interest, particularly considering his minimal military usefulness.”3 But by the following spring there would be no need for his conscription, or that of any other citizen. Serious ceasefire negotiations were underway in October. Attempts by the imperial government to shore up the broken will of the people, not least by the introduction of parliamentary democracy in the so-called October reforms, amounted to little more than a temporary bandage applied to the deep wounds of a disappointed and angry population ripe for revolution. November brought the ominous mutiny of the German navy at Kiel, the abdication of the Kaiser, and on the 11th, the cessation of hostilities. The Empire had lost about 2,700,000 of its citizens in or as a result of the conflict, around 4 percent of its pre-1914 population.4 On the shattered domestic front, the gears of social change now lurched forward. Two days before the ceasefire, the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann had proclaimed a German Republic, setting in motion an uncoordinated complex of political maneuverings that resulted in a coalition government at Weimar and a new constitution drafted over the spring and summer of 1919. Among the new constellations to arise from the chaos was the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP), forged from the Progressive People’s Party and the leftist wing of the National Liberals. Advancing a platform of advocacy for parliamentary democracy, federal unity, and social responsibility, the DDP recruited its members from the 2 Ibid. 3 Memorandum. September 28, 1918, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 24. 4 Petzina, Abelshauser, and Faust, Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch, 27.
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educated middle classes, teachers in the higher schools, leaders of industry, and government employees. It was likewise the party of liberal Judaism: Henri Hinrichsen maintained membership until 1928.5 With the Catholic Center and the Social Democrats, the DDP participated in the first motley coalition government of post-war Germany and retained a significant voice in elections thereafter. Straube joined its ranks in 1919.6 All was not rosy in the Thomaskantor’s office. Straube had not before accepted a post with the sort of nagging apprehension he was importing into this one. For a patriot and aficionado of history, the humiliating defeat of Germany’s aspirations in middle Europe did nothing to buoy his mood. The tatters in which the German economy found itself by autumn 1918 meant that his plans to expand the Thomaner’s ranks would go nowhere. Besides, he had failed to retain a vocal coach, found himself unable to effect his choice for organist, and now had to confront the reality that his prowess at the organ would begin to slip. The new cantor surely must have seen something of himself in the youthful idealism with which the precocious Ramin took possession of his beloved organ bench. With the old world passing away, Straube’s reputation as a sought-after virtuoso was seriously threatened by the tsunami of new responsibilities that came with a preeminent position only part of him had really wanted to embrace. It was in this clouded atmosphere of early 1919 that Straube began to feel out just how much breathing room his employers would allow him. On January 4 the Berlin Foreign Office had informed the Leipzig City Council that the German Protestant congregation in Kristiania would celebrate the tenth anniversary of its founding at month’s end. The congregation aimed to invite the Thomaskantor to appear as its celebrity organist in a concert and festival service, namely “for the reestablishment of good relations between Germany and Norway.”7 Like Sweden, Norway had maintained wartime neutrality, albeit at the cost of tensions with the Kaiser’s government not least over its complicated but friendly posture toward Britain. Now, on the eve of the Spartacus uprising that would spell the provisional administration’s violent end, Friedrich Ebert advocated a purposeful easing of tensions with Germany’s Nordic neighbors.8 Straube was a natural choice, having already 5 Bucholtz, Henri Hinrichsen, 184–85. 6 StAL Straube-Akten 2, 3. The form filed in 1934 claims membership through 1932. 7 Letter, January 4, 1919, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 27. 8 Hannemann, Die Freunde im Norden, 100.
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proven himself as a cultural emissary in Sweden in late 1917 and Denmark in early 1918. There was more at issue, though, than a few days of organ playing. The Council was informed that “the intention has arisen to arrange song recitals in a few other larger cities after the concerts in Kristiania. The singing portion would be assumed by a first-rate German female singer, while Professor Straube would accompany.” The request followed for a leave “from about January 20 through February 21.”9 The “first-rate German female singer” of course was going to be Emmi Leisner, Straube’s younger musical partner with whom he maintained—and with whom Hertha, after the uneasy rapprochement of September 1915, evidently allowed him to maintain—a productive relationship of some sort. Surely that “intention” had “arisen” with Leisner and Straube themselves, likely privy to the conversation before it reached the local authorities. This was just the sort of situation the more circumspect members of the City Council, along with Rector Tittel, had feared. It had been Tittel, after all, who at Straube’s installment several months before had made a point about the “grave relinquishment of certain cherished artistic activities.” Now, the town leaders were being petitioned to allow the newly minted Thomaskantor to gallivant about northern Europe for a month as an organist and pianist on a charm offensive, at short notice. Straube, distressed as ever about the demise of his virtuoso life, will have greeted the opportunity to claim the international stage once more with his twin loves of bygone days— the organ and Leisner. It was a critical conjuncture of personal, professional, and political concerns, and a first test of the city’s official insistence that the cantor place his energies squarely behind the school choir. What happened next was illustrative of the bureaucratic push-and-pull that would increasingly consume Straube and his superiors as the years advanced, often to the great annoyance of the latter. Council and Thomasschule were obliged to take a quick decision, Berlin’s appeal having arrived only about two weeks before the projected leave would begin. City officials well may have received the compressed and hence inconvenient timetable itself as a sign of the times, an improvised bit of foreign policy issuing from what has frequently been called an improvised government. Rector Tittel predictably expressed “not insignificant concern,” and by January 10 Oberbürgermeister Rothe decided that the request would be struck down.10 By the 13th the Schulamt had drafted a painstakingly worded letter to the Foreign Office: 9 Letter, January 4, 1919, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 27. 10 Two notes, both January 10, 1919, on reverse of letter, January 4, ibid.
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the Council “regretfully” would be unable to honor the government’s wish owing to “significant disadvantages for our Thomanerchor.”11 That letter was posted the following day. Before it could arrive, the Berlin authorities, having heard nothing, dispatched a telegram to the Leipzig Council that iterated their petition with greater urgency. The Council convened on the 15th to reconsider the matter, now relenting and granting the Thomaskantor a curtailed leave from January 22 through February 2, having approved the church-related events in Kristiania but not the subsequent concerts in other cities. The decision to reverse gears was hardly unanimous: nine councilors voted against it. Nevertheless, Straube’s interests had prevailed, if only in part. But neither he nor his advocates were accustomed to suffer half-baked compromises. The Council received a second, prolix cable from Berlin on the 16th, the cantor’s departure date now less than a week away. It “urgently” petitioned for an extension of leave in order to mount further concerts in Bergen and Trondheim, and it maintained that the original plan in Kristiania was possible only if the expanded schedule went forward.12 Why Straube’s appearances in the Norwegian capital for a church festival would depend so indelibly on concerts elsewhere in the country was not satisfactorily explained. But Leipzig relented again, if grudgingly. A brief draft response to Berlin read simply “Leave of Straube to Norway more than four days longer denied,” a flatly negative expression that captured the displeasure of the civic authorities at being pressured in a matter of supposed national importance that they thought had been laid to rest.13 And so Straube departed for Norway and his rendezvous with Leisner on January 22. There, he strengthened relationships that would lead to his return the following year with the Thomanerchor on its first international tour of Scandinavia. By February 2, as the northern sojourn neared its agreed-upon close, the Foreign Office turned yet again to the Leipzig Council to convey a telegram from the German ambassador, citing the “great success” of the venture and requesting an extension “for several days, since his further stay here is most urgently desired in the German interest.”14 Again the rhetoric of “urgency” and patriotic duty in troubled times impressed itself upon the Council, and again the bureaucratic instrumentarium was set in motion to 11 12 13 14
Draft letter, January 13, 1919, ibid., 28. Telegram, January 16, 1919, ibid., 31–32. Note, January 17, 1919, on reverse of telegram, January 16, ibid. Telegram, February 2, 1919, ibid., 33–34.
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address a request from the higher-ups. The necessary conferrals with Tittel were had, the necessary deliberations of the Schulamt carried through, the leave extended “so that he is here on February 14 at latest.”15 This was a victory, and perhaps it encouraged Straube to entertain the possibility that he yet might be able to maintain a semblance of his concert career alongside his new obligations as cantor. The Scandinavian tour of early 1919 presented but the most recent manifestation of Straube’s warm relations with Germany’s northern neighbors cultivated over the years. Neither he nor those who oversaw cultural matters in the new Germany’s foreign policy would neglect the welcoming door that seemed to stand open in Scandinavia, particularly when such doors were closed in France to the west and Russia to the east.16 Accordingly, in the wake of the Straube-Leisner triumph in Norway, the Foreign Office turned immediately to the Leipzig Council to praise the unqualified successes of its organist-ambassador. “One had never before experienced such an ovation in Kristiania,” read the letter. And of course the local authorities deserved accolades in the first place “that it was possible for Professor Straube to place his great art in the service of German affairs.”17 City officials would not have to wait long for the next request. That May, Straube turned to Rothe with a virtuosic proposal for his summer activities. The Norwegian state church now wanted him back for organ masterclasses over several weeks, and the Danes had approached him with a similar proposal for Copenhagen.18 Straube unspooled a plan whereby he could teach two back-to-back courses, each of one month’s duration, first in Copenhagen, then in Kristiania. Leipzig would need to grant him three weeks of leave beyond the five already contracted for summer vacation, in effect the months of July and August. He claimed that the immediate value of such work lay in the enhancement of the nation’s reputation as guardian of a great cultural inheritance over against goods peddled by the enemy, particularly France. He could postpone the Copenhagen engagement until 1920, he continued to the mayor, but his Copenhagen contacts had impressed on him the urgency of the situation owing to “the high esteem French music, as opposed to German, enjoys in Denmark at the moment.” In view of the political landscape “it would be possible for me to act as a solicitor in the national 15 Note, February 3, 1919, on reverse of telegram, February 2, ibid., 34. 16 Hannemann, Die Freunde im Norden, 96–99. 17 Letter, February 22, 1919, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 35. 18 Letter, May 14, 1919, ibid., 36–37.
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interest for this small area of German intellectual culture—an area which it is my task and responsibility to administer.”19 The argument was calculated in effect, coordinated in every detail, vested with just the proper modesty (“this small area”), and laced with the political urgency that had proven so effective in official deliberations only a few months before. The next day, Rothe forwarded the request to the Thomasschule with a positive recommendation. The disgruntled rector responded that the choir’s potential would be “negatively influenced” by the cantor’s absence, but that this concern had to take a back seat to the fact that “Professor Straube promotes the standing of German music abroad,” implying that his decision would have gone the other way in a different political climate.20 The official permission followed “on condition that he secure a substitute at his cost.”21 Straube had won again, sacrificing his summer break “in the national interest,” to be sure, but also satisfying a psychological need to remain relevant as an organist. “So I will turn up on July 1 in Copenhagen and seek to unveil my pedagogical talents,” he announced cheerfully to Raasted. Still, he remained cautious about what he could manage at his age: “I will probably not be able to take on organ recitals. If there are to be thirty participants in the class, I would have to teach five hours a day. So this is an enormous amount of work.”22 Plunging into the reality of the summer program, he echoed these sentiments to Ramin some weeks later, writing, “I thought it would be easier. But teaching four hours daily, endlessly talking and always playing, this is not as easy as it would seem.” And the old doubts still gnawed. “I cannot escape the thought that I am a pretty inadequate cantor. Perhaps one feels the deficiencies of one’s own life all the stronger as one ages.”23 As developments thus far had demonstrated, though, he was anything but inadequate with respect to the political legerdemain necessary to steer a given situation in the direction he wanted it to go. The new cantor’s calculating nature and uncanny ability to keep several balls in the air at once meant that the Thomanerchor on Straube’s watch was not and never would be on auto-pilot. The next matter of urgency was already brewing before he returned from his summer classes abroad, precipitated at least in part by a physical ailment that would escalate with time. At latest by mid-1919, it 19 Ibid. 20 Note, May 17, 1919, on reverse of letter, May 14, ibid. 21 Note, May 21, 1919, ibid. 22 Letter, June 5, 1919, BhAE Nachlass Raasted. 23 Letter, July 24, 1919, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 5.
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was clear that his hearing was slipping. Unchecked, the condition might lead to deafness in at least one ear, impeding his choral duties, to say nothing of organ playing and teaching. The illness surely had been exacerbated by sustained exposure to loud organs over the years, not only in countless hours of practice, but also in tuning and maintenance. It compounded a longstanding diffidence about his fitness as a musician and punctured any pride he may have harbored concerning his robust physical nature. Given Straube’s already advanced ambivalence about his professional situation, his hearing troubles drove him further into crisis, and he began to consider whether a retreat into administration might better suit his nature. He had certainly proven himself as an able organizer. Now, with his feelings at their most conflicted, circumstances conspired to open a new door as Hans Bußmeyer stepped down as the director of the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich. The leadership turned to Siegmund von Hausegger, composer and director of the Hamburg Philharmonic since 1910. But Hausegger was reluctant to sacrifice his conducting and composing for teaching and administration, and he recommended Straube, evidently without the latter’s knowledge. News of Munich’s interest reached Straube in Scandinavia that summer. He confessed to Hausegger the emerging situation with his health and solicited advice about Munich. “I really do not believe that your serious nature fits Munich’s superficiality,” Hausegger responded forthrightly. “This philistine society has always managed to drive out real personalities.” Still, Hausegger pointed out potential advantages, observing that Munich “can help you to have two irons in the fire” and that a shared Hausegger-Straube administration might hold possibilities. “I would imagine myself to appear only sporadically,” he continued, whereas the day-to-day administration would fall to Straube. Furthermore, “as far as your person is concerned, I have the feeling that you have not yet found the optimal situation for flexibility and development.”24 Straube had long admired Hausegger’s intellect and musicality, and now the chance to work alongside him gave reason to explore a major career move. Hausegger had no particular reverence for the office of Thomaskantor and its anchor in sacred choral music, and he probably reflected Straube’s own tone in his observation that the Leipzig situation was unnecessarily limiting. Armed with this strategic advice, Straube returned from Scandinavia at the end of August and promptly presented the mayor with the next test of the civic goodwill. His timing left much to be desired, since the St. Michael’s 24 Letter, August 11, 1919, BStBM.
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trade fair was in full swing, with an influx of over 100,000 visitors to the city. The last thing the mayor’s office needed now was a pressing issue from the direction of the Thomasschule. And yet there was Karl Straube, freshly arrived from the north only to aim a gracefully worded warning shot over the bow of the city’s cultural affairs. The Bavarian authorities, he professed, had offered him the directorship outright. He could not “dismiss the question out of hand but rather must examine it more closely.” Once he had weighed the benefits on both ends, “only then will I be able to say how the whole matter will unfold.”25 This of course occasioned an emergency audience with Rothe, at which Straube declared that he intended to interview in Munich and that he would “leave Leipzig only if Munich offered a substantially expanded sphere of activity that fully corresponded to his pedagogical tendencies.”26 Just what “a substantially expanded sphere of activity” anchored in the Bavarian capital might have meant is not clear. On the other hand, Straube was quite certain what such a situation would look like in Leipzig, and he was about to play his hand in such a way as to realize it. Here was another step in enhancing the tight interlinkage of influence characteristic of the protean “Straube system.” If the mayor’s memorandum of their meeting gave anything like a complete picture of the conversation, then Straube was revealing only those parts of the issue necessary to arouse official concern. There was no mention of his hearing loss as a motivating factor, nor was there any indication of his intent to exploit the Munich question for the enhancement of his position at the Leipzig Conservatory. That latter plan would involve the creation of an institution intimately bound to Straube’s name, the Kirchenmusikalisches Institut (Church Music Institute, CMI). Its ground had already been prepared in 1895, when Piutti established a Conservatory class in liturgical organ playing, and further cultivated in 1912, when Schreck had recommended the establishment of an affiliated vocational institute for church musicians. Although Straube presumably had been aware of these early initiatives, he seems not to have been a prime actor in moving them forward. His name was conspicuously absent from an official narrative of 1918 that outlined developments between Schreck’s recommendations and the outbreak of war.27 Furthermore, wartime exigencies and the transition into the cantorate had 25 Letter, August 31, 1919, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 40. 26 Memorandum, September 3, 1919, ibid., 41. 27 Röntsch, “Bericht,” 36.
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provided for a host of discontinuities and distractions. Now, with Straube installed as Thomaskantor, the question of church music training resurfaced, this time catalyzed by competition between the conservatories of Dresden and Leipzig to be designated as the official state institution for musical training. Leipzig regarded its pre-war plans for a Kirchenmusikalisches Institut, to be affiliated both with the Conservatory and the Saxon Lutheran Church, as a strategic advantage over Dresden and moved accordingly to launch it.28 Although the plan’s immediate realization proved financially impractical, the course was set, and Straube undoubtedly perceived in his potential leadership of the Institute a logical and fruitful career advance. The chance to develop a training center integral both to the local and wider cultures of church music would present a “substantially expanded sphere of activity” requiring Straube’s administrative gifts. Thus, if he could use the Munich threat to move forward plans for a Straube-led CMI, enhanced influence at the Conservatory would follow. He had informed the mayor of Munich’s interest on August 31, and by September 17 the story went public via a local press article by the critic and Straube ally Adolf Aber. Surely Straube himself had leaked the news. Aber compared the turn of fortune to the city’s recent loss of the young Hans Knappertsbusch, who had relinquished his conducting post at the Stadttheater for a more lucrative appointment in Dessau. The Leipzigers were indifferent to the real significance of the new cantor, “in whose head the world is conceived differently from those of others. . . . He is an idealist of the most pure sort, possessed of an altruism that appears almost fairy-tale-like in our times.” Aber went on to propose a solution calculated to retain his hero, doubtless reflecting Straube’s own preconceived strategy. A Conservatory appointment in parity with the Munich offer would be “the easiest and most natural way,” though an unlikely one, since the Conservatory’s administration “has not yet even conferred on him the leadership of the institution’s church music department!” That shortsightedness would ensure a bleak future. “When spring comes, we will lose a man, today only forty-six years old, who is still in a position to accomplish great things—but unfortunately not in Leipzig!”29 Deftly exploiting a more or 28 Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Leipzig Conservatory on February 11, 1919, HMTLA Conservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig. SitzungsProtokolle, 19 February 1918–1 February 1924. 29 Adolf Aber, “Zum drohenden Weggang Prof. Karl Straubes,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, September 17, 1919.
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less straightforward news story as an opportunity for cultural critique, Aber painted the situation as an imperilment to the city’s musical reputation. To him and surely to many others in the Thomaskantor’s camp, Straube was no mere musician, rather a man of unusual intellect and deep insight, a “fairy-tale-like” fount of musical offerings, one who gave freely of himself without expecting anything in return. Leipzig’s answer came relatively swiftly. One week after Aber’s essay ran, the Conservatory’s Board addressed the three demands Straube had levied as conditions for his remaining: a fixed annual salary of 6,000 marks (replacing the pro-rated arrangement for his applied lessons), admittance to the conference of higher faculty, and “directorship of the Church Music Institute, the prospect of which has already been held out to him.”30 A vote came in the Board’s meeting the following month on October 27, but this was a mere formality: already on the 21st Aber had published a second essay announcing Straube’s decision to stay and prophesying that “a new era in Leipzig’s musical life” would ensue.31 As Aber readily pointed out, the negotiations had moved Straube into a much stronger position at the Conservatory. Anxious to launch the CMI as leverage against Dresden’s bid to become the music education center of Saxony, the Conservatory’s leaders handed its reins to the Thomaskantor.32 He now would be able, claimed Aber, to fashion an Institute on par with Berlin’s Academic Institute for Church Music, led since 1907 by Kretzschmar. Further, the new director could at long last carry out his plan of “a clean division of those students who wish to dedicate themselves to the musical vocation from those who are keen on music as a hobby.”33 When the CMI finally did open its doors on October 23, 1921, Straube could not help but import his own intellectual passions into his pithy formulation of its goals, to consist in the “thorough formation of the students in all relevant areas of musical knowledge and ability, and in the elevation of our ancient
30 Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Leipzig Conservatory on September 24, 1919, HMTLA Conservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig. Sitzungs-Protkolle, 19 February 1918–1 February 1924. 31 Adolf Aber, “Karl Straube bleibt in Leipzig,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, October 21, 1919. 32 The plan to establish a single, state-supported center for musical training was abandoned. Goltz, Das Kirchenmusikalische Institut, 18. 33 Aber, “Karl Straube bleibt in Leipzig.”
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church music treasures.”34 That mission agreed reasonably with Schreck’s ideals from 1912. More generally, it reflected fascination with a distant past informed by widespread post-war disillusionment, the Jugendbewegung, neo-classicist aesthetics, and perhaps most immediately, the emerging historicist Orgelbewegung. But the “new era” Aber proclaimed turned not merely on the advent of a church music training center. Exploiting the Munich threat, Straube had negotiated a further advantage, namely the absorption of the Bach-Verein into the less accomplished Gewandhaus Chorus. It was a natural move considering the Verein’s collaboration with the city’s famed orchestra in recent years, and a financially astute one insofar as Straube’s group would receive the secure civic funding enjoyed by the Gewandhaus. Now, in the increasingly stringent environment of the post-war economy, Straube proposed a union under a new name, the Chorvereinigung des Gewandhauses (Gewandhaus Choral Union). After protracted discussions and eventual concessions by the governing boards of both choruses, the merger followed in September 1919. As director of the orchestra’s designated chorus, he achieved a more active role at the Gewandhaus, exercised in productive relationships with Wilhelm Furtwängler and Bruno Walter. Furthermore, Straube was furnished with a performing force with which he could explore the secular repertory in a way the more narrow missions of the Bach-Verein and Thomanerchor could not. It was at the Gewandhaus, too, where he would engage his lively interest in contemporary music, throwing himself into works from Pfitzner and Hausegger to Kodály and Honegger.35 All of that lay in the future. For now, Straube could be satisfied at having exploited Munich’s interest in order to advance his status at home to a point he hardly could have imagined a decade earlier. The crisis having passed, the concerned parties breathed a collective sigh of relief as winter approached. He would continue to make his nest in “little Paris.” Or so everyone thought. After the briefest of intermissions, the Munich affair moved into an elaborate second act brought on, at least ostensibly, by a worsening of the cantor’s hearing. On New Year’s Eve Oberbürgermeister Rothe received a telephone call from Straube, who had consulted two local ear doctors. They had reached the conclusion that he ran the risk of total deafness in one ear should he continue his work as a choral conductor. “If he limits himself to organ playing and administrative tasks, his hearing would 34 Cited in Goltz, Das Kirchenmusikalische Institut, 20. 35 Hübner, “Bach-Verein,” 113–15.
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probably be spared,” explained the mayor in a memo to the Council. Straube had divulged to him that his Munich responsibilities would lie largely in administration and that therefore he had reopened a channel “to find out whether he could yet receive the appointment offered him earlier as Director of Church Music for the state of Bavaria.” Under the circumstances, a favorable benefits package there meant that “he will have to go to Munich in the interest of his family, despite the fact that all his wishes have been met in Leipzig, and that even now he prefers his position here to that in Munich.”36 This was a shrewd chess move, and of course Straube was not telling the mayor the whole story. Hausegger, too, continued to dither behind the scenes about whether a move to Munich was appropriate for himself, and Straube did not want to dismiss a possible collaboration, no matter his recent professional gains at home. In January the Gewandhaus choral merger had yet to be worked out. Furthermore, as 1920 dawned, he still was not entirely prepared to sacrifice his organ career to choral music. But Straube’s official argument to the city was clear enough. Since his hearing threatened an early withdrawal from the cantorate, the most urgent question concerned an optimal retirement arrangement. Leipzig was giving him only half the amount offered by the competition—a pension of 6,000 to 7,000 marks instead of Munich’s projected 12,000—and even that was contingent on several years of future service. Despite the holiday, this development set off a flurry of activity in various levels of the Leipzig bureaucracy. The Council addressed the issue immediately in executive session on January 2: Straube’s retention was “by all means extremely desirable.”37 This was to be achieved through the city’s guarantee that it would meet Munich’s pension offer in case the Thomaskantor lost his hearing. In a measure of the respect Straube commanded at the highest levels of city government, that strategy passed with only one dissenting vote. The following day, the Schulamt weighed in, ratifying the decision against eight negative votes and dispatching a long memorandum to the full Council.38 Straube had committed to stay put if the city would grant a favorable pension arrangement. The actual amount depended both on when the cantor would 36 Memorandum, December 31, 1919, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 42. Correspondence shows that “the appointment offered him earlier” was the directorship of the Academy, not of Bavarian (Protestant) church music. 37 Report on the Leipzig City Council’s executive session, January 2, 1920, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 42–43. 38 Minutes (excerpt) of the Department of Schools, January 3, 1920, ibid., 44.
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retire (in turn dependent on his health) and on how the Saxon Ministry of Culture chose to count his years of service to the church. Looking to spare his hearing, “we envisage discharging him from his duties as a choral director, perhaps later even relieving him of the cantorate, but assigning him another function as it appears appropriate.”39 The government’s improvised policy turned on securing Straube’s commitment to Leipzig practically at all costs, a position for which neither his continuation as Thomaskantor nor even the inclusion of conducting duties in that capacity appears to have been integral. On the contrary, the higher-ups were willing to countenance the possibility of a cantor who himself did not lead the Thomanerchor, so long as that person were Karl Straube. The affair was far from over, now having generated more questions than answers. In the meantime, a third medical specialist had gotten involved, whose opinion was that the condition would improve with rest. By January 16 Straube’s troubles had escalated to the point that he submitted a request for an immediate three-month leave of absence as cantor, followed by a similar appeal to the Conservatory administration.40 In both instances, he asked that Ramin step into the interim. Given Straube’s endless vacillations, suspicions lingered that he might yet decide for Munich. He soon had to allay fears that his spring absence somehow had to do with the furthering of his candidacy in Bavaria. And vacillate he did. Four days before requesting leave he wrote Raasted to relate his disheveled state, concluding that “in all likelihood” he would hold to Leipzig.41 But ten days later he told Max Ackermann that he had “in principle” accepted Munich. If his condition improved over the next weeks, he nonetheless would stay put and drop the quest to improve his pension arrangements. If, “against expectations,” his hearing did not improve as a result of rest, he would set course for Bavaria.42 A month later he was still chasing his tail, now in a full-on personal crisis: responding to a request for material toward a biographical essay to be written about him, a normally 39 Draft memorandum (undated) from the Department of Schools to the City Councilors, ibid., 45–46. 40 Letter, January 16, 1920, to the Leipzig City Council, Department of Schools, ibid., 47; and Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Leipzig Conservatory, January 23 and February 13, 1920, HMTLA Conservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig. Sitzungs-Protkolle, 19 February 1918–1 February 1924. 41 Letter, January 12, 1920, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8/102. 42 Letter, January 22, 1920, ibid., 48.
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self-possessed Straube blurted that “I don’t know anything at all about myself and can offer no information. I don’t know what works I prefer, and I likewise don’t know what I want, or what my artistic goals are.”43 Meanwhile an intensified correspondence with Hausegger exposed aspects of the dilemma Straube understandably had not aired with his Leipzig superiors. The two had set up triangulated negotiations with the Bavarian Ministry of Education and Culture, both having conditioned their respective acceptances on the coming of the other. Once Straube resurrected his conversations around the beginning of 1920, Hausegger’s interest was rekindled. Moreover, when Hausegger found out from Leisner that Straube required an extended leave to spare his hearing, he was even more persuaded that fate dictated a collaboration in Munich.44 By mid-January, though, Straube’s wavering had become evident. “One thing appears clear to me, that you have to make the decision between Munich and Leipzig completely independent of me,” Hausegger admonished. “I would never assume responsibility for your leaving Leipzig if you have even the smallest conviction that you possess there the better field of activity.”45 He now found himself caught in the gravitational pull of the black hole that was Straube’s indecision. His perspective undoubtedly amounted to a complicating influence on Straube’s decision making, thus on the latter’s impressive propensity to “leave the Munich affair in the air,” as Hausegger himself had advised some months earlier. For now, Straube had emancipated himself from his obligations on medical orders. He was to abstain from work through the end of April, a period that included Holy Week and Easter. The authorities had shown considerable largesse on account of his hearing condition. Since he had acceded to the cantorate, it seemed that one crisis after another had thwarted any chance of business as usual in his affairs. Surely, then, there were raised eyebrows in the mayor’s office when Rothe discovered, just before Holy Week, that his Thomaskantor was back in Norway, where for some time he evidently had been performing with Leisner. The irritation in the ensuing memo—intentionally typed on the reverse side of Straube’s request for an advance on his March salary—is palpable. “I request that the facts be ascertained exactly,” Rothe wrote, “in order to draft a resolution as to whether Herr Professor Straube, who is still out of commission through April, should be deprived of further leave, and whether Herr Professor Straube can be prevailed upon to 43 Letter to Georg Jäger, February 18, 1920, BhAE. 44 Letter from Hausegger to Straube, January 19, 1920, BStBM. 45 Ibid. Emphasis original.
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pay his substitute from his own pocket.”46 After having to negotiate with the national authorities over Straube’s appearances in Scandinavia the previous winter, still dealing with the threat of losing him to Munich, and now having accommodated what had been trotted out as a serious medical issue, the mayor’s patience had finally run out. Straube once again was taking the stage with his contralto inamorata, and this under the guise of “sparing” his hearing. Meanwhile, he continued to draw full salary while the city covered Ramin’s ad interim honorarium. If he had wanted to test the limits of the civic goodwill, he had succeeded. The person charged with approaching him about the issue was Councilor Ackermann, who dispatched word immediately after the Easter holiday. Straube had already landed back in Leipzig, and Ackermann promptly reported that the cantor had “asked for permission to express himself in writing.”47 This signaled that the Council was about to receive a characteristically Straubeian essay—impeccably wrought, politically savvy, maddeningly poised, infused with just the right degree of indignation, all aimed at making the authorities wonder why they had questioned his behavior in the first place. He had decamped to Norway—“a possibility that presented itself unexpectedly”—only after having spent his first month’s leave at home, retaining leadership of the Thomaner out of a sense of duty and thereby exacerbating his condition. He had performed publicly, “liberally estimated [at] fifteen hours of music-making in five weeks’ time,” to cover costs and shore up his health. The financial realities were no fault of his: he was habitually “forced . . . to earn money from extraordinary resources,” in Germany or abroad. Moreover, owing to the very actions the Council now called into question, his health had been restored, allowing him to turn down the Munich offer on the way home. Since arriving he had plunged back into his obligations and relinquished the remainder of his leave. He further claimed that his return had been delayed by the four-day Kapp-Lüttwitz coup that had played out in Germany beginning on March 13, a revolt of the radical right that had set off strikes nationwide. He had been able to turn toward home finally on the 26th.48 The entire argument amounted to an adroit way out of an obvious and surely embarrassing bind, to be understood as unequivocal loyalty to Leipzig and as a victory for his sturdy physical constitution.
46 Memorandum, March 26, 1920, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 50. 47 Memorandum, April 7, 1920, ibid., 51. 48 Letter, April 10, 1920, ibid., 52–53.
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Rothe’s reaction was as succinct as Straube’s explanation had been prolix. “It is to be expressed to Professor Straube that his behavior raises cause for concern, but this time we will abstain from deducting the costs for his substitute during the leave.” And noted in pencil alongside the official ruling in the mayor’s hand, “I will inform Str. of it myself.”49 The mayor’s language—“cause for concern,” “this time”—betrayed clearly that the still-new Thomaskantor was walking on thin ice during the spring thaw. Straube will not have missed the point and perhaps once again unpacked the “resignation trumpet” he had played during the explosive resolution to the Leisner affair in 1915. As for Munich, it was Hausegger who was caught holding the bag in the eleventh hour that April. Straube in fact had declined Munich not “during my journey home,” as he had told the Leipzig Council, but rather earlier, in a communication to the Bavarian Ministry no later than March 13. But he had neglected to inform Hausegger of that decision, precipitating a series of unfortunate missteps that led to Hausegger’s unwitting acceptance of the post without Straube’s collaboration and under compromised circumstances. Straube had played with fire during these months, allowing free rein to a chaotic ambivalence. He was not the only one to have been burned. It was high time to get off the fence and get on with the rest of his life. In a long postmortem analysis of the bungled affair, an annoyed Hausegger predicted, “You will have to accept many things that limit your effectiveness and leave you unsatisfied. . . . But as a friend, I would ask you not to give in to skepticism, which, it appears to me, has sometimes had a paralyzing effect on you.” In the end it was “the legitimacy and necessity of your personality” that mattered most, in his view. “You have a great task to fulfill and are an indispensable personality. From this feeling you must and will find a way into the future.”50 These were prescient words, formulated by a respected figure at a time Straube most needed to hear them. He was not going to have a perfect future. After nearly two years as cantor, he needed finally to stop brooding and embrace the situation he had created for himself.
49 Resolution, April 13, 1920, ibid., 54. 50 Letter, April 5, 1920, BStBM. Emphasis original.
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https://doi.org/10.1017/9781800104709.019 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Part V
Leipzig 1920–1929 Erhalte, Gott, Karl Straube, God preserve Karl Straube, Daß er auf dieser Erd’ grant that he on this earth Noch lange wirk’, erlaube! will work yet longer! Sei uns der Wunsch gewährt! Let this wish be granted us! —from “An offering to my dear friend Karl Straube on January 6, 1928, the 25th anniversary of his most blessed work in Leipzig” from Arnold Mendelssohn, for SATB chorus a cappella; BAL Nachlass Straube 95b
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https://doi.org/10.1017/9781800104709.020 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Chapter Fifteen
On the Road and at the Negotiating Table By 1920 Straube had made clear to his superiors that he was not the sort of cantor who was content to sit in Leipzig, placidly carrying out routine duties. Over the last decades he had accumulated star power in his interlocking roles as organist, choral director, editor, and pedagogue. The international musical community knew who he was. If the local authorities intended to hold him, they needed to assume a nearly perpetual posture of negotiation as institutions elsewhere approached with lucrative offers. The restive Thomaskantor was not satisfied enough with his situation simply to dismiss outright the possibility of a career advance, and too politically minded not to exploit such instances to his professional advantage. Mayor and Council had learned these lessons quickly and vividly during the short time since Straube had taken the job. In the following years the civic leadership would return repeatedly to fresh demands from the cantor’s office. But in spring 1920, the Munich question now finally off his radar, Straube seemed to have committed to Leipzig. He would pursue the “great task,” as Hausegger had put it that April, within the parameters of his ever-expanding influence in the Saxon city on the Pleisse. The first thing that loomed was the Neue Bachgesellschaft’s formidable eighth German Bachfest, to be spearheaded by Straube and his Gewandhaus Chorus in Leipzig on the weekend of June 19–21, 1920. In 1918 he had been elected secretary of the NBG, signaling his growing influence in the society. Vienna had hosted the last major festival in May 1914, and the planning committee for that event surely remembered the major scheduling collision with the Bach-Verein’s own Leipzig Bachfest, exposing rifts between Straube and other members of the Gesellschaft’s Board. But the clouds had dispersed by late 1919 when arrangements got underway for the landmark
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1920 festival, the first after the war. Now the Board noted the Verein’s “generous accommodation” even as it directed praise to the city, its “excellent friends of art,” and its “energetic” Thomaskantor.1 Such esprit de corps was a far cry from the mood in 1914, and a diplomatic victory. The June Bachfest amounted to another feather in Straube’s cap, but the kind of “great task” of which Hausegger had written lay beyond the planning and execution of this or that festival. Years later, faced with a tempting offer to relocate to Berlin, Straube would confide to his wife that “if I am to go . . . then I will arrive there and have a task to accomplish. In my life it has always been so.”2 He was at bottom a person of projects—or, to put it in the moral language of the Straube and Palmer family backgrounds, a person of mission. After all, he had taken on Reger’s music as a kind of mission, then the Bach-Verein, and now the Thomanerchor. Happiness depended upon a proper challenge, something that transcended the day-to-day work of the cantor and the lesson-to-lesson routine of the pedagogue, in short, an open-ended “task to accomplish” that would impart to his work the cultural significance of which he knew music was capable. This would have to involve a presence not only outside city limits, but also outside German borders. These ambitions crystallized in the form of plans to lead the Thomaner on a tour of Scandinavia during school holidays in late September and early October, an initiative energetically supported by Jens Frølich Tandberg, Bishop of Kristiania and devotee of the cantor. There was much to consider here. The notion of a touring ensemble was new, requiring a formidable organizational structure that had not before existed. The mere possibility of a mobile choir surely triggered alarm among those St. Thomas congregants who viewed it as a slippery slope away from the Thomaner’s time-honored ecclesial role. It had not been that long ago when Superintendent Cordes, faced with the inevitability of Straube’s election, had urged the City Council to guard against “the impairment of the choir’s churchly duties by concert tours or other such extra-ecclesial activities.” The 1918 Dienstanweisung had granted no provision for this sort of travel and made “special performances” subject to ad hoc approval from the higher-ups. Notwithstanding these and other difficulties, Straube must have regarded the initiative more or less as a fortuitous extension of the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed over the last twenty years. Even as he had enjoyed a 1 2
Minutes of the Board of Directors and the Festival Committee of the Leipzig Bachfest, June 19, 1920, UBL Archivbestand Neue Bachgesellschaft. Letter, July 27, 1934, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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robust travel schedule as an in-demand concert artist, he now would salvage that raison d’être by taking the Thomanerchor on the road with him, distinguishing “Bach’s choir” from other prominent ensembles with whom he saw himself in competition. The warm relationships nourished on his recent forays into Scandinavia made the Nordic lands a natural target for a first major international outing. The young republic’s foreign policy continued to cultivate the northern countries as a wedge against the so-called Diktatfrieden imposed at Versailles a year earlier. Just as Straube’s Scandinavian recitals and teaching had sought to persuade Germany’s neighbors that his was a land of culture rather than barbarism, the Thomaner would now embrace a similar grand enterprise to renovate the honor of the fatherland. The tour would deploy the seventy choirboys in fifteen concerts over six cities in three countries: Copenhagen (Denmark); Malmö and Göteborg (Sweden); Drammen, Bergen, and Kristiania (Norway).3 The singers would lodge with local families. Straube himself took on the bulk of the organization, relying on colleagues and former students at or near the performance sites for help. There were plenty of obstacles, not least a personal one: that fall Hertha’s father Bernhard Küchel lay gravely ill in Wiesbaden, where the family had since retired. Straube held his in-laws on the Rhine in high regard, and his own parents had long since passed. The inevitability of Bernhard’s death probably weighed on him as Hertha and Elisabet journeyed east to be at the bedside. Berlin gave mixed signals in its approval of the performance sites, so that the details crystallized only at the last minute. “On Tuesday at 12:30 p.m., the Foreign Office informed the rector that the entire tour was off,” reported a flustered Straube to his wife shortly before departure, “and at 2:30 p.m. it again approved the entire tour to the cantor. The Copenhagen concert seemed to disintegrate, and today that too has been sorted out.” An endless parade of logistics demanded his attention, over and above the musical-psychological preparation of the boys for their cultural mission. “I’ve just received notice from Copenhagen that there are difficulties with lodging,” he continued. “Ticket sales for the concert are going well. A consolation in any case. But such a tour is a questionable pleasure! The boys are looking forward to it immeasurably and become merrier by the day. That’s something, anyway.”4 Tempered by this mixture of optimism and 3 4
“Die erste große Auslandsreise 1920,” inspector’s travel report by Walter Kunzman reproduced in Altner, Das Thomaskantorat, 245–46. Letter, September 23, 1920, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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uncertainty, the choir assembled at the Leipzig train station and set out for the north accompanied by Straube, Ramin, and the baritone Wolfgang Rosenthal, choral alumnus and frequent collaborator. A first stop was Kierkegaard’s Frue Kirke in Copenhagen, where the Thomaner sang a trio of programs hailed in the Danish press as “three shining stars in the Nordic musical heaven.”5 As the ensemble continued to Malmö, an energized cantor enthused to his daughter, “The boys were received by the Danes with extraordinary benevolence and made an excellent impression with their etiquette and good breeding [Wohlerzogenheit].” His satisfaction in his charges’ joie de vivre bubbled to the surface. “The boys are so happy and radiant that they regard the concerts merely as a rather inconvenient interruption of an otherwise very pleasant trip. If they continue to eat like they do now, a group of little Falstaffs will return to Leipzig. . . . If [they] had their way, they . . . would have been happy to forgo concerts and singing! So is youth! But I can well identify with it.”6 Straube’s avuncular rapport with the choirboys would be a recurring theme, both in the public imagination and in the recollections of alumni. For all his conviction about the German musical heritage and its maintenance, the purpose of this and subsequent tours clearly did not lie narrowly with the musical or the political. As he aged he enjoyed the chance to form young people, expanding their horizons by showing them the pleasures of getting to know other landscapes and societies. In lodging the boys with native families on the road, Straube efficiently realized the diplomatic objective of the tours: the German nation was not to be defined by the callousness of which it had been unjustly accused in the Kriegsschuldthese or “war-guilt theory” of Versailles, but rather by the disciplined Wohlerzogenheit of youth singing the great music of a great civilization for the betterment of the neighbor. One popular history of the Thomaner tours, published in 1957, still claimed of the inaugural outing that “the conduct of the Thomaner in Norwegian family circles was so immaculate that Norwegian parents long held up the German youths to their children as models.”7 Germany was trying to build Europe up, not tear it down, a catechism deeply embedded in Straube’s psyche. By bringing it to bear upon the holistic task of a 700-year-old choral establishment, he would make his mark. 5
As cited from the Danish newspaper Berlingske in “Die erste große Auslandsreise 1920,” 245. 6 Letter, September 28, 1920, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 44–45. 7 List, Auf Konzertreise, 24.
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Bernhard Küchel died in Wiesbaden on October 6, near the end of the Scandinavian sojourn. When Karl wrote Hertha on the 15th from the final stop in Kristiania, he did not mention the loss, instead effusing about the venture’s unqualified success. “All the concerts here, as in Bergen, [are] completely sold out. If someone can stand in a spot, someone is standing there.” And he could not help but foreground the implications for relations to the north and the Anglo-French alliance. “Everyone has the feeling that only Germany can produce and possess an institution like the Thomanerchor. Now, all of us are only anxious to see what counter-mines will explode from the side of the Entente. One must be very clear that diplomatic relations are still quite tense, in reality hostile.” But reception had been so favorable that “we had to decline all further invitations, even that from Archbishop [Nathan] Soederblom to come to Stockholm. Most unfortunate, but not to be changed.”8 Going forward, Straube liked to speak of the choir’s work abroad as a high-stakes battle waged by underdogs, God on their side, a David to the Goliath of the Entente, armed with the immutable weapons of culture. Indeed, as German politics drifted rightward with time, the rhetoric of Teutonic courage in the face of imminent peril only sharpened. A 1937 account would recall the first tour as “an act of courage” in that “one rode so to speak into the darkness.” Despite “the shadows and blackness of prejudice against Germany,” the young singers had “departed, cheerful and confident, under their cantor, and they returned happy and joyful, like northern sojourners who have been able to break a wide stretch of the northern ice.”9 Particularly for the hard right in the ominous years of the late 1930s, the point came to center first of all on the upstanding German character, unbreakably “cheerful and confident,”, as it was supposed to be, born of fortitude. Such attitudes would have time to incubate. At present, Straube and his troupe could celebrate an experiment of stunning success. By press accounts, the performances in Kristiania were received as events of genuine popular character with religious significance. Heavy demand for tickets caused long lines formed in the wee hours of the morning, police turned away crowds of hundreds, and in some instances enthusiasts journeyed over 400 kilometers from the outlying areas.10 Straube did his part to court the public by having the Thomaner open its University concert with the first stanza 8 Letter, October 15, 1920, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 9 Lehmann, Die Thomaner auf Reisen, 109. 10 “Die erste große Auslandsreise 1920,” citing reports in Aftenposten, 245–46.
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of the Norwegian national anthem.11 The St. Thomas inspector’s report quoted a farewell speech of the German envoy to Kristiania, in which he felt it as “symbolic” that “German youth [act] as the bearers of a most noble 700-year-old musical tradition. To disseminate this, precisely at the present time, is our steadfast right and holy duty in service to the entire culture.”12 As the Thomanerchor departed for Leipzig that October, the Straube ally Christian Sinding spoke of the “high cultural task” of music, which “will do its part for the eradication of hate and discord”—a fitting close to an enormous undertaking.13 But the celebrated Thomaskantor was not finished yet. The Norwegian oratorio chorus Cæciliaforeningen had lost its conductor that May, and Straube accepted an invitation to lead the group on an interim basis. Now, as the Thomaner returned home, he stayed on to rehearse for a performance of Handel’s Dettinger Te Deum on October 28 in the Vår Frelsers Kirke. It was not easy to persuade the Norwegians to come along with his particular brand of emotion-laden, text-based musicality. “A mediocre choir,” he grumbled to Hertha. “The rehearsals are strenuous for me, because I have to expend a great deal of fire to exhilarate the people. They are doing everything they can to meet my demands, and that’s really not very much.”14 Straube would be engaged again to direct the first Nordic Bachfest with the Cæciliaforeningen the following April. Perhaps he enjoyed the challenge of improving the choral sound and molding the group to his purposes. Perhaps Leisner’s participation in the festival attracted him. For whatever reason, though, he plunged himself back into the draining regimen which he had bemoaned to Hertha only a few months before. An eyewitness description of his rehearsal technique that April affords insight into the bold manner of a musician whose energies had not diminished with age. That writer identified “an indomitable will and a gripping teaching style” as “Straube’s great capacity. He does not merely conduct. No, when the orchestra is not present, he accompanies, and when the soloists are not there, he himself sings the solo parts. He explains and encourages, he grouses and praises.”15 Four concerts followed, offering up generous helpings of chamber music, 11 12 13 14 15
Herresthal, “Das kirchenmusikalische Institut in Leipzig,” 39. Edmund Rhomberg, as cited in “Die erste große Auslandsreise 1920,” 246. Cited ibid. Letter, October 15, 1920, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. Arne van Erpekum Sem, “Solistvalget ved Bachfesten. Hvad Cæciliaforeningens formand fortæaller,” Tidens Tegn, April 23, 1921, cited
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cantatas sacred and secular, the Magnificat, and culminating in Straube’s signature interpretation of the St. John Passion. For all this he had summoned a number of German soloists—Leisner, Rosenthal, Adolf Busch, and others— instead of relying too exclusively on Scandinavian musicians. He in fact was less than enamored of Nordic music altogether, and of “the question mark over Scandinavian art,” as he expressed it that August to Johannes Sievers of the German Foreign Ministry.16 The idea was to direct attention to the excellence of German music and music-making, and to support thereby the warm relations necessary to a new nation’s foreign policy. Meanwhile, his Thomanerchor had become a charismatic traveling ensemble. The year’s outing would not be an anomaly. Of Straube’s remaining nineteen years as cantor, the Thomaner toured in all but two of them (1927 and 1930). In spring 1921 they appeared in Schleswig-Holstein, and in the fall in cities of East Prussia and the East Prussian plebiscite to shore up German sentiment in the border areas resulting from the Versailles partitions. That even such domestic tours carried explicitly political rationales is demonstrated by Straube’s reply to Max Schneider in Breslau, who had inquired in late 1921 how he might sponsor the choir there. “First you would need to direct a preliminary inquiry to the rector of the Thomasschule,” Straube fired off in impresario fashion. “Already in this communication [you should] strongly emphasize the political side if possible—Upper Silesia, reinforcement of Germanic culture, etc. A somewhat pathos-laden style can’t hurt.” The City Council would then need to receive an invitation on that rationale, “issued by one or another very official person. . . . The more the Leipzig City Council gets the impression that it is dealing with a matter of great significance to the leading figures of the province of Silesia, the more likely is the approval for this tour.”17 Although the tour did not materialize, this was first-class diplomatic advice from someone who by now knew, maybe better than anyone else, how to manipulate the Council to his devices. September and October 1922 again took the choir to Scandinavia, this time principally to Sweden on the personal initiative of Archbishop Søderblom. Once again the ensemble was fêted by overflowing audiences. “Generally one is of the opinion that the Thomaner surpass the Berlin Cathedral Choir,” Straube glowed to Hertha in mid-tour. “In any case our in German translation in Herresthal, “Das kirchenmusikalische Institut in Leipzig,” 40. 16 Letter, August 21, 1921, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 17 Letter, December 28, 1921, StBBPK. Emphasis original.
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programs are much better than those of the Berliners.”18 His old competitive spirit, the one that had driven him to the zenith of organ playing in decades past, was alive and well. If he sought cultural victories abroad, his instincts likewise led him to carve out an unassailably superior position for his boys among peer German institutions. His ego was not exactly damaged, either, by the appearance of the music-loving Søderblom after the choir’s concert in the vaulted edifice of Uppsala Cathedral. Straube recalled the encounter in the grand terms of a quasi-religious vision. “At the reception afterwards, the Archbishop—the Primas of Sweden—descended the grand staircase to approach and welcome me. He descends, I ascend: he could not have received his king any differently, not even the pope, should the true unity of Christendom in the distant future lead him northward from the banks of the Tiber!”19 Not least under the impression of Straube’s Thomanerchor, Søderblom soon would venture that “if you ask about a fifth Gospel, I do not hesitate to name the interpretation of salvation history as it reached its acme in Johann Sebastian Bach.”20 The remark is presumably the origin of the popular notion of Bach as “fifth evangelist.” Straube had other reasons to be satisfied that autumn, owing to some professional developments that had played out during the spring and summer months preceding the Sweden tour. In 1922 the Berlin Institute for Church Music had celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary and taken a new name—the State Academy for Church and School Music—reflecting an expanded educational mandate spearheaded by Leo Kestenberg of the Prussian Ministry of Culture. That spring, as Kestenberg looked outward to invigorate the institution with new administrative blood, his eye fell on Straube, a Berlin native whose father had studied at the old Institute. Perhaps a lucrative offer would pry him from Leipzig. On April 7, just before the onset of the Holy Week and Easter liturgies, Kestenberg sought out Straube with a proposal. On the 13th, Holy Thursday, the Thomaskantor appeared before Mayor Rothe to inform him of developments, and to submit a catalog of requirements for his remaining in Leipzig. Mayor and administration had been down this road before. Rothe’s swift communiqué to the Schulamt announced that Straube had been offered “the directorship of church vocal 18 Letter, October 10, 1922, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 19 Letter cited without addressee or date in List, Auf Konzertreise, 26. 20 Nathan Søderblom, Kristi Pinas Historia (Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses Bokförlag, 1928), cited in Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries, 163. The translation is Conrad Bergendoff ’s.
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music for all of Prussia and a position at the Berlin Hochschule with a salary of 120,000 marks, increasable if desired to 150,000 marks annually. In the interest of his family, he must decide if he should accept this favorable offer and leave his position here.” Four shrewd conditions for staying put followed. First, he had to be moved to a higher salary category, “like the rector of the Thomasschule,” or to be paid as if he were. Second, the city had to calculate his retirement package on “the entire period he has spent in other positions since reaching his 25th birthday.” Third, he wanted thirty further unrestricted vacation days “so that he can be artistically active outside Leipzig.” Finally, the Council “must agree fundamentally that the Thomanerchor under his direction may undertake a concert tour once a year, normally during the autumn recess, which if necessary can be extended over the St. Michael holiday. . . . Financial costs would never accrue to the city on account of these tours. He only wishes permission to be granted a priori.”21 This comprised the next bold move in the ongoing chess game with his superiors. Straube was betting a great deal that acceptance of his terms would result in enhanced status and freedom of movement, and this at a time of accelerated currency depreciation and rising discontent over domestic and foreign policy in a fragile nation. His four conditions were anything but arbitrary. First, the Thomaskantor’s financial package reflected the federal civil servant compensation reform of 1920 (the Reichsbesoldungsgesetz), a complex law subject to repeated revision based on inflation and reconciled with various regulations at the state level.22 The rapid devaluation of the German mark would continue to make the civil servant pay grade system a moving target. Although he already enjoyed a position that distinguished him from the teaching faculty—a legacy of Schreck’s tenure—Straube’s salary reflected pay grade Group 11, whereas the rector commanded a nominally higher status in Group 12. According to the current arrangement, the cantor drew 67,140 marks annually, calculated to increase in ten years to 81,050 marks, assuming a stable market. By contrast, a Group 12 classification would have placed him on equal footing with the rector and allowed him to draw 74,290 marks, or 96,650 marks by 1934.23 21 Memorandum, April 13, 1922, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 57–58. 22 Hülden, “Entwicklung der Beamtenbesoldung,” III/59–98. The 1920 legislation was revised no fewer than twenty times before the next round of comprehensive reforms in 1927. 23 Memorandum of the Leipzig City Council, Schulamt, April 20, 1922, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 59–60.
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The relatively moderate raise targeted here could not compete with the Berlin offer then on the table, which in any case was determined by a different set of economic conditions and regulations in Prussia. His demand, then, was to be received as rather modest. Indeed, by adding that he would accept a salary increase without the corresponding official shift to Group 12, Straube made clear that the issue revolved in the first place around enhanced financial security in difficult times and not vain aspirations to co-opt the rector’s status. Concerning retirement, in 1918 Straube had tried to have his service in Wesel counted toward his benefits, that is, from June 1, 1897. Now he was asking for a calculation starting at January 6, 1898, his twenty-fifth birthday. In 1918 the Ministry of Culture had ruled that it would postpone a decision until Straube’s actual retirement. But with the introduction of the 1920 pay reforms, the provisions regulating official years of service had been substantially loosened, presumably motivating him to resurrect the issue and weigh the result against the Berlin offer.24 The third point concerning vacation days amounted merely to a sharpening of the question of artistic freedom raised in 1918, addressed in point 11 of the Dienstanweisung in a manner he undoubtedly viewed as too qualified. Since coming to Leipzig in 1903, Straube had felt the need to argue for more elbow room as an independent artist in a basically provincial situation. Now some two decades later, he was still defending his territory. The related fourth point reflected the new status of the Thomaner as an acclaimed traveling ensemble, and accordingly it was articulated in the strongest language (the authorities “must agree fundamentally”). With two years of successful tours under his belt and another in planning, Straube wished now to institutionalize the practice, dispensing with the time-consuming ad hoc arguments to his superiors as required by point 8 of the Dienstanweisung. As in past episodes, these developments threw the bureaucracy into an unanticipated spasm of activity. The issues to be conquered were complex, the relevant statutes in some cases opaque. The Schulamt immediately proposed that if the Dresden Ministry would not allow classification of the cantor in pay grade Group 12, the city itself should pursue permission through proper channels to make up the difference.25 This was no straightforward matter, requiring nuanced readings of the civil servant statutes at city, state, and national levels. The same questions obtained for the differences 24 Hülden, “Entwicklung der Beamtenbesoldung,” III/61. 25 Memorandum of the Leipzig City Council, Schulamt, April 20, 1922, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 59–60.
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in retirement benefits and Witwengeld (a kind of life insurance policy for Hertha) between Groups 11 and 12, all of which demanded discrete negotiations appealing to various legal statutes and precedents. As to requests for personal vacation days and regular choir tours, the Schulamt’s position was that any allowances would require the sanction of the Ministry of Culture, a point disputed particularly by Straube’s advocate Councilor Ackermann. A week passed. Rothe agreed with the Schulamt that the city should dispense with the difficult argument of moving the cantor’s position to the higher category, instead paying the difference from city coffers. Further, he wanted to recommend to Dresden that Straube’s retirement be calculated from his twenty-fifth birthday, and that in the event of a veto, the city likewise make up the difference out of pocket. Finally, Rothe approved outright Straube’s request for standing vacation days and the right of the Thomaner to tour annually, “nevertheless with the stipulation that the Council and the School administration give permission in individual cases.”26 In the full Council session following, Ackermann argued predictably for the categorical adoption of Rothe’s recommendations. The notion of an established annual choir tour seems to have troubled some councilors and not others, but ultimately Ackermann and Rothe’s camp prevailed. Perhaps the most sobering remark in the entire vexing debate came from Councilor Fritz Wildung, who articulated what may have been on the minds of many for some time. “Stadtrat Wildung,” so read the minutes, “complained of Straube’s continuous efforts to gain benefits by repeated job applications elsewhere. In order to avoid this, he requests that someone eventually deal with him.”27 One would give much to know if that conversation ever occurred. If it did, whoever was assigned the task of confronting Straube was wasting his breath. The threat of his departure seemed always to be just over the horizon. But now in a fifth year of “dealing” with its organist-turned-cantor, the Council’s patience was wearing thin. Rothe apprised Straube of the outcome that same day, extracting from him the assurance “that, after the Council has fulfilled his wishes, he would inform Berlin that he declines the position offered him.”28 As Straube knew, the outcome was not entirely in the Council’s hands, and in fact the city’s accommodating approach hit significant snags at the state level. 26 Mayor’s memorandum to the Leipzig City Council, April 27, 1922, ibid., 57–58. 27 Excerpt of the minutes of the Leipzig City Council, April 28, 1922, ibid., 61. 28 Mayor’s memorandum, April 28, 1922, ibid., 62.
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Despite whatever pledges from the mayor, the cantor was not about to rule out a career move to Berlin merely on the basis of local goodwill. He had asked Kestenberg for permission to defer his decision until May 1, but in fact he delayed well into the summer and, as at other such critical junctures, regressed into bouts of hand wringing and self-doubt. Over two months after he had presented the issue to the Leipzig authorities, Straube was professing to Max Schneider that “my pedagogical and organizational talents are considerably stronger than my musical abilities,” the full weight of his indecision still on display. “The St. Thomas cantorate is a unique world-class position, but another question is whether by moving to Berlin I could possibly exercise a stronger and further-reaching influence!”29 These were hardline professional considerations about status and authority, a noticeably different rationale from that floated to the Leipzig leadership in April, “in the interest of his family.” Not long ago he had proferred a similar argument when considering a move to administration in Munich. And in both cases, he dithered. Meanwhile, the Leipzig authorities scrambled. They had discovered that the precarious economy presented no favorable environment in which to approach the state with an exceptional proposal to make a more comfortable nest for a city employee. A letter of May 6 from the Leipzig Council to the Saxon Ministry of Culture requesting approval of the city’s plan was met firmly in the negative. The state authority underscored that, by his placement in Group 11, Straube was already “significantly singled out” from the normal situation of teachers in the higher public schools, two thirds of whom operated in Group 9, one third in Group 10. Even the cantor’s current status in Group 11 had not been properly approved according to federal statutes. Compensation according to Group 12 would set a dangerous precedent and “lead to the most questionable appeals from the faculty of the higher schools.” The plan to solve the problem by drawing from the city’s coffers was denied on the same grounds. The Ministry countered that, if the Thomaskantor required enhanced benefits, the church should be approached to make up the difference, “since it is in the first place Professor Straube’s ecclesial office, and less so his school post, that makes his remaining in Leipzig appear desirable.”30 This less than propitious response occasioned enough alarm in City Hall that Ackermann traveled to Dresden on June 10 to argue the city’s position 29 Letter, June 17, 1922, StBBPK. 30 Letter to the Leipzig City Council, Schulamt, May 24, 1922, StAL StraubeAkten 1, 66.
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in person with the relevant state ministers. If the declaration of extraordinary circumstances proved necessary to retain Straube, if policy needed to be massaged to meet the cantor’s requirements, the city was prepared to sanction this approach. Having done its legal homework, Leipzig now pursued a particular interpretation of the compensation reform laws, according to which the city could pay a “personal bonus” to employees who turned down offers for positions elsewhere. Further, the Council refuted Dresden’s warning that other school faculty members could pursue similar appeals on the precedent of Straube’s advancement, “since Cantor Professor Straube is not at all a teacher in the proper sense. His position is in no way comparable with that of the other subject teachers.” Building on this observation, Leipzig elaborated its view concerning the Thomaskantor’s cultural significance, dismissing the Ministry’s proposal that the church invest in his compensation. “For Professor Straube is not active in the church to such an extent that it would have as considerable an interest in his remaining as does the city. For the church, Straube is cantor in the first place, but for the city [he is] the artist and keeper of the Bach tradition. Leipzig must strive in every way to retain him.”31 This was a remarkable view, one that had been a long time coming as the cantorate slipped gradually from its medieval underpinnings anchored in liturgical and catechetical service toward an office charged with the curation of a cultural heritage. Straube’s hiring had only abetted these developments, but his wheel-and-deal approach to career advancement now had forced the civic administration to sharpen its thinking about how best to situate in the modern world a 700-year-old institution and its highly marketable leader. Yet again, Straube had won. The city informed him on July 11 that it had successfully negotiated his demands, putting to bed a three-month episode of legal wrangling. The only hanging point was the date from which he would be allowed to calculate his pension. But even here, the Ministry agreed to begin at Straube’s twenty-fifth birthday so long as the law allowed it.32 He had secured a compensation package on par with the rector, one additional month to use entirely as he wished, and a standing agreement for an annual fall choir tour. This was no shabby outcome, particularly given the crisis-ridden atmosphere of the young Weimar Republic.
31 Letter, June 13, 1922, ibid., 67–70. 32 Letter, July 11, 1922, ibid., 74.
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Chapter Sixteen
Politics I Early in 1920 Straube had responded to Wilibald Gurlitt concerning the latter’s seminal essay in the inaugural volume of the Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft on the nature and goals of musicology. Gurlitt had proposed that the musicologist’s task lay not in absolute aesthetic judgments, but rather in the study of music as a cultural object, as an articulation of a particular people’s engagement with its own music. He warned against the imposition of metaphysical systems and philosophical methodologies upon the historical enterprise. Drawing on a Kantian distinction, Gurlitt asked that the musicologist seek an answer “not to the quaestio juris, but to the quaestio facti; to scrutinize, not to judge; to comprehend, not to value; to justify, not to assess.”1 These were just the sort of ponderings that had always stoked Straube’s interest in the whys and wherefores of scholarship. He replied to Gurlitt that, “in contrast to your view, I am of the opinion that only a metaphysical understanding can clarify the proper sense of the musical essence. . . . Perhaps it is the difficulty of the times that forces us to sum up all phenomena from an overriding, spiritual point of view.”2 It was a fundamental premise that the essence of the musical resided in the way it reflected the movement of Geist, the Hegelian spiritual-intellectual engine at the core of the history of ideas. History and metaphysics had to maintain a productive dialectical tension. Not content to stop there, Straube unfurled a paradigm that would direct his thinking after the Great War. To Gurlitt he argued passionately “that western Europe constitutes a uniform culture, that the nationalities of this continent are merely increments within a much larger unity,” and that one must learn above all to recognize “the metaphysical continuities of the western European intellectual character.” He suspected that the war had issued from a blind spot in “the German mentality,” but that a sharpened 1 2
Gurlitt, “Hugo Riemann,” 571–72. Letter, January 31, 1920, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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grasp of European interdependence would rise from the conflict’s ashes. He instructed Gurlitt that the “continuities” of which he spoke amounted to a socio-political potential with an “outer form” shaped by economic exigency and an “inner content” informed by humanist intellectual endeavor. “We Germans will be the first ones to go this [latter] route,” he predicted. “We are the most called to the task . . . because we connect with the great traditions of our global spiritual heritage [unserer weltumspannenden Geistigkeit],” nourished by Bismarck’s mighty political achievements. He proclaimed that “The war was a purification from which the German spirit can arise pristinely in its magnificent universalism,” sullied as it had been with “the nationally tinged materialism of the pre-war era.” These self-evident truths submitted to a clear hierarchy of intellect and social standing. “The masses, and above all the lower classes, are governed entirely by the material goals of the past. I for one do not believe in the idealism of the proletariat. Its political will has to do neither with socialism nor democracy. It is merely inverted capitalism: now the proletariat is to have the money and the power.” From that view followed his hostile posture to the Russian Revolution, where “noble energies are senselessly sacrificed to a dream. . . . A new spiritual will can be achieved only after long battles over a long span of time, and only then will we find the foundation for the building of a new culture” loosed from material fixations. “Until then we can do nothing but work quietly in the place we stand, in the knowledge that every spiritual life is immortal because of its independence from material concerns. In so doing we fulfill our responsibility to our time, for neither the state nor the general population can further cultural politics. The latter is rather the sum of the rich intellectual work of individuals possessed of spiritual feeling.”3 The talking points of Straube’s summa theologiae emerged clear: a premium placed on common European goals anchored in the “metaphysical continuities” of the western heritage and the interdependence of its peoples; an almost mystical reverence for Bismarck’s achievement in a united German nation; an unflinching faith in the “magnificent universalism” of German Geistigkeit; the conviction that the war had acted as a refiner’s fire from which a new world order based on “inner” values would issue; an unfriendliness to the Wilhelmine era of Straube’s youth, in which material decadence had blinded the Empire to the approaching catastrophe and made it a bad steward of Bismarck’s accomplishments; a dim view of communism to the east and capitalism to the west, both made to serve the dead-end materialist urges 3 Ibid.
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of “the masses”; finally, the perception that the real business of forming the cultural will lay neither in the halls of political power nor with the people, but rather with a cultural elite driven by a mature sense of personal responsibility for the good of the collective. Among the most striking aspects of this position is the way it holds anti-populist sentiment in tension with the liberal principles of Weimar social democracy. Further, it insists on the pivotal role of cultural work centered in the Bildungsbürgertum, the bourgeois educated class represented not least in accomplished figures from the Straube and Palmer families. The prizing of unity over division and the nationalist claims for Germany’s unique role in civilization may be seen as responses to the caustic terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The wounds of that accord would permeate Weimar’s rancorous political discourse through its short history. Responsibility for the conflict had been laid squarely at the former Empire’s feet, its economy hobbled by reparations, its dignity stripped, its cultural significance denied. Straube embraced a qualified optimism to say that Europe’s best days were ahead so long as Germany was allowed to reclaim its rightful place in the family of nations. Precisely this constellation of positions found expression in the politics of the young German Democratic Party (DDP) as summarized in the organization’s official publication in early March 1920. Straube’s personnel file records that he joined the DDP in 1919, and the strongest evidence for this rests in the agreement of his views expounded to Gurlitt with those of the DDP platform. That platform embraced the Weimar constitution as the path to “inner unity,” rejected the socio-political hierarchies of the monarchy, and proposed to “serve humanity and prepare the peaceful coexistence of the nations in a world of justice and reconciliation.”4 The party called for a revision of Versailles’s terms, condemned the forced “breakaway of parts of the German people from the fatherland,” and asserted rights to a colonial program on the basis of “Germany’s share in the spiritual enhancement of humanity.”5 An elaborate statement addressed the centrality of culture as enacted by education, character formation, the sciences, art, literature, philosophy, and religion. The new Germany “will ensue only through the cultivation of the spiritual welfare of the people, through a physical and moral strengthening, and through the promotion of the people’s spiritual agencies.” More pointedly, “The culture-state will be ornamented and made livable by scholarship, art, and literature. These should develop freely in life and 4 5
“Programm der Deutschen Demokratischen Partei,” 42. Ibid., 42–43.
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in the press. They should refine and elevate the people. We trust that these life-affirming powers hold within themselves the best safeguards against barbarization and contamination.”6 The party advocated a principled separation of church and state while recognizing that “we Democrats see in the creation of a spiritual world the highest purpose of life.” The corollary was that “the nation most honors those to whom it entrusts the safeguarding of its ideal values. . . . It is precisely the educated person who owes to his people his whole ability and knowledge, for he has the arduous labors even of the plain and simple person to thank for what he is and what he can do.”7 It is not difficult to see why Straube would profess allegiance to this platform, which likewise struck a centrist-liberal economic path by rejecting socialized labor on the one hand and capitalist tendencies toward monopolized wealth on the other. His work stood, after all, at the intersection of humanist education, religious formation, and the tending of Germany’s bedrock musical heritage. It was the “culture-state” guided by enlightened intellects that he envisioned, as he professed to Gurlitt. It would be misguided to assume that Straube’s socio-political convictions were informed merely or even primarily by party politics. His thinking in early 1920 reflected also his reading of Hermann Keyserling’s demanding work Das Reisetagebuch eines Philosophen (Travel Diary of a Philosopher), which had appeared only months before. Keyserling considered the common bonds that unite human societies despite superficial divisions of race and culture. Even as he condemned the war as the annihilation of cross-cultural understanding, like Straube, he was moved to frame the conflict as a catalyst in the right direction. “Just as all progress leads through reactionary periods during which repressed base urges rise up and occasionally conquer,” he wrote percipiently, “we can expect that the more universal world of tomorrow will be introduced by a prelude of unprecedented hate of the nations toward each other. The future solidarity of the peoples [will come] through campaigns of extermination.” In the face of these historical processes, Keyserling asserted a universalist optimism. “I do not share any of the one-sided feelings that possess the combatants. But I can no longer detach myself from the whole, no longer say as before, ‘nescio vos.’ For I know that I am one with my entire time and therefore share responsibility for its fate.”8 On January 29, two days before dispatching his exposé to Gurlitt, Straube recommended 6 Ibid., 43–44. 7 Ibid., 44. 8 Keyserling, Das Reisetagebuch, 647.
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Keyserling’s book to a friend in the Foreign Ministry. “A great deal of metaphysics,” Straube wrote. “But it is a great, liberating book and particularly its end goal is life-affirming. . . . The universal spirit of the book is a hallmark of the very best of truly German values.”9 Undoubtedly he was aware that Keyserling had married Bismarck’s granddaughter, fueling his attraction. Perhaps his bicultural psyche made him receptive to the philosopher’s alacritous universalism. Straube’s remarks to Gurlitt concerning “metaphysical continuities” and European interdependence echoed Keyserling, as did his insistence that the great conflict of the previous decade was a necessary stage to a more enlightened era. He did not yet suspect that Keyserling’s “campaigns of extermination” were so soon to come. Straube’s politics likewise were intimately connected to his understanding of western history, which he had read and pondered obsessively since his youth. Writing to the legal scholar Heinrich Mitteis in 1923, he rattled off a reductionist history of Europe that turned on a vast struggle between French and German hegemony, the ultimate goal of both sides conceived as a peaceful European unity permeated by Romanic or Germanic “cultural values.” As with Gurlitt, he blamed the war’s catastrophe on the inability of the last Kaiser’s government to mind the store Bismarck had so brilliantly bequeathed. A turning point for him in the chain of incompetent foreign policy had been the rejection of England’s overtures for an alliance with the Empire early in 1901. Now, the continent’s center of gravity had see-sawed back in favor of the French. “Everything that the great generation of the nineteenth century built in Germany was pulled down in a massive war and now we stand, just like 120 years ago, at a point when France dominates all Europe and imbues its culture with the Romanic spirit,” he lamented. He further accused the French of “‘Tunisia-izing’ Germany . . . to render a people rootless.” And again he drew a sharp distinction between “outer” and “inner” values, between the materialism of the economy and the transcendence of the spirit. “The battles fought today concern Germany’s material riches, namely its natural resources. Once they are exhausted, we once again will be left in peace,” he concluded. “Woe to us if then we have not preserved and tended our actual asset, the German spiritual culture, for this will return us to world significance. Again and again, our task is to foster consciousness of this, to preserve and promote the eternal values of our culture.”10
9 Letter, January 29, 1920, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 10 Letter, May 26, 1923, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann, Sig. 8, 78–80.
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It is the sheer anxiety of this perspective that first impresses. Straube pointed expressly to the injustices of the French presence in Tunisia since 1881 as the template for France’s post-war policy, a comparison informed by the confiscation of Germany’s colonial assets under Versailles’s Article 22. France and particularly Britain had profited from those territorial losses, and the DDP platform of 1920 had made an aggressive call for the return of the colonies on cultural grounds, namely for the right to pursue “the spiritual enhancement of humanity.” Indeed, Straube’s earlier remarks to Gurlitt concerning Germany’s “global spiritual heritage” had carried overtones of the cultural work that had been lost to the Allied powers. The issue of colonial aspirations only underscored the point that, in his view, the movements of geopolitics were merely gears that turned the larger engine of a war of cultures. For him as for many others, what was at stake now was the same thing that had always been at stake: the “world significance” of “German spiritual culture,” a set of values unfriendly to the material priorities of the nations that now surrounded the defeated Germany to the east and west. Yet despite the strength of his convictions, Straube tended less to hot-headed activism than to reflection and a diplomatic hesitancy for showing too many cards at once. He found any sort of Jacobinism uncivilized, beneath the dignity of a bourgeois intellectual. This trait had been operative in his dealings with the impetuous Reger and in his many negotiations with the Leipzig authorities. It would be well illustrated again in an episode from 1927 in the Austrian resort of Bad Gastein, where he frequently found himself on summer holiday. An evening dinner-table conversation between him and a middle-aged French guest turned to the question of a possible German union with Austria, forbidden under the terms of Versailles. “I expressed myself very carefully,” he told Hertha, “since I could not perceive what the man actually wanted. Was he sounding me out?” To his interlocutor’s contention “that no one could do anything about a union, and that even France would have to tolerate it silently,” Straube retorted that he had no confidence in the French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré’s “passivity” in the question, and “that he would militarily occupy half of Germany if a union were attempted.”11 Here as elsewhere, he was an annexationist who saw in the Versailles prohibition another clipping of Germany’s wings by capitalist powers. Again at Gastein in 1930, he would remark to Hertha that “the very German ways of the Austrians are pleasant. They perhaps feel more German
11 Letter, July 26, 1927, StBBK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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than we northerners do.”12 But in his interactions with others, he prided himself on taking in more about his conversation partners than he offered back. Radical activism, whether left- or right-leaning, was not his game. Finally, it would be difficult to overestimate the role played by the figure of Bismarck, whose legendary discipline, ethics, and political acumen personified for Straube all that was true and upright in the German character. In June 1926, as he vacationed alone in Gastein, Straube wrote his wife and Ramin to effervesce about his hero’s storied relationship with the town. The room he rented, he told Hertha with childlike delight, “is in a house where Bismarck always stayed, and in which he concluded the great treaty of alliance with [the Austrian Foreign Minister Gyula] Andrássy in 1878. Exactly the right house for me, and when I ascend the staircase I have the peculiar feeling in my consciousness that at one time, until 1886, the great genius Bismarck climbed these same stairs, and that his mighty figure dominated these spaces.”13 Just three days later he was moved to add, “My intimacy with Prince Bismarck has grown even greater. For the last two days I have bathed in a cell where the Prince, too, was accustomed to shower himself with health-giving waters.”14 He related the same to Ramin, concluding that “I therefore walk about with a halo.”15 It seems that only J. S. Bach could summon forth as much unqualified devotion as the Iron Chancellor. Even Bismarck’s birthday was observed with befitting rituals.16 But this was no mere hagiography. Straube passionately sanctioned Bismarck’s achievement of German dominance in middle Europe and longed for a leader with the vision and wherewithal to restore that status. Into this complicated picture enters the contention advanced by Hartmann that Straube signed on with Hitler’s National Socialist Party in late 1925 or early 1926, some seven years earlier than the commonly accepted date.17 The singular claim offered in 1937 by the then-president of the Reichsmusikkammer Peter Raabe—“Straube is an old guard member of the NSDAP. (Member number 27,070)”—contradicts not only the 12 Letter, July 21, 1930, ibid. 13 Letter, June 21, 1926, ibid. 14 Postcard, June 24, 1926, ibid. 15 Letter, June 24, 1926, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann, Sig. 9, 6. 16 Postcard to Hertha Straube, April 1, 1932, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 17 Hartmann, Karl Straube und seine Schule, 256–57. For competing analyses see Hartmann, Karl Straube—ein “Altgardist der NSDAP,” 61; Backus, “Karl Straube,” 285–86; and Goltz, Musikstudium, 229.
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membership number given in all relevant primary sources (2,989,464, with entrance on 1 May 1933) but also the 1934 personnel papers that register his membership with the DDP between 1919 and 1932.18 Hartmann is left to the assertion that “Straube actually must have entered the NSDAP twice, a fact for which no further evidence is available at the moment.”19 Several factors do support the thesis that Raabe’s lower membership number is correct, not least the history of the DDP itself. As Weimar democracy unfolded, the DDP’s ranks would dwindle as the party pulled rightward, eventually merging in 1930 with the anti-Semitic Jungdeutscher Orden under the name Deutsche Staatspartei.20 More consistently than in any other party, defections were commonplace. If Straube in fact remained faithful to it through 1932, this might imply his shifting sympathies in favor of the rightist elements that gradually dominated the DDP.21 Further, pronounced nationalist sentiment in Versailles’s wake was by no means exclusive to the German right, as is clear from the DDP’s 1920 platform. Elements of Straube’s own nationalist convictions undeniably made for fertile ground in which aspects of the Nazi program took root. Yet further, Straube’s guarded inner circle included important figures who joined cause with the Nazis prior to 1933, and their thinking surely helped pull his allegiances rightward as disappointment with Weimar republicanism mounted. Yet Straube’s political idealism in the early and middle Weimar years accords much better with the programs of the center or center-left than with those of the hard right. National Socialism did not gain a substantive foothold in Saxony until the 1930s: in 1928 the party commanded only 1.9% of the Leipzig vote.22 Furthermore, the up-and-coming Nazis distinguished themselves by a militant activism essentially foreign to Straube’s disposition. Even allowing the possibility that he voted NSDAP in the May 1928 elections as a disaffected Democrat, the additional step toward membership would have been more radical. And of course the establishment of the “culture-state” so central to Straube’s vision was hardly a plank in the Nazi platform. He was aware of the rise of reactionary extremism on the right, but there is nothing in his writing, his actions, or his personal makeup that 18 Hartmann, Karl Straube—ein “Altgardist der NSDAP,” 62. 19 Ibid., 63. 20 Petzina, Abelshauser, and Faust, Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch, 174. 21 See further Wegner and Albertin, eds., Linksliberalismus, 820–23. 22 Petzina, Abelshauser, and Faust, Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch, 175. Wagner, “Machtergreifung” in Sachsen, 51–55.
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even obliquely suggests sympathy for an incipient National Socialism in the mid-1920s. To the contrary, it was in summer 1926—precisely the period when Straube’s Nazi fervor as a supposed new recruit would have been at a high—when he read the historian Friedrich Meinecke and the sociologist Alfred Weber, both instrumental in the founding of the left-leaning DDP. He recommended Meinecke’s Die Idee der Staatsraison (1924) and Weber’s Die Krise des modernen Staatsgedankens in Europa (1925) to his friend Otto Grüters in July 1926. Meinecke, in principle an imperialist, held to the DDP’s right flank and argued for republicanism as the most practical way forward. Straube distanced himself from that stance (“incredibly clever and fine, but historically backward looking, the reflections on the present [are] sentimental, but not politically active”) and suggested that it be tempered by the cultural politics advanced in Weber’s book. Weber represented the DDP’s left wing and for a brief time had served as party chairman. He accepted a symbiotic relationship between the modern state and the forces of capitalism but advocated economic justice through a correction of capitalist tendencies along socialist lines. He further posited a Führerdemokratie driven by the work of an intellectual or “spiritual” class that would forge a cultural identity for the new nation. An “inegalitarian” democracy informed by “an organic relationship between the cultural elite and the larger masses” would result.23 “For our kind,” Straube wrote, invoking his self-assumed status among Weber’s elite, “a reading of this work is important because in our political considerations and judgments we never sufficiently take into consideration the development and influence of capitalism and industrialization, and, in connection with these, the formation of the mass population.”24 By the end of the decade, when the worldwide economic crash issued in the final turbulent chapter of Weimar democracy, Straube would cling to the premise he had unfolded to Gurlitt in 1920, namely that Germany’s future lay in the quiet maintenance of a principled cultural politics nurtured by “the rich intellectual work of individuals possessed of spiritual feeling,” Weber’s cultural class. He would continue to assail the idea of economic interests and material conquest as guiding principles in the work of the technocrats. “We are of miserable spirit, but in place of that we have automobiles and airplanes, and soon we will visit the moon in a rocket, dead or alive,” he lamented to Ramin in 1928. “As we materialize and mechanize and 23 Loader, Alfred Weber, 139. 24 Letter, July 11, 1926, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 67–68.
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rationalize, the world gets smaller, not larger. . . . It is not external possessions, but rather the great religious and artistic imagination that can perceive the connection of all things in God.”25 There was a measure of melancholy in this stance, a genuine longing for a simpler and more honest time that colored Straube’s reverence for the Bismarck era, and that would increasingly imbue his worldview as he aged. It was the formative work of culture turning on “the great religious and artistic imagination” that interested him, a set of aesthetic-theological priorities he could explicate with a preacher’s fervor That work, he believed, was not going to get done in a fragmented society permeated by one-sided self-interest. The most fertile ground for his kind of project was a civilization built on shared heritage—Keyserling’s central idea—and, as he had told Gurlitt, “the continuities of the western European intellectual character.” These were democratic ideals friendly to the spirit of the Weimar constitution and reflective of Straube’s bicultural roots. To be sure, alongside those internationalist convictions he nursed a chauvinist’s notion of German cultural superiority, producing a fault line in his thinking and a tension in his politics, all with great consequences in the decade to come. In the era of Weimar’s maturity, though, Straube was much more open to ideas from every direction of the intellectual spectrum than any adherence to a narrow-minded politics would seem to allow. Between 1927 and 1930, for example, he showed equal admiration for the Conservative Jewish Prime Minister of Britain, Benjamin Disraeli, whose work on the 1867 Reform Act had introduced voting rights to nearly a million male subjects; for the Socialist writer Oskar Maria Graf, whose autobiographical work Wir sind Gefangene he found fascinating if misguided; and for the Liberal Italian Prime Minister Camillo Benso, whose genial legacy was the unification of Italy in 1861 “with a visionary power of looking into the future and a constant feeling for the necessities of the moment,” in short, a Bismarck-like achievement.26
25 Letter, July 30, 1928, ibid., 79. 26 Letter to Günther Ramin, July 30, 1928, ibid., 77–78.
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Chapter Seventeen
“When the days of darkness come” The political landscape was hardly the only thing on Straube’s mind. Neither he nor his audiences had made peace with his abdication from organ playing. Despite the occasional flare-ups of false modesty and self-doubt, Straube was hypersensitive to the fact that he had stood for decades at the cutting edge of performance. Accordingly, when in 1921 Gurlitt engaged Oskar Walcker to build an organ based on a stoplist from Praetorius’s 1619 Syntagma musicum, Straube’s experimental spirit moved him to play the dedicatory recital at the University of Freiburg on December 4. In July 1922, on the heels of having renegotiated his professional situation in Leipzig, he returned to the University for a series of three recitals featuring the alte Meister, Titelouze and Boyvin to Sweelinck and Buxtehude. The Freiburg experiment would become a touchstone for the historicizing Orgelbewegung. From Gurlitt’s musicology department he proceeded across town to another, very different center of musical progress, the studios of the Welte firm, where he recorded a number of Bach’s organ works on August 14. Having made no recordings of any kind until then, he was quick to offer a ringing endorsement. “Transience and time have been conquered by means of technology,” he declared, “and the moment of a spiritual experience has been captured for eternity.”1 That was far from his stance on the erosive effects of technology that he would direct at Ramin some six years later (“the world gets smaller, not larger”). Still, Straube’s parallel associations with the “Praetorius organ” and Welte bespoke the same innate curiosity that had moved him to extract the expressive possibilities of Sauer’s organs 1
Letter, August 14, 1922, facsimile in program book to The Britannic Organ Vol. 10: Welte’s German Organists and Their Music (Oehms Classics OC 849, 2015), 31.
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in decades past. Now, four years into his tenure as Thomaskantor, his presence as a soloist might have been marginal, but it was still a factor. In 1924 Straube remarked to Julius Levin that “back then, when I was really the top dog in organ playing, I was regarded just as problematically as I am now in my conducting”—an observation that betrayed a subversive spark of pride at having played the iconoclast.2 With the 1922 Welte rolls, he presumably intended to rescue something of his “problematic” artistry for the benefit of future generations. As if in reward for Straube’s decision to stay put in Leipzig, the University’s Philosophical Faculty conferred upon him an honorary doctorate on January 1, 1923, five days shy of his fiftieth birthday and in observance of the 200th anniversary of Bach’s appointment in the city. One correspondent who maintained open channels with the faculty informed Straube that “Dean [Alfred] Körte has just written me that the conferral of your diploma was his most gratifying official act.”3 The certificate festively intoned his achievements as “cantor of St. Thomas, the great German master of the organ, the spirited reviver of old and new music, the energetic guardian of a great musical inheritance, and the enhancer of German artistic prestige in Germany and abroad.”4 The now-Dr. Straube could hardly have said it better himself. But if the authorities had supposed that fanfares from ivory towers, coupled with the exceptional nest Straube had succeeded in negotiating for himself, would quell the cantor’s insatiable need for professional elbow room, they were mistaken. The ink had hardly dried on his diploma when he appeared in Rothe’s office to discuss the outcome of the Thomaner’s tour to Sweden the previous autumn. According to the mayor’s notes, Straube happened to inject into the discussion “that the Berlin Institute [now the State Academy] for Church and School Music was negotiating with him to teach lessons there on two mornings per week.”5 This came as a complete surprise. After all, only a few months had passed since the bureaucracy had accommodated Berlin’s last overture. Straube made clear that he was inclined to accept this newest offer, since the train schedules accommodated a timely return to exercise home-turf duties. To Rothe’s predictable objection that new obligations would fragment his time and “collide starkly” with his role as head of the 2 3 4 5
Letter, March 20, 1924, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 44. Postcard from Johannes Haller, January 21, 1923, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 174. BAL Nachlass Straube, Urkunden, 4; StAL Straube-Akten 1, 76. StAL Straube-Akten 1, 77.
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CMI, Straube replied that the latter institution would not be in competition for Prussian church music students, who in any case were required to pass exams in Berlin. “For this reason, the Prussian institute wants him to teach there, so that the students would be educated equivalently [to Leipzig]”—a polished observation that managed to argue the legitimacy of the request while flattering the locals.6 Unconvinced and surely annoyed, Rothe turned to the Conservatory’s director, Stephan Krehl, who agreed with Straube that the proposed arrangement would not result in a loss of students for Leipzig. Accordingly, there was no objection to his accepting a teaching load in Berlin. There was a deeper and more telling reason for the Conservatory’s position: “Moreover, one fears that, if he is not granted approval, Herr Professor Straube could go to Berlin completely, which could result in considerable damage to the Conservatory, particularly the Church Music Institute.”7 Now in his twentieth year in Leipzig, Straube had not only embedded himself in the sinews of the city’s cultural life, he had, at least for some influential voices, made himself indispensable to that life. But after years of trying to clamp down on his cantor’s Wanderlust, cracks were beginning to appear in the wall of Rothe’s patience. “I told [Krehl],” noted the mayor testily, “that I would effect a decision by the Division [of the Council] . . . , but that I personally have strong reservations about granting approval, because it doesn’t appear to me compatible with the office of Thomaskantor if the holder [der Inhaber] is staying in Berlin for a half or whole day twice a week.”8 The antiseptic reference to der Inhaber thinly disguised the cold logic of the Oberbürgermeister’s response and the distance he was placing between himself and Straube. He seemed ready to draw a line in the sand. A consultation ensued with Rector Tittel, who concurred with Krehl. The Council’s reaction to these developments was neither to accept nor deny Straube’s request outright, but rather to table it, based on the stance the mayor had argued, namely, that a regular teaching post in Berlin was not “compatible” with the cantorate. This was an evasive maneuver from City Hall, for the first time overriding the counsel of the St. Thomas and Conservatory administrations, and surely calculated to set a boundary without unnecessarily antagonizing Straube. Rothe called a meeting with the cantor on February 19 to break the news. The conversation did not go well. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 78. 8 Ibid.
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Straube “regretted” the decision, noted the mayor, “because thereby he is now put in the position to decide whether to go entirely to Berlin or stay in Leipzig.”9 The Thomaskantor was not accustomed to negative outcomes from the higher-ups, tabled or otherwise, and the remark undoubtedly amounted to an empty threat expressed in frustration. He had unwittingly discovered the limits of the mayor’s largesse. The latest Berlin episode amounted to a lost battle, not a lost war. Straube continued to receive invitations to teach and perform elsewhere, and he continued to pursue them. Mid-April 1923 found him again in Denmark, a fact that appears to have taken the mayor’s office by surprise when it was discovered on the 18th. Perhaps Rothe received the news as an act of defiance: here was the Thomaskantor again gallivanting about Scandinavia unbeknownst to city officials. Rector Tittel was immediately consulted, and assurances were given that in fact the rehearsals had been taken by Ramin, that the cantor had notified Tittel of his impending absence, that his Danish address had been registered in the rector’s office. After cataloging these points, Tittel appended a postscript: “By the way, I personally am of the opinion that the policies applying to civil servants are not necessarily transferable to an artist. And one really cannot contest that the Thomaskantor is well schooled.”10 In the end the mayor’s office had to admit that Straube’s latest trip was on the up-and-up. Among the benefits he had wrangled in 1922 were thirty days of leave to spend at his leisure, with notification required only to the Thomasschule, not to City Hall. What is significant about the exchange with Tittel is the reference to the cantor’s exceptionalism among his civil servant colleagues, a rationale the Council itself had unfolded the previous year in its deliberations with Dresden over Straube’s benefit package. Indeed, when Straube approached the Council in January 1924 to push yet again for a decision on the years of service counted toward retirement, Leipzig turned to Dresden with an expanded version of the same argument. The office itself “deserved” an “exceptional position” and “exceptional treatment.” Above all, one had to consider the unusual nature of this cantor, who “as an artist of international reputation, as the most important German church musician, as the greatest contemporary expert on Bach, as conductor of the greatest choral works, and as leader of the Thomanerchor, has as great a significance in the area of art as the leading men in the areas of law, government, and business.” That list sounded like a reprise of Straube’s recent doctoral diploma, 9 Ibid., 79. 10 Letter to Max Ackermann, April 20, 1923, ibid., 81.
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as surely was intended. “A replacement would be completely unthinkable for the foreseeable future. Although St. has until now deflected such offers (Berlin, Munich), it is still to be feared that concern for his family eventually will turn the scales.”11 Leipzig did not want to let him go, and he knew it, even as he was repositioning the status of the office within the civic and state hierarchies. As Tittel had pointed out, after all, the apple of an “artist” was not comparable to the orange of a “civil servant,” a thoroughly modern viewpoint that superseded centuries of tradition. Autumn 1923 saw the Thomanerchor embark on its fourth tour, this time to Switzerland, a foray Straube regarded as a feather in the cap of German art and foreign relations against the backdrop of the recent Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr. “There is a general opinion that the Thomanerchor surpasses the papal Sistine Chapel, and the Berlin Cathedral Choir doesn’t even enter the question,” he boasted to Hertha. “This is actually very fine, since today Switzerland is the international arena for musical Europe in which the various antagonistic political powers allow the skills of their artistic entities to do battle.”12 As always, the musical stage was a kind of cultural Colosseum in a “battle” of great import. Back home in November and energized from the experience, he revealed to his superiors that he had been asked to come to the United States to give lectures on Bach between May and July the following year. He certainly had contacts there and had taught several American students, including Palmer Christian, now professor at Chicago’s McCormick Theological Institute. He hoped to accept the invitation “because he has full command of the English language and believes he can be of use to German culture.” That last point was the one wielded so effectively to justify his and his choir’s presence in Scandinavia. Now Straube unfolded it anew with respect to American culture, the very epicenter of the materialist ideology he maligned. He told the mayor that “in America, German music is increasingly displaced by that of French and English composers, and that the advancement of German cantors is very difficult.” His involvement would alter this state of affairs, and “therefore he considers this journey in the interest of German music and the German nation.”13 Although the city seems to have looked favorably on the opportunity to plant a cultural flag in Calvin Coolidge’s America (with Ramin covering the 11 Draft letter from the Leipzig Schulamt to the Dresden Ministry of Culture, January 25, 1924, ibid., 85. 12 Letter, October 5, 1923, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 51. 13 Mayor’s memorandum, November 30, 1923, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 83.
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interim and Straube relinquishing his salary), the project would not be realized. As fate would have it, he never made an Atlantic crossing. Meanwhile he continued to cling to his solo playing as an adjunct activity. The occasional invitations for recitals landing on his desk reflected an assumption that Straube was still capable of his former triumphs. In that category fell the spectacular request by Hermann Scherchen that he play Reger’s “Inferno” Fantasy, op. 57, for a festival commemorating the tenth anniversary of the composer’s death.14 In 1922 his former student Quentin Morvaren Maclean asked him to London on behalf of Alfred Harriss, organist of All Soul’s Church, Langham Place. Maclean had studied with Straube between 1908 and 1914, evidently Straube’s first pupil from his mother’s homeland. “I am writing in English,” read Maclean’s warm letter, “because it was the language we always spoke together.” Maclean closed with what in retrospect would be an especially striking query: “I trust Mrs. Straube is keeping well, please remember us all very kindly to her and to Lisbeth. (Is she still Lisbeth Straube?!)”15 That was a more ominous question than anyone could have suspected at the time. What had become of Elisabet, born in spring 1904, fondly dubbed “opus 1” by Max Reger? She had entered the world on a plateau of optimism, a blue-eyed girl who embodied Karl and Hertha’s hopes for a new life together in fresh surroundings. That there had been no “opus 2” suggests that their new life lost its glow, leading to a cooling of the marriage on display in the Leisner episode of 1915, when Elisabet was eleven. Father was clearly fond of daughter: together they had assembled a stamp collection, and Karl tried to make up for extended absences from home through correspondence. Among those letters was a long, touching epistle marking her sixteenth birthday while Straube traveled in Berlin. He urged her, “even amid the cares and troubles, the pains and disappointments that no one is spared,” to realize “that true life is embedded in the spiritual values which all can obtain for themselves as the most secure vested right.” He counseled further that “we do not live for ourselves, but rather we have the duty to help our fellows through our life’s work, to give them inner encouragement, as is the task of the artist.”16 The letter, which goes on to quote Paul’s familiar words on love from I Corinthians, not only expressed a deep-seated affection for a child on the threshold of adulthood, but it also reflected on his 14 Letter, September 20, 1926, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube. 15 Letter, December 6, 1922, ibid. 16 Letter, April 3, 1919, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, Briefe, 41–42.
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own life’s experience as he saw it—the artist as earnest laborer, armed with cultural treasures deployed for the neighbor’s benefit, transcending petty superficialities. It had not been the first time she had gotten this sermon from him. Maybe he consciously strove to be the father his had not been. Whatever the case, he unfolded a profoundly Pauline view colored by the piety of his own upbringing, an expansive meditation on coming of age and the exigencies of life. His accompanying gift to her that year was W. M. Thackeray’s The History of Henry Esmond, presumably in the German translation of Else von Schorn, a link to the culture of Elisabet’s English grandmother and a classically Victorian meditation on the virtues of duty and upright personal character. Elisabet had shown interest in art at latest by age twelve. That orientation likely betrayed the influence of her uncle William, who by this time had returned to Berlin as a teacher and freelance painter. Karl’s and presumably Hertha’s support suggests a socially progressive view on the place of women in the arts. “Such a beautiful talent is a gift that one should strongly foster and encourage,” he had written, careful to instruct her in his ethics. “You know, in the Bible this is very well expressed in the parable of the ‘talent,’ which is our duty to ‘increase,’ and ‘he who has made no increase, from him will be taken what he has.’—Therein is expressed a great experience in life, and so I think it would be wise if you ‘increase’ your ‘talent’ as well.”17 By June 1921 Straube had appealed to the State Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Trade to admit his daughter that fall, despite the fact that at seventeen she fell one year short of the age requirement. But the Straubes decided to strike while the iron was hot: “It appears to me desirable that the development of a talent perhaps in evidence be furthered now by a strict, comprehensive education,” he argued to the Academy’s administration that spring.18 This cautious but hopeful support resulted in her acceptance into the drawing class of Hans Soltmann that October, followed by formal matriculation in July 1922, the first opportunity after her eighteenth birthday. Her education was not the only thing in the picture. A man entered Elisabet’s life at just around this time. His name was Walter Reuschle, almost ten years her senior, son of a Stuttgart mathematics professor and
17 Letter, August 20, 1916, ibid., 29. 18 Letter to the directors of the State Academy, June 27, 1921, StAL Staatl. Akademie für graph. Künste und Buchgewerbe Lpz. Nr. 00136, Akte Straube, Elisabet (7722).
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a decorated veteran of the German Air Force.19 Reuschle probably came to Leipzig in 1921, where he worked as a stage actor. The Straubes were supporters of the theater, so a crossing of paths would have been likely. Reuschle’s background would have endeared him to Elisabet’s prominent father. The relationship escalated into an engagement sometime over the next two years: in a letter from early 1925 Straube would refer to Reuschle as “the fiancé of our dear Liese.”20 But tragedy lurked. Elisabet’s accomplishments at the Academy were acceptable but not stellar. Maybe she was distracted, swept off her feet by an older and dashing suitor, or perhaps her talent was not what her parents had hoped. She fell ill, and around Christmas 1923 her condition degenerated rapidly, causing her to withdrew from her studies altogether. A little more than a month later, Hinrichsen wrote Straube concerning the “anxious, difficult time you are going through.” He was sending money, along “with the genuine wish that the doctors have erred, as they sometimes do, and that you bring back better news.”21 The reference to “bringing back” news indicated that Elisabet had left Leipzig to be hospitalized elsewhere. In fact the family had removed to Berlin, where Hinrichsen’s letter was answered on February 2 in a tone of unqualified gratitude. “In the opinion of Geheimrat His, who as Consiliarius has been in charge since yesterday, the status of [her] health is entirely uncertain! Very dangerous and serious.” Any outcome was possible, on any timeline. “So we have to wait and do everything possible to support the body in its fight for life. How it should end and will end lies in a higher hand; we humans are powerless!”22 An excruciating period of breath-holding resonated around the Straubes’ inner circle. Ramin’s wife Charlotte reported grimly to Raasted that “we expect L. Str.’s death at any hour; there is surely no further hope.”23 She succumbed on Saturday evening, February 9, 1924, one week after her father’s letter to Hinrichsen, just less than two months short of her twentieth birthday. Strikingly it was Reuschle, not the parents, who filed the death record with the Berlin civil registry the following Monday, revealing 19 Reuschle’s biography comes from Joachim Ruf, who was kind to search out an obituary (November 23, 1978) compiled by the Süddeutscher Rundfunk Stuttgart. 20 Letter to Georg Jäger, January 2, 1925, BhAE. 21 Letter, January 31, 1924, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510. 22 Letter, January 2, 1924, ibid. 23 Postcard, undated, BhAE Nachlass Raasted.
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that Elisabet died at a private sanatorium known for the treatment of chronic illnesses like tuberculosis.24 One further clue as to her condition stems from the involvement of Wilhelm His, Jr.—distinguished internist, cardiologist, celebrated identifier of the “His-bundle,” at the time director of the First Medical Clinic at the University of Berlin.25 Following a private cremation on the 13th, Elisabet was laid to rest in the Leipzig South Cemetery at the idyllic site that one day would receive her parents’ remains. The public notice came after the interment, speaking of a “gentle death” that alleviated “severe suffering.”26 It carried the names of the Straubes and, again, Reuschle. The rest is a mystery. The tragedy took the predictable toll on both parents. Hans von Philipps, chair of the Conservatory’s Board, surely spoke for many in mourning the family’s “extraordinarily hard fate. . . . During anxious and tormented days, the hopes you had for a positive turn in your Fräulein daughter’s condition have been abruptly dashed.”27 On the 17th Straube approached Councilor Ackermann with a medical recommendation that attested to the “extraordinarily damaged state” of his health. The physician required “absolutely and as soon as possible a longer rest (about four to six weeks) from any professional activity whatsoever, unconditionally.”28 Straube nevertheless requested only three weeks, from February 25 until March 15, granted on condition that Ramin’s pay be covered from his salary.29 By March 5 the Straubes had reached Bolzano, South Tyrol, well out of reach of the cold Leipzig winter. Upon arrival he turned to Hinrichsen to request another “honorary stipend . . . to allow my wife the possibility of remaining here in the south as long as realizable,” the only faint reference to what was surely the overwhelming grief of a mother.30 Life would go on, but the lens through which the parents viewed it had been fundamentally refocused. It seems that Elisabet was rarely spoken of again, her memory 24 The Mommsen-Sanatorium at Mommsenstraße 15. Sterberegister der Berliner Standesämter 1874–1955, Landesarchiv Berlin, Ancestry.com. 25 Straube had a connection through the physician’s father, the anatomist who in 1894 had led the examination of J. S. Bach’s remains. 26 Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten 45, February 14, 1924, 5. 27 Letter, February 14, 1924, HMTLA Briefwechsel des Kuratoriums 1924. 28 Medical certificate from Wolfgang Rosenthal, February 17, 1924, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 88. 29 Memoranda, February 17, 20, and 21, 1924, ibid., 87, 89. 30 Letter, March 5, 1924, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510.
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Figure 17.1. Death notice for Elisabet Straube, Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, February 14, 1924.
consigned to a cellar of sorrow and regret. But the scars endured, and occasionally they surfaced in private lines directed at those who knew how to read them. When on Christmas Eve 1925 Straube congratulated Elsa Reger on the engagement of her adopted daughter Lotti, he added his wish “that the bonds of love and faithfulness hold fast even when the days of darkness come.”31 Certainly this was a poignant echo of a tragedy still fresh. Perhaps Karl and Hertha were drawn closer together in grief, healing the wounds inflicted during his apparent indiscretion with Leisner a decade earlier.
31 Letter, December 24, 1925, MRIK.
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Chapter Eighteen
Colleagues As promised, Straube was home by March 15. Observing him in proximity, Ramin confided to Raasted that he had “very much recuperated physically in Italy, but emotionally he is still completely broken. One notices nothing for a time, but then suddenly he completely breaks down.”1 Such encounters over spring 1924 must have disturbed those accustomed to the cantor’s typically self-possessed demeanor. But Straube persisted. “Solace is still out of reach,” he told the publisher Anton Kippenberg. “Perhaps the only thing that can save me is work.”2 His old instincts were emerging again, prompting him to plunge back into the complex network of his commitments. Even while in the Tyrol, he had tried to distract himself with matters beyond family. To Hinrichsen he could not help but lament the ceding of the region to Italy when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved under the Treaty of St. Germain. “The political loss of the South Tyrol is great,” he had remarked, “because the German spirit’s actual potential for influence has been pushed back to Innsbruck. There stands the last post of German essence.”3 In the years following, concerns over those “posts” would continue to color Straube’s politics. In the meantime he preferred to focus on work. Plans for the American tour had been dropped during Elisabet’s final illness, but this had not left an appreciable vacuum in an imposing schedule. There were ceaseless rehearsals, concerts, and liturgies. There were preparations for the 1924 tour that would return the choir to Denmark. There was his ongoing work as adviser to publishing programs. And he had not abandoned his role as an editor. Like Schreck before him, Straube had been engaged by Breitkopf to edit a series of German choral pieces under the heading Ausgewählte Gesänge des Thomanerchores, including works by Schütz and other historical figures, but 1 2 3
Letter, April 14, 1924, BhAE Nachlass Raasted. Letter, March 20, 1924, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 51–52. Letter, March 5, 1924, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510.
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now also Arnold Mendelssohn. At latest by 1922 he was working on what he called “the second volume of the Alte Meister” for Peters, a project that would coalesce in 1929 as Alte Meister Neue Folge, a two-volume expansion and reconceptualization of the 1904 namesake collection.4 By early 1925 Hinrichsen was breathing down his neck to finish his comprehensive edition of the Bach organ works, the colossal task languishing in his inbox since 1907.5 Over and above these pressures weighed the demands of the Conservatory. Despite the slowing of his performance career, Straube’s name was virtually synonymous with consummate organ virtuosity in middle Europe. Students accordingly appeared from Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, even as far away as Australia. By the mid-1920s he had been a fixture at the Conservatory for nearly twenty years, with an influence that extended well beyond his bustling organ studio. Between 1921 and 1922 he had served briefly as chair of the voice department. 1921 also had brought the opening of the CMI under his direction. Early in 1924, when the question of a successor to the ailing Conservatory director Stephan Krehl emerged, Hinrichsen as member of the Board nominated Straube for the position. The minutes of the meeting just ten days after Elisabet’s death recorded that Hinrichsen “believes on the basis of Straube’s statements that he would accept,” and that Krehl supported the recommendation in the name of the Faculty Senate.6 The choice of a director weighed with particular urgency as the institution stood on the precipice of insolvency, its endowments and grant monies severely eroded by the runaway economy. A letter from the Board chair Richard Linnemann to the Saxon Justice Minister that previous November, only days after inflation had been arrested by the introduction of the new Rentenmark, described a “hopeless” situation, with monthly salaries in the billions of marks, and dried up public funding. Attempts to compensate by starkly hiking student fees had resulted in declining numbers for domestic as well as international students.7 The new director would inherit these existential difficulties as the Conservatory’s survival hung in the balance. Hinrichsen, who knew better than most how to reconcile business concerns with artistic ones, had proposed a bold rescue operation to introduce “a new artistic and solid financial foundation with governing principles completely different from those 4 5 6 7
Letter to Henri Hinrichsen, November 19, 1922, ibid. Letter, January 5, 1925, ibid. Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Leipzig Conservatory, February 19, 1924, HMTLA Protokolle 1924. Letter, November 27, 1923, to Alfred Neu, HMTLA Kuratorium 1921/23.
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in the past.”8 Straube’s nomination appears to have been integral to this vision, and with good reason. Over the years, he had proven himself as manager-businessman and artist in countless contexts. Now, just after the unimaginable loss of his only child, he stood before the possibility of yet another significant career advance in Leipzig. In his protracted hand wringing over possible outward positions, Straube had questioned whether he would be a more effective presence in administration. Maybe these were the “statements” that had prompted Hinrichsen’s nomination. That nomination did not go unchallenged. The faculty leaned heavily toward the pianist-composer Max von Pauer, director of the Stuttgart Conservatory since 1908. The conductor-composer Hermann Zilcher, director at Würzburg since 1920, was likewise in the running. The in-house candidate Straube would not bring the specialized administrative experience of these men. Fresh from his convalescence in Bolzano, Straube dispatched to Hinrichsen a typically considered perspective on these developments. He would not stand for election, at least not outright. “Above all we must endeavor to draw a new and, if at all possible, significant figure to Leipzig,” Straube argued instead. “The more talent assembled here, the better it is for the music city of Leipzig.” He went on to propose six potential candidates: Hermann Zilcher; the Karlsruhe Conservatory director Heinrich Kaspar Schmid; the pianists Leonid Kreutzer and Edwin Fischer; Fritz Stein, now a reader in musicology at Kiel; the Busoni protégé Egon Petri; and the Austrian composer-scholar Egon Wellesz, pupil of Guido Adler and Schoenberg. This inventory suggests much about the broad artistic directions Straube was willing to countenance in a leader: Zilcher and Schmid were south German traditionalists in the Brahms mold, Kreutzer a mainstream pianist with strengths in pedagogy, Wellesz a progressive internationalist with atonal tendencies. Petri likewise reflected the internationalist impulses of Busoni. Particularly Wellesz and Stein embodied Straube’s prized balance between academics and praxis. That also applied to the pianists Fischer and Petri, influenced by scholarship and notions of textual fidelity. Straube had drafted a thoughtful pool. He took the extra step of singling out Petri and Wellesz for intense consideration. The former was “a dutiful, excellent person, also able to work, energetic, willing.” The highest praise went to Wellesz, an assimilated Jew with “an intellectually significant personality, of cultural distinction, a worker of the first order, and an international 8
Letter from Hinrichsen to Hans von Philipp, February 5, 1924, cited in Goltz, Musikstudium, 42.
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name.” Further: “I know Wellesz personally. He made a very meaningful impression on me and the enlisting of his nature would mean a real win for Leipzig. We would be one personality richer!”9 Hinrichsen conveyed Straube’s larger point that the Conservatory had to attract a prominent outside candidate, and that he, Straube, would be willing to step in only as an “emergency plug.”10 The debate drew out for some months, complicated by the new democratic structure of the institution’s administration. By April 1924 Straube had even thrown out an additional name: his musicologist friend Max Schneider.11 In the end, though, it was Pauer who came to Leipzig to lead the Conservatory through the difficult waters of the remaining Weimar years. Straube and his colleagues found themselves faced with wrenching decisions. Faculty positions were cut, much of the Conservatory library was sold to the University’s Institute of Musicology, and the iconic facility in the Grassistraße was rented out to the spring and fall trade fairs to bring in extra cash. The austerity policies did not spare the Church Music Institute, either: at latest by February 1924 there was talk of shutting it and the School of Opera altogether. The less-than-desirable result was an administrative downscaling to a “church music department” in which at least some teaching was done gratis. Only in late 1925 did negotiations lead to the CMI’s resurrection under the auspices of the Lutheran Church in Saxony.12 The 1924 deliberations surrounding the directorship well illustrate Straube’s tendency to regard Leipzig not only as a place where he could construct an impressive network of influence for himself—the “Straube system”—but also as a magnet for internationally recognized talent. In his view, the goal was a community of artists and intellectuals that rivaled the larger European centers: the city of Bach and Goethe should be a voice in the “culture-state” that was so central to the Democratic platform. In effect he was projecting his own restless ambition onto the city’s larger cultural politics. And by no means for the first time. Early in 1922, when Nikisch’s death prompted the Conservatory to seek a director for its orchestra, Straube had stumped vigorously for his ally Hermann Scherchen, at the time conductor of Leipzig’s Grotrian-Steinweg Orchestra and advocate for social justice 9 Letter, February 23, 1924, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510. 10 Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Leipzig Conservatory, February 26, 1924, HMTLA Protokolle 1924. 11 Minutes of the Personnel Committee, Board of Directors of the Leipzig Conservatory, April 7, 1924, ibid. 12 Goltz, Das kirchenmusikalische Institut, 20–21; Goltz, Musikstudium, 37–51.
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causes. Like Wellesz, Scherchen represented avant-garde interests, Reger and beyond, with active ties to Schoenberg’s circle. Straube’s support served as a spirited rebuke to the candidacy of Hans l’Hermet, the conductor of the Leipzig Philharmonic, regarded as a dilettante without vision. At a key administrative meeting Straube proposed “that we put our cards on the table and talk about Scherchen, who in his opinion is a very good fit” and “suitable also on a personal level. He is neither a troublemaker nor a machinator and morally unassailable.” To Krehl’s objection that Scherchen would prove “unsuitable as an educator for young people, since he is too modern,” an exasperated Straube countered that “we could acquire a first-class artistic personality in Leipzig and we aren’t doing it. [Board member Reinhold] Anschütz: But we are concerned here only about the Conservatory. . . . Straube left the meeting and resigned his position as chair of the voice department.”13 Not only was he prepared to assume an aggressive stance when arguing points he believed in, but he also regarded the engagement of a top-tier progressive like Scherchen as good for the city in the first place. Anschütz’s rejoinder that decisions needed to be taken on the narrower basis of the institution’s immediate needs got no better a reception with him than did Krehl’s position that exposure to the avant-garde was bad for students. In a rare abandonment of his usual sangfroid, he appears even to have walked out of the meeting in protest. Scherchen’s candidacy was not pursued. Upon Nikisch’s death in January 1922 another conductor representing a quite different aesthetic arrived in Leipzig as Nikisch’s successor at the Gewandhaus, the thirty-six-year-old Wilhelm Furtwängler. Evidently Straube had a hand in persuading the younger man to sign on to the position, which he would occupy parallel to the directorship of the Berlin Philharmonic, as Nikisch had done.14 Straube deeply admired Furtwängler’s broad education, his probing musical intellect, and his composing efforts. Kurt Varges remembered that Furtwängler “enjoyed the tone, the highly cultivated spirituality of performance, and the passionate impulse of the Thomaner”— hallmarks of Straube’s approach that resonated with the conductor’s own musical instincts.15 The result was a particularly warm, productive collaboration between the Gewandhaus Orchestra and Chorus during the 1920s. 13 Minutes of the Faculty Senate and Board of Directors of the Leipzig Conservatory, March 17, 1922, HMTLA Conservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig. Sitzungs-Protokolle. 19. Febr, 1918–1. Febr. 1924. 14 Shirakawa, The Devil’s Music Master, 53. 15 Varges, “Wilhelm Furtwängler und der Chor.”
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Straube regarded Furtwängler’s presence in Leipzig as a star in the crown of the city’s cultural life, just the sort of first-class figure with which he wished to populate “little Paris.” Moreover, the conductor’s advent was an advance on Nikisch, with whom Straube had maintained cordial but not particularly close relations, and whose more impulsive musicality did not suit him. The Straube–Furtwängler liaison would be an extraordinary one, developed on the familiar Du basis. Straube was thirteen years older than his friend, but he seems to have looked up to Furtwängler as a talent he could not equal. When in 1927 a civic conducting post came open in Görlitz, Furtwängler proposed that he recommend Straube for it. That prompted the cantor to write his wife a candid assessment of his friend as “the greatest living German conductor” whose compositions nevertheless would not endure. Concerning the opening in Görlitz: “It will be said of me that I’m not important enough. . . . My actual approach is effective only in the Thomaskirche, since it is configured very much around the church. If one were to pluck me up from there and plant me elsewhere, my art would be introduced into false quarters and would not blossom.” Then the cynical postlude: “For me, the danger of becoming a local star is quite minimal. The Leipzigers themselves have seen to it that I don’t fall into this.”16 This was a roundabout way of saying that he had no interest in pursuing a secular position in a removed corner of Lower Silesia, no matter the stature of his advocate. Straube’s well-tuned capacity for self-doubt was alive and well. But after nearly ten years on the job he had begun to settle into his role as Thomaskantor, however uneasily, and with however much simmering resentment for a local environment he considered too parochial. Straube’s accumulated influence continued to afford him contact not only with performers like Furtwängler, but also with important scholarly voices. Given his intellectual leanings and his hyperawareness of having never pursued higher studies himself, it is not surprising that Straube kept his finger on the pulse of the Wissenschaften. He had always maintained ties to musicologists (Schneider, Seiffert, Kretzschmar, Schering), theorists (Riemann), and theologians with musical sympathies (Smend, Spitta). As with Gurlitt, he did not shy from the occasional tête-à-tête exploring the underpinnings of scholarship. During the Weimar era a new and consequential group of scholars began to intersect his path. The theorist Heinrich Schenker; the musicologists Hans-Joachim Moser, Alfred Einstein, and Jacques Handschin; the theologian-musicologist Christhard Mahrenholz, the historians Heinrich 16 Letter, October 4, 1927, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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Mitteis, Johannes Haller, and Wilhelm Weber—these and many others would have roles to play in Straube’s life, and would have pieces of their lives shaped by him. Then there were the composers. Although Straube would never again move so intensively in a composer’s world as he had in Reger’s, he maintained a lively interest in contemporary composition and did not hesitate to advise or otherwise promote such music when he found it appropriate. He encouraged Furtwängler’s compositional urges, as he did those of the young Hans Gál, whose work he introduced to Breitkopf in 1930. During the 1920s Straube directed perhaps his greatest sympathies to Arnold Mendelssohn, whose neo-classical polyphony he regarded as a viable path to a renewed Protestant church music. Like Furtwängler, Mendelssohn was broadly educated as a humanist, predisposing him to the rarified air of the Thomaskantor’s inner circle even though he worked in centers well removed from Leipzig. Some eighteen years Mendelssohn’s junior, Straube had encountered him in 1906 on the occasion of a recital in Darmstadt, where Mendelssohn held a leading position for the Lutheran Church of Hessen. Much later he would recall his vivid first impression of the composer as “the noble specimen of a highly talented, young general of aristocratic breeding, not as a musician.”17 He found in Mendelssohn a capable pedagogue and accordingly dispatched to him promising students like Kurt Thomas and Günter Raphael. A sporadic correspondence between the two intensified during the 1920s over a number of compositional projects in which Straube became intimately involved. Accordingly, Mendelssohn’s a cappella choral works populated the Thomaner’s repertory, and Straube approached both Peters and Breitkopf to recommend publication. Painfully aware as always of his status as a non-composer occupying a composing office, Straube turned to Mendelssohn’s muse as a source of new music he himself could not produce. “Don’t leave me in the lurch,” he admonished the older man in 1924 while urging the composition of fresh motets for the Thomaner. “Because if you do not compose diligently, I am merely a quite fragmentary Thomaskantor.”18 That was an arresting choice of words, betraying a sense of deficiency in the position that continued to lurk subcutaneously in his psyche. 17 Letter to Friedrich Michael, July 26, 1947, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 217. He probably had performed Mendelssohn’s music as early as 1900. Heinz Kirch, undated draft lecture on Straube at Wesel, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 13, 36–39. 18 Letter, April 9, 1924, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 52.
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Composer or not, Straube was determined to advocate for adventurous new music, and the alliance with Mendelssohn did not disappoint. He found himself in a relationship that in some ways paralleled the one with Reger some twenty years earlier. The substantial age difference between the two did not prevent Straube from bringing the entire weight of his critical persona to bear upon the compositional projects that passed under his eyes and into his rehearsal room. In the early 1920s, at the cantor’s instigation Mendelssohn undertook a series of fourteen a cappella motets for the feasts of the liturgical year, the Geistliche Chormusik, op. 90, dedicated to the Thomanerchor. When formal problems arose in the conception of no. 12 (New Year), cantor did not hesitate to inform composer that the latter’s proposed cuts to that work were nothing short of “barbaric,” following this with several specific remedies as “the only solution.”19 Just a few days later, examining the manuscript to no. 13 (Trinity), Straube unleashed a barrage of commentary based on his perception that “the chosen words are not yet sufficient to achieve the necessary breadth of the musical form” in the first movement. A step-by-step roadmap then dictated how the piece should look, what text should be set, what textures and formal procedures should be employed.20 High-handed behavior or not, an extraordinary degree of trust between Straube and his interlocutors made invasive approaches like these not only possible but productive. Certainly, Straube’s persona amounted to an unlikely set of elements held in tension: on the one hand, a penchant for the ex cathedra pronouncement handed down with stereotypically Prussian self-assurance; on the other, an uncanny ability to draw admiration from his inner circle as a judge in all sorts of aesthetic matters, whatever his personal insecurities. It was around this particular discordia concors that the Thomaskantor’s fascinating personality orbited. There is no denying that he projected the kind of authority that composers like Mendelssohn sought to engage. Admittedly, not every liaison with his composing colleagues bore optimal fruit. Perhaps the most egregious case of uneasy relations was that with the colorful composer-theorist Sigfrid Karg-Elert—product of the Leipzig Conservatory, experimentalist advocate of the Kunstharmonium, and prolific composer of works that drew as freely upon English and French influences as upon German ones. In a 1928 essay Karg recounted the “dull” organ lessons of his youth with Paul Homeyer. “Then Straube came to Leipzig and caused a tremendous stir by his wonderful organ playing, the unheard-of 19 Letter, February 20, 1925, ibid., 58. 20 Letter, March 6, 1925, ibid., 60–61.
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audacity of his treatment of Bach and his interpretation of Reger’s early works. At one stroke my boundless love of Bach and the art of the organ was awakened.”21 Whereas he granted to Straube-the-organist a decisive place in his development, Straube-the-educator recognized that Karg’s international reputation was good for the city: in spring 1919 he recommended to the Conservatory’s Board that Karg be hired, because “he has a good name outside the country.”22 Moreover, certain pieces from Karg’s demanding organ catalog found a place in Straube’s performances and in the repertory of certain pupils.23 But whatever the mutual regard between the two at first, the relationship cooled. Straube was disinclined to give the nod to a composer who evidently wanted to build upon the Reger organ style. Already before Reger’s death and for some time thereafter, he was preaching that such a direction amounted to a dead end.24 He was predisposed to distrust Karg’s pungent amalgam of international influences, the sort of cross-bred product Reimann would have rejected out of hand decades earlier. And now, as neo-classicizing tendencies began to achieve aesthetic distance from the overwrought muse of Reger & Co., Straube followed suit. When the American Arthur Poister came to Leipzig for study during winter 1933/34, he fell into a conversation with the Thomaskantor in which “we got off onto Karg-Elert. I told Straube, ‘He’s played so much in England—they have Karg-Elert festivals in England. He’s played so much in America. . . . Straube replied, ‘Well, here in Germany we do not regard Karg-Elert as a composer. Karg-Elert is a band man!’”25 That exchange admittedly was colored by the distance of forty years, but it does suggest just the sort of summary judgment Straube was inclined to issue, at least privately in an English-language conversation with a pupil, about music he felt to be out-of-step with the times. That it was formulated after the 21 Karg-Elert, “How I Came to the Harmonium,” Musical Opinion (April 1928): 717, trans. Godfrey Sceats, reproduced in Sceats and Fabrikant, eds., Your Ever Grateful, Devoted Friend, A-5. 22 Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Leipzig Conservatory, May 22, 1919, HMTLA Conservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig. Sitzungs-Protokolle. 19. Febr. 1918–1. Febr. 1924. 23 Letters to Godfrey Sceats, July 12–13, 1926, and December 10, 1931, in Sceats and Fabrikant, eds., Your Ever Grateful, Devoted Friend, 4g and 35g. 24 Postcard, December 21, 1914, BhAE Nachlass Raasted. 25 Interview “Arthur Poister on Karl Straube,” American Guild of Organists National Convention, June 27, 1973, transcribed in Pickering, Arthur Poister, 80.
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composer’s death the previous spring, on the heels of what was widely seen as Karg’s disastrous American tour in 1932, tends to lend it the weight of a final verdict. In the early 1920s Karg-Elert habitually groused at being shut out of a Straube-dominated society for whom Bach and Reger were the house gods. One sprawling letter from December 1923 took Straube to task as “a man of unequalled vanity and an almost pathological place-hunter,” one who clung to tradition yet occupied the cantor’s office as a non-composer.26 At the CMI’s opening in 1921, Karg felt he was passed over for a position awarded to Hermann Ernst Koch, who commuted from Chemnitz. “The travelling expenses are more than the salary for a distinguished teacher,” he grumbled. “But Omnipotentissimus Straube so wished it . . . and so alas I found in examining the students, that the good folk did not have any idea of pure style modulation in Church-tones, or of neumes, but knew only about Bach and Reger (the latter of course far more important than his feeble predecessor!).”27 This unguarded and typically emotion-laden commentary is neither entirely fair nor accurate, but it did communicate the ire of a competent musician who felt himself on the short end of the “Straube system’s” formidable stick. One further instance suggests with particular clarity the efficiency with which that “system” could function by the 1920s, or at least was perceived to function by someone who took a dim view of it. Karg-Elert reported in December 1923 that representatives from the University of Chicago had planned a Leipzig visit that year to invite a cadre of local luminaries “in Science and Music-Theory” for American residencies. However, the nomination process, which in Karg’s telling was supposed to operate through the University and Conservatory administrations, had been sabotaged. “The good Straube, who like a detective sets his traps everywhere, saw to it that he secure for himself this American trip which is bound to mean so much.” And a revealing contention: “The good man is thoroughly German with the diehards but at the same time is often received in audience by this swine-lout of a communist prime-minister [Erich] Zeigner in Dresden, who has bolshevized our Saxony into filth and hell.”28 It is not unlikely that Straube worked behind the scenes in 1923 to nail down the American lecture invitation he 26 Letter, December 20, 1923, “To His Australian Friends,” in Fabrikant, ed. and trans., The Harmony of the Soul, 32. 27 Ibid., 33. Emphasis original. 28 Letter, December 20, 1923, ibid., 36.
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submitted to his superiors that November, and that other potential choices, an irritated Karg-Elert among them, were bypassed as a result. He did not hesitate to exert influence in high places when his interests were at stake. And precisely in this sense, the allegation of warm ties with the “swine-lout” might say more than it first appears. The Leipzig-educated Zeigner had risen through the city’s justice bureaucracy during Straube’s virtuoso days. No doubt he was aware of who Straube was, and he well could have been a valuable ally during his tenure as Saxon Justice Minister from August 1921 through March 1923, then as Minister-President through October 1923, representing Ebert’s government and the left-leaning SPD. Whether or not the cantor was “often received in audience,” he later would have a history with Zeigner, who became the Soviet-appointed mayor of Leipzig in 1945. At the least, Karg-Elert wanted to expose Straube in a pragmatic and probably genuine alliance with the political center-left, one that affirmed the “Omnipotentissimus” Thomaskantor as cultural ambassador to the United States at just the time of Hitler’s failed Munich putsch.
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Chapter Nineteen
The Treadmill In January 1927, some ten years into his tenure, Straube offered a would-be visitor a candid window into his daily routine. “From 9:00 to 1:00, meeting of the committee for state examinations of the Leipzig Conservatory,” began the intonation of his Saturday obligations. Then: “1:30, Motette; 2:30–3:30, rehearsal with the sopranos, then sleep; 5:00–6:00, rehearsal with the altos; 6:00–7:30, rehearsal with the entire choir; 8:00–10:00, Conservatory teaching. So it goes day in and day out.” At least until Easter “I am on the treadmill of my three offices and actually never free. It may be wrong, but I am not in control of my life and take it as it comes. The more I have to work, the better, because then no bleak thoughts [keine trüben Gedanken] arise.”1 At fifty-four, Straube felt he was riding a wave not of his own making. The punishing routine rattled off here amounted to a bulwark against a tide of trübe Gedanken, probably a clinical depression now some three years after Elisabet’s death. His propensity for sustained hard work was itself nothing new, but his attitude toward it had taken a dark turn by the middle of the decade, stained by personal loss and accumulated bitterness. Each New Year and birthday likely prompted reflection. Almost exactly two years earlier, he had told Raasted that “the only anesthetic” for Elisabet’s loss “is work, the more of it and the more desolate, the better. . . . Thank God that someday this life too will pass.”2 This talking point would surface repeatedly now, betraying a Weltschmerz that would gain the upper hand in Straube’s psyche by the 1940s. And work he did. Over the second half of the 1920s, as the Republic appeared to stabilize under Hindenburg, and as a newly constituted Nazi party began to incubate on the margins, Straube embraced a bewildering counterpoint of demanding, highly visible projects that would further his 1 2
Letter to Julius Levin, January 13, 1927, DLAM A:Levin 61.410, no. HS009177497. Letter, January 17, 1925, BhAE Nachlass Raasted.
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status and erode his health, all framed as deeply personal strategies to deflect trübe Gedanken. First, there was the German Handel Festival of June 6–8, 1925, in Leipzig, mounted under his initiative, reflecting a national (and nationalist) interest arising in tandem with Friedrich Chrysander and the Händel-Gesellschaft’s edition completed in 1902. Perhaps it was Handel’s English connections that had pushed Straube to engage with the oratorios since at least spring 1906, when his Bach-Verein had launched Saul at St. Thomas. He had offered distinctive readings of Samson (1908), Belshazzar (1910, 1918), Judas Maccabaeus (1912, 1914), the Dettinger Te Deum (1913, 1914), Saul (1919), Jephtha (1922), and Semele (1923).3 Undoubtedly he felt that Handel’s supreme gift for the theater could be illumined by his signature musical approach, which itself capitalized on dramatic and emotional elements. Later, when a friend ventured that “Handel’s effect depends on a nuanced working out of his scores, [Straube] exclaimed, ‘Completely wrong. It depends on the dramatic breath. Handel is a dramatist, that’s the key!’”4 Evidently this suggested to him a kindred spirit in need of advocacy. The 1925 festival featured Belshazzar and Solomon (Theodora having been dropped), as well as chamber music in Seiffert’s arrangements.5 Straube long had been disenchanted with Chrysander’s lesser-known “practical” editions and the standard German translations of Gottfried Gervinus. Likewise, he felt that the arrangements of Hermann Stephani, who had sought to distance the oratorios from their Jewish element, had diluted the dramatic point. After the 1912 Judas, Straube had written the anti-Semitic musicologist Alfred Heuss that Chrysander’s “approach is as unartistic as possible: not fish—not meat! In all this: on the contrary, back to original Handel!”6 At just that time, Peters had brought out the Dettinger Te Deum in Straube’s version to demonstrate what “original Handel” looked like to him. By spring 1925 the impending Handel Festival had whetted his appetite to publish his signature renditions of Belshazzar and Solomon, slated for performance at the Gewandhaus on June 6 and 8 respectively. In the end, it was only a cut-down version of Solomon that would see the light of day, in a translation by the Schenker associate Herman Roth 3 4 5 6
Hübner, “Bach-Verein,” 111; Fritz Merbach, “Karl Straubes fünfundzwanzigjährige Tätigkeit,” in Feier zu Ehren, 12–19. F. Weismann, ed., untitled memoir of Wilhelm Weismann, 78, relating a conversation from 1945 or 1946. Forner, ed., Die Gewandhauskonzerte, 455. Letter, November 29, 1912, UBL Kurt-Taut-Slg./5/Sei-Stra/S/268.
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and appearing with Breitkopf, not Peters. The circumstances of publication exposed what surely were long-simmering tensions arising from Straube’s competing loyalties. In May 1925, a month before the festival, he revealed to the Peters chief editor Paul Ollendorff that he had placed Solomon with Breitkopf after claiming to have offered both that work and Belshazzar to Peters “not very long ago at all, perhaps two years ago.” In his telling, he had corresponded with the publishing firms of both Leuckart and Breitkopf early in 1925, eventually ceding his arrangement to the latter because “I really don’t see why I should hide my light under a bushel while other people publish merrily on.”7 The infuriatingly insouciant tone of that remark touched a nerve in the Peters offices, the firm to whom so much was owed, and which eternally was treading water over the long-promised Bach organ edition. “If artists—and especially successful artists—evidently need neither know nor show consideration as do other mortals,” read Ollendorff’s testy rejoinder, “I in my long experience have not encountered it before, in any case.”8 A handwritten annotation noted, “not sent.” In the end, the “Straube system” was too influential, too valuable, too embedded in the cultural mechanics to risk a breach. The Handel Festival itself came off successfully, though Ollendorff’s feathers were not the only ones ruffled. Friedrich Chrysander’s son Rudolf, who after his father’s death had sought to further his legacy by continuing publication of the “practical” editions, registered his displeasure with the ascendency of Handel à la Straube, whether on financial or purely artistic grounds. In letters to the Breitkopf firm, Chrysander the younger aired his view that the “recent Handel movement” was going off the rails as it moved beyond his father’s work. Evidently because of Breitkopf ’s alliances with the modernizing Thomaskantor, he had refused the publisher’s overtures to acquire the plates to the complete works edition and had taken “particular offense that in earlier times, one had affirmed Chrysander exclusively. He can’t get in his head that with time, this approach could change.”9 Straube did not meet the invitation to a turf war head on: through the remainder of his tenure with the Gewandhaus Choral Union, he would offer no further Handel aside from the premiere of his arrangement of Messiah on February 21, 1929.10 7 8 9
Letter, May 4, 1925, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510. Letter, May 6, 1925, ibid. Letter from Breitkopf to Straube, July 31, 1925, SäStAL Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel Nr. 3057. 10 Forner, ed., Die Gewandhauskonzerte, 560.
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Straube’s efforts for Handel bore one further piece of notable fruit, though: the Arbeiter-Händel-Fest (Workers’ Handel Festival), given in Leipzig on June 26–28, 1926, and recycling the 1925 format: two oratorios (Samson and Hercules) alongside a concert of smaller vocal and chamber works.11 The event was organized under the auspices of the Workers’ Choral Alliance, Saxony district, and the Leipzig Institute for the Formative Education of Workers (ABI), the latter established in 1907 with roots in the center-left agendas of the Social Democrats. The Institute and the 1926 event aimed to foster working-class solidarity through philanthropic efforts at cultural education and access to art. At the center of these social justice efforts stood Barnet Licht, choral director at Leipzig’s liberal Old Synagogue, adviser for the ABI’s musical activities, and organizer of civic choruses and orchestras for the city’s underprivileged. Licht had been instrumental not least in achieving access for Leipzig’s workers to the dress rehearsals of the Thomanerchor since the beginning of Straube’s cantorate.12 In a 1933 article for the Social Democratic newspaper Leipziger Volkszeitung, marking Straube’s sixtieth birthday, he stressed that “the name Karl Straube has good standing among working Leipzigers,” citing a long collaboration with the ABI in which the cantor had acted “selflessly” in concerts sacred and secular. He further had “participated in a panel discussion for an ‘International Workers’ Music Congress,’ since he was of the opinion that great musical art must be made accessible to all strata of the population.”13 Leftist initiatives toward worker solidarity and education would be quelled subsequent to the 1933 power grab or Machtergreifung. Once the Nazis began to proscribe Licht’s initiatives, Straube would recommend him in glowing terms to Fritz Stein as a “thoroughly decent, original man” while denouncing the incoming regime’s parochial view. Licht had believed “that this [German] music is more than politics and . . . stands higher than all political issues, that it is necessary for all workers to be convinced of the significance of this art.” He added with cynicism, “Yet Barnet Licht then was rejected by the party bigwigs, regarded as a reactionary who, seen as a socialist from the party standpoint, pursued dangerous things and even 11 Wolf, “Das Arbeiter-Händel-Fest,” 89–90. 12 Schinköth, Jüdische Musiker, 31; and Schinköth, “Dem Menschen Leid und Sorgen lindern: Zum Wirken von Barnet Licht,” in Schinköth, ed., Musikstadt Leipzig, 418. 13 Barnet Licht, “Karl Straube. Zum 60. Geburtstage,” Leipziger Volkszeitung, January 6, 1933.
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peddled religion.”14 A longstanding collaboration with the center-left Social Democracy, the ABI, and the liberal Judaism represented by Licht is, to say the least, difficult to reconcile with Hartmann’s thesis that Straube gave himself over to the nascent radical right in the mid-1920s. On the contrary, it tends to affirm certain telling details of his biography, among them the Thomaskantor’s relationship with the SPD’s Erich Zeigner attested to in 1923 by an annoyed Karg-Elert; his 1922 advocacy for Hermann Scherchen, likewise a partner with Licht’s ABI; and the Palmer family’s history with liberal social causes. In the wake of the 1925 festival Straube would turn his attention to Handel’s adopted and his mother’s native homeland, namely in the form of an invitation to England for the Bach Festival marking the London Bach Society’s fiftieth anniversary in June 1926. He must have viewed this sojourn into the English-speaking world in some sense as a replacement for the American lecture tour abandoned two years before. But there was a difference: the trip offered a chance for direct contact with his mother’s heritage, the world of the Palmers. In this connection, it is surely right that certain elements of Straube’s persona—facial features, comportment, attitudes— impressed his German compatriots as English, or at least as non-Teutonic, and that from time to time he found it advantageous to project his bicultural heritage. The eventual Peters associate Wilhelm Weismann recalled that, upon meeting Straube in 1925, he “reminded me of an English reverend, sitting in a comfortable armchair, smiling with a certain grandeur about him.”15 In 1922 Straube had told Elsa Reger that “what you find foreign in my nature is probably my Englishness. All the Germans have a similar experience, all sense something alien in and about me! It doesn’t hurt anything and can’t be changed, either.”16 The invitation to England, and Straube’s willingness to follow through on it, reflected a relationship with the island nation years in the making. He had attracted a handful of English pupils, and he appears to have cultivated relations with other English students who studied outside the church music orbit. His ability to speak the language naturally furthered such contacts. Since at least 1923 he had corresponded with Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose 14 Letter, April 19, 1934, BAK Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, Akten betreffend Prof. D. Dr. Straube, Kap. II Tit. I. No. 282 [hereafter StraubeAkten Musikhochschule]. See Schinköth, “Dem Menschen Leid,” 423–25. 15 F. Weismann, ed., untitled memoir of Wilhelm Weismann, 73. 16 Letter, February 22, 1922, MRIK.
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new Mass in G Minor he had given with the Thomaner that November, and who apparently issued the 1926 invitation.17 And as if to prelude the Thomaskantor’s visit, the historian and musicologist Charles Sanford Terry turned up in Leipzig that April to attend the annual Passion performance. Upon departure he inscribed to Straube a copy of his just-published translations of Bach cantata libretti, citing the “overpowering memories” of the Good Friday and Easter services upon “a pilgrim to Bach’s Shrine.”18 After the Easter rush, Straube gushed to Raasted about “the absolutely extraordinary achievement” of Terry’s work. “A very interesting, fascinating person, a real Englander with all the strong-willed merits of one!”19 The broadly educated Terry was just the sort of person Straube admired ardently, the “strong-willed” Englishman who could show the Germans a thing or two about getting their cultural priorities in order. By 1929 The Times of London was reporting that Straube “has spoken of Professor Terry’s reconstruction of the Leipzig liturgies as a work which made him feel ashamed that its accomplishment should have been left to a foreigner.”20 That same year, Terry’s Bach biography had appeared in German translation with a Foreword by Straube. There, Terry’s inborn “ethical will” had led him, in the present Thomaskantor’s reckoning, “to impart knowledge of the greatness and beauty of . . . Bach’s art to all classes” of the English nation, a philanthropic impulse Terry shared with Stanford, Parry, Vaughan Williams, Holst, and ultimately Thayer.21 This was the same kind of cultural work that earned Straube the praise of Barnet Licht at just this time, a social-democratic initiative to enlighten the masses with the gospel of high art. But all this lay in the future as Straube prepared to cross the Channel in June 1926. This would be his sole journey away from the continent, extraordinary also in that the trip had no agenda beyond his mere presence at Vaughan Williams’s Jubilee Festival. No lectures, no teaching, and certainly no organ playing would impinge on his schedule. That circumstance reflected his compromised health: he had secured a six-month leave-of-absence from 17 Letter from Straube to Vaughan Williams, December 5, 1923, in Cobbe, ed., Letters, 141. 18 Joh. Seb. Bach: Cantata Texts, Sacred and Secular, with a Reconstruction of the Leipzig Liturgy of his Period (London: Constable, 1926). BAL Sig. AF 34.1 T329. 19 Letter, April 11, 1926, BhAE Nachlass Raasted. 20 “Bach’s Chorals. A Complete Collection.” The Times, June 8, 1929, 12. 21 “Geleitwort” to Terry, Johann Sebastian Bach, 5.
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teaching, and a medical certificate submitted to Rector Tittel in late May claimed “profound neurasthenia, which necessitates a thorough recovery period of at least three months.”22 These issues notwithstanding, the higher-ups received the London invitation as an exceptional development and went to some lengths to support Straube on his mission as cultural emissary: transportation was covered, per diem allowance granted, performance obligations rearranged, Ramin’s substitution secured. “The Council sees in [this invitation] an honor for the city of Leipzig for which it has you to thank,” read the official letter from City Hall.23 A congratulatory announcement with the same sentiment promptly appeared in the press.24 On May 30 Straube struck out in the direction of Düsseldorf, where he would spend a few days of down time with Otto Grüters, brother-in-law of Adolf Busch. On June 6 he embarked to London, where he was received at Campden House Court as the guest of Sir Malcom MacNaghten, an MP whose daughter, Anne, Straube would have known as the violin pupil of his Leipzig colleague Walther Davisson. The four-day festival featured the Bach Choir and the London Symphony Orchestra under Vaughan Williams, offering the London premiere of the latter’s Sancta Civitas and concluding with the B-minor Mass. From London, Straube proceeded to his beloved Gastein in the Austrian Alps to rest his nerves and process the experience. “London was very interesting,” he reported to Raasted, “the Bach performances extraordinarily good, the two leading younger (that is, my generation) composers Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst splendid people and absolutely exceptional musicians.”25 To Grüters he composed a long, perspicuous meditation that probed the sinews of the English psyche and society. He was fascinated by the reserved manner of the natives (“the most admirable thing about the English essence”) and how they warmed gradually to a foreigner. Grüters could digest observations about everything from domestic habits (“the English leave all the doors to their rooms open”) to the social criticism of Bernard Shaw (“really the critical attitude of the younger generation”) to Westminster Abbey (“I wasn’t as horrified as I thought I would be”).26 He made an extended visit to the National Gallery and a shorter one to Hampton Court Palace, but otherwise a tight schedule allowed only limited 22 23 24 25 26
Medical certificate, May 28, 1926, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 115. Letter, April 23, 1926, ibid., 112. Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten 114, April 26, 1926. Letter, June 25, 1926, BhAE Nachlass Raasted. Letter, July 11, 1926, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 65–66.
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sightseeing, precluding any searching out of the Palmers’ Islington haunts if he had so wished. Music-making took pride of place. He admonished the English to pay more attention to their native musical heritage.27 His hosts’ symphonic approach to early music particularly intrigued him. Vaughan Williams had brought an unapologetically personal voice to Bach, with clarinets and other updates to the orchestration, “but I have experienced here how little such questions matter when a great, strong inspiration speaks out of the whole performance from the suggestive power of the leader.”28 This was high praise from a musician who had built his own reputation on an “as-I-see-it” aesthetic, and who would continue well into the 1930s to offer the Passions and Christmas Oratorio with the large-scale combined forces of Gewandhaus and Thomanerchor. Straube’s cross-Channel professional associations intensified in the wake of his 1926 visit. E. J. Dent invited him to Cambridge in 1928 for a performance of Purcell’s King Arthur, and a number of letters bear witness to an ongoing relationship with Holst, who visited Leipzig in 1928 and 1929.29 Likewise in 1928, a Times correspondent turned up to write a documentary about life in the Thomanerchor.30 When H. C. Colles’s third edition of Grove’s Dictionary appeared the year before, it included for the first time a biography of Straube by Hugh Butler, the first sentence pegging its subject (with some national pride) as “the son of a German father and an English mother.”31 And when Straube directed the seventeenth German Bachfest in June 1929, several English visitors were on hand to render due praise, among them Holst, Colles, and the physician Arthur Phear. Colles promptly issued a keenly perceptive piece in The Times, still valuable today for its description of Straube’s St. Matthew Passion, including timings, precise arrangement of performing forces, and several observations taken note of “for the consideration of English conductors [because] . . . Professor Straube’s reading differed definitely from what we are accustomed to hear.”32 All this made
27 28 29 30 31
C., “Purcell’s ‘Dido’ in Germany,” The Musical Times, April 1, 1926, 317. Letter, July 11, 1926, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 66–67. Letter from Edward Dent, January 30, 1928, BStBM Straubeana. “Bach’s Choir. A Visit to the Thomas School,” The Times, June 16, 1928, 12. Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 3rd ed., ed. H. C. Colles (1927), s.v. “Straube.” Butler claimed strikingly that the organist Straube’s “powers of improvisation are unrivalled.” 32 “Bach at Leipzig. The ‘St. Matthew Passion,’” The Times, June 15, 1929, 12.
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Figure 19.1. Straube sketched by Erich Ohser for Hans Reimann’s tourist manual Das Buch von Leipzig (Munich: R. Piper, 1929), 137.
for lively dialogue with a country that, it seems, had begun to consider the Thomaskantor something of a native son once removed. The abundance of English good will was only one thing on his radar. These years saw first performances of Bach’s Art of Fugue and Musical Offering under Straube, on June 26, 1927, and July 1, 1928, in the instrumentation of Wolfgang Graeser and Hans T. David respectively. As usual, Straube saw himself not only as performer-interpreter, but also as counsel and authority figure to the young editors. The 1927 premiere of The Art of Fugue attracted particular attention, not least due to the unorthodox résumé of its editor. The polymath prodigy Graeser was nineteen when Breitkopf published his revision of The Art of Fugue as a supplement to the Bach-Gesellschaft complete edition, twenty at the time of the premiere, and twenty-one when he hanged himself in the family home in Berlin. Graeser’s interests extended far beyond music to eastern languages and philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysical theories of the body. His book
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Körpersinn adopted Spengler’s view of Western civilization in its final stages and explored body movement as a transcendent window onto the mystery of existence. All this expressed a congeries of priorities unfocused and eccentric enough for Straube to pass judgment on Graeser as a charlatan, “very talented, but superficial (eclectic).”33 When in 1928 Hans David published a competing edition of The Art of Fugue with Peters, proposing a new ordering and an alternate instrumentation, Straube elevated it to Karl Matthaei as “a flawless text” that “will force Graeser’s edition into the shadows.”34 On the one hand, Straube’s attitude likely reflected the fact that Graeser’s and David’s versions represented the competing interests of their respective publishing programs, a tension that had ensnared him at the time of the Handel Festival and which he in some sense had exacerbated. On the other, the cantor’s less-than-enthusiastic embrace of Graeser’s work reflected in the first place personal misgivings, not musical or economic ones. Those were on display in an unvarnished letter to Julius Levin in the wake of Graeser’s death. The young man had been “a tremendously unstable intellect . . . in principle uncreative, lacking potency, dynamic vigor even less.” The essential elements of his approach had been advanced already by Rust and Hauptmann. “Did he come up with the instrumentation himself? I very much doubt it, and probably with good reason. The Critical Report in his edition is the straightforward reissue of W. Rust’s Critical Report, without a word to indicate that this is the case, thus suggesting that it is Graeser’s own.” Körpersinn drew withering criticism (“derivative judgments summed up in bad German, the whole thing superficial but pretentious”), even as Straube attributed its author’s demise to “the discrepancy between a bold, beautiful ambition in grand style on the one hand, and on the other, the recognition of his own inability. . . . I am told that the cause of death was hanging. Were there erotic perversions at play here, or was death simply a misfortune?” The final verdict: “He could never surpass this fame [of editing Bach] and hence his passing is perhaps for him, the ambitious lad with the burning ambition and inadequate capacity, a piece of good fortune.”35 These and other mutually 33 “Konferenz am 7. Dezember 1927 bei C. F. Peters,” SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510. 34 Letter, 16 March 1928, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 227. 35 Letter, July 24, 1928, DLAM A:Levin, 61.410, no. HS009177503. For a competing perspective concerning Straube and Graeser’s edition, see Zurlinden, “Bachs Kunst der Fuge und Wolfgang Graeser,” in Letzte Ernte, 915–16; and Zurlinden, Wolfgang Graeser, 49–52.
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reinforcing charges rolled out at length here—lack of originality extending to plagiarism, moral and intellectual weakness, superficiality, undue pretension, ambition masking incompetence, fear of and inability to receive criticism, homosexual “perversions,” awkwardness with language—these were perceived traits Straube could not abide in another, although in his own dealings he did not always forgo a posturing self-importance. Maybe he sensed in Graeser’s “burning ambition and inadequate capacity” a reflection of his own psyche’s dark side. Whatever the case, the embers of an uneasy ambivalence would still glow in 1950, when he claimed, “It was absolutely clear to me that this instrumentation would not be granted the last word. But I wanted to take the first step to rescue Bach’s miraculous work from the excommunication of unperformability.”36 In the midst of preparations for the Bach/Graeser performance, Berlin had made yet another overture to persuade Straube to relocate. A proposal was on the table by spring 1927, evidently abetted by his friend Charles Münch, at the time Gewandhaus concertmaster. Straube wrote Hertha on April 4, what would have been Elisabet’s twenty-third birthday. “I can’t report anything about Berlin, and no one can advise me, since the Berlin plan is somewhat larger. In Leipzig a lot is in play, indeed.”37 Hertha’s absence from Leipzig may have reflected the painful anniversary, and surely the “bleak thoughts” Karl had identified to Levin that January were not far from the surface as he considered afresh the possibility of realigning his commitments. As usual, he would leverage the situation to drive a bargain for upgraded conditions at home. And as usual, Straube got what he wanted, in the form of at least two material consequences. The first was the acquisition of six new Conservatory practice organs, a development that paralleled Sauer’s extensive renovations to the institution’s concert hall instrument completed in 1927.38 The second, more controversial outcome was the Straubes’ move, by 1929 at latest, from their longtime residence on the Dorotheenplatz to a new apartment at Grassistraße 30, a short walk to the Conservatory campus down the same street.39 The circumstances and motivations for the move might be more elusive had it not placed a significant burden on the Conservatory’s already 36 Straube, “Rückblick,” 14. 37 Letter, April 4, 1927, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 38 Goltz, Musikstudium, 212. 39 Letter from Paul Ollendorff to Straube, February 19, 1929, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2152.
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strained budget well into the 1930s. By spring 1933 the negotiations that had led to the acquisition of the new apartment had become one element in a complaint brought to City Hall by Reinhard Oppel against Gustav Flinsch, a Straube ally who at the time of the disputed events served as Board treasurer. Oppel was a Schenkerian theorist who had joined the faculty in 1927, having long nursed a distaste for Straube’s accumulated influence and the good-old-boy network that furthered it. The pump was already primed, then, when in 1933 Oppel spied irregularities in the ledgers. He took Flinsch to task for financial abuses, one of which alleged that 16,000 marks had been funneled to the updating of the Straubes’ new digs in anticipation of the couple’s move. A memorandum narrated the Conservatory’s position and rebutted Oppel’s claims, in part by couching developments against the background of Berlin’s latest attempt to woo the Thomaskantor. Straube had been convinced to stay put with his current financial package, but “in order to make him comfortable in remaining here, we wished to aid in securing a home that suited him better, since it was known that he did not feel well in his apartment at the time on the Dorotheenplatz.” Hence 14,600 marks had gone to “the remodeling of the apartment that Frau Professor had chosen, commissioning an architect for this purpose,” whereas Straube himself had “expressed no wishes or requirements concerning the renovation.”40 The 1,400-mark discrepancy seemingly at issue here is ultimately of less interest than the deftness with which the mature Straube could and did manipulate the system even while distancing himself from its advantages. This was the latest example of the great lengths to which official Leipzig would go to retain him. Likewise significant is the claim that the cantor “did not feel well” on the Dorotheenplatz and that this was common knowledge, betraying a state of affairs that surely predated the latest Berlin offer by some time. Elisabet had been dead only three years in 1927, and it is easy to imagine that the Straube home, where her room and personal effects probably reminded her parents daily of her absence, had fed the trübe Gedanken of the mid-1920s. Maybe Karl and Hertha had been looking quietly toward a relocation for years, in Leipzig or not, as a grieving strategy. And maybe, then, the move was a welcome distraction, even though it became clear that the Conservatory and civic administrations had paid their pound of flesh for it, and even though Oppel was surely not the only person who came to resent it. In early 1932, 40 “Verteidigungsschrift gegen eine Anzeige des Herrn Oppel,” June 19, 1933, HMTLA Kuratorium Schriftwechsel 1929–1933.
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as the institution struggled with budgetary constraints, its Labor Committee recorded “that the Ministry of Finance has calculated an income tax of 1,312.50 marks arising from the renovations to Professor D. Dr. Straube’s apartment that the Conservatory must pay. Legal action against this decision,” noted the minutes succinctly, “is thought to be inadvisable.”41 Where the formidable Thomaskantor was involved, there would be no contest.
41 Minutes of the Arbeitsausschuss, Leipzig Conservatory, January 20, 1932. HMTLA Kuratorium des Landeskonservatoriums, Sitzungsprotokolle 1924–1933.
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Chapter Twenty
Movements in Time A final strand in the counterpoint of Straube’s “treadmill” concerns the nexus of loosely coordinated, quasi-antiquarian initiatives commonly called Orgelbewegung (organ reform movement). The dominant image has been the one offered in Wolgast’s seminal 1928 biography, published so to speak in medias res, where an “ever young” Straube was intent on embracing new knowledge with open arms. “It is wonderful,” enthused Wolgast, “with what energy and elasticity Karl Straube promotes the new Orgelbewegung not only as an organizer, but also as an artist. This is all the more so in that it amounts to a renunciation [Abkehr] of the ideal that had informed the entire glorious era of his virtuoso years.”1 The problem with this view is not that it shows its subject as keeping up with trends in the organ world, or even that it affirms the cantor’s robust ethical nature, spawning advocacy for new aesthetic impulses where they appeared worthwhile. Rather, the flaw lodges with the fact that Straube was not good at constructing his world as a series of mutually exclusive options, as a zero-sum game in which the striking of one path meant the all-out disavowal of another. The drawn-out hesitancy with which he had embraced the cantorate itself is but the most vivid example. Categorical renunciation or Abkehr was not his game. The tensions in Straube’s personality meant that on virtually every level— career advancement, political allegiances, aesthetic, and historical assessments—conflicts and contradictions abounded, some of them downright debilitating and intensifying with age. His interactions would always be subject to a propensity for indecision, a need to think things through from multiple perspectives, never granting one solution the absolute upper hand over another. Further, his frequently expressed anti-materialism sensitized him to the transience of human striving. “I say again and again, vanitas, vanitas vanitatum,” he would declare to Manfred Mezger in 1945, bringing the 1
Karl Straube, 24–25.
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words of Ecclesiastes to bear upon the open-ended task of the Bach edition.2 That sentiment was already much in evidence during the 1920s, when he pondered if and how to go forward with the project. “He often has been approached to complete the Bach organ edition,” wrote Wolgast. “Straube will not do this, because he himself has said that all arrangements always have but a limited time value.”3 This would have alarmed Hinrichsen and his colleagues, who had been pressing him to fulfill the commitment that had eluded everyone concerned for nearly two decades. But it also underscores, in a way the received narrative does not, the degree of ambivalence he carried into the Orgelbewegung discourses of the period. Straube had already stepped into the historicist debates around organ building in 1921, when he accepted Gurlitt’s invitation to dedicate the so-called Praetorius organ at Freiburg. That instrument was hardly a model of fidelity to historical principles, built on a 1619 stoplist to capture the “sound ideal” of the period central to Gurlitt’s view of performance history. In other respects, Straube sat at an organ in 1921 that conformed to the familiar parameters of the modernist-industrialist establishment: membrane chests, tubular pneumatic action, equal temperament, pipework behind a screen. This hybrid approach would not go unchallenged. Before he returned to Freiburg in July 1922 for further recitals, he was to cross paths with the expressionist playwright Hans Henny Jahnn, a protean iconoclast with a suite of interests similar to Graeser’s: mathematics, music, body culture, world history. Among the most fascinating characters in the organ reform movement’s curiosity cabinet, the pacifist Jahnn had defected to Norway during the war, where he had indulged his twin passions in expressionist theater and certain arcane metaphysical theories of architecture and organ building. In his view, the “modern” German organ on which Straube had built his career was “an excellent means of expression for the restlessness, superficiality, and virtuosity of our time,” which was evidence of the misguided exceptionalism and arrogant progressivism of imperial society.4 In the surviving historical instruments of his native Hamburg and environs, on the other hand, Jahnn believed himself to have discovered the “true organ,” an instrument of cosmic significance based, like the cultic buildings of antiquity, on “holy” yet ascertainable mathematical proportions. Such an instrument offered a window 2 3 4
Letter, November 10, 1945, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. Karl Straube, 21. Jahnn, “Die Orgel,” 37.
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onto much more than the music composed for it by the north German and Dutch masters, music in which Jahnn likewise saw reflected mystic principles of construction. Both instrument and music bore witness to a distinctive worldview based in the wholesome verities of nature, a holistic ethic now smothered by mechanization and the ossified moralism of institutional religion. Upon his return to Hamburg at war’s end, Jahnn, with his life partner Gottlieb Harms and the architect Franz Buse, had founded an artist colony called the Glaubensgemeinde Ugrino, a quasi-medieval “community of belief ” outfitted with a publishing arm and a constitution. Through the publication of exemplary texts (musical texts included), the construction of cultic architecture, and the promotion of ancient principles of organ building, Ugrino was supposed to proclaim “in place of the Christian notions of God and morality . . . a fundamental, mythical, pre-confessional sense in which are anchored the primal life forces of body and soul.”5 This recondite brand of anti-establishment activism did not endear Jahnn to the Leipzig Thomaskantor, who, as with Graeser, had little patience for what he perceived as half-baked alchemies of esoterica. Jahnn came to Leipzig on February 5, 1922, for the premiere of his sprawling Shakespearian play Die Krönung Richards III, a blood-and-guts expressionist piece full of the dystopian anxieties and degeneracies that the Ugrino colony wished to highlight in a broken post-war society. Straube and Ramin attended the performance and a meeting with Jahnn ensued, the discussion falling to organs and organ music. Much later, Hans Rothe, son of the Leipzig mayor and director of the Richard premiere, recalled that Jahnn had impressed his musical company as “a great organ-builder who knew the Bach organ better than the two musicians who played it.”6 Other versions of events assert that Jahnn spoke of his “discovery” of the 1693 Schnitger organ in Hamburg’s Jakobikirche and brought with him to Leipzig Ugrino’s new edition of Vincent Lübeck’s works. One account notes that Straube “was not fond of taking lessons from a layman [and] snubbed Jahnn in front of everyone.”7 In the end these fuzzy details matter little. What is clear is that the relationship between Jahnn and the Leipzig powerhouse Straube–Ramin intensified subsequent to the February 1922 encounter. By April Ramin had 5 Summereder, Aufbruch, 74. 6 Rothe, “Theatre: From Sorge to Unruh,” 237. 7 Freeman, Hans Henny Jahnn, 187. See also Charlotte Ramin, Günther Ramin, 45–46; Ramin, Weggefährten, 35–36; and Lipski, Hans Henny Jahnns Einfluß, 5–6.
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answered Ugrino’s invitation to undertake a series of Hamburg recitals, at first on the Petrikirche’s modern Walcker instrument, by 1923 moved to the St. Jakobi Schnitger, the controversial restoration of which Jahnn and Ugrino would spearhead. And when Straube returned for further recitals on the Freiburg “Praetorius” organ in July 1922, Jahnn made a point of showing up, issuing an exhaustive review that took the organ to task for its leftover industrial features even while praising Straube’s “bold and logical” handling of it.8 Sometime before summer 1922 and probably reflective of the Gurlitt collaboration, Straube decided to revisit his Alte Meister des Orgelspiels of 1904 in form of an updated Neue Folge volume. That November Hinrichsen learned that he had “finalized the entire content” that July and August while in Freiburg, promising delivery at the end of January 1923.9 But by May 1923 his plans had fundamentally changed, as he dispatched a stop-thepresses letter to the Peters offices. “Thank God nothing has been engraved yet,” he wrote, “since a large part of the whole work must be completely reconceived.” He told the publisher of his discovery “that in the Jakobikirche in Hamburg there is a completely preserved organ of overwhelming tonal beauty,” and that after Pentecost he would travel north to inspect it. What Straube called “the actual historical development of things” appeared clear-cut to him, the Schnitger organ epitomizing “the sound ideal of the post-1650 masters,” Gurlitt’s Freiburg organ remaining “authoritative for 1550–1650.”10 As it turned out, he did not go to Hamburg that spring. Another circumstance intervened, one that revealed the fault lines in a consequential relationship. Meantime the ambitious Ramin had been in Hamburg, having been recruited as the star for Jahnn’s Ugrino initiatives. Deeply impressed by his experiences, Ramin returned home in spring 1923 for a recital of early music at St. Thomas, where he demonstrated the fruits of a first interface with Schnitger. Straube published a less-than-positive review of the performance, prompting an exhaustive rebuttal by Ramin, fired off to his erstwhile mentor that Pentecost weekend. “If I understood correctly,” Ramin began, “you had the impression of an exceedingly arbitrary and modern interpretation in my rendition of the ‘old masters.’ The thing is that I could more easily understand the charge of too historical an approach, rather than the opposite.” His choices had been the product of working with the “purely historical” organs 8 “Die Praetoriusorgel,” 11–14. 9 Letter, November 19, 1922, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510. 10 Letter to Henri Hinrichsen, May 1, 1923, ibid.
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of Hamburg and Lübeck, which had yielded “the greatest aural experience of my life” and “the impulse for an inner conversion.” Once back home, the task had been “to transfer these historical tonal premises to a rendition on the contemporary organ. . . . Because I avoided the interpolation of any gradual dynamic shifts . . . I attempted to shape the pieces only by means of tonal contrasts (admittedly bold and vivid) and extremely clear structuring of the polyphony.”11 He attached a stoplist of the Hamburg Schnitger and a set of press clippings that addressed its tonal character. Pentecost fell on May 20 in 1923, and it is clear that Ramin did not believe Straube was familiar with or even aware of the organ. Yet the latter had enjoined Hinrichsen about three weeks earlier to pull his Neue Folge edition from the engraver on the basis of having found out about the instrument and its potential significance. As with the February 1922 encounter with Jahnn, then, the details are conflicted about who knew what, from whom, and when. But by 1923, pupil doubtless was out ahead of master on what could be learned from antique north German organs. Straube’s critique of Ramin’s approach betrayed a more conservative mindset, one that clung to the basic aesthetic reflected in his earlier editing efforts. Still, there is a distinct sense that deference needed to be shown, at least eventually. Later Ramin would note in print that “when in 1924, then, my organ master Professor D. Dr. Straube came to Hamburg in order to get to know the Jakobi organ, and as we spent unforgettable days together working there on the interpretation and shaping of old organ music, I received happy confirmation that the path taken was the right one.”12 It was a marker of Straube’s accumulated stature that one would not come very far in these efforts without his imprimatur. To be sure, Ramin’s initiative to get Straube up to Hamburg in 1924 furthered psychological ends as much as political ones, signaling a genuine concern for a respected mentor still reeling from the death of his only child. “Just after Christmas I will again work in Hamburg on the Jakobi organ together with Straube,” Ramin informed Raasted that December. “He wants to finish his edition of the ‘Alte Meister’ now. I’m always happy when he has a positive objective. This alone gives him back his vigor for work and courage to face life.”13 That the Alte Meister project’s “positive objective” would extend to 1929 is attributable in part to a logjam of commitments over the 1920s, to a 11 Letter, Pentecost 1923, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. Emphases original. 12 Günther Ramin, Gedanken, 3–4. 13 Letter, December 21, 1924, BhAE Nachlass Raasted.
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protracted grieving process, but also to a stubborn ambivalence toward the aims of the organ movement not readily acknowledged in hero narratives like Wolgast’s. The Orgelbewegung’s movers and shakers (Gurlitt, Ramin, Jahnn, Mahrenholz) were born around 1890 or later, all Straube’s juniors by some twenty years or more. Only the Widor pupil and Straube contemporary Albert Schweitzer stands out as an exception. Straube, on the other hand, had learned the power of expression by observing Bülow’s orchestra at a time when Parsifal counted as new music. The family business had afforded him a front-row seat to the early modernist organ building industry in Berlin. Inherently open-minded or not, a person operating from this vantage was going to come along only so far in spearheading the priorities of the Orgelbewegung’s catechism. It is fair to wonder whether he would have bothered to travel to Hamburg at all had his “take-two” edition of Alte Meister not been in progress in the first place. The Orgelbewegung was for him an affair to be driven largely by younger generations. “Admittedly I am aware,” a fifty-seven-year-old Straube would write Richard Engländer in 1930, “how much the young people have a right to express their view about things, and how my work may only be short-lived.”14 He was not only willing but also predisposed to take a back seat, and not about to jettison categorially his “as-I-see-it” approach. The old Straube surely was on display still during his Freiburg recitals, and demonstrably in his August 1922 Welte recordings of Bach. Similarly, when he sat at his old Sauer organ to play “with great verve” the big Bach Preludes and Fugues in E-flat Major and E Minor for Günther and Charlotte Ramin’s wedding at St. Thomas in spring 1922, the approach undoubtedly had more in common with the aesthetic of his 1913 edition than with any emerging historicist standard.15 By 1926, as German debates churned on about how Buxtehude & Co. should or should not sound, Straube in London had found Vaughan Williams’s forthrightly modern interpretation of the B-minor Mass not only acceptable but inspiring owing to “the suggestive power of the leader.” And at the 1928 Leipzig Bachfest, his own rendition of the Mass with the Gewandhaus Choral Union programmed Ramin’s continuo on a 14 Letter, July 10, 1930, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 7, 38–39. That sentiment must be read against certain hot-button political debates concerning the role of younger generations in the nation’s future, most famously operative in Strasser’s 1927 admonition “Macht Platz, ihr Alten!” (“Give way, old ones!”). 15 Letter from Ramin to Niels-Otto Raasted, Pentecost 1922, BhAE Nachlass Raasted.
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Blüthner piano.16 Recollections from students, too, suggest that Straube continued well into the 1930s to teach the elaborate approach to the organ perfected during his virtuoso period. Against this background it was predictable that after the 1926 reformers’ conference Straube should lament the “intellectually inferior level” of the discourse. An extraordinary letter to Matthaei opened onto the grandiloquent cultural critique by now familiar. “The people do not sense that everything artistic is borne by a general spiritual mentality,” he opined. “Otherwise they could not render such stupid judgments about the ‘romantic organ,’ as if it were a technical plaything and absolute nonsense, whereas it actually embodies the overheated dynamic aspirations” of Nietzsche, Wagner, modern physics, and Reger’s musical architecture. “We have collapsed in this spiritual respect . . . and we are returning to very simple, clearly assessable, static attitudes toward life! But in fifty years these things will be obsolete once again, and a new world will arise. All of it is in the flow of things, and we in the midst of it.”17 Taking the long view, Straube perceived in the reformers’ attempts to get beyond imperial German culture just another manifestation of material ephemerality, vanitas vanitatum. It did not follow that there was nothing to learn from the historicism of the 1920s, rather only that its insights had to be relativized in “the flow of things.” The Orgelbewegung in his view was not and never would be a straightforward choice between alternatives. Annual conferences began to debate the reformers’ theses and tested the practical results on instruments new and old. The first took place July 6–8, 1925, conceived by the ever-controversial Jahnn around the antique organs of Hamburg and Lübeck. At Jahnn’s invitation, the Thomaskantor himself was to impart the festive opening lecture and, by implication, his blessing on Ugrino’s efforts. But much to Jahnn’s and others’ annoyance, Straube “wimped out” at the eleventh hour, leaving Ramin to greet the attendees and Jahnn to deliver remarks.18 Straube attended but did not participate in the following year’s conference, organized around the Freiburg organ he had dedicated some four and a half years earlier. It was that meeting that kindled his 16 Bachfeier der Stadt Leipzig. Sonntag den 1. July 1928. Leitung Prof. D. Dr. Karl Straube, Kantor zu St. Thomae (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1928), BAL Sig. SM 2008–253. 17 Letter, December 30, 1926, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 69. 18 Recounted in Freeman, Hans Henny Jahnn, 189–90. The expression “wimped out” [kniff] is Jahnn’s. Muschg, Gespräche, 150–51.
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ire at the “stupid judgments” about which he had vented to Matthaei. Later that year, Ramin confirmed to Raasted that Straube had been “pretty disappointed” at Freiburg and “veiled himself in silence through the whole conference. Whether that was right, I of course cannot judge.”19 Undoubtedly, his taciturn attitude was conspicuous: he showed no real appetite for wading into the often highly charged political waters around the debates. His motivations were anything but straightforward. First, his back-seat stance played out against the exigencies of a “treadmill” schedule susceptible to pressures from far more than Orgelbewegung goings-on. Jahnn’s conference fell one month after the Handel Festival and less than a week before the Thomaner’s appearance at the Essen Bachfest. Gurlitt’s 1926 meeting came on the heels of the London sojourn and a period of medically ordered rest in Gastein. Organ reform matters thus competed with these and many other commitments. Second, Straube was adept at not burning bridges where unnecessary, as demonstrated in countless instances. Third, he was older and simply more conservatively minded than many of the Orgelbewegung’s players. And finally, his worldview did not easily accommodate Manichean binaries. All this made for a conflicted stance and the issuance of private, not public, judgments that must be deconstructed based on the allegiances of the respective conversation partner. As the 1920s wore on, the reform movement crept in Leipzig’s direction. Straube was drawn into a third major conference, mounted in Freiberg (Sachsen) on October 2–7, 1927, around the local cathedral’s 1713 Silbermann organ. Prominent at that gathering was Christhard Mahrenholz—Lutheran pastor, Scheidt scholar, church music enthusiast—who had spearheaded the construction of a reform-minded organ in the Göttingen Marienkirche. Mahrenholz directed his interests, on the one hand, to the properly vocal character of a liturgical organ that partnered with congregational singing and the liturgical theology supporting this priority, and, on the other, to bridging the supposed gap between Kultorgel and Konzertorgel. Curiously, it was this meeting that framed Straube’s first real intervention in the Orgelbewegung’s turbulent dialogue, namely in the form of Oskar Walcker’s comprehensive renovation of the Leipzig Conservatory’s concert hall instrument according to an eclectic plan Straube had conceived. And just as curiously, Ramin’s inaugural recital on that refurbished organ, expanded by twenty-one stops from Straube’s 1909 concept, was on October
19 Letter, September 12, 1926, BhEA Nachlass Raasted.
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2, the first day of the “Silbermann conference,” the actual center of gravity of which lay some 100 kilometers southeast in Freiberg. One survey claimed that the renovation had transformed Sauer’s manual divisions “somewhat in the sense of an old” Hauptwerk, Rückpositiv, and Oberwerk, “with 1′ and bright mixtures.”20 Notwithstanding Ramin’s compelling musicality at the dedicatory recital, the results were predictably mixed. Oskar Walcker lauded Ramin’s performance “as a revelation more suited than any number of words to impel us organ builders to perfect the organ of the future.”21 Jahnn, on the other hand, did not even wait to hear the Straube–Ramin compromise to declare it a dead-on-arrival miscegenation. “I read with some horror the disposition of the new organ at the Leipzig State Conservatory,” he groused to Mahrenholz a month before the conference. “Translated into Sauer’s scaling practice, this is just what I hate unto death.”22 A year earlier, Handschin had cited Jahnn’s prediction that such a “compromise would destroy not only my organ type . . . but also the modern one, and then one has nothing more at all.”23 This was, to repurpose Straube’s evaluation of Chrysander’s Handel editions from the same period, “not fish—not meat.” To bring a degree of coherence to these rancorous debates, the Freiberg delegates instituted a German Organ Council or Orgelrat, the official mandate of which lay with “the organization and preparation of future organ conferences and the supervision of the entire Orgelbewegung from the artistic side.”24 Straube was elected unanimously as president, Mahrenholz as secretary. The whole effort was doomed to failure. From the beginning Straube felt uncomfortable in the role of elder statesman and downplayed his public presence. Only just after the Freiberg conference, when Gurlitt suggested he distribute press notices about the Council and its mandate, he balked. “Already we’re sitting in the sausage pan. I haven’t the slightest talent for publications such as those you suggest.” He instructed Gurlitt to produce the draft himself, which he, Straube, would channel to press sources if necessary. “Naturally it would be more correct were this sent from Freiburg.
20 Jung, “Die neue Orgel,” 1. 21 Letter to Gustav Flinsch, October 11, 1927, HMTLA Allgemeine Schriftstücke, Vermischtes, 1924–27. 22 Letter, September 12, 1927, in Jahnn, Briefe, 305. 23 “Die Freiburger Tagung,” 649. 24 Mahrenholz, ed., Bericht, 9.
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Then people would know whose brainchild the whole thing is.”25 Straube was practiced in public relations and his claim of ineptitude had an air of desperation about it. The truth was that he had neither time nor energy to invest, and it appears very much that he wanted to maintain the impression of hovering above the fray. He wished to be the enabler without owning the ideas himself. In time he would discover that he had no appetite for cat-herding, either. In February 1928 he was still trying to effect a first meeting of the committee chairs.26 The last straw came with a proposal to integrate the Orgelrat into the national Department of the Interior, a task Straube was ideally positioned to direct given his extensive dealings with the Berlin bureaucracy. But by March 1929 that initative had gotten nowhere and Straube’s subordinates had grown impatient. He had enough and pivoted in Gurlitt’s direction. “It’s my fault, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. But I cannot change it, since I am constantly overburdened with the obligations of the day, so that time and energy are simply lacking.” He rattled off the several roadblocks to his working out the text of a petition, which “was to emphasize the maintenance of tradition in connection with the great Schnitger era” and “the defense of German organ building against American invasions (that is, capitalist American dangers!), furthermore historic conservation of the musical apparatus, and finally an explanation of the resources we need for these objectives.” Straube now asked Gurlitt to partner with Mahrenholz to author the proposal instead, and he relinquished the presidency of the Orgelrat. “Whoever takes it over must have time to work at it, and if we cannot find that person, it’s better to dissolve the entire thing than to go forward in this impossible manner. For internal and external reasons it would be natural should you like to assume the president’s chair, but I don’t know if this is possible for you.”27 Evidently it was not. This was the beginning of the end for the Orgelrat and its conservationist-protectionist agenda. Read against the larger socio-political landscape, that agenda had reacted to advances in capitalism and liberal mass culture following the enactment of the 1924 Dawes Plan, which had allowed American bonds to flow into Germany (hence “American invasions”) as a way to ameliorate war reparations. The Orgelrat’s platform had amounted to an affirmation of old Germanic values in the face of foreign 25 Letter, October 14, 1927, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 26 Letter to Gurlitt, Mahrenholz, and Reimann, February 24, 1928, ibid. 27 Letter, March 3, 1929, ibid.
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influence, a position that eventually would fit snugly into Nazi cultural policy. Straube’s inaction reflected in the first place the pressures from his phalanx of commitments. One effort that had come to a head in the months preceding his capitulation to Gurlitt was the new Alte Meister edition, which he had resolved to complete in the wake of the Freiberg conference. But in July 1928, just when he was trying to steer the incipient agenda of the Orgelrat, his energies failed him. Straube appealed to the City Council with a medical certificate ordering a six-to-seven-week convalescence.28 The work bled into the winter, the print emerging finally in February 1929. More than anything else, the product represented an expansion of the 1904 collection, the latter with fourteen free and chorale-based pieces, its successor having more than doubled this to twenty-nine works. Germanic repertory had monopolized the earlier edition, whereas the Neue Folge was not so delimited: Cabezón, Frescobaldi, Titelouze, and Sweelinck now augmented the German diet. Only one work from 1904 was retained in 1929. The Hamburg Schnitger’s stoplist appeared at the outset of the collection, with each piece’s detailed registrations based on it. The Foreword constituted Straube’s principal position paper on the organ reform movement to date and was rendered in a parallel English version, recalling the ties to his mother’s country that had developed during these years. The anonymous translator was Margaret Reid, then living in Leipzig with her sister Victoria, who studied at the Conservatory.29 Their father was Sir James Reid, personal physician to the British monarch. Straube settled into a warm friendship with them, perhaps over Vaughan Williams or Holst, with whom the family maintained ties. Straube here argued that the modern organ—the instrument assumed in 1904—“has proved an unfit medium for conveying the serenity and grandeur of works, which have their roots in religious belief,” further that organists must jettison their subjectivity in favor of interpretations “render[ed] positively, faithfully, and with the least possible output of emotion.” Far from suppressing individuality, though, the new approach aimed “to liberate the mainspring of [the organist’s] energy from the prejudices and limitations of his own period and personality,” a turn of phrase that suggested an escapist attitude toward late-1920s Weimar culture as much as it did an aesthetic 28 Medical certificate, July 7, 1928, submitted July 10 with approval of Rector Tittel, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 155, 156. 29 Paul Ollendorff, memorandum, December 21, 1928, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510.
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stance.30 Yet the musical text itself could not help but betray Straube’s familiar “as-I-see-it” aesthetic, with its Riemannian phrasing, its tempo shifts and affect-laden rallentandi, its più fs and the “orchestral” lifting out of this or that line. The registrations, essentially the gimmick of the volumes, must have been received as rarified curiosities rather than as helpful advice to players on the ground. A pragmatically minded Graz organist said as much when he lamented to the publisher that the indications from the Schnitger stoplist “are completely impossible for our modern organs,” and that Straube was supposed to have indicated “how similar tonal effects can be realized” on instruments mainstream organists actually played.31 That sort of translation was what Ramin had been after in the 1923 Leipzig recital Straube had faulted. In any case, the ambivalence evident in the Neue Folge mirrored the conflicted and always shifting commitments of its editor. He was, after all, trying to chart a course between the old-school conservatives, who “are still fully occupied with the lovely paint pots of their modern organ stops,” and the objectifying ideology of Orgelbewegung orthodoxy—between the musical dialect of his virtuoso days and the aesthetic impulses owned by a younger generation.32 It would be a mistake to assume that he pledged blind allegiance to either.
30 Foreword (English) to Alte Meister des Orgelspiels Neue Folge (Leipzig: C. F. Peters, 1929). 31 Letter (transcription) from Mauritius Kern to Paul Ollendorff, March 1, 1924, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2152. 32 Letter to Niels-Otto Raasted, January 17, 1925, BhAE Nachlass Raasted.
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Chapter Twenty-One
“God preserve Karl Straube” On October 1, 1927, a new nationwide set of compensation laws went into effect, and accordingly the Leipzig bureaucracy had to realign the Thomaskantor’s financial package negotiated in 1922.1 City Hall argued for the retention of its earlier commitments within the new framework. The matter took on added urgency, since Berlin’s latest overture to draw Straube away still hung in the air. When the Saxon Ministry of Public Instruction outlined to the Leipzig City Council its translation of the older arrangement into the new one—that the cantor’s pay be classified in the new Group 7b, a supplementary allowance elevating it to the status of 7a—City Hall countered that it considered his position in Group 7a, and that the supplement would place it on par with the rector in pay grade Group 6, “which surely corresponds to the importance and special nature of this position.”2 That latter comment was but the tip of the iceberg, intimating much about the authoritative position Straube had constructed for himself a decade into his tenure. The hairsplitting between city and state soon prompted a painstaking argument from City Hall to validate its stance. Above and beyond the pedantic details, the real point was “that making such an exception of the position and its present occupant is readily justified, given the special nature of the former and the outstanding accomplishments of the latter. It is unlikely that consequences will arise from this, since to our knowledge there is in all Saxony no position to be rated equally and no cantor on par with Professor Dr. Straube.” The city had worked long and hard to cobble together a unique contract for this singular musician. “To avert the danger that the Bach city of Leipzig yet might lose him, we consider the arrangement we envision as 1 2
On the particulars of the reforms, see Hülden, “Entwicklung der Beamtenbesoldung,” III/64–65. Memorandum from the Leipzig Schulamt, July 10, 1928, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 158.
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essential.”3 Straube had restyled the cantorate into an exceptional cultural position tied first of all to the Bach legacy. The “consequences” cited here were presumably those pointed out also in the 1922 negotiations, namely resentment among civil servants (other Latin school cantors among them) that could arise from irregularities in what was supposed to be a democratic structure. No matter. City officials were well exercised in such arguments by now, convinced that Straube’s retention depended largely on financial parity between cantor and rector. The debate about the particulars of the cantor’s package plodded on for over a year, well into the period of international economic crisis precipitated by the market crash of October 1929. An appendix to one relevant document of that year crystallized the exceptionalism the city was willing to apply: in Leipzig’s higher schools and vocational institutes, 499 teaching faculty were compensated in pay grade Group 7b, eleven rectors and five co-rectors in the higher Group 7a, and five further rectors in the highest allowable Group 6 “in view of the pedagogical and organizational character as well as the size of their institutions.” The cantor of the Thomasschule presented the sole exception to this regularized scheme.4 This meant that, as the 1920s waned, Straube would receive an annual compensation of 12,368 marks (11,000 marks salary and 1,368 marks living expenses), of which the city assumed 2,500 marks, the difference in salary rate between Groups 6 and 7a. City Hall had again secured his loyalties, at least for the moment. It so happened that the latest reforms had coincided not only with Berlin’s overture, but also with a career milestone, one that undoubtedly informed the conversations around Straube’s salary and benefits: January 1928 marked his twenty-fifth anniversary in Leipzig. It was his personal physician Paul Nitsche, City Councilor for Medicine and chair of the Gewandhaus Choral Union’s board, who rattled cages at City Hall at the eleventh hour. Mayor Rothe’s summary of that conversation noted a second agenda as well. Nitsche had “further attested that Herr Professor Dr. Straube appears overworked and insufficiently paid for his extensive activity. He asked what the city could do to help him.” Rothe, who had acceded to his office at almost the same time Straube had become cantor, would have none of this after having been ground down by a decade of the latter’s machinations. In full bureaucratic 3 4
Letter from the Leipzig City Council, Schulamt, to the Saxon Ministry of Public Instruction, July 27, 1928, ibid., 159. Explanation of the “local law concerning compensation and rights of teachers in the Leipzig higher schools,” April 23, 1929, ibid., 164–72, esp. 166, 170.
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mode, he replied flatly that Straube was compensated on par with the associate rector, that his time was estimated at ten to twelve hours weekly, that if he felt overburdened, he was free to lighten his duties in other areas, as in organ teaching, that indeed “the city accommodates Herr Professor Straube from every direction.”5 Having run into a brick wall with Rothe, Nitsche nevertheless had spoken with optimal authority concerning Straube’s health. After all, he was the one who regularly submitted medical attestations to the Stadtrat for the cantor’s leaves. Further, it was not as if the mayor wanted to let an important occasion pass unrecognized. A week after his meeting with Nitsche and in consultation with the Council, Rothe crafted a sprawling letter to Hans Haas, dean of the University’s Theological Faculty, pressing for the conferral on Straube of a second honorary doctorate to mark the anniversary. The argument dwelt on the by-now accepted narrative of how the young firebrand Straube had rescued the organ from its inferior position in German concert life and how his recitals of historic repertories had highlighted a national musical treasure. Further, “it is to Straube’s particular credit that he . . . returned the organ to the church, so that he may be considered the second creator of church music in grand style,” Bach presumably having been the first. Then Rothe ticked off one item after another. There was the CMI, where students regarded the organ “not only as a virtuoso matter, but also as a thing of wide cultural and especially ecclesial significance.” There was the cantorate, where Straube had shifted the emphasis from composition to curation of legacy. There were the Bach and Handel festivals, the editions of organ and choral works, the stimulation of new church music via composers like Mendelssohn and Thomas. There was the recent Orgelbewegung, where Straube “assumes the leading position” in the founding of the Orgelrat. There were his roles in musical societies, the Bach-Verein-turned-Gewandhaus-Choral-Union, and the 1923 PhD. Rothe foregrounded service to the church and, by extension, the nation. The restoration of the dignity of “church music in the grand style” was a gift to the German people.6 The whole affair was a rush job, but a successful one. “Your letter to the dean of the Theological Faculty carries the date December 13, 1927,” replied Haas with a flourish two days later. “On December 14 at 9:00 p.m. your proposal was accepted by unanimous consent of my faculty. . . . A promotion in our department can ensue only by unanimous decision. Your 5 6
Memorandum, December 6, 1927, ibid., 122. Letter, December 13, 1928, ibid., 126–28.
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letter made it very easy for me to effect that.”7 Festivities ensued at noon on January 8, two days after Straube’s fifty-fifth birthday, in the Choral Hall of the Thomasschule. Rothe was the first to deliver remarks, announcing an official portrait by Hugo Lederer to hang in the school, then presenting the Thomaskantor with three volumes of the Propyläen Verlag’s popular Kunstgeschichte, indulging Straube’s interests in early Italian and modern art. After copies of Wolgast’s new biography were distributed to the attendees, Haas awarded the honoree his freshly minted theology doctorate honoris causa. The Thomaner framed the ceremony with Bach’s motet Singet dem Herren, led by the first prefect. “That would have made my mother happy,” Straube is supposed to have remarked about the theology degree, conjuring the upstanding piety of the Palmers.8 “For all these honors, Professor Straube voiced gratitude in his unpretentiously straightforward manner with deeply felt words, giving expression to a sheer outsized modesty,” reported one of several accounts. “He said that he regards his artistry as the result of the surrounding environment in which destiny has placed him, and he praised Leipzig’s distinguished musical tradition.”9 A similar sentiment was directed to the Breitfkopf firm, which had taken the extra trouble to present him with two leather-bound copies of Wolgast’s biography. “Actually it is a distinction that I absolutely did not earn,” he replied, “since I’ve done nothing more than my duty. I admire the accomplishment of the author, who has been able to write fifty pages about the life of this ‘manual laborer.’”10 And in his letter of thanks to Rothe and the Council, Straube drew upon the decorous language he summoned for exalted occasions, calling on “the goodwill and support of the superior authorities, also in the time to come. I hope that these lines may give humble expression to a devoted appeal for such helping kindness.”11 This signaled an important message for those who knew how to read it. As Rothe and others in the chain of command knew from experience, “goodwill and support” did not mean the occasional civic accolade, the maintenance of mere collegiality, 7 8 9
Letter, December 15, 1928, ibid., 129. Beyerlein, “Karl Straubes Leben,” in Gaben, 383. dt, “Kultur und Kunst. Die Stadt Leipzig beglückwünscht den Thomaskantor,” Neue Leipziger Zeitung 10, January 10, 1928. See also A., “Ehrungen für den Thomaskantor,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten 9, January 9, 1928. 10 Letter, January 29, 1928, SäStAL Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel Nr. 3057. 11 Letter, January 29, 1928, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 151.
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or even deep ideological sympathy in the first place, but rather the authorities’ willingness to negotiate, repeatedly and generously, the particulars of his life in the city, the consolidation of his influence on his own terms. To be sure, there was something authentic about the “outsized modesty” that many perceived in this cantor’s way of intersecting the world, and, for his part, Straube worked hard to project the image of the submissive curator, called to service through no merits of his own, the Bismarckian “little, honest broker” or “manual laborer.” But this amounted to a mere surface feature of his personality rooted in a conflicted place, a combination of enduring disgruntlement and indecision on some fronts and, on others, a calculating pertinacity aimed at arranging his environment for maximum impact. By the end of his first decade in the cantorate, Straube had become accustomed to laurel wreaths bestowed at home and beyond. At its Leipzig meeting in 1924, for example, the German Society of Astronomy had resolved to name a recently discovered asteroid for his Thomanerchor.12 Now, recognition of the Thomaskantor’s milestone anniversary would remain earthbound but by no means limited to the January 1928 fête at the Thomasschule. To the contrary, this year and the following one would be festooned with tributes to remind Straube how deep his roots ran in the “Bach city,” what he had achieved there, and, by implication, why he should stay put. In his congratulatory essay Ramin underscored the “cultural-political mission” of the choir tours, and he compared Straube to Sweelinck as the modern deutscher Organistenmacher.13 At about the same time, the pianist Alf Nestmann appealed to City Hall to rename the Dorotheenplatz “Karl-Straube-Platz,” not only because its would-be namesake still lived there, but also since “the several streets that lead into the new ‘Karl-Straube-Platz’ appear to characterize well the diversity, prudence, and farsightedness of Master Straube.”14 Albrecht Leistner, the Leipzig sculptor whose son sang in the Thomanerchor, 12 This is asteroid 1023 Thomana, named by the Heidelberg astronomer Karl Reinmuth after having experienced the “astronomical precision” of the choir’s singing during the conference. The official naming ensued in 1955, but the honor was noted in 1937 in Lehmann, Die Thomaner auf Reisen, 118. 13 Günther Ramin, “Karl Straube-Jubiläum. 25. Jahre an der Kirche Joh. Seb. Bachs,” Neue Leipziger Zeitung, January 6, 1928; also “Karl Straube. 25 Jahre in Leipzig an der Thomaskirche,” Zeitschrift für Kirchenmusiker 9/20 (January 15, 1928): 1. 14 Letter to Rothe, December 25, 1927, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 130–31. The idea went unrealized.
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produced a bronze bust for the Gewandhaus foyer.15 And of course the Straubes’ relocation to the Grassistraße, financed from the Conservatory’s coffers, played out against the background of the anniversary and the renewed threat of an exit to Berlin. Further celebrations followed. On May 19, in proximity to Karl and Hertha’s silver wedding anniversary, a choral concert featured the premiere of two works by Arnold Mendelssohn, a four-voice motet “Erhalte Gott, Karl Straube” (“God preserve Karl Straube”) and a six-voice fanfare that toasted the health of the couple.16 Yet another evening on October 22 commemorated his association with the Bach-Verein since October 1903. Ramin headed the program with a harpsichord improvisation on a six-note chromatic soggetto derived from Straube’s last name “in the form of a toccata-scherzo and aria with variations.” There followed two cantatas composed for the occasion by the Straube protégés Thomas and Raphael. Between these came a congratulatory speech by Nitsche and the unveiling of Leistner’s bust. A substantial program book offered an essay on Straube’s choral activities in Leipzig, an index of the Bach-Verein/Choral Union’s concerts from 1900 to the present, and a comprehensive listing of repertory performed or studied under Straube.17 The honoree rose to express his gratitude, according to one press account, “in his uniquely thoughtful and perfectly formed way,” impressing upon the assembly his trademark conviction that “great artistic deeds can arise only where the spiritual and the artistic are united, and where both are borne by a great feeling of duty and responsibility.”18 Still more was to come, arising from a constellation of initiatives with roots early in the decade. Already in 1925 work had begun to relocate the Grassi Museum to the Johannisplatz, promising an architecturally progressive, spacious complex to house the University’s Institute of Musicology and its Collegium musicum. Virtually at the same moment, the notable musical instrument collection of Fritz Heyer came up for sale in Cologne, prompting an aggressive and ultimately successful campaign to acquire it for Leipzig, where it would be integrated in the chic rooms of the new Museum to enrich 15 “Eine Straube-Büste von Albrecht Leistner,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten 28, January 28, 1928. 16 BAL Nachlass Straube 95b and c. 17 Mehrbach, “Karl Straubes fünfundzwanzigjährige Tätigkeit,” in Feier zu Ehren, 6–10. 18 W. Jg., “Karl Straubes Dirigentenjubiläum,” Leipziger Abend-Post, October 23, 1928.
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Figure 21.1. Arnold Mendelssohn, “Erhalte Gott Karl Straube” (1928), manuscript p. 1. Reproduced with permission from the Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
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Figure 21.2. Program sheet “Feier zu Ehren von Professor D. theol. et Dr. phil. h.c. Karl Straube” (October 22, 1928). Reproduced with permission from the BachArchiv Leipzig.
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the musicology curriculum. That venture was spearheaded by Theodor Kroyer, Professor of Musicology at Leipzig since 1923 and an advocate for the study of historic instruments.19 Straube appears to have been involved in these negotiations, as he was in talks to build an organ for the expansive lecture hall in the Grassi complex. This latter plan picked up steam from the reform conferences of the mid-1920s, ultimately intersecting the good cheer around Straube’s silver anniversary to yield a “Karl Straube organ,” a neo-Baroque instrument designed by Mahrenholz and executed in 1929 by Furtwängler & Hammer. When the Institute of Musicology and the instrument collection were opened in the new Grassi lecture hall on May 30, 1929, the “Straube organ” was dedicated too. The festivities naturally focused on the performance of early music, with the Collegium offering excerpts from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo and chamber music by Handel. Alongside these, the Thomaskantor made one of his by-now rare appearances as an organ soloist, demonstrating “his” new instrument with works by Buxtehude, Pachelbel, and Muffat, repertory that had appeared just months before in his Alte Meister Neue Folge. Kroyer grandly consecrated the organ so that it might “receive Bach’s spirit from the hands of his most loyal interpreter.”20 For the Bach avatar now vested with two Leipzig doctorates, this was high approbation from the halls of scholarship. At the same time, the organ necessarily associated him with the Institute of Musicology and its early music studies. To memorialize the occasion Breitkopf produced a small volume put together by Kroyer’s assistant Helmut Schultz, including essays by Schultz and Mahrenholz, Ramin’s report upon testing the instrument, and the stoplist. It was not the first time an instrument had carried Straube’s name. In 1908, on the initiative of the Gewandhaus trumpeter Franz Herbst, two D-trumpets had been purchased to negotiate the high parts in Bach’s Magnificat, a centerpiece of that spring’s first Leipzig Bachfest. Funding had come from the publishers Lauterbach & Kuhn. The surviving trumpet of the two bears an engraved dedication on its bell from the publishers to Straube and his chorus.21 But unlike the “Straube trumpets,” which received much use in Gewandhaus performances, the “Straube organ” was destined 19 Fontana, “Annäherungen an die Alte Musik,” 331–34; and Fontana, “Musikinstrumente,” 267–79. For a more critical analysis see Goltz, Musikstudium, 209–12. 20 Die Karl-Straube-Orgel, 3. 21 Fontana, “Musikinstrumente,” 270–72.
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to wither on the vine, much as did the reformers’ Orgelrat. Despite generous private donations, full funding for the organ did not materialize until 1934, the difficulties surely compounded in the wake of the 1929 market crash.22 The concept itself was problematic, reminding of Gurlitt’s Freiburg project with which it was compared. The “Straube organ” was a two-manual, nineteen-rank instrument with a quasi-Baroque stoplist that was supposed to serve a pedagogical role alongside the early instruments of the Heyer collection, but with electric action, crescendo mechanism, the pipework enclosed in a single Swell box behind a screen with false façade. Schultz praised the economy of the design, which married “Baroque scaling and stops . . . with the technical improvements and conveniences” of the present. Moreover, “the organ will allow more recent masters to have their say, Reger for example, whose works will here undergo a certain recoloring already partly implicit within them.”23 Something similar had been claimed for the expanded Conservatory organ unveiled at the 1927 conference, another instrument in a Leipzig educational institution associated with Straube that sought to reconcile the requirements of music new and old. Compounding the problems was the fact that the Grassi organ had been rushed through—the contract signed on March 7, 1929, for a dedication on May 30—leading not only to cost- and time-saving measures, but also to persistent technical difficulties that appear to have rendered the organ unplayable for a period.24 Nevertheless, the instrument was envisioned as integral to the regular broadcasts of the Museum’s concerts and lectures over the Middle German Radio (Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk AG, MIRAG). When Straube initiated his weekly Bach cantata broadcasts in April 1931, the performances came from the Grassi lecture hall and employed the “Straube organ” in the continuo group. That winter, though, the radio began to move its transmissions to the Gewandhaus, and from 1933 the Museum was altogether abandoned for the purpose. In the midst of these developments in 1932, Kroyer, among the instrument’s strongest advocates, left Leipzig for a professorship in Cologne. In Schultz’s 1938 birthday letter to Straube, the neglect into which the instrument had fallen became evident. “It plays a part 22 Goltz, Musikstudium, 210. 23 “Die Bedeutung der Karl-Straube-Orgel,” in Die Karl-Straube-Orgel, 14 and 16. 24 “Gutachten über die Karl-Straube-Orgel erstattet von Günther Ramin, Organist zu St. Thomae in Leipzig,” ibid., 18. Ramin’s inaugural recital did not take place until February 7, 1931.
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in our studies largely in seclusion, but every now and then it speaks publicly,” he confessed ruefully. “And if I might express a very personal wish, it would be that we are granted the opportunity once more to hear you play your instrument, as at the 1929 dedication.”25 This was not to be. The organ met its demise in December 1943 during the Allied bombings. Although the hopes placed in the instrument sputtered and ultimately failed, in May 1929 its less than auspicious trajectory could not be foreseen. Straube, Thomaskantor now for over a decade, and venerated from quarters where it counted, had reached arguably the zenith of his career. He had not only stuck with Leipzig through years of over-commitment, personal tragedy, and much maneuvering, but he had managed to fortify his mutually reinforcing positions into a dispensation of maximum influence. As the decade closed, Straube could not know that seismic shifts in the world around him were going to make for a bumpy, decidedly downhill ride.
25 Letter, January 8, 1938, ZbZ NL 117A Nachl. Straube.
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Part VI
Leipzig 1930–1939 Again I have become aware of how much I have lost in erudition over the last years, how much I have gained in ignorance. Therefore I’d like to cut back on my work. Otherwise I’ll grow stupid through music. —Karl to Hertha Straube, July 26, 1932; letter, July 26, 1932, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12
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Chapter Twenty-Two
Bach on Air “Actually I was born a journalist,” Karl opined to Hertha in 1938, half in jest. “That’s surely a prospect for the future.”1 Quite why a “prospect for the future” might appear necessary in 1938 would become depressingly clear as the 1930s progressed. Not even the cantor’s most convicted detractors would deny his facility for crafting artful prose, and over time he had exercised it in several essays on musical topics that mattered to him. In spring 1929 Straube had produced a pair of articles for the local press, the first a series of portraits of previous St. Thomas cantors, the second an ideological piece probing the question with which the first had concluded: “What is the significance of the Thomanerchor for the present German culture?” In answer he pointed first to the Motetten, the weekly liturgical concerts at which “all classes are present,” where “one is offered something free of charge” as “a gift from the city, but above all [as] a gift from the generations who earlier have worked in this capacity or have ensured the preservation and development of this choir.” He intoned his credo that “a great past imposes responsibilities,” ones which the city had engaged in its support of the choir and the humanist education that framed it. Unsatisfied with a garden-variety argument, he moved into contemporary foreign relations. “The campaign of hate against Germany has not contented itself with crushing the country militarily and economically,” he contended. “It also intended to trample underfoot the international standing of German culture and to drag it through the dirt.” The response had been the strategic export of German music by leading institutions, exemplified not least in the Thomaner’s first tour of 1920. “That the opposing side, too, had recognized the significance of this cultural propaganda was shown clearly by the fact that, before the choir’s appearance, all sorts of fairy-tale lies were 1
Postcard, April 11, 1938, ibid.
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circulated. But a victory on all counts ensued.”2 Straube reviewed the past decade’s tours, underscoring that “the choir gradually has become an international cultural factor,” recent interest having been awakened in England and America.3 Upon becoming cantor, he had introduced the Bach-Verein’s cultural politics into St. Thomas’s music department, the Thomaner now assuming the mandate to rehabilitate German culture abroad. Though he could not undo the humiliating injustices of the war reparations, he could wield the venerable choir of Bach to restore honor to the fatherland with the universal verities inherent in its art. He had never been the sort of musician to perform for the sake of performance alone. Raised in Bismarck’s capital and schooled in Reimann’s chauvinist aesthetics, Straube had long believed passionately that Germany’s “spiritual” inheritance, the Geistigkeit manifest in the perceived values of Bach and Goethe, distinguished it from the material concerns of other nations. One of the reasons his relationship with Reger had been so fruitful was that the two had found common cause along these lines. Now, after military defeat, the failures of the republican experiment, and the sharp right turn in German politics, this brand of nationalism would become ever more deeply rooted in his psyche. Enemies, after all, pressed in from all sides, a perception that would metastasize in Hitler’s cynical cultural policy. “In the political arena other nations surpass us,” Straube would profess to his brother by 1938, “and militarily our rivals are the French. In the economic and financial arena we will never be able to compete with the Anglo-Saxons and the Jews.” The practical conclusion drawn from these reductionist premises: “Our personal task may be to help preserve German spirituality, so far as our limited strength suffices, in the hope that, in one or another place and time, this stance will impress a younger person constructively and show him his life’s actual objective.”4 Music-making was to serve these ends. Nothing less than the identity of the nation was at stake. Thus, the tempo of Straube’s performance schedule would intensify as the 1930s dawned. Despite his resolve to cut back, this was not to be the case for a musician who framed himself as a cultural ambassador in anxious times, with music the tool to preach the gospel of German Geist. His calendar confirmed full steam ahead. As one commentator aptly wrote in 2 3 4
“Was bedeutet der Thomanerchor,” 2–3. The sister essay is “Thomaskantoren.” “Was bedeutet der Thomanerchor,” 3. Letter, June 12, 1938, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 10, 7–8.
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1933, “the Thomaner on tour lead a life like propaganda speakers at election time.”5 For this politically minded cantor, it was always going to be election time. Aside from an interruption in 1930, the tours established a decade earlier continued unabated. 1931 found the ensemble making fresh rounds through Scandinavia, 1932 in south Germany, 1933 in north and middle Germany, 1934 in Sweden. The Leipzig Bachfest of June 1930, centered on the St. John Passion, had crowded the agenda further. And when Edwin Fischer fell ill in December that year, Straube stepped in at the eleventh hour to lead the Munich Bach-Verein in the St. John at the Odeon. Then he spent over two weeks in the Netherlands in March 1931 to lead a pair of performances of the St. Matthew Passion in Rotterdam and Utrecht, before the Thomaner’s Good Friday rendering of the same work at home. Between the Munich St. John and the Dutch St. Matthew, Straube had agreed to collaborate as organist with Adolf Busch in an all-Bach recital at the Basel Münster in January 1931, an exceedingly rare solo appearance where he dusted off signature interpretations of BWV 572 and 544, among other works.6 By late February his body protested, slowing him down with a bout of flu. But he remained in demand as ever, stopping in Leipzig to attend to duties while repacking his suitcase. All these busy comings and goings supplied mere background noise to the much more ambitious project launched in spring 1931, namely the live broadcast over the Middle German Radio of all known church cantatas of J. S. Bach, usually on Sundays at 11:30, with the Thomanerchor and members of the Gewandhaus, the forces routinely deployed in the Sunday services. Straube later remembered that he had been able “to undertake the performance of the complete cantatas of Bach in uninterrupted succession, and to establish the weekly Bach cantata as an inviolable element of the St. Thomas service. Owing to the radio broadcasts, the cantata was accessible to a universal congregation.”7 His 1946 Lebenslauf gave “1931 to 1935” as the project’s timeframe.8 Aside from the edition of Bach’s organ works (ultimately unre5 6 7 8
K. H. von Stockmayer, “Die Thomaner in Stuttgart. Eine Erinnerung,” cutting from an unidentified newspaper, BAL Nachlass Straube 138. H. E., “Konzert Karl Straube und Adolf Busch,” Basler Nachrichten, January 5, 1931. Straube, “Rückblick,” 16. BAL Nachlass Straube 81a. A shorter version of the Lebenslauf, also in Straube’s hand (81b), notes “with Bach’s forces,” that is, with reduced personnel.
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alized), this broadcast series would be his most comprehensive and impressive undertaking. The series commenced on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1931, on the heels of the appearances in Munich, Basel, and the Netherlands, and in fact concluded on the fourth Sunday of Advent, December 19, 1937. Straube rarely was mistaken in recalling dates, but the 1931–35 timeframe probably reflected his original estimate: to the church council he referred to the contract between the city and the radio as a “five-year plan.”9 The launch date on the highest of liturgical feasts with Cantata 4 signaled a clear intention to offer the cantatas not as a random cycle, but rather as a doctrinal corpus bound to the rhythm of the Christian year. After the Nazi ascendancy, that intention would be increasingly upended, and with it the punishing weekly rhythm. In 1931, though, the series got underway with fanfare and high hopes. For those who had dealt close-up with the recurrent threat of Straube’s abandoning the city, it surely implied a relatively long-term commitment to shepherd through a highly visible undertaking of significance. Still, it was not as if he had gotten on board immediately with the new radio technology. On the contrary, the cantata project was a relative latecomer to a medium that had advanced impressively by 1931, and the timing itself says something important about the cantor’s priorities. The Leipzig-based Middle German Radio had launched in March 1924, and by 1925 its daily air time had expanded to sixteen hours.10 The new Grassi Museum’s lecture hall with its “Straube organ” had been equipped with radio transmission technology by 1928. The Museum’s opening and organ dedication were broadcast in 1929, as was the Good Friday Passion at St. Thomas. The University’s Collegium series premiered on air the following year. The first commercial recordings of the Thomanerchor date from these years, implying Straube’s openness to a related medium.11 When the Bach cantatas began broadcast at Easter 1931, they were transmitted regularly from the Grassi lecture hall, moving in mid-Novemeber that year to the Gewandhaus, then occasionally to the Conservatory.12 9
Letter, November 1, 1931, cited in Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas,” in Held and Held, eds., Karl Straube, 152. 10 See further Führer, “Auf dem Weg zur ‘Massenkultur,’” 766–68. 11 The remastered performances (1928, 1930) are available as a CD appendix to Kunze and Lieberwirth, eds., Der Thomanerchor Leipzig. See further Steffen Lieberwirth, “Der Thomanerchor im ‘naturnahen Klang,’” ibid., 208–13. 12 Fontana, “Musikinstrumente,” 277–79.
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Hence in 1931 Straube could count on a robust infrastructure that had been in place for several years, allowing the sharing of programs among multiple stakeholders. Deutsche Welle, the nationwide broadcaster in Berlin, had gotten off the ground in 1926, and the International Broadcasting Union had operated from Geneva since 1925. Well before Easter 1931, the radio companies had coordinated to make the cantatas an international affair for the “universal congregation” the cantor’s rhetoric would claim. In the MIRAG newspaper’s Holy Saturday issue that year, one writer enthused that “all Germany” would have access to the cantatas, while another announced that “the Dutch, Finn, and Austrian” equivalents were likewise on board.13 The Thomanerchor would benefit from a burgeoning audience. Yet, no matter the advantages, several factors may have given the cantor pause to enlist in a long-term project over air. The incipient radio technology advanced in a period when he was tremendously overcommitted. Moreover, he was invested in the cultural debates that played out around the advent of mass communication in Germany. Conservative, nationalist voices from the educated bourgeoisie worried that the market-driven values of mass culture amounted to an American incursion that would dehumanize the embodied experience of art and dilute the integrity of the German heritage. The state of play in 1930 was articulated perhaps most clearly in the positions of Arnold Schoenberg and Albert Einstein respectively, the former fearing damage done by the “unspeakably coarse tone” of the radio, the latter pointing to the same technology as a catalyst to democracy via its “unique capacity for reconciling the family of nations.”14 Indicative of the apprehension the radio could catalyze was an essay that announced the cantata series in the popular magazine Beyers für Alle. Its author warned of “an Americanization of art” should the technology fall into “the hands of unauthorized persons.” Hence “a spiritually and artistically elect leadership is needed to fulfill the demands of the time.”15 The Thomaskantor and his charges, transcending the culturally erosive effects perceived as inherent to the new medium, would spearhead a long-term program for the spiritual formation of radio audiences. Even so, 13 Erich Liebermann-Roßwiese, “Die Kantaten Joh. Sebastian Bachs. Zum Beginn der Reichssendungen aus der Thomaskirche am Ostersonntag, 11,30 Uhr,” Die Mirag. Mitteldeutsche Rundfunkzeitung 14, April 4, 1931, 2; and Lr., “Bach-Kantaten auch in Österreich,” ibid., 19. 14 Cited in Hailey, “Rethinking Sound,” 13–14. 15 A.R.S., “Rundfunk überträgt Bach,” Beyers für Alle. Die große FamilienIllustrierte mit Zwei Romanen 5/44 (1930/31): 10.
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Straube evidently had to be asked: early on he claimed more than once that the series was no brainchild of his. The initiative had come from Berlin on the basis of his intense advocacy for Bach.16 That claim was more than plausible, and for revealing reasons. He always had tended to view technological advances with suspicion, initially holding to tradition before investing in innovation. This conservative position likely stemmed from the culture of his father’s instrument workshop, where paying attention to emerging technologies had made the difference between good and bad business decisions. It likewise reflected his vast experience as a performer on an instrument that had absorbed the best and worst of industrial-era gadgetry. Still in 1907 he was steering Hans Pfitzner away from electro-pneumatic actions in organs on grounds that they had not yet been proven reliable.17 He had agreed to put his playing in the service of Welte’s roll recording technology only in 1922, whereas an aggressively entrepreneurial artist like Reger had done so in 1905 (piano) and 1913 (organ). Thus, when radio and film began to make headway, Straube reacted with predictable circumspection. Early in 1929 he flatly dismissed Franz Schreker’s invitation to join a committee of the new Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ton und Bild, posing the question “Should we not see in the sound film a further mechanization of our art, a development in which productive and reproductive artists actually should not take part to support? Or am I seeing all this far too pessimistically, as a remotely positioned cantor, who after all is ‘unmodern?’”18 He was perfectly happy to remain “unmodern” if he could not be convinced on practical grounds. And on aesthetic ones too. Straube worried that an alliance with the radio could compromise the musical quality of the product. The extent to which Bach’s music lent itself to broadcast in the first place was questionable.19 The broadcast recordings that survive fail to represent well the complexities of the counterpoint and the presence of the bass lines. Particularly the dry acoustic of the Grassi hall would not have compared to the livelier situation 16 Letters to the St. Thomas Church council, November 1, 1931, cited in Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas,” 151–52; and to Joseph Goebbels, September 9, 1933, facsimile in Hartmann, Karl Straube und seine Schule, 121–23. 17 Letter, July 17, 1908, OeNB Nachlass Hans Pfitzner Sig. F68. Pfitzner.3262/1-4 Mus. 18 Letter, March 10, 1929, OeNB Nachlass Franz Schreker Sig. F3.Schreker.517. 19 Hailey, “Rethinking Sound,” 25.
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in the churches, further compromising the experience of music-making and listening. The cantor reacted to variables like these from the outset, when he informed the church council that the broadcasts would be realizable “only if the performances are flawless, as far as within my power.” He continued adamantly that “on this point the critics must not be given the opportunity to object. If one cannot guarantee the possibility of monitoring the acoustic effect in the broadcast device before the actual broadcast . . . then the ability to assure a worthy performance is completely out of the question.”20 Given that he was an artist so consistently concerned with clarity of texture from Bach to Reger and beyond, and one so invested in the embodied communication of emotion to live audiences, it is all the more significant that he seems eventually to have found that the philosophic-aesthetic losses justified the socio-political gains. For Straube it was Einstein’s democratizing view of the radio as “reconciling the family of nations” via access to great art that would win out in the end. From the beginning the explicit aim was the “systematic” transmission of “all surviving cantatas of Bach,” the “uninterrupted succession” Straube would later recall.21 He chronicled progress in a copy of Rudolf Wustmann’s Joh. Seb. Bachs Kantatentexte, entering the date of each performance beside the corresponding title, presumably week to week.22 That book’s organization by liturgical date, rather than by catalogue number or otherwise, surely proved helpful as Straube aligned his choices with the church year whenever possible: of the 197 cantatas assigned broadcast dates, 82 were mounted on the date for which Bach composed them, and many more came within one or two weeks of the proper date. Early on, liturgical propriety dictated that the radio extend programming beyond Sundays in several instances: Christmas (1931) and the day following (1932), New Year (1934), Easter Monday (1932, 1933), Ascension (1931–34), Pentecost Monday (1932), and repentance (Buß- und Bettag, 1933). But even before this plan began to bump up against Nazi interference, reality tempered the ideal of regularity. The annual autumn tour intervened, as did the school’s summer holidays and other isolated circumstances. Even so, during the first cycle—Easter Sunday 1931 through Easter Monday 1932—the Thomaner managed to transmit 20 Letter, November 18, 1931, cited in Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas,” 152–53. 21 Liebermann-Roßwiese, “Die Kantaten Joh. Sebastian Bachs,” 2. 22 Rudolf Wustmann, Joh. Seb. Bachs Kantatentexte (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1913). BAL Sig. Rara II, 356.
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thirty-nine cantatas, an impressive tempo that would intensify in 1932 and 1933 before moderating.23 Straube’s claim that the cantata had become “an inviolable element of the St. Thomas service” recalls his relationship with the congregation and its clergy. That relationship had been clouded virtually from the beginning, his being first a high-profile solo artist whose Christian commitment had been called into question, then a cantor who had aggressively expanded the choir’s mandate beyond the liturgy. The task of vending German high culture to an international audience may or may not have been received approvingly from a primarily nationalist-conservative Protestant leadership, but by the time the Bach cantatas went live, the tepid relationship between clergy and cantor did not exactly encourage an ideal collaboration of spoken and sung word in the services.24 The resulting disconnect meant that the choral music, with respect both to theme and placement, became less integral to the liturgy during Straube’s tenure. Much after the fact, Charlotte Ramin remembered the cantata’s position on Sunday mornings as “abrupt and inorganic.” Eventually “Straube had even placed it before the beginning of the service, since he never could come to an agreement with the clergy. This of course led to the embarrassing situation that some auditors left the church at the end of the cantata.”25 These were circumstances not entirely of his making. In the late nineteenth century some congregants had developed the habit of ducking out after the Hauptmusik, relieving themselves of the sermon and everything that followed. Regular printed notices pointedly asked “those who wish to attend the church music and not the service” to sit in the gallery behind the pulpit so that their exit would cause minimal disturbance.26 Once Straube came on board and intensified the choir’s preoccupation with Bach, the line between the interests of a devout congregation and a secular audience evidently intensified too. The eventual solution was to transplant the cantata to the beginning of the service, making of it a kind of prelude so that anyone indifferent to the 9:30 a.m. liturgy could leave before it commenced. This arrangement in turn yielded the schedule dictated by the radio in 1931, whereby singers and instrumentalists discharged their liturgical obligation, 23 24 25 26
Hübner, “Karl Straube zwischen Kirchenmusik,” 184–85. See especially Fitschen, “Die Thomasgemeinde,” 299–301. Charlotte Ramin, Günther Ramin, 120. Cited in Stiller, “Johann Sebastian Bachs Kantaten,” 35. Such admonitions continued well into the 1940s.
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generally in alternating weeks at St. Thomas and St. Nicholas, before proceeding on foot across town to the broadcast site. The Sunday morning procession of musicians—cantor with about sixty Thomaner, soloists, and an orchestra in excess of twenty—must have created a familiar spectacle in the city center during these years. The cantata rehearsal began around 10:00 for an air time of 11:30.27 These arrangements reflected the uneasy relationship long obtaining between cantor and clergy. About a month before the cantatas launched, Straube told his wife that the St. Thomas pastor Gerhard Hilbert had branded him an all-out “heathen.”28 At that point, at least, it is easy to imagine the parish administration applying that epithet. Once the broadcasts began, Hilbert and his church council wasted little time in registering misgivings. By the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, as the cantor continued his relentless march with Cantata 95, they had had enough. The cantatas had “degenerated to mere rehearsals for the radio broadcasts at 11:30,” read the irritable letter that arrived with Straube ten days later. “We had already submitted to you the complaint that the orchestral musicians no longer apply their full energies in church. And now on the 20th of this month the tenor triggered a virtual outrage by his way of singing. He then sang in a completely different manner on the radio from in church.” The parish had been embarrassed because “the participants in a big Leipzig church conference” visiting that day had “received a very unfavorable impression” of the music.29 The congregation’s leading voices had gotten the distinct feeling that they were playing host to an artist whose real priorities lay beyond the services, and who did not hesitate to exploit his liturgical responsibilities to the benefit of career advancement. Those fears had long simmered, first with the organ recitals, then with the choir tours, and now with the radio. Admittedly, the church’s essential point—that Straube had coopted the Sunday liturgy as rehearsal time for the radio—is not so easily dismissed. When the schedule required a new cantata each week, time was at a premium, probably to an unprecedented degree in modern times. Ekkehard Tietze, who sang with the Thomaner during these years, communicated this urgency in his recollection 27 “Von den ‘größten, gemeinsamen Rundfunk-Veranstaltung Europas’: BachKantaten mit dem Thomanerchor und dem Gewandhausorchester unter Karl Straube,” in Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, 130–32. 28 Letter, March 9, 1931, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 29 Letter, September 30, 1931, cited in Stiller, “Johann Sebastian Bachs Kantaten,” 32.
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of the tight Sunday routine: after putting in an appearance at the service and hoofing it to the broadcast site, “we rehearsed so to speak until 11:29, and the broadcast began at 11:30, always transmitted live.”30 Even when it went well, this modus vivendi was hardly stress-free. The council’s letter drew a defense con molto passione that revealed substantial cleavage between a “heathen” cantor and representatives of the worshiping faithful. Straube replied in no uncertain terms that the tenor for Cantata 95 had not sung differently in the two settings; that the emotion-laden interpretation of the aria “Ach, schlage doch bald, sel’ge Stunde” was demanded by the text and Bach’s setting; that the Thomaner, while accustomed to singing the four-part chorales at sight, had studied those in Cantata 95 meticulously “because they had to grasp the spiritual context” of the whole; that the idea for the broadcasts had not come from him; that he was merely a middleman unable to alter the details of the contract between city and radio, including the setting of weekly rehearsal and transmission times, which were received as inconvenient.31 Pressed further about how the broadcast schedule was compromising the choir’s liturgical obligations, Straube continued his manifesto in a second installment later that month. “It is the church’s obligation to support the radio and the performers in this task,” he declared, claiming the rhetorical high ground, “because never again will it have at hand such a means to be able to reach countless listeners who, filled with emotion, hear the tones of Johann Sebastian Bach and his exegesis of the Word. Therefore I ask you to commit to the position that, for the realization of such a great objective, even the Thomaskirche is prepared to sacrifice a little.” The schedule reflected neither his wishes nor those of the radio, the original proposal having been to place the cantata in the Sunday evening service. Since his last letter he had tried in vain to persuade the bureaucrats to grant an extra fifteen minutes of breathing room.32 The glaring sarcasm that “even the Thomaskirche” needed to compromise given the project’s magnitude drove the point home. If in late 1931 the cantor had any lingering hesitation concerning the legitimacy of radio technology and what it could mean for the reception of Bach’s church music, he was not about to show it while defending his musicians against the shortsighted 30 Cited in “Von den ‘größten, gemeinsamen Rundfunk-Veranstaltung Europas,’” 131. 31 Letter, November 1, 1931, cited in Stiehl, “Organist und Kantor zu St. Thomas,” 151–52. 32 Letter, November 18, 1931, ibid., 152–53.
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attitudes of a parish council. Straube concluded his second letter with the stouthearted peroration, “Where I stand is where God has put me, and I serve him when I fulfill the obligations of my task.” As in past episodes, the church needed either to help or to stand aside as he pursued big new ideas. In saying so, he managed to allude both to Luther’s celebrated declaration and Bach’s own indignant exchanges with his superiors. Despite Straube’s view of the cantata as an “inviolable element” in the services, congregants almost always heard only excerpts of Bach’s works.33 That practice had been in place from the outset of his cantorate. But the venturing of this or that chorus or aria in the liturgy, before the entire cantata was performed offsite two hours later, undoubtedly fueled the council’s argument that the services had “degenerated into mere rehearsals” for the broadcasts. On the other hand, an adumbrated cantata might have reflected impatience from the chancel, petty jealousies, or the genuine fears of some that, if left unchecked, the music could overshadow the pious business of the liturgy. Residual disgruntlement still resonated in 1962, when the erstwhile Pastor and Superintendent Heinrich Schumann recalled that “during his entire tenure [1935–53] there was ‘constant quarreling between chancel and organ gallery.’ In the sacristy [Schumann] ‘sat as if on hot coals’ and paced back and forth if the cantata took too long.” Much later, when a widow, Hertha Straube told Günther Stiller that Schumann had “complained bitterly because in one service, the cantata lasted a minute longer than Straube had specified.”34 This sounds like an exaggeration reconstructed much after the fact, but the cross-purposes at which clergy/parish and cantor/choir found themselves is demonstrable, and the antagonisms went deeper than any single incident. Late in life Straube was still conjuring “the old opposition of altar and chancel to cantor podium and organ bench.”35 Yet the relationship with Schumann, and with the parish in general, was probably not as openly or aggressively adversarial as Stiller wanted to paint it, no matter how deep the fault lines and how dissonant the occasional falling-out. If the Thomaskantor really had been a rogue actor, he would not have been able to navigate the expansive cantata project to a successful conclusion in the first place. More than an authoritative knowledge of Bach and a compelling interpretive approach, Straube brought to the table 33 Stiller, “Johann Sebastian Bachs Kantaten,” 28–29. 34 Ibid., 34. 35 Letter to Johannes Haller, April 6 and 10, 1947, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 451.
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a suave diplomacy and, from his own background, a real understanding of the priorities of ecclesial piety from the inside out. Schumann appears to have regarded him with genuine respect. As the 1930s advanced, the two seem also to have shared political convictions. Schumann had come to his St. Thomas office via extensive social mission work in the Leipzig diocese, reflecting an interest integral to the Straube and Palmer families. On the occasion of Straube’s 1928 anniversary in the city, he had dispatched a congratulatory letter on behalf of the council that cited the “great successes gifted you by God’s grace.” Straube nuanced his reply to speak head on to the priorities of a cleric like Schumann. “The formation of my essence, proceeding from a very strict ecclesial-religious education in my youth, naturally entails the fact that the exercise of my life’s mission as a church musician is for me an inner happiness. . . . I hope that this spiritual bond in common work will unite us also in the future.”36 There was a grain of truth and goodwill in these thoughts, fraught as they were with the persistent anxieties integral to the cantor’s “essence.” As the broadcasts proceeded and the socio-political landscape darkened, he was going to need all the allies he could summon.
36 Letter from Schumann to Straube, and undated draft reply on reverse, January 6, 1928, BStBM Straubeana.
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Chapter Twenty-Three
Politics II Well before the radio cantatas, Straube had consolidated a position of multilayered influence surely unprecedented in the St. Thomas cantorate. Many factors had contributed to the potency of that influence, nothing more consistently than his promotion of J. S. Bach’s music in countless performances that bore his subjective stamp. He had used his positions to cultivate his forebear’s art with an intensity not seen since Bach’s own time. The result was that, whether concerning Bruno Walter’s questions about cuts in the first Brandenburg Concerto or Karl Böhm’s deliberations over tempi in the St. Matthew Passion, Straube, for many, had become the go-to authority for all things Bach.1 As first the tours and then the radio exposed the Thomanerchor to expanding audiences, and as the Thomaskantor grew ever more at one with Leipzig’s cultural identity, public perception began to frame him as something beyond a supreme Bach interpreter. Particularly among his allies he was becoming a Bach avatar. “Bach is Bach and Straube is his prophet!” was the extravagant closing flourish in his former pupil Richard Engländer’s review of the 1930 Bachfest.2 More frequently now, writers would find variations on this sentiment. That same year brought Julius Levin’s Bach biography, a 200-pluspage read that cadenced, “Among the representatives of Bach’s spirit, as far as concerns the embodiment of his thoughts, stands in Germany first and foremost Bach’s successor . . . Karl Straube.”3 Anton Kippenberg would best distill this position in 1935, when he related an ecstatic dream in which Bach himself appeared by night to an intimate company in the Kippenberg home, Straube among them. The resurrected Bach “greeted his twelfth [sic] successor like an old acquaintance with a firm handshake. Now there is nothing 1
Letters from Bruno Walter and Karl Böhm respectively, June 16, 1932 and April 14, 1931, ZbZ NL 117A Nachl. Straube. 2 “Leipziger Bachfest 1930,” Dresdner Anzeiger, June 25, 1930. 3 Levin, Johann Sebastian Bach, 242.
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remarkable about this, because of course the cognatio spiritualis unites the Thomaskantoren. They constitute an unending chain—le roi ne meurt. And the kings all know each other.”4 As the popes enjoyed a bond through Peter’s spirit, so Straube re-presented Bach’s spirit, wielded to help the German republic reclaim its place in the family of nations via the supposed universality of its music. Through the lens of what he believed passionately to be his mission, this was a cognatio spiritualis placed squarely in the service of cultural policy. Georg Bollenbeck has written about the “susceptibility” of this position to a swelling National Socialist propaganda, and about how the “arbitrary nature” of that propaganda cut across political parties and socio-economic conditions.5 Straube happened to find himself at the zenith of his influence at precisely the time of the republic’s demise, a conjuncture that throws the matter of his political convictions into sharp focus. More frequently than not, the questions are multivalent, the key actors’ motivations opaque, the resulting allegiances unstable over time. In part owing to his longstanding interests in world history, and in part because the success of his cultural initiatives depended on a favorable political landscape, Straube considered himself a student of contemporary politics. When he confided unguarded attitudes to an inner circle, the tone often tended toward that of a dispassionate observer above the fray, one who coolly situated developments within the arc of a metanarrative. He was paying attention when England abandoned the gold standard in 1931, lamenting to Hertha how the resulting flow of gold to France reflected that nation’s unchallenged hegemony in Europe. “These are bitterly difficult times. But life flows on, everything remains in flux, and we must go along with it, whether we want to or not. Joy and life, pain and death, all these things are nothing in the course of the universe. And nevertheless we must live this life, because only here can we work, and for everyone the day is coming when ‘no one can work.’”6 This betrayed a politically pragmatic stance that would allow him to keep his distance from causes he found abhorrent. But it also revealed a self-assured condescension, even a stereotypically Prussian one, destined to provide an intellectual escape hatch from protesting Nazi excesses and injustices. From that vantage point the gas chambers and everything else could be rationalized 4 Kippenberg, Reden und Schriften, 67. 5 Bollenbeck, “German Kultur,” 69. 6 Letter, July 27, 1931, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. Straube appealed habitually to John 9:4.
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down to the biblical omnia vanitas in the end. Straube’s way of thinking had long inclined to that ethic. Hindsight would show that the regime’s victims, including some of his own friends and allies, were not going to have the luxury of a poised metaphysics intoned from the high ground of quasi-Johannine idealism. Well before the “bitterly difficult times” of summer 1931, the embattled German republic had lurched from crisis to crisis. By the end of March 1930 the coalition government formed under the Social Democratic chancellor Hermann Müller had fallen apart. Paul von Hindenburg, president since 1925, had appointed Heinrich Brüning, a Center Party academic with expertise in financial management, as Müller’s successor. Unable to form a coalition, Brüning operated according to the constitution’s Article 48 emergency powers. The Reichstag was dissolved in mid-July 1930, effectively closing the door on the parliamentary system. Straube had monitored these events closely. By the end of July he was ensconced in Gastein, summing up his thoughts to Hertha. For him as for many others, the parliament’s demise threatened to catalyze a leftist ascendency. “The correct thing,” he concluded, “would be to oppose the Social Democrats and the Communists with a large, unified party of the middle classes, but the Germans are too dumb for this, and too politically inept.” A centrist coalition would mirror “Germany’s geographic position as a middle European state. One then could see clearly the course of the battle between eastern (Soviet) ideas and the old, western European cultural concept, in other words, between the masses and individualism.” The Democrats needed to be attentive particularly to the economically disadvantaged rural constituencies susceptible to communism. As for the Conservatives, they “would need to be clear that, with the downfall of the monarchy, they have lost their exceptional, privileged position” and “that ‘throne and altar’ was an ideological swindle with which they disguised their own hegemony. Hence the only thing left for the Conservatives is to make common cause with the middle class, to jettison all their feudal prejudices.” Brimming with predictions, he turned to the fraught condition of Saxon state politics. “An administration cannot be formed because of the National Socialists, and therefore the latter will move for the dissolution of the Landtag. What will be the result? A weakening of their own party, a reduction of its votes in favor of the Deutsche Volkspartei, perhaps also of the Democrats. For in the last election, the Marxist parties were not on the losing side, rather only the middle-class parties.”7 7
Letter, July 24, 1930, ibid. Emphasis original.
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Straube turned out to be right that, in the national elections of September 1930, the far-left German Communist Party (KPD) witnessed gains, taking just over 13 percent of the national vote. His views on this front, animated by an abiding fear of socialist domination, were not atypical of middle-class anxieties about leftist politics that were particularly pronounced in Saxony.8 But the spectacular upset was the advance of Hitler’s NSDAP, which had received 2.6 percent of the vote in 1928 but now spiked to 18.25 percent, entitling the party to 107 parliamentary seats, second only to the Social Democrats. This clearly was not the alignment Straube had foreseen. His documented affiliation with the DDP, together with his known interests, suggests a voter at pains to effect a consolidation of bourgeois influence against the left even as the middle of the party system fractured. This appears to have led him and many others to miscalculate that the far left would hold more appeal to the economically disadvantaged than the far right, as his remarks to Hertha imply. The developments of September 1930, which worked ever more effectively to hollow out the center of the national party system, had been anticipated in the Saxon regional elections that June: there, the NSDAP had claimed 14.4 percent of the popular vote, up from 5 percent the previous year. In the wake of these realignments, the party sustaining the most debilitating losses was Straube’s liberal DDP, which had participated in almost every Weimar government. Now after a long decline, its members headed for the exits to join cause with more established, anti-socialist caucuses like the right-liberal German People’s Party (DVP). The Leipzig Thomaskantor may well have been one of them. All of this reflected a volatile political dyspepsia with origins in a decade of accumulated republican policy, and which now would push the country sharply to the right while incapacitating its parliamentary system. Straube’s hope—that Germany should claim its place “as a middle European state” in a centrist-oriented coalition balancing the interests of the working classes (“the masses”) against “the western European cultural concept” (the “individualism” of its leading voices)—would not be realized. Still in summer 1931 he seems to have believed that the National Socialists eventually would undermine their own interests through parliamentary obstructionism, with disaffected voters throwing support to the center-right DVP and the center-left Democrats. Concerning the much-discussed theory of the cantor’s early dalliance with the Nazis dating to 1926, the views expounded to Hertha in mid-1930 clearly were not those of someone bound to the Nazi agenda. 8
Jones, “Saxony, 1924–1930,” 336–38.
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A doctrinaire commitment to any political party is noticeably absent from them. Instead, Straube’s position reflected broad confusion and disillusionment in the middle classes about how best to vote their interests in a dysfunctional climate. In the immediate aftermath of the 1930 elections he joined the Rotary Club, an international apolitical service organization with a Leipzig branch founded in 1929.9 “The beginning of the end,” as one historian has termed the September elections, was at hand, and many recognized it.10 A correspondent from C. F. Peters, probably Ollendorff, wrote Straube that October, “I’m sending you the latest issue of [Eugen] Diederich’s Die Tat, which offers an excellent, almost objective clarification of how we stand politically. In case you don’t already have it, it will surely fascinate you.”11 Whether or not he was a regular reader of the conservative, non-partisan political monthly Die Tat, which in this period carried the provocative subtitle “for the construction of a new reality,” is not known. Evidently his friend across town thought he should. The so-called Tatkreis (“Action Circle”) for which Die Tat served as mouthpiece rejected capitalist ideals in favor of protectionist self-sufficiency through neomercantilism, a stance that knit together ideas from various ends of the political spectrum. The October issue offered a granular analysis of the elections, supported with charts that parsed the outcomes by party, class standing, and other parameters. Its author confirmed many of Straube’s own positions and interpreted the vote as announcing a “dangerous situation” in which Germans had aired an apoplectic exasperation with a dark enemy, “a vague oppositional force everyone feels and cannot yet agree to name.”12 The writer dismissed the notion that significant Nazi gains reliably expressed voters’ ideological commitments and prefigured the party’s future success. “Will the National Socialists remain the victors? No! . . . In the ten years of their fight they have never found the muse to tend to the theory of what they actually want. . . . They don’t have the intelligence for the plans they have drafted and worked through for years.”13 The two scenarios now possible— a rightist government under the National Socialists, a leftist one under the 9 10 11 12 13
This was as the first of only three local musician members. Marx, Der Rotary Club Leipzig, 23–29. Straube dated his membership from September 23, 1930. StAL Straube-Akten 2, 9. Reulecke, “Die Zeit der Weltkriege,” 358. Letter, October 11, 1930, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2152. “Die kalte Revolution,” 485. Ibid., 496.
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Social Democrats—were unworkable, the only conceivable outcome being a “new election from which the National Socialists and the Communists would emerge as winners, with a good showing by the Social Democrats and the complete collapse of the middle-class parties.”14 How Straube received this ominous analysis is not known, but he clearly shared with the writer a fear of polarized politics at the expense of “the middle-class parties,” as well as the widespread propensity to imagine National Socialism as a movement without a meaningful future. He now would throw support to an effort to deny that future to Hitler and his circle. As discontent grew with Brüning’s crippling austerity policies, the presidential election approached in spring 1932. Heinrich Sahm, mayor of Berlin, organized a committee to assure the re-election of the octogenarian war hero Hindenburg as a way to block Hitler’s growing influence. On February 2 came a public appeal for a petition to convince Hindenburg to stand for the vote, an action requiring 20,000 signatures.15 A second article advertised the explicitly supra-partisan nature of the initiative, and hence Sahm’s wish to appeal not to party representatives, “but rather to personalities, especially to those prominent women and men under whose leadership stand large, apolitical organizations.”16 The strategy reinforced Hindenburg’s mythical status as a patriot perched above political squabbles. Sahm’s ambitious effort, which sought to construct a bulwark against the hard right from across the entire political spectrum, was immediately and vigorously attacked by the National Socialists for just this reason. No matter. Two days later on February 4, the press could report that “already on the first day, the officially required number of 20,000 signatures was exceeded many times over,” and that nevertheless the signatory lists would remain available “still for about ten days” so that “all sections of the population are given opportunity for a powerful demonstration.”17 Straube, bound to the “apolitical organizations” of Thomasschule and Conservatory, apparently resolved to join other prominent figures in signing the Hindenburg petition post hoc, a move that suggests initial hesitancy to step publicly into the political fray, 14 Ibid., 503–4. 15 “Um Hindenburgs Wiederwahl,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, February 2, 1932, 1. 16 “Die Konstituierung des Hindenburg-Ausschusses,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, February 2, 1932, 2. Emphasis original. 17 “Auslegung für die Listen des Hindenburg-Ausschusses verlängert,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, February 4, 1932, 3.
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but also the strong feelings of someone who wanted to lend demonstrative support even after the appeal’s objective had been realized. His name appeared on February 7 alongside thirty-two other signatories, among them Konrad Adenauer and a number of university rectors, academics, and arts administrators.18 Two days later the Leipzig press announced the constitution of a local chapter for the advocacy of Hindenburg’s candidacy, one of the United Hindenburg Committees surfacing in the wake of Sahm’s initiative. Straube’s name appeared again, now in a list that included his colleagues Walther Davisson and Julius Klengel, as well as the University rector Theodor Litt and the former mayor Karl Rothe.19 Much later, Straube and his allies would point to this moment as witness to his attitude toward the incipient Hitler regime. Things unfolded quickly in early 1932. Hindenburg was reelected decisively in two rounds of voting that spring. Himself no friend of the leftist and centrist forces that had locked arms to ensure his success, he promptly withdrew his support for Brüning’s minority government and appointed Franz von Papen as successor. Papen, like Brüning a Catholic Centrist but with extreme conservative and aristocratic tendencies, represented yet another step in the national drift toward rightist authoritarianism. Confronted with insurmountable opposition, he and his cabinet had the parliament dissolved, triggering new elections for July 31. Straube, again vacationing in Gastein and writing to his wife, reacted in terms that left his commitments in no doubt. He had arranged to have a ballot sent to him. “So on the 31st I, with Pastor Dr. Schumann, Rector Reum, and our neighbor the Jewish dentist, will travel to Freilassing in order to save the fatherland. I’m voting German People’s Party [DVP], which I absolutely consider a more sound choice than a party on the radical right. Furthermore it will be prudent if an independent government like von Papen’s survives and the partisan rule of a group directed toward the radical right is avoided.” He went on to unfold a calculus of allegiances based on the assumption that the NSDAP would gain about 200 Reichstag seats at most, “which still does not constitute a legal majority. Therefore it would be good to reinforce the other right-leaning parties, which probably will not gain 100 seats, but even with 60 seats could constitute a counterweight to the excessively partisan administration on the right.” 18 “Weitere Unterzeichner des Hindenburg-Aufrufs,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, February 7, 1932, 8. 19 “Ein Leipziger Ortsausschuß für die Hindenburg-Kandidatur,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, February 9, 1932, 2.
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The endgame was to ensure that “the balance of power will remain with the Center. . . . The Center is clever enough to make peace with Papen if it gets its money’s worth.”20 That Straube and his compatriots at the time in Gastein—the St. Thomas cleric Heinrich Schumann, the retired Nikolaischule rector Albrecht Reum, and the unidentified Jewish neighbor—were willing to invest time and energy to travel the 100 kilometers north to the Bavarian border town of Freilassing in order to vote signaled the intensity of their conviction. Schumann, who had his differences with the Thomaskantor over the ongoing radio cantatas, was a member of the moderate wing of the German National People’s Party (DNVP), a conservative caucus with a nationalist-monarchical platform, one of the “other right-leaning parties” Straube mentioned.21 The strategy outlined to Hertha, which aimed at a conservative alliance that would avoid both an absolute National Socialist majority and Communist gains, surely emerged from discussions in Gastein. In 1930 Straube’s DDP had entered an unlikely and ultimately unsuccessful merger with rightist elements to form the new German State Party. In July 1932 his support of the DVP—the right-liberal party of the respected and since deceased foreign minister Gustav Stresemann, now waning in influence as it pulled further right—exposed his unwillingness to give loyalty to the wholly ineffective remnants of the DDP, and rather to support a more conservative coalition that had the potential to stave off Nazi influence. Straube’s remarks to Hertha revealed that he even would have preferred the continuation of a non-parliamentary government like Papen’s, ruled by presidential executive powers, to Nazi authoritarianism. That view was not uncommon among middle-class Germans. And he still held to his earlier theory that a National Socialist takeover was anything but inevitable. He and his kind would be proven wrong. The NSDAP overtook the SPD as the top vote-getter at 37.4%, now earning 230 parliamentary seats, quite beyond Straube’s worst-case scenario, but still without an outright majority. The Communists likewise made gains, whereas all other established parties except the Center had lost seats. To Hertha he observed cynically that “from proletariatized citizens and unemployed workers one cannot expect great devotion to the parties of industry (Volkspartei) and capital (Staatspartei).
20 Letter, July 24, 1932, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 21 Wilhelm, Die Diktaturen und die evangelische Kirche, 42. Most Leipzig clergy supported the DNVP.
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These are finished for all time!”22 He pursued the argument in a wandering letter to her in which he claimed that “about 1,000 people” had made the trek to Freilassing, “all of them with the feeling of having to save the fatherland!” Again, he believed he could predict the course of events. “The Nazis will not last, since they aren’t sufficiently socialist. Why not? We can talk about that in person.” Again, the key to a sound politics was the allegiance of “the working masses,” in his view now to be secured through “a national German communist party, one that is separate from Moscow and communist nonetheless. . . . The most important thing is to support the communist economic system, which will come whether we want it or not, with the intellectual viewpoints that arise from the German past. Moscow’s rationale ‘maschine = God!’ is impossible for German spirituality!”23 Thus, after the Nazis had surpassed all other parties in the Reichstag, Straube still was unwilling to accept that the future belonged to them. If the center was not going to prevail, then the left would, at its best a “spiritual” brand of socialism tempered with German idealism. Ultimately the country would not swing left, regardless of efforts by some in the left wing of Hitler’s party to pull it in the direction of socialist interests. The “Bohemian corporal,” as Hindenburg disdainfully styled him, demanded that the president elevate him to the chancellorship as a condition for Nazi participation in a cabinet. Hindenburg refused. The parliament again was dissolved on a no-confidence vote and new elections set for November. How Straube voted is not known, but the NSDAP recorded a loss of thirty-four seats, with the Communists, the DVP, and the DNVP landing modest gains. The Papen government, now supported only by the DVP and DNVP, yielded to the defense minister Kurt von Schleicher in December. Seeing as did others that the Nazi initiative was cash-strapped and losing steam, Schleicher attempted to manipulate Hitler into supporting his government, sparking yet another parliamentary impasse. Hindenburg, wishing to avoid the declaration of a state of emergency, held his nose and appointed Hitler chancellor on Monday, January 30, 1933, a date that would be burned into history as the moment of the Machtergreifung or braune Revolution. On the previous morning Straube’s radio audience had tuned in as the Thomanerchor continued its tour through Bach, this time with Cantata 111 “Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit.” It was to be the last Leipzig performance of Bach’s church music in a free democracy until 1990. The cantata’s 22 Postcard, August 4, 1932, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 23 Letter, August 4, 1932, ibid.
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libretto, which speaks of divine providence beyond human understanding, takes on especially poignant significance in hindsight. Straube and his auditors could well have directed the prayer of the closing chorale toward the struggles to come: “When the evil spirit challenges me, let me not despair.” Hitler’s fortunes advanced rapidly. New Reichstag elections were called for March, in anticipation of which the Nazis set in motion a campaign of intimidation directed particularly at the left and Center parties. When the Reichstag itself went up in flames on February 27, supposedly at the hands of a Dutchman loyal to communism, Hitler seized on the event to weaken further the left’s legitimacy in the court of public opinion. The election handed the National Socialists a 43.9% share of the vote, still short of a majority, but enough to form a practical coalition with the DNVP. Next, on March 21, by chance Bach’s birthday, was the distorted symbolism of the Day of Potsdam, on which the new Hitler parliament was opened with Hindenburg’s blessing. Two days later came passage of the notorious Ermächtigungsgesetz (“Enabling Act”), on paper a mere amendment to Weimar’s democratic constitution, but in effect the legal foundation for the chancellor’s dictatorial powers. At about this point Straube made the consequential decision to enter the NSDAP. The recorded date of registration is Monday May 1, the effective date of the Aufnahmesperre or suspension of admissions, a policy ordered on April 19 to stem the flood of applications arising in the wake of Hitler’s ascendency. He likewise registered with the Opferring, a party organization operating on the regional level that drew financial contributions from its membership.24 Typically, participants either were independent of party or were counted as inactive in other party initiatives, hence taxed in effect. One piece of contemporary correspondence addresses Straube’s move to join the Nazi ranks, an intriguing but undated letter from Ramin to Niels-Otto Raasted. The context places it in the days before Pentecost 1933, which that year fell on June 4. “As I have heard recently at a gathering at [Walter] Tiemann’s, [Straube] is supposed to have registered as a member of the National Socialist party. Since we meet so seldom, or never, I can report nothing from him.”25 A close reading of these lines may detect at least mild surprise, among those who knew him well, that he had taken this step, hence 24 The record indicates membership “since May 1933,” membership no. 15,344. StAL Straube-Akten 2, 3. His association with the Opferring is not recorded in the file established on November 7, 1935, with the Reichskulturkammer. See Goltz, Musikstudium, 231 n. 1233. 25 Letter, undated, BhAE Nachlass Raasted.
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implying that he was doing so for a first, not a second, time. Again, Straube’s political affinities over the Weimar period, as expounded to his wife and others, do nothing to reveal a committed Nazi-in-waiting and everything to suggest an opponent of radicalized politics, whether leftist or rightist. The day following Straube’s party registration, the Sturmabteiling (SA) seized the Leipzig Volkshaus, the longstanding home of the city’s labor unions and only a few minutes’ walk from the Straube apartment. Its substantial library was plundered and emptied into the street. About a week later on May 10 followed a coordinated nationwide book-burning under the auspices of the National Socialist German Student Union, staged in Leipzig in front of the University’s Augusteum. A “cleansing” of the University’s faculty began roughly at the same time, acting on the new Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, inevitably affecting colleagues Straube knew well. Among those dismissed immediately was the respected law professor Erwin Jacobi, who in 1945 would offer strong testimony supporting Straube’s rehabilitation: Straube had followed a pattern of inviting him to house parties, also to his birthday celebration in 1943. Further, “After the weekly Motetten Herr Professor Straube regularly accompanied me home in full public view, doing his part to help me cope with the heavy grief of my dismissal and social degradation.”26 High-profile official actions against Jews had stained Leipzig’s musical life earlier in spring 1933. On March 11 Gustav Brecher, longtime director of the Opera, had been furloughed. Five days later a subscription concert of the Gewandhaus Orchestra under its Kapellmeister Bruno Walter was blocked by the Saxon Ministry of the Interior, despite aggressive efforts to the contrary led by Straube’s friend Max Brockhaus. Walter, whose relationship with Straube had been warm and productive, immediately vacated the city.27 The concertmaster Leo Schwarz, another musician with lively personal and professional ties to Straube, soon followed. The crass politicization of culture was in full swing well before May, to the detriment of both music and learning. Whatever his motivations and however debatable they may remain, when he signed on with the NSDAP the Thomaskantor knew well what company he was keeping. In his “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” a lengthy testimonial submitted in September 1945 toward his denazification, Straube wrote that “the day of 26 Attestation, October 29, 1945, BAL Nachlass Straube 82c. On Jacobi see Lambrecht, Politische Entlassungen, 109–11. 27 Walter, Thema und Variationen, 385–88.
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[my] party entrance is among the darkest of my life,” and that he made the move in order to “save” the Thomanerchor.28 It is true that just weeks before, he had looked on as Walter was ousted from the Gewandhaus, the iconic orchestra made to face an imperiled future. The notion of a rescue mission aimed at protecting the choir thus appears the more credible. He attested to the internal climate at the Thomasschule, claiming that his singers “were schooled jointly by their teachers and me . . . without any glorification of militarism and without any reference to National Socialism.” Post-war political unrest had “moved” the older boys notwithstanding, and “the intellectually minded in the years before 1933 took pro and contra positions on the rise of the National Socialists. Certainly the theatrics of the Day of Potsdam and the fanfares of the party’s hyped speeches during the first weeks were not without influence on the youth.” But Straube pointed to his known status as “an enemy of the party from the beginning,” extending beyond his “sacrifice of party entrance. . . . My hostile silence made an impression on the older students, though, since they had a high level of trust in me and knew how seriously I regarded the political developments.” Accordingly, those choristers began to confide in him “doubts and misgivings” occasioned by “instances of violence and Jewish persecution they had observed as well as the Roehm episode. . . . From this point forward I believed it was right for me not to hold back my own views. As a result, the thoughtful members of the Thomanerchor judged the party and its leaders very critically in the years before the war, and at the war’s outbreak in autumn 1939, the entire choir became dismissive and anti-National Socialist.” Straube maintained further that the Saxon Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann had turned against the choir on account of its overtly anti-NS stance, with a “vehement invective that culminated in the words, ‘I will completely smoke out this ‘Catholic’ nest!’”29 The controlling factor in this narrative is the robust loyalty directed toward a cantor acting in loco parentis to the choirboys, a credible point. From the beginning Straube had been purposeful in cultivating camaraderie and trust as necessary qualities for music-making in a residential choir school. Likewise realistic is the cantor’s acknowledgment that the older boys were “moved” by political developments through the years of the republic, and that opinion was split on the advent of Nazi power, at least initially. 28 “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” BAL Nachlass Straube 80. In 1992, in the wake of Hartmann’s intervention, the essay appeared to a wide public as “Karl Straubes Rehabilitationsgesuch (1945).” 29 “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” 158.
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One striking detail concerns his “hostile silence,” which implies that he kept to himself his decision to lock arms with the party on May 1. This may mirror his seeming hesitancy in 1932 to step into the public eye as a Hindenburg ally, and it is supported by Ramin’s report to Raasted, which framed Straube’s entrance as gossip floated around a house party (“As I have heard . . . he is supposed to have registered . . .”). Only after “the Roehm episode”—the arrest and murder at Hitler’s behest of the SA commander Ernst Röhm in summer 1934—did he become vocal. By Straube’s admission, that strategy was motivated largely by a hesitancy to politicize the arts in an educational environment, an attitude affirmed by some in his inner circle. In 1930 his former student Matthaei had written him that “we would not want to associate art with politics,” along lines Straube presumably would have approved. “Alas, without wanting it, we are far too defined by contemporary forms of government in our work, in our views.”30 And Hausegger, whose nationalist-Wagnerian leanings had led him to fraternize with Hitler’s regime, nevertheless would turn to Straube in 1936 to grouse about Nazi meddling in Munich’s overcrowded music scene. “The National Socialists want pride of place, but they achieve exactly the opposite, since they aren’t clouded by expertise, and since far too many personal cross-frictions and dilettante ambitions are tolerated. You will have similar experiences to mine.”31 By 1936 Straube already had, namely across town at the Conservatory. Well ahead of the Machtergreifung, student loyalists had agitated to form a chapter of the NS German Student Union. During winter term 1931/32 they approached the administration for official recognition. The request was denied on grounds that “organizations of a political nature as well as the wearing of insignia and the posting of placards etc. are forbidden inside the building.”32 That position, buttressed with the sentence “I am of the firm opinion that it is not permissible to import politics into an artistic institution,” was articulated to a representative of the City Council by the Conservatory’s acting and soon-to-be new director Walther Davisson. He had taken on the provisional directorship in 1931 with the express wish that Straube partner with him as unofficial co-administrator, an arrangement that would continue once Davisson assumed the permanent position in October 30 Letter, June 7, 1930, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube. 31 Postcard, January 12, 1936, BStBM. 32 Letter from a Conservatory official, presumably the director, to the City Council concerning “a petition of National Socialist students,” February 29, 1932, cited with a detailed account in Goltz, Musikstudium, 117–25.
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1932.33 There can be little doubt that his stance reflected Straube’s own. The policy was not aimed narrowly at right-wing groups, either. When, for example in June 1932 the leftist Union of Socialist Spiritual Workers advanced a decidedly more modest request to hang one of its placards at the Conservatory, Davisson registered with the Board of Directors the same opinion that he had had concerning the NS students, in nearly the same wording.34 But that August the Nazi student organizer Werner Hauswald, enrolled in Straube’s CMI since 1930, revived the petition of the previous winter with the state Interior Ministry in Dresden. The ensuing negotiations, which now involved not only official recognition for the NS Student Union but also authorization to hold concerts on school premises, dragged on into 1933, during which time Hitler seized power. In the end Davisson acquiesced, albeit reluctantly and on condition that overtly political displays be disallowed. Emboldened, the Nazi students approached Straube and Davisson in March 1933 to request their signatures on a political declaration. “It seems to the gentlemen not unobjectionable to sign the declaration,” reported the City Councilor for Municipal Law to the mayor, “and they request instruction from Herr Oberbürgermeister as to whether they should consent.” Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, an ultra-conservative Prussian monarchist who had succeeded Rothe as mayor in May 1930, replied unequivocally “that a signature from the leader of an institution would be out of the question, and that I was surprised that a query with me would be necessary in the first place.”35 For Straube, an aversion to putting his cards on the table carried over into social situations as well. In summer 1933, as the new regime in Berlin gathered steam, he sat at dinner with a Dr. Kornmann and his wife while on a gout cure in Switzerland. In relating the experience to Hertha, he revealed that the couple’s two daughters, at the time resident in Germany, were “National Socialists from head to toe. The result was that the evening’s conversation took on a thoroughly political character.” The letter is cut away at that point, suggesting a censor. What survives picks up on the back of the same page. “Naturally, in such debates my English blood and its [in English] ‘matter-of-fact’ essence work to my advantage. I view politics 33 Letter from Goerdeler to Straube, February 16, 1932, HMTLA Kuratorium Schriftwechsel 1929–1933. 34 Letter, June 21, 1932, ibid. 35 Memorandum from Stadtrat Hoyer to Goerdeler, undated; and reply, March 3, 1933, ibid.
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as politics, matters of state which one must regard as soberly as possible. This is difficult for the Germans, but in their most eminent statesmen—the great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm I, Frederick the Great, and Bismarck—they have the great models as to how one can pursue politics with a cool head.” He believed those leaders “ultimately . . . intended to serve German culture and the assertion of German spirituality.”36 This account, or what is left of it after the censorship of the scissors, is valuable in that it reveals more directly than other sources Straube’s propensity to engage his supposedly dispassionate “English blood” when convenient. Here, an open appeal to his English side gave permission to imagine himself assessing the political state of play as if from the outside—“the Germans” and “their most eminent statesmen” appear in third person—and with the objectivity of the historical figures in his pantheon. In Straube’s thinking, Bismarck and his spiritual compatriots conceived their geopolitics in the name of the nation’s cultural treasure, and with the detached calculation of a chess master. Perhaps he viewed his party entrance some two months earlier in the same way. After all, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that the Thomaskantor would ally with the Nazis that May, and there is little evidence that his feet were being held to the fire in that regard.37 Others in his circle—Ramin, Hausegger, Furtwängler, Goerdeler—never joined the party, despite various unsavory Faustian bargains with the regime’s cultural machinery that went markedly beyond any documented dealings with Parteigenosse Straube. At his rehabilitation Straube claimed to have confronted the clear and present danger that he would be replaced in the cantorate by a loyalist who would transform the Thomaner “into one of the usual secular choirs. My will was to prevent such a destruction of the Bach inheritance. Given the hostile attitude of the National Socialists to me, the only path open to me was to join the party. And if I were again to stand in the same difficult position, I would have to make the same choice.”38 The duty required of cultural actors played the leading role in that rationale, and he was careful to achieve 36 Letter, July 28, 1933, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 37 But see the cryptic and striking of Ernst Eichelbaum: “The matter of that party entrance, damned with such vehemence by [Straube], agitated and oppressed him for years. Hence when the ninety-year-old Frau Hertha Straube moved to Hamburg [in 1966], I did not dare mention the name of the man that she held and still holds responsible for the step taken in 1933.” Letter to Hans-Olaf Hudemann, May 31, 1968, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 6, 18. The identity of the man in the remark remains a mystery. 38 “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” 157.
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a direct link between it and the most striking claim in the entire account, namely that he would act identically if faced with the same circumstance. Drawing the point into even sharper focus, Straube wrote further that his own fate was in principle “not threatened,” that “at any time” he could have emigrated to Switzerland on the invitation of Adolf Busch and Rudolf Serkin, and that he could have continued with them to the United States, where he was already widely known. The plan was risk-free, because, “since I master English as my mother tongue, I would have been called to a university as professor of music.”39 The reference to Busch and Serkin was hardly arbitrary. The former, a longtime close friend and vocal opponent of Hitler well before 1933, had vacated Germany for Basel in the late 1920s. The latter, Busch’s Jewish son-in-law, had joined him in Switzerland in 1933. Straube had concertized with Busch in Basel in 1931, and both Busch and Serkin had appeared at Straube’s Leipzig Bach festivals. The open invitation to the Thomaskantor to evacuate the fatherland apparently led to a falling out. Anne MacNaghten, the daughter of Straube’s London hosts in 1926, recalled later that “when Busch tried to persuade him to leave Germany because of the Nazi regime, poor Straube could not bring himself to leave his home and his Thomaskirche, and Busch could not forgive him.”40 The mature Straube’s knack for suave diplomacy, for the crafting of just the right turn of phrase directed at just the right audience to achieve a desired end, surely played a role in his decision to stay put. He may well have concluded, based on past experience with officialdom, that he could dance with the regime as a nominal insider to get what he wanted until Hitler’s grip on power eroded. That position would have allowed him to let his guard down with outsiders, as he appears to have done when the American Emerson Richards visited Leipzig in autumn 1933, sometime after Straube had returned from his Swiss cure. The arrival of Richards, a Republican New Jersey state senator and organ builder, naturally would have encouraged conversations about the political climate: an essay he produced in fact brims with observations about Germany’s politics and its organ culture. Richards had met the famous cantor on a previous visit in 1931. “Straube had failed physically very much since I saw him two years before and while we were in Leipzig he was compelled to give up all his pupils,” he reported. “Failing health, and worry over the political situation with which he was not in sympathy, had changed Professor Straube not a little. He was an exhausted old 39 Ibid. 40 Letter to Tully Potter, October 25, 1985, cited in Potter, Adolf Busch, 376.
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man, struggling with the exacting duties of his office.”41 That was but a harbinger of the catastrophe to come. If the cantor insisted on playing politics with an authoritarian government, his “exacting duties” would grow ever more arduous, later intolerable. This relatively granular portrait of Straube’s political proclivities, considered together with his larger habits of mind, suggests his essential motives. The evidence shows an avid reader of history long committed to the nation’s mission as a culture state, one who worked pragmatically within the party system to support that mission optimally, and one who, like many in the liberally disposed educated middle classes, neither wished for nor took seriously the ascendency of rightist extremism. Once the Hitler government did emerge, he engaged his usual political pragmatism to shield a cultural institution under his charge. Whereas it is perfectly possible to take issue both with the premises and the ethics of this strategy, it does not make of Straube the nefarious Nazi sympathizer some have proposed, nor does it make of him the hero that has long dominated Straube hagiography. The rehabilitative self-portrait meticulously sketched by the septuagenarian former cantor in 1945 presents its protagonist as one who recognized the dangers of Nazi extremism from the beginning, who assumed a position of maximum distance and stood beyond all “susceptibility” to the regime’s ideology, to return to Bollenbeck’s term. But a more uncomfortable, conflicted portrait comes closer to the truth. With regard to the Jewish people and Judaism, he labored under deep-seated stereotypes. In his essay of 1945, Straube justifiably claimed the friendships of Leo Schwarz, Edith Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Henri Hinrichsen, Günther Raphael, and others. Particularly with Hinrichsen he had enjoyed a long relationship informed by genuine mutual admiration and respect. He esteemed the musicianship of Walter, Raphael, Mendelssohn, Wellesz, Serkin, and many besides. His collaboration in and regard for the social initiatives of Barnet Licht are clear. He did not hesitate to lavish praise on Jewish authors whose writings he found engaging. He had not been and would never be the rabid anti-Semite who stoked the ovens of Auschwitz. Yet it must be observed that Karl Straube—admirer of Henry Hechler, his maternal cousin and right-hand man to Herzl in the Zionist cause—was quite capable of indulging the cliché of the itinerate Jew, the prisoner to materialist urges irreconcilable with the German Geist. At times, those biases encouraged insensitivities toward Jews caught at the uneasy juncture of 41 Richards, “Leipzig–Straube–Bach,” 13–14.
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cultural assimilation and the practice of religion. Hermann Berlinski, whose Conservatory studies began in 1927, recalled having intersected Straube during a practice session the latter unwittingly interrupted. As Berlinski ran through the Goldberg Variations on the piano, Straube, about to use the room for teaching, “waited respectfully.” Berlinski recalled the ensuing exchange. “When I finished he said to me, ‘You are wasting your time with the piano. You should play the organ!’ I countered that I would like to study organ but didn’t know where I could. In Leipzig organ is taught only at the Church Music Institute, and that path isn’t open to me as a Jew. Straube replied, ‘Get baptized!’ And I, ‘One gets baptized for religious reasons, not on account of organ playing!’ This was so to speak the first organ lesson I never had.”42 It likely was neither the first nor the last time that Straube’s entrenched cultural prejudices would get in the way of signing on a gifted student. The picture sharpens when nativism and socio-economics were at stake. Writing to his brother in 1938, Straube was quick to lump together “the Anglo-Saxons and the Jews” as the economic forces against which Germany was impotent.43 Once the war commenced in 1939, that reductive sentiment was magnified. “The paradox of the whole situation,” Straube mused to Johannes Haller, “lies in the fact that the opponent of Hitlerism—the propertied upper classes in England and America, furthermore Judaism—in fact represents only material interests and confronts the problem of the masses unsympathetically, with hostility.”44 By 1942 he again would meditate to Haller on “the problem of Judaism” for the distribution of world finance and its effect on what by then had become a war on two fronts. “The Jews can do nothing but hate us,” he fulminated, positing the unbridgeable chasm that would always define Jewish otherness. “It lies in their mentality, in the notion of justice. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth is as alive now as ever.”45 It is not difficult to imagine how attitudes like these, operatinging without corrective under generations of theological and cultural stereotyping, could escalate into open persecution and “final solution” policy. The self-assured Thomaskantor was capable of directing such sentiments outward, too, well beyond his inner circle. One telling instance arose in the wake of the Machtergreifung, couched in a longstanding debate 42 43 44 45
Hermann Berlinski, “Erinnerungen,” in Schinköth, Jüdische Musiker, 278. Letter, June 12, 1938, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 10/7–8. Letter, August 17, 1940, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 311. Letter, January 24, 1942, ibid., 334. Straube alluded to the Torah’s law of retaliation, as in Exodus 21.
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between conservative and progressive forces in organ building and liturgical theory. Conservative advocates for the industrialized “orchestral” organ allied themselves with right-wing political elements to condemn the historicist Orgelbewegung as anti-German, cosmopolitan, and expressive of that most unfocused of contemporary rightist scare-catchwords, “cultural-Bolshevism.”46 That the battle plan did not shrink from ad hominem attacks is shown most clearly by a jaundiced brochure appearing in April 1933 titled “Church Music in the Third Reich.” Its author was Hans-Georg Görner, Nazi organist of the Berlin Marienkirche. Görner painted the Orgelbewegung as a degenerate movement inimical to the German spirit, tainted by the perverted (internationalist-Jewish, Bolshevist, morally bankrupt) artistic sense of Hans Henny Jahnn. The Deutsche Christen, the Lutheran faction committed to a National Socialist co-opting of the church, threw its weight behind Görner, who himself served as the head of the organization’s national church music division. The conservatives were riding the rising tide of extremist politics to the advantage of its message. The answer to Görner’s invective came in the form of a “Declaration” of Orgelbewegung principles drafted by the movement’s leading voices at a meeting in Berlin that May.47 It spoke of the particularly “serious responsibility” of church music renewal to “the whole Volk,” and of liturgical propriety removed from concert-hall virtuosity. But not unlike Görner’s pamphlet, the “Declaration” seized on tropes of the radical right, valorizing phrases like the gemeinschaftsgebundene Kraft (“power bound up in the community”) and volkhafte Grundlage (“Volk-ish basis”) of church music. Its third clause expressly condemned “non-indigenous cosmopolitan art” as a source for Protestant church music and rejected the “distortion” of German organ building through “unnatural approximation to foreign products and artistic viewpoints.” Spearheaded by the erstwhile Straube pupil Wolfgang Auler, the statement carried the endorsement of a parade of leading lights friendly to reform (Jahnn conspicuously absent), with Straube’s name lifted out prominently as the first and most important signatory. Immediately upon publication, Straube complained to one co-signatory that the placement of his name was a “clumsy act” that made it seem as if he were the author.48 Clumsy or 46 Summereder, Aufbruch, 128–32; Kaufmann, Orgel und Nationalsozialismus, 58–65. 47 “Erklärung zu dem Flugblatt ‘Kirchenmusik im dritten Reich.’” 48 Letter to Bobo Erhardt, May 25, 1933, cited in Kaufmann, Orgel und Nationalsozialismus, 65 n. 90.
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not, that way of presenting things was all the more remarkable in that he does not seem to have been in attendance in Berlin, as is implied by an open letter to him that appeared on May 21, three days after the conference, authored by the participants and citing his inspiration for their platform. Echoing the formal “Declaration,” that letter betrayed a nationalist-protectionist edge, honoring the cantor as “fellow combatant” and senior statesman “in a movement that has tasked itself with the support of ancient German cultural heritage as well as healthy contemporary organ music of German character.” The Orgelbewegung is “deeply indebted to your life’s work,” Straube could read, as those attending the meeting gave “express allegiance to the goal of resurrecting a new religious and liturgical feeling in the Volk” in his name.49 Among the many voices that reacted to the appearance of the “Declaration” was Paul Hirsch, the Jewish industrialist and music bibliophile whose Frankfurt home housed the most extensive private music library in Europe. In June Hirsch had written Straube, undoubtedly citing the document’s verbiage as appearing to make common cause with the regime’s cultural program. Straube in turn reported the exchange to his wife. Hirsch had “read anti-Semitic sentiment from the ‘Declaration’ Ramin and I signed. I admittedly was able to reassure him on this count, but on the other hand I wrote him in the kindest tone (!) that the political side of the Jewish question was a very difficult one, and that I could not always consider Jewish influence on Germany as favorable.”50 This is hardly a ringing endorsement of a leading figure who later would claim straightforward fealty to the Jews when it counted most. That it was directed toward one of the leading Jewish figures in Frankfurt’s musical life underscores all the more rashly the fault lines in the cantor’s character, plastered over in 1945. Over time Straube was pulled in different directions as to the legitimacy of Hitler’s government. Fierce nationalist urges had led him to cast Germany as victim to the 1919 peace terms (a pan-German view during the republican era), and hence to wield the Thomanerchor as a diplomatic tool. Now, those same urges predisposed him to endorse Blut-und-Boden irredentism and to cheer the chancellor’s backbone in standing up to neighbor nations that pursued anti-German interests. One pertinent example came in the aftermath of the assassination of the Austrian anti-Nazi chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss on July 25, 1934, the result of a struggle among factions working for or 49 “Ehrung Karl Straubes. Sein Werk und der Geist der neuen Zeit,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, May 21, 1933; StAL Straube-Akten 1, 248. 50 Postcard, June 25, 1933, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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against the annexation of Austria. Because an Austro-German union was forbidden by the peace accords, and because the major powers were suspicious of Hitler’s motives, the surrounding nations had allied with the authoritarian Dollfuss government to oppose the move. The Austrian Civil War that February and the murder of Dollfuss by Nazi loyalists were the latest violent stages in a saga that would culminate in the 1938 Anschluss. Straube candidly analyzed the situation in a letter to his wife six days after the assassination. It was Italy and France that covertly aimed at an Austrian alliance, he posited, therefore motivating them to thwart “rapprochement” with Germany. But “all the judgments and opinions of Jews and non-Aryans are always antagonistic toward Germany in political matters and therefore to be rejected by us. . . . We Germans must accustom ourselves to the fact that we always will be taken to task, and now all the more since we have a chancellor of caliber, a strong-willed political personality who therefore must be brought down. Before 1866 and 1870 Bismarck was taken to task in exactly the same way. This is the destiny of anyone who possesses magnitude and will.”51 That view went as far as any committed National Socialist in its support for the “chancellor of caliber,” comparing him to the hero Bismarck in the cantor’s typical way of dispensing such praise. Characterization of the German Geist as righteous, hence isolated and victimized, was nothing new for Straube: circumstances had coaxed similar theories from him during the Great War and earlier. Then as now, in matters of politics as in art, genuine Germans had to resign themselves to the persecution inevitably heaped upon those of “magnitude and will.” And to prosecute the question even more exactly, one need only recall that in his rehabilitation narrative, Straube would advance “the Roehm episode” of June 30, 1934, one month before his hypernationalist assessment of the Dollfuss incident, as one of the straws that broke the camel’s back of his “hostile silence” at the Thomasschule. The puzzle pieces did not fit together as neatly as the retired cantor would profess in 1945. The dissonances in Straube’s personality are nowhere more biting than in his cultural and political views from the fateful years around 1933. The same person who could disapprove of Hitler to an American state senator in 1933 could elevate him as a “chancellor of caliber” in 1934. The same person who did not hesitate to keep open company with Jews he respected could foist on one of them his misgivings about “Jewish influence.” And the same person who, once the republic found itself in freefall, manifestly worked for 51 Letter, July 31, 1934, ibid.
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the defeat of the Nazis “to save the fatherland” could sign on with the party in 1933. As the decade progressed, Straube’s attitudes evolved too. A drift toward ambivalence, toward the consideration of issues as if from the outside, applying the “cool head” of the Englishman he liked to think he was, did not lead him to principled allegiance to one or another view, no matter how much the 1945 “Rehabilitationsgesuch” wants to have it that way. The evidence is too conflicted, the cultural stakes too high, the political atmosphere too charged, the celebrated Thomaskantor all too human.
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Chapter Twenty-Four
Praeceptor Germaniae
As Germany’s democratic experiment crumpled early in 1933, Straube’s admirers were occupied with more than the political winds, however ominous. Celebrations were in order. The previous summer he had been distinguished as an honorary member of the Helsinki Conservatory.1 Now at Epiphany 1933, he would mark his sixtieth birthday and thirtieth anniversary in Leipzig. In order that these celebrations were not overshadowed by those of 1928, Team Straube banded together once again to fête the cantor, this time with an appeal to Hindenburg to bestow the prestigious Goethe Medal for Art and Science. The award was new in 1932, having been established under the president’s protectorate to mark the centenary of its namesake’s death, despite the federal constitution’s prohibition on state-sponsored decorations.2 By 1933 Hindenburg had given out the medal many times: the honorees had included then-Chancellor Brüning and the Leipzig Mayor Goerdeler, as well as literary luminaries like Hauptmann and Mann and musicians like Furtwängler. As with Straube’s doctorate, his Goethe Medal appears to have been an eleventh-hour idea, this time set in motion by the composer-theorist Josef Achtélik and the Leipzig chapter of the Reichsverband deutscher Tonkünstler und Musiklehrer. The proposals ran through appropriate channels at City Hall beginning on December 23. A Christmas Day letter to the mayor requested the nomination.3 Goerdeler dispatched the official letter to the Interior Ministry on December 27, arguing that the award would be particularly appropriate in the Thomaskantor’s case, “since Goethe’s significance for music has not been sufficiently recognized 1
Minutes of the Board of Directors, July 5, 1932, HMTLA Kuratorium des Landeskonservatoriums. Sitzungsprotokolle 1924–1933. 2 Heyck, Goethe, 1. 3 Letters to Goerdeler, December 23 and 25, 1932, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 225, 227.
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in the Goethe year.”4 And indeed, by the time Straube became the medal’s 156th recipient, it had distinguished musicians in only four other instances.5 Hindenburg conferred the medal on January 3, so that Goerdeler could include the news in his congratulatory letter to Straube on the eve of his birthday. Perhaps anticipating the hubbub that would surround the milestone year, the Straubes had withdrawn to Dresden for a brief holiday. Even so, they would have been unable to escape the national press, which lit up with tributes marking birthday, anniversary, and medal alike. As in 1928, his accomplishments were run through, his broad erudition lauded, his national significance accentuated. Some writers embarked on flights of fancy approaching religious veneration. One essay, appearing in a Protestant parish newssheet, pointed out that “just as the ‘twelve days’ [of Christmas] come to an end, Karl Straube was gifted to the German people and the Lutheran church . . . a Cantor Germaniae, a precentor for all Germany and far beyond!” The author effused that he “breathes in Bach’s proximity and co-exists in Bach’s sphere. Karl Straube is priest and preacher.” Finally, “Bach—Straube: both Lutheran mystics!”6 Another brief notice even managed to confer a sort of papal infallibility by claiming laconically that “the height of his artistic personality stands beyond all criticism.”7 Personal tokens of admiration piled up in the mail. Mitja Nikisch, pianist-composer son of the late conductor, asked rhetorically, “Could you imagine Leipzig’s musical life without your wonderful personality? You must, simply must work on indefinitely.”8 The Breitkopf administration wrote him directly in Dresden to announce the engraving of one of its rare Bärenplaketten. For his well-endowed library, he likewise would receive Philipp Spitta’s magisterial edition of the works of Schütz.9 Hinrichsen sent 500 marks, citing Straube’s “immortal accomplishments” for the city and his work with the publisher “over an entire generation.”10 And the Association 4 Letter to the Berlin Ministry of the Interior, December 27, 1932, ibid., 229. 5 Heyck, Goethe, 28–35. 6 Fritz Bannier, “Ein Epiphiniaskind. Thomaskantor Professor D. Dr. Karl Straube zum 60. Geburtstage,” Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt für Everswalde 8/7 (January 8, 1933): 2, 3. 7 Deutsche Tonkünstler-Zeitung 31/1 (January 5, 1933): 12. 8 Postcard, January 5, 1933, ZbZ NL 117A Nachl. Straube. Emphasis original. 9 Letter from Hellmuth von Hase and Ludwig Volkmann, January 5, 1933, SäStAL Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel Nr. 3057. 10 Letter, January 4, 1933, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2152.
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of Church Choirs in Saxony announced 100-mark scholarships in his honor for two CMI students.11 Given the sheer number of encomiastic lines that poured forth, the signs of the times inevitably lodged between them. The pro-Nazi editor of the Zeitschrift für Musik, Gustav Bosse, dispatched a letter that praised Straube’s part in “the recuperation [Gesundung] of our people” and his work “for the well-being of our German music.”12 Of the same feather was a perceptive piece appearing in the Dresden press by the anti-Semitic musicologist Hans Schnoor, who had admired Straube since his student days in Leipzig. “He does not belong to one city. The threads of his conscientious diplomacy extend in all directions,” Schnoor asserted, putting his finger squarely on the essence of the cantor’s sweeping influence. “As an intellectual he is a German figure, the incarnation of the humane and the good. . . . He sits at the switchboard of a ramified system, a ruler in secret—but luckily one of which the nation, regardless of party differences, can be proud. . . . It is good fortune for our leaderless time [unsere führerarme Zeit] that such a teacher of the nation still works at full force for the community.”13 A decade later, once the führerarme Zeit had been viciously overcome, Schnoor would sharpen these sentiments in an article for the same paper, branding Straube “one of the earliest champions of the ideals which have become common over the last ten years, since the renewal of German politics.”14 Straube could glean much the same perspective from his Conservatory colleague, the pianist Carl Adolf Martienssen, who offered an arresting assessment of the CMI as a Bauhütte (“builder’s hut”) entirely dependent on Straube’s leadership for its character. For Martienssen, the Institute was no mere training ground for church organists, but rather “of invaluable significance for the inner reemergence of the German person.”15 Translated into the cultural policy of the ascendant regime, it is not hard to imagine what he meant.
11 Haufe, “‘Praeceptor ecclesiae cantantis,’” 4. 12 Letter, January 5, 1933, BAL Nachlass Straube, 61. 13 Schnoor, “Karl Straube 60 Jahre,” 2. Emphases original. See also his Musik der germanischen Völker, 108. 14 Schnoor, “Ein Leben für Bach,” 2. 15 Letter, January 6, 1933, BStBM Straubeana. The following year he would observe that the Institute functioned “like clockwork, in the true spirit of National Socialism.” Letter to Gustav Havemann, April 27, 1934, cited in Goltz, Musikstudium, 207.
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Even those who largely would resist the Nazi tide could not help but conceive their hero worship in nationalist terms, sometimes starkly so. Friedrich Högner, former pupil and since 1929 a colleague at the Conservatory, waded into the fascist weeds when he proposed that the great man’s essence lay in “the specifically Germanic perspective according to which music is considered not only a fine ornament of human existence, and never merely a witty play, but rather a tremendous life-giving power that has to do with the whole person, as molder of mind and soul.” Romantic frivolity and Anglophone materialism had no place here. Straube’s ultranationalist mission was to be regarded as nothing short of “work on the soul of the German people.”16 The critic-composer Herman Roth spoke in print of a “musical Praeceptor Germaniae,” a title usually reserved for national icons like Melanchthon and Christian Gellert.17 All this was a great deal to ascribe to a musician of half English blood. Goerdeler and Davisson presented the Goethe Medal and Hindenburg’s accompanying letter on January 11.18 Not to be outdone, the Leipzigers themselves had banded together to make a gift of the Bachgesellschaft complete edition, purchased jointly with substantial contributions from the Gewandhaus administration, the Choral Union, the Conservatory, the Middle German Radio, Kippenberg, Ramin, and the Leipzig academic publisher Alfred Giesecke.19 On January 17 Straube crafted his thanks to the mayor, poised thoughts permeated with the historical consciousness and self-effacing sense of duty that was long since his brand. The honor spoke to a cause that was “not mine, but an affair of the German people.” He fell into a well-worn talking point that his devotees, Nazi or not, would have applauded. Bach, the “unassuming cantor, imbued with and borne by a deep religiosity,” had lent the nation “renewed courage and fortitude” in the face of injustices perpetrated against it following the Great War. It had been the B-minor Mass, “an ultimate revelation of the German spirit, that became for those who heard it an affirmation to our people that again kindled exhilaration, the courage to live, and hope for the future.”20 This was the catechism 16 Högner, “An Karl Straube,” 34. Emphases original. 17 “An Karl Straube. Zu seinem sechzigsten Geburtstag am 6. Januar,” Hamburger Nachrichten, January 5, 1933, 2. 18 Mayor’s memorandum, January 11, 1933, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 244. 19 Letter from Anton Kippenberg to Walther Davisson, January 2, 1933, ibid., 230. 20 Letter, January 17, 1933, ibid., 246–47.
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of an evangelist, a praeceptor charged with nothing less than lifting a nation from the abyss of despair into the rarified air of its essence. This was not all. The literary club of which Straube was a member, the Leipziger Bibliophilen-Abend, mounted a gala in his honor on February 27, as fate would have it the evening of the Reichstag fire. Oddly, Beyerlein’s keynote address centered on the cantorate of Johann Adam Hiller, the Singspiel composer and Bach’s third successor at St. Thomas. He drew “lighthearted parallels” between Hiller and the present cantor, concluding that both “had stood in service to a genuine German feeling for art.”21 Then came the performance of a “Recitative and Duet” for tenor and baritone “from the pen of Johann Sebastian Bach with the collaboration of Günther Raphael.”22 The music, saturated with borrowings from Bach, set text by Kippenberg and Levin Schücking, the Shakespeare scholar and chair of English at the University. With Raphael at the piano, all were treated to a performance by the baritone Oscar Lassner and the tenor Hans Lissmann, both lead singers at the Leipzig Opera and colleagues from the Conservatory’s voice department. By the end of the year Raphael and Lassner would be turned out on the street on account of their Jewish blood. The libretto, which began “Es hört der fernste Afrikanenmohr am Sonntag staunend den Thomanerchor” (“The most remote African Moor listens on Sunday, astonished, to the St. Thomas Choir”), highlighted in a few artful if racially stereotyped words the “universal congregation” supposedly reached by the radio cantatas. The aria, a series of adroit spoonerisms, balanced this with lines that lauded the evening’s hero. Straube would have recognized the final couplet, which had been presented to him the previous year during Kippenberg’s lecture to the Leipzig Rotary on the history of the spoonerism: “Ungehört von keinem Ohre jubelt laut in einem Chore: Wer nach Lorbeerlaube strebt, sehe zu, wie Straube lebt!” (“Unheard by any ear, rejoice loudly in a single choir: whoever aims for the laurel bower, behold how Straube lives!”).23 As the Reichstag burned, the work was given a repeat performance and followed by a convivial gathering.
21 a., “Die Leipziger Bibliophilen feiern Karl Straube,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, February 28, 1933, newspaper cutting BAL Nachlass Straube, 108. 22 Program booklet “Musikalisches Opfer beim Leipziger Bibliophilen-Abend am 27. Februar 1933 für Karl Straube,” BAL Sig. MUS Faks. Z S91. 23 Marx, Der Rotary Club Leipzig, 119–23.
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If all this was supposed to convince the Thomaskantor of his indispensability to a city that adored him, it failed. Developments over 1933 and 1934 would reveal that his old compulsion to find a way out of the Bachstadt was alive and well. A first remote prospect arose in summer 1933, as Hausegger prepared to step down as president of the Munich Academy. Emanuel Gatscher, a former pupil and now Munich faculty member, alerted Straube that he was being “very frequently named” as a viable successor.24 A drawn-out flirtation with the Bavarian capital had played out not long ago, as Hausegger had weighed leadership of the Academy in partnership with Straube. Now, thirteen years later, a second act seemed imminent. Straube considered and ultimately rejected the idea of feeling out Hausegger himself about the possibility, which in any case turned out to be a canard. Traveling home from his Swiss cure that summer, he wrote Hertha that, should an offer materialize, “I would probably go. It would be a new challenge that today I could solve well.”25 Now aged sixty and approaching retirement, he still pined for a way out of the narrow confines of church music, convinced that he could bring decades of accumulated experience to a fresh project elsewhere. Any move in 1933 presumably would have meant abandoning the cantata broadcasts in medias res, a radical rejection of a high-profile initiative, albeit one that now would sputter under increased pressure from the regime. Still, Schnoor had opined earlier that year that “he does not belong to one city,” and indeed the cantor’s loyalty to Leipzig would always be an unstable affair. More to the point, an “I-would-probably-go” attitude in August 1933 is difficult to square with Straube’s later claim that he had sacrificed himself to the Nazi party some three months earlier to “save” the Thomaner from a successor who would prove more useful as a political sycophant. Why, then, would he countenance a move from a city in which his influence was now so entrenched, a city that had just gone to great lengths to remind him again of his accomplishments there? Even if faced with the reality of a Munich appointment, ambivalence would have gotten the best of him as it had in past episodes. There is something to be said for the notion that he never really wanted to be pried from his Leipzig “switchboard” in the first place. Yet an array of stressors and irritants was at play around this time, below the surface bonhomie of the celebrations, the success of the radio project, and the quotidian carrying out of duties. One of them was the worsening political climate and the calculations (whatever they really were) that 24 Letter to Hertha Straube, August 13, 1933, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 25 Letter, August 18, 1933, ibid.
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led to his decision to enter the Nazi party that May. The energy required to achieve his goals while navigating the pressures of an increasingly authoritarian environment would exact a heavy toll in years to come, even for a seasoned, silver-tongued operator like Straube. An episode in late summer 1933, just as he was considering the Munich question, demonstrated his willingness to dance with the highest levels of a repressive administration if he felt the threat justified it. Richard Liesche, a former pupil then serving at Bremen Cathedral, appears to have alerted Straube to a rumor that the government intended to relocate the Bach radio broadcasts to Bremen. The speculation was enough to swing the cantor into emergency mode, and accordingly he turned straightaway to the top of the food chain in an effort to save the project for Leipzig. On September 9 he drafted a letter to the new Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. Then he requested of a third party—Arno Eichhorn, a Leipzig acquaintance with direct contacts to Goebbels—that it be sent under cover of an elaborate recommendation. In his letter Straube rehearsed the predictable thesis concerning the cantatas’ long history with the city. Not content to argue merely on this basis, he assured Goebbels that the choir “guarantees a level and form of achievement that corresponds to the rigorous demands of our Führer, as he again articulated them especially clearly and purposefully at the Nürnberg Party Rally.”26 The rumor itself came to nothing, given the succinct response of the underling charged with answering the cantor’s concern.27 Given Straube’s longstanding association with bureaucrats, it should not surprise that he would go to the top to get what he wanted. But of course no previous appeal had required anything like genuflection to “the rigorous demands of our Führer,” either. It was a compromised and compromising position entered into of his own initiative, one that inevitably would reprise itself. One would give much to know whether or not—or to what extent—the Thomaskantor really believed in 1933 that his musical aims aligned with the new regime’s political ones, or whether the remark amounted to mere bootlicking.28
26 Letter, September 9, 1933, facsimile in Hartmann, Karl Straube und seine Schule, 121–23. Emphasis original. The Nürnberg Rally (Parteitag des Sieges) had concluded on September 3. 27 Memorandum from Heinz Ihlert to Straube, September 18, 1933, facsimile ibid., 123. 28 See further Mutschelknauss, Bach-Interpretationen, 68, 72.
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If Straube was threading the needle to kowtow to party ideology, he was having to navigate a different sort of politics at the Conservatory, a poisonous brew that had simmered for some time and threatened to boil over just as Hitler settled into power. An ailing economy, strained budgets, and falling enrollments contributed to a febrile climate. After the student population had peaked at 800 in winter 1930, it would retreat to 669 in summer 1931 and 597 for the 1931 winter term. Projections for the coming years went as low as 300.29 The establishment in 1932 of a competing music school in Leipzig, the Musikpädagogium, only added to the Conservatory’s woes, as did an aging faculty and an institutional reluctance to adjust finances to economic realities. By 1932 there was talk of downsizing the faculty, a measure ultimately avoided by a 35-percent across-the-board cut in salaries and honoraria put into effect that April. Those teachers who objected to the reductions would be let go.30 Straube, who now functioned as informal assistant to Davisson in the latter’s role as interim director, had more than a casual hand in these decisions, which inevitably gave rise to personal frictions and resentments. Furthermore, the enrollment crisis did not hit the CMI as hard as the school at large, setting up a situation of perceived privilege just when everyone was being asked to share burdens. Since its founding in partnership with the Lutheran Church of Saxony, the Institute had risen rapidly to become the prestigious go-to educational center for Germany’s church musicians, complete with a concert series, a publishing arm, and a celebrated chorale. Nepotistic or not, Straube had used his influence to stock it with faculty from his own orbit: the organists Ramin, Högner, and Hoyer, the conductor Thomas, the composer Raphael, the theorist-historian Grabner, and the librarian-musicologist Wolgast had all worked alongside the Thomaskantor, in one degree or another, to secure the CMI’s robust place within the economy of the larger Conservatory. By February 1932 a suggestion materialized in a Conservatory Board meeting that, since the church music faculty did not have to reckon with falling per-lesson honoraria to the extent their colleagues did, “it would be regarded as a nod to equity if individual teachers at the Conservatory would be engaged for teaching at the Church Music 29 Letter from the Leipzig Conservatory Board of Directors to the Dresden Ministry of the Interior, February 8, 1932, HTMLA Kuratorium Schriftwechsel 1929–1933. 30 Letter from Friedrich Nitzsche to Conservatory teachers and faculty, February 12, 1932, ibid.
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Institute. If this proves impossible, the Church Music Institute’s faculty at least should not be allocated teaching in other units of the Conservatory.”31 Straube objected, yet the idea was kept alive that spring and summer, even as pay cuts went into effect and began to push some teachers to the exits. In July he was still defending his position on grounds that “the structure of the Church Music Institute would suffer” from the policy.32 Only in September was he able to produce evidence that winter enrollments in church music would fall to 89, allowing him to argue further that his unit not be exploited to mollify the burdens of the faculty at large.33 As the economy worsened and an emboldened National Socialism pressed its way onto the scene, troubles piled on. Karg-Elert had withdrawn from the Conservatory in summer 1930, ostensibly owing to conflicts “with faculty and senate.”34 Early in 1933 there arose the charge brought by Oppel against Flinsch for misuse of funds, including inappropriate support of the Straubes’ move to the Grassistraße. Throughout the early 1930s, and parallel to the economic crisis of 1932, Straube involved himself in sustained institutional resistance to Nazi student organizing. Alongside all this, suspicions of backroom networking and favoritism hung in the air when economics and politics caused faculty positions to be abandoned, realigned, or otherwise refilled. Among Straube’s enemies at least, eyebrows were raised when the cantor’s protégé Kurt Thomas took over the Conservatory choir in 1930. Straube further worked to replace Raphael, dismissed in 1934 in accordance with the Nazi civil servant laws, with Gottfried Müller (unsuccessfully); and to replace Thomas, called to the Berlin Hochschule that same year, with Johann Nepomuk David (successfully). By early 1934 Oppel could frame the goings-on as a desperate battle against a Straube kleptocracy. “The fight against Straube goes on, continuing now with the critics,” he told Schenker. “Nonetheless he has his hands in everything.”35 In counterpoint to these issues ran questions of Straube’s deteriorating health. There were ample reminders that he was no longer the invincible young man who could master a herculean workload, rejuvenating himself 31 Letter from the chair of the Conservatory Board to Straube, February 16, 1932, ibid. 32 Minutes of the Conservatory Board, July 5, 1932, ibid. 33 Letter from Straube to the Leipzig City Council, September 22, 1932, ibid. 34 C. F. Peters, internal memorandum, August 14, 1930, cited in Goltz, Musikstudium, 211 n. 1091. 35 Letter, February 15, 1934, cited ibid., 213.
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Figure 24.1. Straube in his study around 1930. The photograph on his desk is probably Elisabet; if so, it is the only known surviving image of her. Reproduced with permission from the Meininger Museen, Sammlung Musikgeschichte/ Max-Reger-Archiv.
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with solitary mountain hikes. In 1927 he had broken a finger, causing him to pull out of a landmark Gewandhaus performance of the Missa solemnis. In early November 1930 he had fallen off a piano bench and cracked several ribs.36 Then, a few months later while preparing Handel’s Samson, he had become so ill that a rehearsal was broken off and Ramin called in as a last-minute replacement.37 By 1933 Emerson Richards had witnessed a worrying deterioration in the cantor’s physical condition, confirmed in the latter’s July 1933 report to the City Council that he had been ordered on a four-week cure for inflammatory arthritis.38 At the outset of the concert season that September and citing health concerns, Straube abruptly stepped down from the Gewandhaus Choral Union, an ensemble he had led in one form or another since 1903. It was the first time he had jettisoned a major local commitment, with Ramin now taking the reins, ultimately opening the door to a power struggle between Ramin and the incoming Kapellmeister Hermann Abendroth.39 As the decade progressed, physical setbacks would become more common, often manifesting as neurasthenia or nervous exhaustion. On August 23, 1935, he had to interrupt a rehearsal owing to “a lengthy bout of dizziness, merely the expression of a very weakened nervous condition,” which incapacitated him well into that September.40 There were unpleasant distractions even in the routine execution of his responsibilities in the churches. One nettlesome incident had arisen with the Nikolaikirche in early July 1932, when that congregation’s senior pastor Theodor Kühn summoned Straube to a church council meeting over the fact that the Thomaner had failed to appear in a scheduled liturgy. Kühn had addressed his summons to the “Cantor of St. Nicholas.” The exchange ballooned into a wider dispute that autumn, when the choir again was absent on Sunday September 4, just at the time a major festival service on September 18 loomed. Kühn turned to Straube, asserting that the latter was, “just like J. S. Bach, simultaneously cantor of the St. Nicholas parish and as such remunerated by the city to be sure, but from ecclesial funds.” The pastor furthermore was “prepared, if you prefer it that way, to go through 36 Letter from Günther Ramin to Niels-Otto Raasted, November 28, 1930, BhEA Nachlass Raasted. 37 Letter from Charlotte Ramin to Niels-Otto Raasted, March 7, 1931, ibid. 38 Letter, July 17, 1933, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 265. 39 Hübner, “Bach-Verein,” 113–14. 40 Letter from Oberstudiendirektor Johannes Pinkert to Goerdeler, August 26, 1935, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 77.
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official channels which, upon your refusal, would be pursued via the supervisory authorities.”41 Having no appetite for threats and now out of patience, Straube beat him to the draw. He immediately referred the entire matter to Councilor Friedrich Stahl of the Schulamt and wrote Kühn to say so. In that communication, which maintained a clinical tone kept just under boiling point, Straube went as far as to cite Bach’s own 1723 contract to demonstrate that his predecessor, too, had served at the pleasure of the City Council rather than any ecclesial body. The arrangement did not accommodate a discrete cantorate for St. Nicholas, nor had it ever done. “But if you, esteemed Oberpfarrer,” he concluded sardonically, “wish to speak with the Cantor of St. Thomas School . . . I stand absolutely at your disposal.”42 The requisite bureaucracy was set in motion, paper trails generated, phone calls had. Both Stahl and Rector Tittel informed Kühn that Straube served as Cantor of St. Thomas, that he answered to the city, that the cantor’s salary issued exclusively from city coffers according to arrangements operative since the seventeenth century, that the traditional participation of the Thomaner at St. Nicholas required “mutual discussion and contact and [was] determined on the principle of good faith.” This went only so far to pacify Kühn, with the result that the question was left open-ended. All these stressors—from the practice of a cultural politics at ever higher stakes, to the enemy camps that seemed to be closing in at the Conservatory, to his worsening physical condition and beyond—contributed inevitably to a darkening of Straube’s psyche over time, expressed most directly in a wish to disentangle himself from local commitments and start fresh elsewhere. He began to withdraw, a tendency long embedded in his personality, but one that now came increasingly to the fore. “In this way I’m different from you,” he confessed to Hertha in 1930, while contemplating a brief getaway in the Spessart Mittelgebirge, “but I incessantly have to be around people and noise. . . . The Spessart is supposed to be completely isolated . . . so that I can find peace and not come upon anyone.”43 By autumn 1932, when the Thomaner toured south Germany, he unexpectedly broke from the group en route from Freiburg to Tübingen, retreating to Stuttgart for a day “in order
41 Letter, September 5, 1932, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 213. 42 Letter, September 6, 1932, ibid. 43 Letter, June 8, 1930, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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finally to be alone and to have quiet. The endless idle talk with every possible person gets me down. Thank God today I’m alone.”44 To no one was Straube’s disengagement more evident than Ramin, with whom he maintained an increasingly strained relationship. “I think it is a sign of aging with him,” Ramin’s wife Charlotte speculated to Raasted in 1931. “He doesn’t need people anymore and has become very egocentric. . . . I think that one must give up trying to come into real contact with him. Günther recently spent an hour with him and noticed that one can do nothing but toot [Straube’s] own horn. As soon as one does something else, he immediately withdraws back into himself. It’s very, very unfortunate.”45 Some of this behavior, even the unflattering self-absorption, might reflect merely the struggle with an overcrowded calendar. Charlotte’s observation came just as Straube shuttled from Munich to Switzerland, the Netherlands, and back. She herself admitted the following year “that he has more to do than he can achieve fundamentally. I now frequently have the feeling that he’s in over his head.”46 But this was not the only impression that surfaced in Ramin’s household during these years. When early in 1933 Raasted complained that, despite prompting, he seemed to have lost contact with Straube, Ramin replied with exasperation that “all of his former friends seem to be buried. The way he gave up contact with you, he has done with me too, and with several others. Why? Heaven only knows!”47 Having recently returned from a much-touted American tour, Ramin went on to lament that he had read in the press the news of Straube’s withdrawal from the Gewandhaus instead of learning it from him personally. He added later that spring that “a hundred other Leipzigers know much more about my trip to America than does Straube. Naturally, I cannot yet tell him a thing about it.”48 And so, as summer 1933 wound down, the celebrated yet deeply unsettled praeceptor Germaniae seemed ready to weigh anchor. “I would probably go,” he had recently theorized about that possible offer from Munich. After thirty years in Leipzig, fully half his lifetime, Straube had convinced himself that more fallow fields lay elsewhere. As it would happen, he would soon have opportunity to act on his urges to abscond, with a genuine prospect appearing that would occupy him for the entirety of 1934 and beyond. 44 45 46 47 48
Letter to Hertha Straube, October 15, 1932, ibid. Letter, March 7, 1931, BhAE Nachlass Raasted. Letter, December 3, 1932, ibid. Letter, February 9, 1933, ibid. Letter, April 15, 1933, ibid.
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What followed would expose the deep fault lines of the messy personal politics in which he had enmeshed himself. Not by accident, the whole matter was bound up with two of Straube’s unrelentingly ambitious protégés. The first was the St. Thomas organist Günther Ramin. The other was the Berlin Musikhochschule director Fritz Stein.
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Chapter Twenty-Five
The Spring of Our Discontent “In both cases appeal to me and to Günther Ramin,” Straube had instructed Raasted in 1922 about how to approach Leipzig publishers with proposals. “But Ramin is the one to name in the first place, since he is ‘enfant gâté’ in Leipzig!”1 It was a rare unguarded remark. Ramin was then approaching his twenty-fourth birthday, having served as organist of the Thomaskirche for about four years. For the most part, the pas de deux between cantor and organist proceeded on a foundation of mutual respect and, at times, authentic camaraderie. This was so even though, as Ramin surely was aware, he had not been Straube’s first choice for the position. Once he was appointed, though, his life had taken off, propelled by the white-hot ambition and work ethic of a multifaceted musical talent. In 1919 he had taken leadership of the Arion Chorus. The following year he assumed the reins of Straube’s organ class during the cantor’s three-month leave, the foot in the door he needed to be appointed as faculty alongside his erstwhile mentor.2 At virtually the same time Ramin became director of the Lehrergesangverein and was elected Gewandhaus organist. And just when Straube registered his enfant gâté comment, Ramin had signed on with Jahnn for a recital series in Hamburg to benefit the Jakobikirche’s Schnitger restoration. He would continue to build on this trajectory. As with his formidable teacher, the city found itself at pains to retain him. In 1924 and 1927 Ramin had used offers from Berlin and Lübeck respectively to leverage more favorable terms in Leipzig. The Lübeck episode had resulted in the expansion of 1 2
Letter, September 2, 1922, BhAE Nachlass Raasted. Minutes of the Conservatory’s Board of Directors, February 13, 1920, HMTLA Conservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig. Sitzungs-Protokolle. 19. Febr. 1918–1. Febr. 1924.
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his activities into orchestral conducting, Ramin having been awarded joint charge with Scherchen of the Leipzig Symphony Orchestra’s season. By 1931 he was in Berlin once a week to lead an organ masterclass on a guest professorship at the Hochschule, initiating a relationship with the capital that would progress in 1935 to his directorship of the Berlin Philharmonic Chorus. An honorary PhD from the University of Leipzig came in 1931, a Conservatory professorship in 1932. Successful recital tours to Leningrad (1932) and North America (1933, 1934) introduced Ramin to audiences Straube never reached. The relationship proved reasonably resilient into the 1930s. When the Ramins’ daughter Gabriele died in December 1930, aged seven, the couple surely was drawn closer in grief to the Straubes, who knew a thing or two about losing a child. Each man admired the other’s work and gladly said so. Still, the two were different sorts of musicians who had come of age in different eras, driven by dissimilar personalities and worldviews. Whereas Straube’s music-making had always been informed by his considered and analytical manner, Ramin tended to embrace the impulsive inspiration of the moment. He had developed into an accomplished improviser. Ramin composed, Straube did not. The older man had long mastered the art of strategic diplomacy, whereas the younger, recalling Reger before him, generally adopted a less filtered, more impassioned style that often betrayed a thin skin. Well after the protégé had graduated to colleague status, Straube readily dispensed unsolicited advice and pointed out perceived stumbles in Ramin’s dealings with others. Given the age difference and power dynamic between them, the elder’s opinions could prompt prolix, defensive letters from the younger if they happened to strike him the wrong way. There were further essential differences. Straube was a bibliophile who read maniacally in history and culture, ever ready to enlighten his interlocutors with sweeping theories about politics domestic and foreign. Ramin preferred to concentrate his energies more exclusively on his ever-widening musical interests. He never joined a political party and rarely spoke of music as a tool of cultural politics. It was characteristic of Straube that, as Ramin played his way across the American Midwest in February 1933, the cantor addressed the effort in terms strikingly more geopolitical than musical. “At issue is nothing other than the diffusion of German superiority in areas of English and French influence,” he intoned to Ramin just days after the Nazi power grab. Even while serving up exclusively German programs in America, Ramin would not have formulated things in just this pungent way, even if he did not dispute Straube’s basic premise, and even if his musical ambitions
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would cause him to adopt a dangerously pragmatic posture toward the regime.3 Yet the politically savvy Thomaskantor was merely taking a page from the choir tours, conceived expressly to redeem the German image on the international stage. “Do your duty to the utmost as a valiant soldier,” he admonished in conclusion.4 To be sure, the political climate was not the only thing that by 1933 had contributed to the besmirching of the German image abroad, at least in organists’ circles. Sigfrid Karg-Elert—a self-admitted non-virtuoso, accordingly appreciated overseas as a composer rather than as an organist—had arrived in North America in January 1932, performing his own music in underprepared renditions that were widely panned in the American press. Ramin appeared exactly a year later. “There are two things that very much impede the [present] tour,” reported Charlotte to Straube from Montreal in late January 1933, once her husband had about half his recitals behind him. “First is the really very strong depression here in America . . . and second is Karg-Elert’s tour of the previous year.” She elaborated. “The people were so disappointed and horrified by his playing that several cities simply did not risk engaging another German organist (this of course in confidence). . . . He has done enormous damage to German organ music.”5 Straube, who viewed Reger’s style as a dead-end model for contemporary composition, had been increasingly disinclined to take Karg’s music seriously, seeking as it did to advance on Reger’s hyperchromatic monumentality. At its worst it was for him schmaltz without substance, a mawkish alchemy of international dialects in place of uncompromising German Geist. It had doubly pained him to see the Americans take Karg-Elert’s slapdash performance in 1932 as the face of German organ playing. But where he spoke of “German superiority” and intrepidly soldiering on to victory, Ramin tended to think in aesthetic and pragmatic terms. For him his own tour had been “a great artistic success” which “will have a good impact in the future, in that more Americans will come to Germany to study.”6 By the late 1920s a complex issue had arisen that eroded the bond between Ramin and Straube, namely the question of the latter’s retirement 3 4 5 6
But see Mutschelknauss, Bach-Interpretationen, 524–25, 526; and Kater, The Twisted Muse, 175, for Ramin’s communications to Hitler’s Foreign Ministry (1933, 1934) concerning the political usefulness of his recitals abroad. Letter, February 8, 1933, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 8. Letter, January 28, 1933, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. Emphases original. Letter to Niels-Otto Raasted, April 15, 1933, BhAE Nachlass Raasted.
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from the cantorate. Straube did not need to be reminded that a Saxon law from 1923 dictated the pensioning of state-funded teachers three months after their sixty-fifth birthday, with a possible twelve-month extension in cases where “particular difficulties” would obtain otherwise.7 Because he would turn sixty-five in January 1938, he would be put to pasture at latest by April 1939. He had been wringing his hands about how to debark from the cantorate virtually since he signed on to it, and in 1927 he chose a moment of marked professional instability to lay out to Ramin how he saw the future. At the time the younger man was entertaining the offer to abandon Leipzig for Lübeck, while Straube himself was dealing with a fresh prospect from Berlin. “Besides you I know of no one who can continue my work,” Straube wrote. “There is something in the air at the moment, recognized from many sides as right and necessary, and if that works out, I will hand over to you the St. Thomas cantorate as one of the most important posts in German music. In about three years this goal can be taken up, but not before that, since good things take time.” He persisted even more cryptically with the counsel “that you conserve your present resources prudently, since in about ten years you will have to go at it with full steam.”8 That stance was informed by much conflict under the surface, with both men measuring their prospects to advance. What exactly was “in the air at the moment,” who exactly represented the “many sides” that “recognized” it, why exactly succession could be addressed only “in about three years,” what exactly it would take for any deal to “work out”—these were the vagaries of a malcontent cantor uncertain about his own future, willing to plant the idea of succession in Ramin’s head but unable, or at least unwilling, to expand upon it. Perhaps he had advanced the idea earlier, or maybe he trotted it out in 1927 as a deterrent to Ramin’s prospects elsewhere. Was he really unable to endorse anyone else? The notion of an heir apparent, particularly one from the St. Thomas organ bench, surely was no foregone conclusion. Straube himself had progressed from organist to cantor, though from a pool of twenty candidates and after Council debates yielded four dissenting voices. Rust likewise had been tapped in 1880 while serving as parish organist, but the only other instances of that trajectory since the Reformation had been Georg Rhau (organist 1518, cantor 1519) and Johann Kuhnau (organist 1684, cantor 1701). Even so, Straube evidently made peace with the idea that his pupil’s 7 8
Goerdeler cited the law in a letter to Goebbels, April 18, 1935, BAK StraubeAkten Musikhochschule. Letter, July 30, 1927, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 73.
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career path would mimic his own. By early 1932 this private plan had taken on a bureaucratic dimension, namely in a meeting between the cantor and Associate Mayor Ewald Loeser. “In agreement with [Goerdeler] I therefore should further request of you a written statement concerning whether you regard Herr Ramin as an eminently suitable successor in all the positions you now hold,” Loeser wrote Straube in a follow-up memo. “If this is the case— and I readily assume it is, given the discussion between us—nothing would stand in the way of informing Herr Ramin that, in the case of a hypothetical replacement, he would be the first considered.” Loeser made no secret of the fact that Ramin was involved in these goings-on. “When he visited me yesterday, I made Herr Ramin aware that no formal commitment can be adopted in this respect. Only a certain moral claim can be established for Herr Ramin, which I nevertheless regard as quite valuable.”9 The written agreement concerning Ramin’s succession, even a non-binding one riding on “only a certain moral claim,” prompts a number of intriguing questions, one of them concerning the motivation for Straube’s signing on with the Nazis in May 1933. For if in fact the cantor believed at the time that hitching his wagon to the party would prevent his defenestration and allow him to “save” the choir—from its transformation into a secular chorus, the incursion of radical ideology, manipulation as a propaganda tool, and whatever else—then perhaps another aim was in part to “save” it from the less disciplined, more opportunistic enfant gâté he had endorsed as his successor. Significantly, the notion of a Thomaskantor Ramin had arisen over the 1920s in the context of a reasonably stable democracy, and in early 1932, when he ratified with city officials Ramin’s “certain moral claim,” Straube was unwilling to accept the idea of a National Socialist government and worked to prevent Hitler’s ascendancy. It is then not difficult to imagine that, once Nazi rule became reality, the sitting cantor had second thoughts about how much the apolitical Ramin would concede to unscrupulous party operatives. Ramin’s seeming lack of hesitation to engage with the highest echelons of the Nazi dictatorship (and the Soviet one afterwards) would bear out these concerns. By April 1935 he was sitting at the organ of Berlin Cathedral to play for Hermann Göring’s wedding, a high-profile ceremony in which Hitler himself participated. The following year he would take command of the new behemoth organ Walcker had erected for the annual party rallies in the Nürnberg Luitpoldhalle, playing it not only for the amassed faithful but also in a private demonstration for the “Führer.” Whether such collaborations 9
Letter, January 21, 1932, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube.
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arose from invitations accepted or commands followed, whether from career ambition or political gullibility, depends rather on one’s point of view.10 What can be maintained reasonably is that Ramin, in the pithy formulation of a recent author, “evinced no significant fears of contact with the NS regime.”11 And as the 1930s progressed, that quality evidently suggested to the higher-ups that an ascendent Ramin would prove a more pliable cantor than an aging incumbent approaching retirement. This view cannot justify uncritical acceptance of Straube’s categorical, post factum denial of any party association beyond membership. “I never had any sort of relationship with the party,” he would profess, staking out a claim Ramin clearly could not. “I stayed away from all gatherings, no matter if large or small. I turned down all invitations from Hitler and [Robert] Ley to come to their celebrations in Berlin and Hamburg. Similar invitations from the National Socialist mayor and Council members in Leipzig were handled the same way.”12 In his defense, it appears Straube did in fact hold the party at a more critical distance than did his protégé, even if his testimony paints a more straightforward picture than the facts can sustain. His political sympathies were pulled in different directions, in ways that a black-and-white narrative cannot accommodate. After all, the rejected brutal dictator of Straube’s 1945 public statement had been the “chancellor of caliber” in his July 1934 letter to Hertha. Ramin may have ramped up the masses with his organ playing at Nürnberg, but the older man’s claim of not having “any sort of relationship” clearly protests too much. For one thing, Straube went to some lengths so that the Thomanerchor could perform at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Richard Wagner National Monument in Leipzig on March 6, 1934, a much-touted event of typically outsized pomp attended by Hitler and members of the Wagner family. About three weeks earlier he had produced a medical certificate toward a four-week cure necessitated by “chronic joint rheumatism that has affected
10 See Charlotte Ramin, Günther Ramin, 79–80, for Ramin’s wife’s view of these instances. 11 Mutschelknauss, Bach-Interpretationen, 380. See also Kater, The Twisted Muse, 175–76; and Goltz, Musikstudium, 97–100. In 1944 Ramin would appear on the Gottbegnadete-Liste (“Divinely-Gifted List”) of artists important to the furthering of regime propaganda. 12 “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” 157–58.
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his hands particularly.”13 That request had targeted a leave from the second Sunday in Lent (February 25) until the Friday before Holy Week (March 23), a timeframe that had him resuming duties just before the high liturgies.14 But at latest by February 21 the plan had changed, so that “Professor Straube has decided to begin his leave only on March 7” to accommodate the Wagner festivities.15 The attending physician had underscored that a four-week cure was “calculated at a minimum” owing to the severity of the condition.16 But when overwrought ceremonial hosted by the the “chancellor of caliber” became part of the calculus, deference was to be shown. The tweak meant that Straube’s convalescense was trimmed by a week, voluntarily or not. Either way, an ex post facto claim of “stay[ing] away from all gatherings” overstates the case. Of greater consequence than any isolated event was the fact that Straube was drawn rapidly into the politics of Protestant church music policy when in 1933 the profession began to reposition itself in light of the Hitler government.17 That April, NS elements within church music associated with the Deutsche Christen had coalesced in the Reichsverband evangelischer Kirchenmusiker Deutschlands, advocating among other things a liturgical aesthetics opposed to the historicizing movements associated with Straube’s name. By September this prompted the founding of the competing Reichsbund für evangelische Kirchenmusik, with the Thomaskantor himself installed as honorary president. When on September 22 the government mandated coordination of cultural life under a new Reichskulturkammer, the leaders of both Reichsverband and Reichsbund responded on November 3 with a Berlin summit to found a united society, reflected in the hybrid name Reichsverband für evangelische Kirchenmusik. Straube participated in these negotiations, which resulted in a power dynamic tipped in favor of Orgelbewegung-friendly voices. Once the “new” Reichsverband was absorbed into the Reichsmusikkammer, Straube headed the Protestant church music section of the Reichsfachschaften, the division accommodating the nation’s professional music associations.
13 Medical certificate from Fr. Oppermann, February 3, 1934, StAL StraubeAkten 1, 270. 14 Letter to the Leipzig City Council, February 16, 1934, ibid., 269. 15 Memorandum, February 21, 1934, ibid., 271. 16 Medical certificate from Fr. Oppermann, February 3, 1934, ibid., 270. 17 Jörg Fischer, “Evangelische Kirchenmusik,” 188–201.
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These many factors—the timing and finances of the cantor’s retirement, the anxieties and professional posturing fed by a rightist regime, rancor at the Conservatory—shaped the tense conjuncture into which now stepped the consequential figure of Fritz Stein. Reger disciple, organist, musicologist, and opportunist anti-Semite, Stein had maintained warm relations with Straube since the two met earlier in the century. His career path had led from Heidelberg to Leipzig, where he undertook private organ study with Straube, then to Jena and Kiel before landing him in Berlin to direct the Musikhochschule. His marked sympathies for NS policy, expressed most vividly by his administrative role in the hardline Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, had positioned him to oversee the reorganization of national church music governance, a circumstance that naturally led him to refresh his old alliance with Straube. Stein had served as president of both the short-lived Reichsbund of September 1933 and the united Reichsverband established that November. He was destined for the Executive Council of the Reichsmusikkammer, leading the division overseeing choral and “Volk” music. Thus, just when Straube’s disillusionment with Leipzig was at a high, developments had placed him in close working proximity to Stein. Conversations were inevitable. In Stein’s telling, Straube confided “that he felt weary of his Leipzig responsibilities and aimed at a change in his circumstances,” then posed the “direct question” of whether he might become an organ teacher at the Berlin Hochschule. Ramin had led a weekly organ class there for some years but was stepping down at the end of March 1934, again in Stein’s telling, “on account of increasing demands placed on him in Leipzig.”18 Not by accident, Straube was talking to the right point man, presumably calculating that the vacuum left by Ramin’s exit presented an opportunity. But the plan that emerged was rather more ambitious. As part of his mandate to restructure church music governance nationwide, Stein had been tasked with the integration of Berlin’s Academy for Church and School Music into his Hochschule. With Straube’s express intent to exit Leipzig, he had identified not only a high-profile hire for the organ studio, but also the right leader for the resulting institute. A long paper trail attests the plan’s unfolding over 1934 and 1935, exposing just how strong Straube’s distaste for his compromised Leipzig situation had become. The hurdles to the exit were high, the issues complicated. Given the Conservatory’s financing of his move to the Grassistraße, he had agreed 18 Letter to the Reichsminister für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung, November 1, 1934, BAK Straube-Akten Musikhochschule.
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to a contract that bound him until 1940. If he wanted out earlier, he would need new terms. Concerning Berlin, Straube at first argued for a straightforward contract through 1941, when he would be sixty-eight. That March he considered the options. “Your advice is certainly good,” he wrote Hertha concerning the ongoing acrimony at the Conservatory. “But when I read your lines . . . I had only one wish, to be out of the city. I hope we will be successful.”19 He seemed ready to weigh anchor. By April, though, negotiations hit substantial administrative snags as ongoing efforts to reorganize state education gummed up the system. Straube used the time to stump for advantages at home, extracting among other things a promise from Goerdeler that he would be installed “as musical adviser to the national church,” necessitating the creation of a formal advisory role to Hitler’s designated Reichsbischof Ludwig Müller. To the mayor’s sentiment that his pulling out of Leipzig would exact a heavy toll, Straube countered unguardedly “that it is perhaps a good lesson for the little people if they experience that they can’t run roughshod over others without consequences.”20 The oft-praised modesty of his personality masked a self-righteous hyperawareness of his position at the top of the totem. “The little people” were not going to get the best of him, now or ever. The affair dragged out, zombie-like, over months of prevarication and the wheel-and-deal posture Straube always assumed when faced with the possibility of a career move. He knew that any decision would play directly to the ambitious Ramin waiting in the wings. When Ramin telephoned him to report gossip from a Berlin student that the Leipzig Thomaskantor was coming to the capital to lead church music education, Straube took evasive maneuvers. “Perhaps he wanted to prepare himself already for the cantorate,” he speculated to Hertha, “or maybe he just wanted ‘to know everything,’ and nothing can be done without his involvement. Or both. Actually that alone is reason enough to go to Berlin.”21 Maybe accumulating discord with Ramin really was enough to drive him away. The truth was, though, that he had never rolled out for Stein a comprehensive set of conditions, and Stein’s superiors had been in no position to advance an offer. There was nothing concrete to negotiate. Egged on by Stein to create a sense of urgency, Straube played loose with the facts when telling the Leipzig mayor that June that he had “received the offer of 19 Letter, March 12, 1934, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 20 Letter to Hertha Straube, May 17, 1934, ibid. 21 Letter, May 20, 1934, ibid.
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an appointment as director of the church music department of the Prussian Musik-Hochschule,” and that he had only until the next day to make a decision.22 This prompted Goerdeler to bring the matter immediately before the full Council, effecting a unanimous vote that, “in consideration of the contracts concluded with Professor Ramin, Professor Straube be asked to remain in Leipzig and in doing so, he be assured that his retirement will not be made dependent on the age limitation.”23 Goerdeler’s letter to Straube of the same day reported this result without reference to “contracts concluded with Professor Ramin,” censoring the fact that the “certain moral claim” Ramin had on the cantorate in January 1932 had advanced to “contracts concluded” by mid-1934. That latter wording was precise and based in transactions to which the sitting cantor was not privy. For in November 1932, when Ramin had entertained a possible appointment as director of the Berlin State and Cathedral Choir, he articulated to the Leipzig fathers his willingness to stay put “if he had a justifiable prospect to become Herr Professor Straube’s successor in the directorship of the Thomanerchor.”24 City Hall appears then to have ceded to him “the exclusive claim to succeed Professor D Dr. Straube, unless impediments arise from [Ramin’s] person on artistic, ethical, or medical grounds.”25 That had been a backroom concession with eventually decisive consequences. Just as he was withholding the whole truth from the Leipzig mayor, so too was Straube overstating the case to Stein that Goerdeler had issued an outright “rejection of my request to retire,” and thus, by current Saxon law, he was bound until age 65. If in future the Reich were to standardize the age limit at 62 nationwide, he could renegotiate.26 What he did not reveal to Stein was that the Leipzig bureaucratic instrumentarium was hitting on all gears to meet a fresh round of demands he was presenting there: he wanted say over the timing of his retirement, an additional month’s vacation to spare his health, and an exception to a 1933 statute that dictated cuts to his
22 Letter from Goerdeler to Straube, June 29, 1934, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 12. 23 Leipzig City Council resolution, June 29, 1934, ibid., 11. 24 Minutes (undated, certainly late November 1932) of the Leipzig City Council, cited in Charlotte Ramin, Günther Ramin, 83. 25 The then-Oberbürgermeister Alfred Freyberg cited the text of the Council’s decision, dated November 25, 1932, in a letter to the Saxon Ministry of Education, October 24, 1939, StAL Ramin-Akten, 19–21. 26 Letter, July 1, 1934, BAK Straube-Akten Musikhochschule.
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Conservatory income.27 While the Leipzig authorities went to extraordinary lengths to identify loopholes and secure state approval for these demands, Stein put all oars in the water to keep the possibility of Straube’s appointment in Berlin alive. Still willing to countenance the possibility even after having told Stein he could not uproot, Straube now echoed a wish he had floated with Goerdeler, namely that he rise in the Reichsmusikkammer to the hitherto non-existing position of Reichskirchenmusikwart “if in future the political situation in the Protestant church is to be cleared up and steadied.”28 Feeling the wind in his sails, Stein responded positively. He had proposed “already three weeks ago” to Reichsbischof Müller that he be granted the new title.29 Playing the two sides off each other, Straube thus succeeded in constructing for himself a prolonged situation of dissonance, extended by indecision and fired by the passions of those in the two camps who sought his loyalties. Weary of chasing his own tail and beset by an intransigent Conservatory politics, he imagined a situation in which others’ actions would decide the question for him: Goerdeler would insist he stay, Berlin would or would not accept an aging professor. As the affair dragged into September, a flashpoint arose when Leipzig officialdom discovered that Straube was not the CMI’s only high-profile faculty member in negotiation with the Berlin Hochschule: Thomas had already signed a contract, and Martienssen was soon to do so. This caused Goerdeler to raise the temperature and inject himself further, namely in a letter of September 17 to Goebbels himself, alleging that Stein and his institution were seeking to “destroy” the CMI by systematically syphoning off its faculty.30 That allegation eventually drew a prolix defense from Stein to the Education Minister Bernhard Rust, in which he recounted his dealings with Straube, Thomas, and Martienssen in turn. “Destruction” had never been part of the calculus, Stein asserted, “since I know from documentation that the Leipzig City Council had already provided an arrangement for Straube’s successor in the St. Thomas cantorate in November 1932.”31 27 28 29 30
Letter from Straube to Goerdeler, July 1, 1934, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 12. Letter, July 6, 1934, ibid. Letter from Stein to Straube, July 11, 1934, ibid. Goerdeler’s use of the word “destroy” raised considerable alarm and was cited in a response from the Prussian Minister für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Volksbildung to Goebbels, November 17, 1934, BAK Straube-Akten Musikhochschule. 31 Letter, November 1, 1934, ibid.
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Stein was clear to the Leipzig authorities that he knew Ramin was the legal heir apparent, a cat-out-of-bag revelation of which Straube presumably still was unaware. Nevertheless, there was more to think about than the opaque political game Straube was playing with his future. That fall he prepared his troupe to travel to Sweden, where a social-democratic government navigated tense relations with Hitler’s Germany. In Stockholm he wrote Hertha of a conversation with Rector Tittel, who “told me of a comment in Leipzig, ‘The eternal Bach singing finally has to come to an end now.’ Since it was not intended for [Tittel’s] ears . . . he did not want to identify the speaker.” Faced with another ominous grumble from the enemy camp, he had to acknowledge that Tittel, a key ally and rector for the entirety of his cantorate, was vacating his position in April. The future seemed even more precarious as he clung to the possibility of Berlin, which “has a substantial shadowy side but also many points of relief. . . . It appears to me that my time in Leipzig is past.”32 The bellyaching about the cantata broadcasts (“the eternal Bach singing”) amounted to much more than an irritating affront to a signature project. In June 1933 the German broadcasters had signaled the termination of the contract for the series at the end of that year. It had taken an official appeal to effect even a modest extension through Easter 1934, at which point the German radio was nationalized and the Sunday air time increasingly appropriated for propaganda.33 The subsequent disruption of the weekly pace was in full swing by the time of the choir’s rounds in Sweden. Whereas the radio had transmitted forty-five cantatas in 1933, only twenty would come in 1934, and sixteen in the Bach anniversary year of 1935.34 It surely was no coincidence that Straube’s conversations with Stein over Berlin found traction just at the time the regular programming was upended. The cantata broadcasts would hover around twenty per year until the project’s completion in 1937, reflecting the effects of Nazi obstructionism, but also the resulting foul mixture of anxiety, resentment, and eroded enthusiasm left to simmer in the cantor’s psyche. Upon return from Sweden Straube found that rumors about his designs on Berlin had spread, feeding anxieties among city officials and spurring the bureaucratic machine into overdrive. The Schulamt issued a summary of the cantor’s financial package and an exhaustive analysis of the state- and 32 Letter, October 12, 1934, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 33 “Von den ‘größten, gemeinsamen Rundfunk-Veranstaltung Europas,’” 130–31. 34 Hübner, “Karl Straube zwischen Kirchenmusik,” 186–87.
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Reich-level laws affecting it. Its proposals, issued on November 2, were considered that same day by the full Council as an exceptionally urgent item of new business.35 Salary and pension questions were ironed out, with a recommendation that the relevant ministries be petitioned that the age limit on the cantorate be struck in Straube’s case.36 Most significantly, “the prerequisite for the foregoing arrangement is that Professor Straube declares once and for all that he rules out going to Berlin; moreover he will remain in Leipzig through the end of his artistic career.”37 Goerdeler called the cantor the same day to report the outcome, asking him to inform Stein immediately that he was pulling out. Straube obliged, framing the Berlin plan as having fallen victim to intrigue and dutifully professing that he could not shoulder the responsibility for failed Conservatory reforms should he abandon his home turf.38 As before, Stein was not inclined to admit defeat, admonishing his friend that he should not trust Leipzig’s promises, that the Conservatory’s finances could not compete with Prussia’s robust subventions for the Berlin Hochschule, and that Straube’s rationale for the various intrigues around him was misguided. The decision was his to make, Stein wrote cryptically, “but from my exact knowledge of many circumstances, about which I am here not at liberty to speak, I am absolutely convinced that later you will bitterly regret that you rejected the Berlin offer. I know that the disgraceful treatment to which you have been subjected over the last few years in Leipzig actually has a deeper rationale, one that over the long term cannot be neutralized by the perhaps well-meaning actions of the Leipzig mayor.”39 That “deeper rationale” was Ramin’s discreet formal agreement about his elevation to the cantorate. Meanwhile, Straube was clear-eyed that his demands now accommodated at City Hall depended on official assent in Dresden and Berlin. On November 5 Goerdeler pivoted to him, bringing pressure to bear by asking that Straube put into writing what he had already affirmed orally, namely that he would remain in situ indefinitely. The mayor had advanced an elaborate argument with the Saxon Ministry of Education and the Reich Ministry 35 Memoranda, November 2, 1934, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 23–24, 25. 36 Memorandum of the Leipzig Schulamt, November 2, 1934, ibid., 26. 37 Memorandum of the Leipzig City Council meeting, November 2, 1934, ibid., 25. 38 Letter to Stein, November 2, 1934, BAK Straube-Akten Musikhochschule. 39 Letter, November 3, 1934, ibid.
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of Finance about why this particular Thomaskantor should be exempt from mandatory retirement, appealing to an obscure clause in the civil servant laws of 1873. Yet a positive result was hardly assured, and Stein’s dark musings about a “deeper rationale” had sown doubt in the cantor’s mind, susceptible as it was to vacillation. And so, when Straube discovered that Leipzig had quoted him gross rather than net figures in his financial package, he abruptly pulled the plug, telling the mayor that he still could not write Berlin out of the picture.40 It was a smokescreen of course: his conversations with Berlin had been limited to the exchanges with Stein, and there had never been anything like an offer and certainly no “acceptance” of one to withdraw. Knowing that he would get further by presenting a solution rather than a problem, Straube proposed nevertheless to accept Leipzig’s figures as quoted, so long as he continued to be remunerated in full as CMI director. The mandated salary cuts, he reasoned, applied only to teachers, not musicians. “I work at the Alumnat, not the school, and do not belong to the faculty of the Thomasschule.”41 He wished to make clear that he was no mere Latin school teacher: the Thomaskantor was in the first place an artist charged with the conservation of a heritage, not a choirmaster grinding through liturgies in the name of a school curriculum. And if that way of seeing things proved financially advantageous, so much the better. Ultimately, the local authorities would rebut that point while still recommending that the “teacher” Straube receive his uncut salary in his capacity at the helm of the CMI. All the resolutions made at the municipal level were then sent up the pipe to the higher ministries, so that the question of Straube’s status remained open well into 1935. The sticking point turned out to be the city’s ruling concerning the retirement age limit. By March Goerdeler could inform Straube that his financial package had the official green light, but that an exemption from the retirement statutes had been denied in Dresden. In light of an anticipated new national law aiming to standardize retirement policy, a different decision might be possible later on.42 Straube responded to the mayor, finally committing that he would drop anchor in Leipzig “through the end of my work as an artist.”43 Even then he had second thoughts, writing again to Goerdeler a week later to condition his promise on the Conservatory’s intent
40 41 42 43
Letter, November 8, 1934, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 35. Ibid. Emphasis original. Letter, March 5, 1935, ibid., 53–54. Letter, April 2, 1935, ibid., 57.
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to retain him after his retirement as cantor.44 Still, he had given his word, and the Berlin affair would not be resuscitated. But Goerdeler, who could have been content to put the affair to bed, now doggedly pursued the retirement question. He turned directly to Goebbels and Rust, arguing anew for an exemption from the retirement age in a four-page letter which deployed not only an analysis of the abstruse legal situation but also the tried-and-true narrative meant to demonstrate the Great Man’s exceptional status. Having already secured Straube’s promise to stay, he nevertheless pushed the point that “the Bach city of Leipzig is bound to muster every means to avoid losing this world-renowned artist, for whom no comparable replacement exists in the foreseeable future.”45 Ramin, with one foot firmly in the door, did not register here. Goerdeler’s proposal, however noble, merely got bounced back to the Saxon Ministry of Education that summer, where it was denied a second time. Before that, though, it came to Stein’s desk via Rust’s ministry, with whom Stein now put in his two cents. Parroting what Straube had told him, Goerdeler had written that the cantor “has recently again received an honorable offer from the state Musikhochschule in Berlin.”46 Clearly annoyed, Stein now sounded off. Goerdeler was operating “pretty abundantly on the argument of a supposed offer to Professor Straube from Berlin,” a fiction that “had not progressed beyond the stage of an exchange of views” but had been misrepresented to force optimal terms in Leipzig. Straube had told Stein “that he could not bear the responsibility for abandoning his Leipzig obligations” and therefore had pulled out of the dialogue with Berlin. Goerdeler’s current petition could not be justified on the phantasmagoria of a concrete offer from Stein’s side. Further, “I feel that Professor Straube should not have brought the content of his talks with me to bear on his Leipzig negotiations, all the more so since at the time, he himself was the one who had initiated discussions about a possible Berlin appointment.”47 Stein was telling the truth. The latest Berlin episode would be the final, protracted overture from the outside that Straube would consider seriously.
44 Letter from Straube to Goerdeler, April 8, 1935; Goerdeler’s reply, April 13, 1935, ibid., 58. 45 Letter, April 18, 1935, BAK Straube-Akten Musikhochschule. 46 Ibid. 47 Letter to the Reichs- und Preußischen Minister für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung, June 15, 1935, ibid.
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Going forward, the only battle in which he could not claim at least some victory was the one concerning retirement. On September 2 the matter was clarified definitively by the Education Councilor Arthur Bennewitz in a letter to the mayor: even with every loophole exploited, the current relevant laws dictated that Straube be pensioned at latest by May 1, 1939.48 He would have to plan accordingly, at least for the time being.
48 Letter, September 2, 1935, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 76.
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Chapter Twenty-Six
Beyond the Rhine On June 15, 1935, the Deutsche Akademie in Munich, founded during the Weimar period but since co-opted for Nazi propaganda, had announced Straube’s appointment as senator.1 The timing of the award was made to coincide with the opening of the Reichs-Bach-Fest in Leipzig, a marathon of concerts and events scheduled from June 16 through 24, the final four days under the auspices of the NBG. Just before its launch Mayor Goerdeler directed a congratulatory letter to the cantor, together with thanks “that you have defied all temptations aiming to prepare a worthy domain elsewhere for your masterly abilities and personality. We thank you for the loyalty with which you have retained the office of Thomaskantor.”2 Writer and recipient knew that “loyalty” had not come easily, achieved only after months of wrangling. Amid all the subcutaneous malcontent, and while the Berlin question had loomed, Straube’s busy schedule had rolled on mercilessly. Not least on the agenda had been preparations for the longest and most demanding Bach festival yet, marking its namesake’s 250th birthday. As with such occasions in the past, he had been integrally involved in the planning for some time.3 The festival capped a series of nationwide events around the triple anniversaries of Schütz, Handel, and Bach, many of which had featured the Thomanerchor. The outsized program of the Leipzig celebration reflected the hypernationalism of the moment and the propensity of the NS machine to assert itself in high-profile gatherings with the potential to galvanize the country. “From the work of Sebastian Bach speaks the spirit of the German nation,” proclaimed one newspaper, pushing the official line that the festivities would instill Bach’s music—“rigorous, disciplined to the last, and thoroughly German”—in the hearts and minds of the “Aryan” Volk, not just the 1 2 3
“Ehrung von Professor Straube,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten 166, June 15, 1935. Letter, June 15, 1935, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 73. Rembold, “Die Geburt der ‘deutschen Volksseele,’” 119.
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privileged educated classes.4 To this end a breathless schedule offered performances of both Passions, the B-minor Mass, the Musical Offering (J. N. David), The Art of Fugue (Graeser), and much besides. An exhibition at the Gohliser Schlösschen, designated locus of the NS-Kulturgemeinde, displayed eighteenth-century artifacts alongside a Bach family tree, the latter calculated to demonstrate the master’s Teutonic blood line. On the festival’s penultimate day, members of 120 Saxon church choirs assembled on the Leipzig market square to sing stanzas from six chorales, conjuring an unprecedented spectacle of 4,000 singers (so claimed) swarming around a swastika-adorned podium, demonstrating the regime-sanctioned optics of Volkstümlichkeit in action.5 For Nazi hardliners the climax came on June 21, when the “Führer” himself arrived to attend the evening concert at Abendroth’s Gewandhaus, accompanied by Goebbels, the Saxon Gauleiter Mutschmann, and a phalanx of henchmen. Hitler was presented with the Bach-Plakette, an award created for the event, now to be given “every five years to particularly faithful and deserving stewards and caretakers of Bach’s works.”6 His presence in Leipzig was greeted by rapturous crowds watched over by SS and SA details, a spectacle that eclipsed the ostensible point of the event. Whether the current Thomaskantor was in attendance at the Gewandhaus, or whether he “stayed away from all [political] gatherings” as claimed in 1945, is unclear.7 Of the festival’s twenty-seven discrete events, seven involved Straube and his Thomanerchor, and the cantor’s pervasive influence was felt in other ways as well. He surely was behind the University’s awarding of the honorary PhD to C. S. Terry, for whose Bach biography he had supplied the German preface years before.8 Goerdeler made a point to underscore Terry’s honor in his Gewandhaus speech on the 21st, despite having been advised not to by Hauptmann.9 Straube personally had seen to it that Christhard Mahrenholz, 4 5 6 7 8 9
“Der Führer in Leipzig: Deutschland huldigt Bach,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten 173, June 22, 1935, 1. “Bach-Choralsingen auf dem Markt,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten 175, June 24, 1935, 5. “Der Führer in Leipzig,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten 173, June 22, 1935, 4. “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” 157. Rembold mistakenly claims that the Thomanerchor performed in Hitler’s presence on June 21. “Die Geburt der ‘deutschen Volksseele,’” 136. “Der Festakt im Gewandhaus,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten 173, June 22, 1935, 5. Rembold, “Die Geburt der ‘deutschen Volksseele,’” 141.
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Oberlandeskirchenrat in Hannover and partner in organ reform, would serve as preacher for the St. Thomas service on June 23. Mahrenholz’s sermon, positioned between the two parts of Cantata 75, took up that work’s juxtaposition of earthly vanity and heavenly blessedness in the tale of Lazarus and the rich man, bringing these themes to bear on Bach’s transcendent historical position. “In his immortality Johann Sebastian Bach of course is a shining testimony for the Spirit’s overcoming of the power of death,” Straube wrote to Mahrenholz, thanking him for accepting the invitation. “But this is not meant dogmatically. The resurrection of the dead as confessed by the Church is somewhat different from my thinking about Bach’s immortality.”10 The same strain of cultural Protestantism that had possessed him in his youth reasserted itself, decidedly non-pious, nativist, and projected onto the great figures of German history. Just two years earlier Straube had observed admiringly that Frederick the Great was “the skeptic” who “saw clearly in Protestantism the spiritual power that endowed the German with his inner freedom and sovereignty over the material world.”11 Positioned to reinforce convictions of German exceptionalism, that theology would continue to imbue his own cultural work as the Nazi tide rose. An unprecedented (almost) full-length performance of the Matthew Passion, given from Max Schneider’s scholarly edition on the afternoon and evening of Sunday June 16, launched the festival.12 In his 1946 Lebenslauf Straube would recall with some pride that for the first time since Bach’s day the Thomaner alone, without the usual choral supplements drawn from the Gewandhaus and the Friedrich-List-Schule, performed the work “with the original orchestral forces as Bach had specified in his well-known petition to the Leipzig City Council.”13 In another draft, he remembered a chorus of seventy (the Thomaner and, for the cantus lines, the Thomasschule choir) and an orchestra of thirty-two, “the elite of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.”14 The pared-down forces stood in sharp contrast to the big performances later that week (B-minor Mass with the Riedel-Verein under Max Ludwig, St. John Passion with the Gewandhaus Chorvereinigung and Lehrergesangverein 10 Letter, June 2, 1935, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 57. 11 Letter to Hertha Straube, July 28, 1933, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 12 In 1941 Straube told Kurt Thomas that he had made certain modest cuts to the arias and recitatives in Part 2. Letter, February 9, 1941, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 10, 48–49. 13 BAL Nachlass Straube 81a. 14 Typescript fragment, BAL Nachlass Straube 81d.
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under Ramin) and to the Nazi liking for monumentality generally. One reviewer cast Straube’s Matthew as “a deeply moving vision from the past,” citing “the chaste, pious expression” of the chorus that “awakened Bach’s polyphony to a distinct vibrancy.” He added that Straube had “extracted from the Thomaner not only a sonorous piano of ultimate inspiration. He also filled the dramatically sensational choral interjections with a sharply accentuated sound of the most potent visual imagery, something that no massed choir could surpass.”15 This sort of talk had more than a little in common with propaganda around the “reformed” organs of Gurlitt, Mahrenholz & Co., with its rejection of Romantic excess in favor of hard-edged or “chaste” tone. And as with the Orgelbewegung, the reception was by no means uniformly positive, stirring in Straube memories of his long-ago defiant performances with the Bach-Verein. “Just like thirty years ago, when I first directed a Bachfest, there was a storm at this latest one,” he reported to Haller that summer. “As in the words of Scripture, ‘Your old age be as your youth.’”16 Surely one manifestation of official discontent was the fact that the performance had not aired on radio, nor had any musical event of the festival in which he participated.17 With the Sunday broadcasts slowed to a trickle, the authorities evidently were not interested in supplying him an extra platform. The energies required to plan and execute a nine-day Bachfest, coming on the tail of the extended parleys over the Berlin question, would have utterly exhausted anyone, even a person of Karl Straube’s stamina. But these were but pieces of a larger mosaic of obligations, his publishing commitments among them. In early 1935 Straube’s pen produced two essays that reflected on the significance of the nation’s musical heritage in the context of the triple anniversary.18 Before that, in spring 1934, at just about the time his discussions with Stein over Berlin got going, he had agreed to edit Bach’s so-called Eight Little Preludes and Fugues for Peters. Although it is unclear who proposed the project, the choice to return to Bach undoubtedly reminded all parties of the unrealized complete organ works à la Straube, relegated to a back burner now for two decades. During summer 1934 he studied the eight pieces in a number of versions then available, including those of Widor/Schweitzer 15 Julius Goetz, “Die Matthäus-Passion: Das ungekürzte Werk in der Urbesetzung,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, June 17, 1935. 16 Letter, August 3, 1935, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 241–42. The pericope is Deuteronomy 33:25, set as the third movement of Cantata 71. 17 Hübner, “Karl Straube zwischen Kirchenmusik,” 187–88. 18 “Schütz, Händel, Bach”; “Zur Geschichte der Bach-Bewegung.”
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and Gustav Hecht, and by autumn he delivered the work with uncharacteristic punctuality. Hinrichsen’s fall catalog offered a meticulously phrased and articulated volume, generously (and exceptionally) supplied with fingering and pedaling, registered throughout using the 1721 Silbermann organ in the Rötha Georgenkirche, all with the authoritative imprimatur of the sitting Thomaskantor. Its relatively compact preface dispensed with the philosophical flights of the 1929 Neue Folge, concentrating instead on a run-down of the musical sources and rendering Straube’s view that the attribution to Bach was spurious, “since [the pieces] lack the legitimacy of organic design.” Further, the paucity of sources and questions of authorship “give the editor permission, even require him to compensate inadequacies and ambiguities with careful ‘overpainting.’”19 Whether or not he would have admitted it, these twenty-four pages of 1934 testify as eloquently to Straube’s “as-I-see-it” aesthetic as the 1904 Alte Meister had done. It was predictable that, once his “overpainted” Bach emerged, talk of jump-starting the larger Bach project surfaced, particularly given the big anniversary of 1935. On April 27, as the Reichs-Bach-Fest neared, and not a month after Straube had put in writing his oath to remain in Leipzig, he appeared at the Peters offices to discuss various publishing ventures. According to the minutes of that meeting, he told Max Hinrichsen of plans to retire “next year”—surely disingenuous, since he and Goerdeler were still beating the bushes to extend his cantorate beyond May 1939—and that “by October” 1936 he would be reworking his iconic volume 2 from 1913. “After that he will finish the rest and later will bring a new edition of the Choral-Vorspiele [alter Meister].”20 This was a glaringly unrealistic forecast, but one that would sustain hopes for a complete edition for the time being. As queries arrived from locales as remote as Buenos Aires, Hinrichsen passed them on to Straube, keen to demonstrate widespread anticipation for the complete Bach works in his version. Even before the advent of the 1934 edition, Peters had pushed the impression that the multi-volume initiative was advancing. One notice had announced both projects as “in preparation.”21 In July 1935, once the Bach celebrations had passed, a fatigued Thomaskantor retreated to the Swiss Alps, hoping to gather his energies 19 J. S. Bach, Acht kleine Präludien und Fugen, ed. Karl Straube (C. F. Peters no. 4442, 1934), Preface. 20 Max Hinrichsen, memorandum, May 16, 1935, regarding a meeting on April 27, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2152. 21 Edition Peters, “Neue Bach-Ausgaben 1932–1934,” ibid.
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for autumn’s rigors. Business followed him mercilessly. Ensconced in the majestic Engedine valley, he had to deal with concert agents for the fall tour, which was to take the Thomanerchor on a trek through north Germany, Switzerland, and, for the first time, over the Rhine to Strasbourg and Paris. Goebbels’s Ministry was backing the tour with 1,000 marks, confident that the choir would put a good face on German culture as international tensions rose.22 By early August Straube had transitioned to the Black Forest, now joining his wife and still craving rest. He must have sensed that his health was precarious.23 Soon he was back home, immersed in work and having barely caught his breath. On August 23 the stress finally caught up with him. As he was conducting a regular Friday rehearsal of the Thomaner, Straube suffered an extended dizzy spell. The attending physician attested “severe nervous exhaustion on account of professional and mental demands” and recommended up to a month’s cure.24 Unable to see through the weekend’s obligations, the cantor was granted an open-ended recuperation period beginning on Monday the 26th, making use of his contract’s extra thirty-day vacation provision. Straube left Leipzig again, this time bound for the Glottertal near Freiburg. Removed anew from quotidian pressures, he turned to another, more personal matter. Initially he solicited Gerhard Bau, a former student whose wife’s father served as Director of Missions for the Moravian Herrnhut Brüdergemeine, for the address of the English Moravian Brethren. “The reason for this strange request is that the Reichsmusikkammer will probably soon demand proof of my Aryan heritage. Until now this has not been asked of anyone, but gracious colleagues [liebenswürdige Kollegen] likely have expressed doubt.”25 To this end he was tracing his English grandmother Elisabeth Hutton, member of the Brethren. Straube had already sworn fealty to Hitler in August 1934, a move required of civil servants upon the amalgamation of the chancellorship and presidency into the new role of “Führer.”26 But this was a question of blood, not loyalty, and the acrid cynicism of the expression liebenswürdige Kollegen left no doubt as to his position. He anticipated that his enemies would latch onto racist policy to 22 Letters to Hertha Straube, July 12 and 18, 1935, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 23 Letter to Johannes Haller, August 3, 1935, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 239. 24 Medical certificate, August 23, 1935, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 78. 25 Letter, September 5, 1935, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 7, 7. 26 Attestation, August 27, 1934, StAL Straube-Akten 1, 12.
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cast aspersions, aiming to unseat him from the post he had recently worked so hard to extend indefinitely. Elizabeth Hutton, second wife to Straube’s grandfather William Henry Palmer, was a single point in a web of familial associations he knew little about. It was not as if he had no contact with his English relatives. Ada Hechler, the youngest daughter of Herzl’s colorful Zionist colleague Henry Hechler, had surprised him with a letter upon her father’s death in 1931 and had proposed to call on him in Leipzig. “For you a bit uncomfortable, but for me the visit will be interesting,” Straube had reported to Hertha at the time, obviously intrigued.27 Making good on her wish, Ada presented herself on the Straubes’ doorstep late in 1933. Thus the reality of the Thomaskantor’s English genealogy had appeared incarnate in his Leipzig home not too long before, in autumn 1935, he set out to demonstrate his lineage, via a supposed connection between the Huttons and the Moravians. Within a few days he had his answer from Bau, namely addresses for members of the Hutton family and Ada Hechler. Through the latter he would attempt to contact “Aunt Hannah Hechler, who is the historian of the Palmer family and who lives in Oxford as a ‘Sister of the Church.’”28 During her 1933 visit Ada had told him that “Aunt Hannah” was the key to the Palmer family history, and he now had cause to avail himself of her knowledge. By the time Straube returned to Leipzig on September 14, he could be satisfied at having unearthed a wealth of fascinating information about his English relations. He had a plan and wasted no time acting on it. “The real cause of my turning up suddenly is the necessity to reveal to the officials in Germany my pedigree,” he wrote Ada in poised English, now requesting Hannah’s address. “I have to bring forward a proof that no jewish [sic] injection has stained the pureness of my Teutonic-English race.” Once unearthed, church records “would show with authenticity that my forefathers from mother’s side were Englishmen of pure blood and true Christians all their life long.” Perhaps Hannah could search these things out for him. “Growing old the English side of my individuality speaks louder in me than ever before and is full of desires to go to England,” he cadenced. Maybe he could make a second Channel crossing, since “there is a talk of my coming to London 1936 with all my boys, the Thomanerchor. If it should be, I do hope to see you and I shall go to Oxford and give my reverence to Aunt Hannah, 27 Letter, July 22, 1931, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 28 Letter, September 10, 1935, ibid. Hannah was Henry’s half-sister, residing in Oxford as a member of an Anglo-Catholic order.
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the sister of your father, who belongs to my life since I was a tiny little boy, with dirty hands and with a face, coloured by the soil of a Berlin-garden.”29 Certainly, his curiosity had advanced beyond the surface details required by Hitler’s government. The most vivid point, captured in the sardonic line “that no jewish injection has stained the pureness of my Teutonic-English race,” sprang from the grim irony of his appeal to the daughter of Henry Hechler, one of the most energetic advocates for Jewish rights of the previous generation and an admired member of his own family circle. The sarcasm would have been lost on neither correspondent, formulated as it was just two days after the enactment of the Nürnberg Laws. Straube would have little time to walk through the door he had opened with his English relatives. By the end of September he had heard from both Ada and the Huttons, but already on the 30th his choir was embarking on the much-anticipated fall tour. With suitcases packed, he sat down that same day to reply to Ada, again in English, telling her all he knew about his grandfather, and writing that, based on his contacts with the Huttons, “it seems doubtful wether [sic] my grandmother really was a Moravian.”30 How or if the correspondence advanced beyond this stage is not known. About two years later Straube would file an Ariernachweis demonstrating his wife’s Aryan heritage through both sets of grandparents. An equivalent document tracing the Straube and Palmer lines is absent from the record, though undoubtedly required. In its place is a brief form on the order of the Saxon state attesting that, to his knowledge, he and Hertha had no Jewish blood.31 The defining moment of the 1935 tour lay with three engagements west of the Rhine, two in Strasbourg (French since 1918), one in Paris. The immediate political backdrop was Hitler’s open move, announced that previous March, to rearm Germany and reintroduce conscription, policies that aggressively eroded the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno. In April 1935 France had joined with Britain and Italy to protest these developments via the so-called Stresa Front. Furthermore, a Versailles-mandated referendum of January 1935 had yielded the return of the industrialized Saar Basin to the German Reich from French and British control. All this maneuvering had asserted a new German autonomy while fortifying the economy and incrementally exposing Hitler’s designs on a blood-and-soil pan-Germanic Empire. Thus, as the French border was feeling the strain of German policy, the Thomaner 29 Letter (English), September 17, 1935, CSLJ. 30 Letter (English), September 30, 1935, ibid. 31 Legal declarations, August 26, 1937, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 5–9.
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would stage a “thrust into new territory,” as one later account framed it—not merely “new territory,” but ground where the diplomacy of high art could go some way to ease current tensions.32 Straube could feel he was tending the eternal values of the fatherland while playing pater familias to his boys, expanding their horizons into new cultures. Besides, he had achieved much in 1935, both personally and professionally, so spirits were high. In Strasbourg the choir would appear twice (once en route to Paris, once on the return) in the iconic Wilhelmskirche, a fourteenth-century Gothic edifice housing the remnants of a 1728 organ by Andreas Silbermann. The venue was not arbitrary: it had been the epicenter of the city’s Bach culture since 1885, when Ernst Münch had established a choir there, offering cantatas and the Passions in historically aware versions. The Thomanerchor’s appearance celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of these efforts. Moreover, Straube enjoyed a productive friendship with Münch’s son Charles, concertmaster to the Gewandhaus and violin faculty at the Conservatory over the previous decade. Now Charles would collaborate to bring “Bach’s choir” to France. It was perhaps inevitable, then, that the Strasbourg visits would allow Straube to engage with a singular personality about whom he had long since formed a rather rigid opinion, namely Albert Schweitzer, the Widor protégé, theologian, and medical missionary in Africa. Schweitzer was an extended member of the Münch clan, his brother Paul having married Charles’s sister Emma. Two years Straube’s junior, he had been and continued to be a respected voice in matters of historic organs—indeed, decades before Straube had entered that arena—and had appeared as organist for Ernst Münch’s concerts at the Wilhelmskirche. In autumn 1935, as the Leipzigers crossed the Rhine, Schweitzer had arrived in Europe from Africa to deliver the Gifford Lectures in theology at Edinburgh and, in London, to record Bach’s organ music for Columbia. To his gramophone audiences and undoubtedly beyond, he was touted as “the greatest interpreter of Bach,” a title that put him in direct competition with Straube.33 In fact, so authoritative and longstanding was Schweitzer’s presence in matters Bach that the Leipzig City Council had raised his name as a possible candidate for the cantor’s post at
32 List, Auf Konzertreise, 29. 33 Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 384, citing advertising materials of the Columbia Gramophone Company for Schweitzer’s December 1935 recordings at All Hallows-by-the-Tower, London City.
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the time Straube acceded to it. The NBG had intended to invite Schweitzer to lecture at the Bachfest that June.34 For some time, Straube’s attitude to Schweitzer had been a revealing reflection of his self-image, at least to the few with whom he had chosen to share it over the years. After Schweitzer’s study J. S. Bach, le musician-poète had appeared in an expanded German translation in 1908, Straube reacted candidly to its author’s theological and Wagnerian biases, together with what appeared to him the overtly subjective approach to Bach of the musicologist Alfred Heuss. “I believe that it is impossible to understand Bach’s essence in its totality solely and exclusively from the ecclesial-liturgical standpoint,” he had professed to a confidante. His own approach was “the more appropriate one, because I perceive things more impartially and unconditionally than is possible from the standpoint of ecclesial sensibility.” The “Schweitzer– Heuss interpretive method” was to be condemned. “I find this type of musical hermeneutic Alexandrian, and nothing points more toward the decline of our musical culture than these forced conceptual explanations. . . . Schweitzer’s book, insofar as I’m familiar with it, seems to me more nearly a late-born child from the time when program music was the sole sanctifying aesthetic.”35 Undoubtedly he was feigning ignorance about the Bach biography, which incidentally had misprinted the editor of the 1904 Alte Meister as “M. Straube.”36 In any case this was a curious position for an artist who at that time was issuing unapologetically subjective versions of old music “as I see it,” buttressed by flights of fanciful rhetoric. Still, he would hold fast to the view that theological (“ecclesial-liturgical”) claims should not hijack the business of Bach interpretation, a position reinforced by his deeply rooted tendency to view any overt praxis pietatis with circumspection. Schweitzer was dismissed as a self-righteous amateur with no authority in musical matters. Indeed, when in 1930 the death of the NBG chair Julius Smend coincided with the University of Leipzig’s efforts to attract Schweitzer
34 Rembold, “Die Geburt der ‘deutschen Volksseele,’” 122. The NBG’s proposal was ignored by Nazi elements in City Hall. 35 Letter to Rudolf Wustmann, January 1, 1910, UBL Nachlass Wustmann NL297/4/Nr. 139. 36 Schweitzer, J. S. Bach, 36. The reference does not appear in the French edition of 1905.
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to a professorship in New Testament, Straube had recommended him to the NBG on the rationale that a “layman” should hold its chair.37 Schweitzer’s opinion of the Leipzig cantor appears to have been equally critical. In 1927, when Straube learned from Raasted that Schweitzer regarded him as “superficial,” he had taken umbrage in a small manifesto. “I have no luck with theologians,” he fulminated. Schweitzer “is completely ‘self-centered,’ his life, his work, his experience, his feelings are holy and important things to him, a sensibility that is entirely alien to me. How could he call my seemingly cool objectivity anything other than superficial? Were he to assign a value to that, he would have to diminish himself to a certain degree, but you cannot demand this of anyone.”38 Feeling perpetually under siege by his detractors, he had pushed forward, remarkably unguarded. “I don’t believe that in general I assign too much worth to favorable criticism, except perhaps for that of educated Englanders. For this I stand too much apart and live my own life, which perhaps is possessed of a fairly lively intellect, and so people don’t know what to do with me.” He aired his conviction of having been “pretty heavily exploited,” of having been the source of “very many ideas” for those around him, of not being held in high regard “precisely for this reason.” Further, “in earlier years I had fretted somewhat over the loneliness around me. I’ve overcome all that now. . . . I’m not bothered when I find no resonance and come up against so-called ‘ingratitude.’ This is actually the will to independence!”39 Thrown into stark relief, these were his enduring themes—heroic loneliness born of a phlegmatic enlightened state, the noble burden of being misunderstood, the persistent life of the mind unfettered by dogmatism, and a cultural chauvinism that managed to find a place for “educated Englanders.” And so, when in 1935 he finally encountered Schweitzer in the flesh, he imported a good deal of prejudice, as did Schweitzer, presumably. Straube got to hear Schweitzer the organist as well, since the latter collaborated as soloist alongside the Thomaner. The disappointment dispatched to Hertha was preordained. “Actually this is dilettantism, or merely average, and undistinguished next to Ramin’s artistry. It’s just that he is in no way what he so would like to be, namely an artistic nature. For this he is much too naïve about himself. He is absolutely convinced that everything he does amounts 37 Letter to Julius Levin, September 7, 1930, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 52. 38 Letter, December 26, 1927, BhAE Nachlass Raasted. 39 Ibid.
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to the highest perfection, and everyone else is questionable. Naturally one can see life like that. It’s easier that way.”40 Much later, when Domizlaff formulated his eloquent description of Straube’s approach to the organ, he would compare the cantor’s playing to Schweitzer’s in an apples-to-oranges argument. “They both represented very extreme directions,” he recalled. “Schweitzer was a dreamer, a theoretician” whose playing “was very strict.” Straube on the other hand “downright wallowed in the Baroque profusion of musical ideas,” embodying “the realization that the life of reality and art cannot be interpreted by formulas.”41 Straube could not have said it better himself. He had never been one to cling to rigid catechisms, musical or theological. Between the two Strasbourg concerts was sandwiched the choir’s momentous visit to the French capital. A 1937 narrative by one of the chaperones recounted the wide-eyed astonishment of the boys as their train rolled into Paris by night, the broad avenues, the monumental architecture, the bustle of pedestrian and automobile traffic, the light coruscating from public fountains, the exotic rituals of the French.42 This was Laval’s Third Republic, led by a city awash in music. The aged Widor, Dupré, Tournemire, the Boulanger sisters, Stravinsky, the young Messiaen—all these and many others contributed to the feracious musical Petri dish of 1930s Paris. The Thomaner’s visit was regarded widely as the first time a German boys’ choir would step before the Parisian public. Straube had seen to it that the schedule accommodated a two-hour tour of the city, with stops at the Pantheon and the Dôme des Invalides to view Napoleon’s crypt. The French went so far as to document one of the rehearsals on film.43 The much-anticipated performance ensued at 9:00 p.m. on October 19 in the dry acoustic of the cavernous Salle Pleyel. Straube and his choir shared the Bach–Mozart program with Münch and the new Orchestra of the Société Philharmonique, which offered Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony K. 504 and Bach’s Orchestral Suite in D Major (either BWV 1068 or 1069). “Bach’s Choir” under its iconic cantor contributed the motet Singet dem Herren, three “sacred songs” by Mozart (among them the famous Ave, verum corpus), and Cantata 67. Straube achieved the connection between Bach and Mozart not least through his clever programming of Singet, which Mozart famously was supposed to have heard on his 1789 Leipzig visit. The French 40 Letter, October 25, 1935, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 41 Domizlaff, Nachdenkliche Wanderschaft, 375–76. 42 Lehmann, Die Thomaner auf Reisen, 93–95. 43 Ibid., 97.
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press exploded with enthusiasm. “Paulo majora canamus,” raved Florent Schmitt, quoting Virgil. “The execution is utterly ideal,” he continued, singling out the final “Alleluia” of Singet dem Herren.44 Another writer enthused of the same motet that “one cannot imagine music more utterly ‘theological’ . . . [an] endless song of glory . . . which for almost twenty minutes keeps one in dizzyingly high regions where the air is rarified, where time seems to stop.”45 At evening’s end, one listener was said to have written on a note given to the boy soprano soloist, “God bless you. You have taught me to pray again.”46 One of the only doubts came from the formidable Parisian critic Robert Brussel, who admitted that the choir delivered perfection in balance and choral sound. “But one could,” he ventured, “by being more sensitive, press further into the heart and secret soul of Bach. I thought . . . of the boys of St. Stephen’s in Vienna” who are “more supple and more naturally moving.”47 This seems a not-so-veiled way of saying that Austrian-Catholic emotion was to be preferred over German-Protestant efficiency. No matter. Paris had been an unqualified success. The following morning the Germans set out to tour Versailles and then caught the afternoon express train back to Strasbourg. From there it was on to several Swiss venues before turning homeward. In Bern Straube reported to Hertha that Charles Münch had “become a very excellent conductor, much more significant than the leading Germans, Furtwängler excepted. But essentially he’s an unhappy fellow, a true Alsatian, who remains dissatisfied with what he has and wishes for what doesn’t belong to him. ‘Hans im Schnakenloch.’”48 This was the threadbare Alsatian stereotype, but Hertha, surely inured to her husband’s endless professional machinations over the years, might have realized that “remain[ing] dissatisfied with what he has” was Karl’s own life’s story in a nutshell. As Europe now inched toward a second war, and he toward retirement, that sense of dissatisfaction was not going to be allayed any time soon.
44 Florent Schmitt, “La musique,” Le Temps, November 9, 1935. 45 Gilbert Brangues, “De Salzbourg à Leipzig,” Sept, November 8, 1935. 46 Lehmann, Die Thomaner auf Reisen, 102. 47 Robert Brussel, “La Chorale de Saint-Thomas de Leipzig,” Le Figaro, October 29, 1935. 48 Letter, October 25, 1935, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. Emphasis original. The reference is to the Alsatian folk song “Dr. Hàns ìm Schnokeloch.”
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Chapter Twenty-Seven
Deceptive Cadence By the early 1930s the sexagenarian Thomaskantor had taken on an old man’s mien, his hair receded and white. The stress-related issues that had stopped him in his tracks in August 1935 portended a long decline. Despite warning signs, his schedule remained as punishing as ever, the pressures unrelenting. As 1936 dawned, Max Hinrichsen continued to fire off regular news that customers were anticipating the Bach edition and inquiring as to its progress. Having been reminded the previous fall about his roots in England, and mindful now to exercise those connections, Straube had escaped to Hamburg in late March 1936 to hear the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, at the Jakobikirche, one of the final stops on its northern European tour. “The Thomaner surpass the English choir by far in terms of sound,” he confided to Hertha. “But despite that, there is a wonderful peace and beauty to the choir’s singing, something expressly English, something sweet and tranquil, I can’t express it any other way.” It was not “his” sound, but one that had captured his imagination in London some ten years earlier. “The English felt it was a great honor that I came,” he continued, clearly gratified.1 That same spring Straube became light-headed during a rehearsal and again during a business meeting. On May 22, for the second time in a year, he was off to the Glottertal on medical orders to quiet his nerves. “My duties will be assumed by Herr Helmut Kästner, who, as a former Thomaner and first prefect will lead rehearsals and the church music in my sense and according to my practice,” he informed the new rector Alfred Jentzsch.2 Kästner, who had stepped into the breach during the 1935 episode, was again engaged on the enthusiastic recommendation of both cantor and rector. The latter had hastened to add in his official assessment, “Aryan ancestry
1 2
Letter, April 2, 1936, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. Letter, May 21, 1936, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 80.
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unquestionable. He is intimately acquainted with the Thomanerchor and so is the most appropriate substitute in the rehearsals.”3 Actually it seems that the most “intimate” and “appropriate” Kenner to have taken the reins would have been the cantor-in-waiting Günther Ramin. The St. Thomas organist—a known quantity who had stepped in frequently over many years—apparently was passed over now in favor of an itinerant former student, however capable. The situation reflected both Ramin’s evolving professional status and the deteriorating relationship with his erstwhile mentor. In May 1935 he had become director of the Berlin Philharmonic Chorus after a drawn-out and unsuccessful battle with Abendroth over leadership of the Gewandhaus Choral Union. Ramin clearly felt that Straube had not wielded his considerable influence to advocate his position in that dispute. Shortly after taking over in Berlin, Ramin confessed to Raasted that “on a purely human level Leipzig has lost a lot of its appeal for me, also due to the bitter experience with Straube.”4 This was to be neither the last nor the most difficult test of the liaison. But Straube had much to worry about beyond the affairs of his heir apparent. At his Glottertal cure in spring 1936, he reported to Hertha the results of his conversations with the attending physician. He had been ordered “to continuous bedrest, so that after 36 hours of sleep I am today . . . again completely perpendicular. . . . Since August 1935 I have lost fourteen pounds, my weight is presently 172 pounds. . . . Cause of the fatigue is age and overwork.” Then he asked that she “communicate the essentials to Dr. Jentzsch, Davisson, maybe also Kästner if you see him. It is good if this is known, so as to strike down all too great hopes for my imminent departure.”5 The last thing he needed right now was to give the appearance of not being able to handle his load, of age getting the better of him when he was stumping to have his tenure extended. Transparency was better than secrecy. Besides, the worst would be over with a period of rest. Not so. He went back to work during the week of June 8. On the 12th, while conducting the Friday Motette, Straube was incapacitated by another episode. This time he was referred to Max Hochrein of the University, who initially concluded that the recurring dizziness suggested Ménière’s disease, an inner ear condition likely connected to the hearing problems he had long 3 4 5
Letter, May 23, 1936, to the Leipzig Schulamt, ibid. Letter, August 20, 1935, BhAE Nachlass Raasted. See also Charlotte Ramin, Weggefährten, 52. Letter, May 24, 1936, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 80.
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suffered.6 As before, a month’s vacation was recommended, but since summer recess now loomed, he could use an even longer period. Kästner again stepped in until the break. By the first week of July, Straube was off to Bad Liebenstein in the Thuringian Forest, this time accompanied by Hertha and not to resume duties until August 18. The situation was serious enough that Mayor Goerdeler got involved, contacting Dr. Hochrein directly. “At a recent municipal event I was struck by how bad Herr Professor Straube looked,” he wrote in early July. “It was visibly difficult for him to stand. It is self-evident that the city must do all it can to maintain the working capacity of this singular man. Hence I would be extraordinarily grateful if you would inform me whether, in your opinion, any particular official or unofficial measures are necessary to allow Herr Professor Straube to carry out his duties as Thomaskantor as long as possible.”7 Hochrein responded that “treatment requires a lengthier conservation of the body and nerves,” and that “it would be advisable to relieve him from overexertion.”8 He simply could not be allowed to push himself at the intensity and tempo of former times. Accordingly, once he was back in the saddle in mid-August, conversations had gotten underway about how to create a situation in which he could “carry out his duties . . . as long as possible,” as the mayor had put it. At pains to smooth the way for the iconic cantor he had worked so intensely to retain, Goerdeler pursued such conversations well into the autumn, also with Davisson and Hertha. From now on his working habits would be unofficially monitored. Straube’s nature had never really admitted relaxation in any conventional sense. In Liebenstein he immersed himself in reading and also managed to craft an appeal on behalf of Günther Raphael. Owing to Straube’s influence, Raphael had joined the Conservatory’s faculty in 1926, but he had been let go in July 1934 over his “half-Jew” status and had since moved to Meiningen. Straube had taken a lively interest in Raphael’s work since the mid-1920s as both informal advisor and performer.9 Whereas the Hitler regime’s barbed rhetoric was unyielding, the law was pliant under the right circumstance. Raphael’s was one of them: by summer 1936, with Straube’s backing not least, the young composer had regained membership in the 6 7 8 9
Medical certificate, June 12, 1936, ibid., 81. Letter, 2 July 1936, ibid., 86. Letter, July 7, 1936, ibid., 87. On Raphael see esp. Goltz, Musikstudium, 81–91; and Schinköth, Jüdische Musiker, 236–54.
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Reichsmusikkammer under an exception granted by Goebbels. In 1934, when Raphael was shown the door, Straube, Goerdeler, Davisson, and others had ultimately stood aside. Now Straube turned to Kippenberg, overseer of Gewandhaus chamber music, to announce Raphael’s changed status. “Now indeed it would be wise if this happy turn in his musical circumstances could be gradually brought to the attention of the loving colleagues [den liebenden Kollegen]. His shunning was gratifying to them. The performance of a new symphony in the main concerts would be far too great a triumph. But how about a new string quartet or a sonata for violin and piano in the chamber concerts?”10 It is unclear how Kippenberg acted on this entreaty. Certainly the cynical formulation liebende Kollegen in Raphael’s case echoed the liebenswürdige Kollegen ventured the previous year to Bau in Straube’s own, both of them in reference to the weaponizing of “Aryanism” by Nazi zealots. Whether or not Straube felt himself and others to have been supine in the face of injustices like Raphael’s dismissal, he at least was willing to engage pragmatic diplomacy to get optimal terms where he thought it possible. While convalescing in Liebenstein Straube had continued to Kippenberg that he hoped his health would allow for the fall tour, “the culminating point of which may be the performance of the ‘Matthew Passion’ in Paris. From there we have now a formal invitation.”11 The offer to return to Paris had arrived just the day before. The plan to take Matthew to the French capital (unrealized until 1938) likely stemmed from the 1935 Reichs-Bach-Fest, when the Thomaner had performed it without the usual choral reinforcements. The idea brought its own set of issues reflective of the previous fall’s experience. The work needed an appropriate venue, as did a planned second concert of a cappella repertory, for which Straube initially dismissed the Salle Pleyel as too dry.12 Despite reservations, the Thomaner would return to the Pleyel on October 29, again with Münch and his orchestra, and in a second concert at Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the Latin Quarter. The ever historically minded Thomaskantor tolerated the former but must have relished the latter. The chance to give the boys an encounter with the rich heritage in and around Saint-Germain was right up his alley.
10 Letter, July 28, 1936, DLAM A:Kippenberg-Archiv 64.1531, no. HS009177281. 11 Ibid. 12 Letter, July 27, 1936, to Fritz Münch, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 92.
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Once again consigned to the Pleyel’s uninspired acoustic, Straube introduced the French audience to the motet Jesu, meine Freude, Cantata 78, and pre-Bach repertory by Dulichius, Schein, and Gallus. Münch contributed the third Brandenburg Concerto and Reger’s Mozart Variations, op. 132. The latter choice alluded to Straube’s by-now legendary liaison with Reger while linking to the Mozart-heavy Münch–Straube collaboration the previous season. The evening was broadcast on Radio Paris. “Discipline without rigor,” one critic observed, underscoring the unaffected interpretive powers of the choir and its cantor.13 “One does not perceive the reflection of the dictatorial grip of a master,” agreed another. “Nothing reminds, either, of the current sounds of professional choirs, excellent though they be. The ensemble of Saint Thomas–Leipzig retains its character as an ideal household [un foyer idéal].”14 The pianist-composer Louis Aubert, mindful of Straube’s reputation as a virtuoso organist, likened the ensemble to “a living organ, more docile, quicker to obey than the most perfect keyboard, and how much more sensitive, purer, and warmer.”15 Besides Paris, the 1936 tour would take the Thomaner through south Germany, again to Strasbourg, and for the first time to Brussels, where the choir performed to acclaim at the magnificent Palais des Beaux-Arts. It had been the fourteenth time in seventeen years that Straube had led his troupe on a touring mission of musical diplomacy, and he had reason to be satisfied. In the first place, the ensemble could once again celebrate a series of artistic triumphs, this time in the wake of the Berlin Olympic Games that August, and after Hitler had reoccupied the Rhineland in March. The tensions along the French and Belgian borders arising from Germany’s brazen move westward undoubtedly influenced the shape of the 1936 itinerary. If ever the Thomanerchor could wield the glories of Bach to help mitigate international anxieties, now was the time. Second and no less important, the cantor had come through the whole marathon without a relapse into nervous exhaustion. When later that November, Stadtrat Hauptmann approached Straube on a post-tour reconnaissance mission to inquire about his health, the latter told him that “he still feels fully well physically and declines any alleviation
13 Denyse Bertrand, “Concerts divers,” Le Ménestrel, November 6, 1936, 308. 14 G. B. [Gilbert Brangues], “Le chœur de Saint-Thomas de Leipzig,” L’Intransigeant, November 7, 1936, 8. 15 Louis Aubert, “La semaine musicale,” Le Journal, November 3, 1936, 8.
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[of his duties] at this time. But he would like to make use of the offer should it become necessary.”16 It became necessary on February 19, 1937, when Straube’s routine was interrupted again, this time by a renal colic that incapacitated him through March 5.17 Yet again, Kästner assumed the choral duties, as he had done between January 4 and 16 when Straube had asked for time off.18 Even the January retreat had been health-induced, or at least plagued by worries over his well-being. Isolated in Garmisch, he wrote Hertha that “my condition seems to me a nervous malady. The circulation disorder is a consequence of this actual illness.”19 Whatever the cause of the breakdowns, and whatever the diagnoses, the bottom line was that he had begun to show signs that his energies were not up to the job. That this was on everyone’s mind became clear in the spring, once the regime issued a number of new ordinances governing national standardization of civil servant pay. Inevitably, Straube’s package was reassessed to square with the new guidelines, which (as had been anticipated) also clarified what was possible in terms of extending the compulsory retirement age. This latter issue was likely the most pressing one, since the question had been left open in 1935 pending Berlin’s official position. A lengthy legal analysis that March determined that the new provisions would affect the internal arrangement but not the substance of Straube’s finances hammered out two years earlier. A retirement exemption beyond age sixty-five was possible in extraordinary cases. The city could recommend an unrestricted arrangement on the basis of its cantor’s unique status. The memorandum continued, “Admittedly we must wait and see whether Professor Straube himself, who recently has required recurring periods of convalescence, still attaches importance to this benefit. It is obvious . . . that the repeated temporary ailment cannot be ascribed to a general weakening of his state of health, but rather to an overly intense set of responsibilities at the Conservatory.”20 The Nazi Schulrat Bennewitz wrote Straube on April 27 to cite both the letter of the ordinance and the exemption, which he had set wheels in motion to secure. “The Bach city of Leipzig would gratefully welcome my being able to inform you, just after the new German civil servant 16 Memorandum to Goerdeler, November 28, 1936, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 90. 17 Memoranda, February 24 and March 8, 1937, ibid., 93–94. 18 Letter from Rector Jentzsch to the Leipzig Schulamt, January 6, 1937, ibid., 92. 19 Letter, January 9, 1937, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 20 Memorandum, March 24, 1937, Straube-Akten 2, 96–100.
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law takes effect, that the statutory age limit does not apply to the present gifted custodian of the world-renowned office of Thomaskantor, rather that it falls to him to determine the timing of his departure from this office.”21 The councilor’s stilted language betrays something between self-satisfaction and polite aversion at having reached this conclusion. It was the most advantageous position Straube could have imagined, essentially an open-ended invitation to stay put as long as he wanted. For many years he had maneuvered, steadily and stubbornly, toward this outcome. True to his word, Bennewitz immediately appealed to his NS superiors in the Saxon education ministry for the exemption.22 Neither Straube nor Dresden replied right away, so the question hung in the air that summer. But when the response from the cantor’s pen did finally arrive that September, it became clear that the city had been justified to question whether Straube’s view had evolved. “After much consideration I find it right to withdraw from the office of Thomaskantor once I have reached the age limit (January 6, 1938),” he now announced. “I make the request to be released from office on December 31, 1937, with the granting of the pension ensured to me.”23 He had long mastered the art of the well-timed bombshell, here rendered the more effective by a deft brevity and conspicuous lack of explanation as to what “much consideration” had involved. By autumn 1937 Straube had retreated even from the idea of staying on an extra year, proposing instead to step down before his sixty-fifth birthday. So radical was this decision that a memorandum from the Schulamt questioned whether the cantor had “chose[n] December 31, 1937, deliberately (end of calendar year) or out of unfamiliarity with the new legal provisions.”24 Neither the path to nor the timing of this extraordinary moment can be explained entirely on the basis of an advancing health crisis, troubling though it was. Larger factors had been at work, ones that reflected the consequences of the regime’s creeping Blut-und-Boden policies. In the first place, Goerdeler had withdrawn as Leipzig mayor in March 1937 over increased frictions with the Nazis. An independent conservative politician and economist who twice had served at the forefront of national economic policy as Price Commissioner, he had occupied the office of Oberbürgermeister since 21 Letter, April 27, 1937, ibid., 103. The law is the third Besoldungsangleichungs gesetz (July 25, 1936). 22 Letter, April 28, 1937, ibid., 105. 23 Letter, September 8, 1937, ibid., 110. 24 Memorandum, September 10, 1937, ibid., 111–12.
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1930. Straube was hyperaware that realization of his own goals was hitched to an alliance with Goerdeler, who repeatedly had gone the extra mile on his behalf. “What would happen to me if he were no longer in Leipzig?”, he wrote to Hertha, and this question he also raised personally with the mayor in mid-1934, as the Stein–Berlin issue heated up.25 By spring 1937 Straube found himself in the unenviable position of calculating his fate as eventuality became reality. “To my distress I read in the [Münchner Neueste Nachrichten] of the mayor’s resignation,” he had written Hertha from Garmisch that January, again convalescing in the Bavarian mountains. “We can talk further about it in person.”26 He rightly implied that it was a sensitive issue. Goerdeler’s relationship with National Socialism had been no more straightforward than Straube’s own, charting a course from acceptance to toleration to uneasy opposition, ultimately to open defiance. It so happened that the straw that had broken the camel’s back of Goerdeler’s increasingly strained relations with Berlin turned on a nefarious episode of musical culture, namely the NS-instigated removal of Werner Stein’s bronze monument to Felix Mendelssohn, displayed prominently outside the Gewandhaus since 1892. Party operatives had agitated for the statue’s elimination since May 1936, despite hesitancy over potentially unfavorable optics coinciding with the Berlin Olympics that August. Still in September 1936 the Thomanerchor could and did sing Mendelssohn’s choral works without incident at official municipal functions.27 Impatient with anti-Semitic extremism, Goerdeler had put up roadblocks and initiated stalling tactics to thwart the monument’s removal. But while the mayor traveled to lecture in Helsinki, the Nazi Deputy Mayor Rudolf Haake caused it to disappear during the night of November 9/10.28 Facing open insubordination upon his return, and disillusioned over an array of policy differences with Berlin, Goerdeler requested release on November 25.29 Between his 25 Letter to Hertha Straube, May 17, 1934, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. He had taken a rumor that Goerdeler had joined the party at Hitler’s behest as a factor in his deliberations about vacating Leipzig for Berlin. Letter to Hertha Straube, May 19, 1934, ibid. 26 Postcard, January 9, 1937, ibid. 27 Reich, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, 257. 28 See further Gesine Adler, “Das Leipziger Mendelssohn-Denkmal (1892– 1936),” in Schinköth, ed., Musikstadt Leipzig, 395–404; Reich, “In Stein und Bronze”; Hoffmann, Carl Goerdeler, 53–56. 29 On Goerdeler’s relationship with the regime, see Reich, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, esp. 163–73, a summary of Nazi infiltration of the City Council by 1935.
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official exit on March 31, 1937, and the installation of the veteran Nazi hardliner Walter Dönicke as mayor on October 12, the municipal leadership so critical to Straube’s standing hung in the balance. It seems no coincidence that the cantor’s letter of resignation arrived at City Hall during this window. “So long as the office was occupied by [Goerdeler], a man with whom I was close, and who honored me with his trust, all difficulties could be surmounted,” he would recall later.30 The dance with Straube’s superiors would become more precarious going forward, as the delicate mayoral buffer between the NS-synchronized Council and Thomaskantor fell away. A second issue had reached boiling point at the time of Straube’s September resignation, one that demonstrated the grotesque pitfalls of that dance in no uncertain terms. He later would recall that with Goerdeler he had prevented “until 1936” the absorption of the Thomanerchor into the Hitlerjugend, the raucous Nazi youth organization founded in the 1920s. “From that point I found myself in an intense struggle with a Herr [Gerhard] Richter, who was installed by the HJ powers as administrator of the Thomanerchor, and who aimed at nothing less than the destruction of my artistic efforts by sabotage. The unwavering loyalty of the Thomaner to their cantor thwarted all such efforts [hat solche Absicht zuschanden werden lassen].”31 The Gesetz über die Hitlerjugend, the law according to which membership would become compulsory, appeared on December 1, 1936, signaling an escalation from voluntary recruitment efforts to coercion. Though the law was not enforced and had to be backed by a second ordinance in 1939, the regime’s designs were clear enough. Already before the adoption of the HJ laws, wheels had been set in motion to absorb the Thomaner. Berlin’s Mozart Choir and the Regensburger Domspatzen—the latter had particularly close and long-standing relations with Hitler—were among comparable ensembles targeted for incorporation, to the end of enhancing the musical reputation of the Hitlerjugend.32 At its core the HJ embodied a value system as far removed as imaginable from Straube’s own: a blowhard anti-intellectualism propelling an undisciplined program of ultranationalist vagaries; a music wing promoting simplistic music-making in the name of “character-building” indoctrination, 30 “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” 159. 31 Ibid. In a calculated use of Old-Testament language (zuschanden werden) Straube underscored the fate of Nazi treachery in the face of divine justice. 32 Stoverock, Musik in der Hitlerjugend, 96.
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often in alliance with radio stations that now had less time for and interest in high art; and, above all, the bald incursion of politics into education. The organization’s intentions with respect to music education in particular were encapsulated in a Leipzig press article, according to which the schools must stand for “the affirmation that political and artistic breeding amount to an inseparable unity that categorically rejects the division of young people, and therefore the entire Volk, into political soldiers and cultural vehicles.”33 Strings were pulled at the highest levels to mitigate the inevitable, Goerdeler having appealed to Goebbels to block the move in June 1936.34 At latest by mid-1937, Straube himself had gotten involved, enlisting the voice of a high-profile artist who had the ear of the Nazis, namely his old friend Furtwängler. In July 1937 he stopped over in Bayreuth to see Furtwängler conduct rehearsals for Götterdämmerung. By that time Furtwängler had long managed his own set of politically motivated difficulties, both with the NS government and the Wagner family. Unlike Straube he had refused to join the party but, like him, he had elected to stay on and dance with the regime. That same summer Furtwängler is supposed to have defended his position to Arturo Toscanini with the dictum that “music belongs to a different world, and it is above chance political events”—just the sort of precarious credo to musical autonomy on which the Leipzig Thomaskantor, too, had erected a comprehensive ideology.35 Straube told his wife what he had learned from Furtwängler at Bayreuth, namely that Goebbels had “promised him that Leipzig’s wishes with respect to the incorporation of the choir in the HJ will be fulfilled. In case that doesn’t happen, he will intervene, since he has a meeting with the Reich minister on July 22, and he would use that opportunity to push for the delivery on the pledge for the Thomaner.”36 “Leipzig’s wishes” likely referred to the efforts of Goerdeler, Straube, Jentzsch, and others to ensure that, if the choir’s absorption into the HJ was unavoidable, it be granted the status of an autonomous unit. That way rehearsal time would not be compromised by other responsibilities normally attached to membership (athletic training, paramilitary exercises, rally attendance, and so on).
33 Waldemar Rosen, “Politische Erziehung durch Musik: Kulturarbeit auf neuen Wegen,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, October 14, 1937, citing an essay by Helmut Siebert in the NS periodical Musik und Volk. 34 Reich, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, 138. 35 Recounted in Shirakawa, The Devil’s Music Master, 217. 36 Letter, July 19, 1937, StAL Nachlass Hans-Olaf Hudemann, Sig. 10, 36–39.
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It appears that, probably before Straube’s July conference with Furtwängler, all the political choreography had come down to a contentious meeting of some ninety minutes in Leipzig with the Reichsjugendführer and HJ head Baldur von Schirach, members of Schirach’s entourage, local and regional HJ representatives, Schulrat Bennewitz, and Rector Jentzsch. Not unlike Straube, Jentzsch had gotten on board with the Nazis “with stark inner inhibitions” in May 1933, before having become rector, in the naïve hope of being able to exert positive influence from within.37 Now, he had opportunity to try. Of the meeting with Schirach, he recalled that “Professor Straube declined to participate, since the matter fell in my area of responsibility,” an obviously political move with a glaringly weak justification issuing from distaste, dread, calculated caution, or some combination of these. Therefore “I alone represented the choir, standing in a dark suit among about two dozen brown[-shirt] figures.” Over against Schirach’s intention “to do away with the unique status of the choir,” Jentzsch proposed that the Thomaner’s musical work should be recognized as service to the nation, and that the choir should comprise a distinct unit of the HJ. “A result was not immediately forthcoming,” he wrote.38 Straube’s Bayreuth conference with Furtwängler evidently fell in this interim. But even with Straube’s enlisting of heavy lifters like Furtwängler, the future did not look promising. Goerdeler now was out of pocket, the city’s affairs steered by the Nazi zealot Haake and an NS-dominated Council, including Bennewitz. But as Jentzsch recalled, “a decision came down from Berlin after a few weeks, essentially in the spirit of my suggestions.” This was a Pyrrhic victory, nonetheless. Instead of a choral administrator being elected from the immediate circle of the Thomanerchor, the NS-proxy Gerhard Richter would be installed instead. “He caused us a great deal of trouble and instigated an intrigue to bring about my downfall, an action unfortunately abetted by a member of the choir,” wrote Jentzsch. “My overthrow was unsuccessful. We were permitted to choose the blue uniform of the Jungvolk, and in the summer to wear a white shirt with blue trousers.”39 Jentzsch’s and, it appears, Straube’s insistence on relative autonomy meant that the choir was granted status as a Spielschar, an exceptional class among 37 Jentzsch, “Thomasschule und Thomanerchor in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus,” in Kunze and Lieberwirth, eds., Der Thomanerchor Leipzig, 71. 38 Ibid., 81. 39 Ibid.
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the HJ music covens that accommodated advanced music-making under professional leadership. For all non-church appearances, uniforms would be mandatory, in the Thomaner’s case those of the Deutsches Jungvolk, that division of the HJ for boys aged ten to fourteen. The not insubstantial cost of the uniforms plus the required accoutrements was eventually sprung on the parents, although Jentzsch went out of his way to offer payment plans through in-house loans.40 These developments reached their tipping point that September, as the Thomasschule celebrated its 725th anniversary. Capping the commemorations was a program at the Gewandhaus on September 5—three days before Straube’s letter requesting release from the cantorate—attended by Leipzig luminaries and party operatives. The local press carried a photograph of Jentzsch behind a Hakenkreuz-adorned podium, delivering remarks that recounted the school’s history and the leading role of the Thomanerchor in it. Straube, who conducted “Bach’s four-voice choral song ‘Auf Pfingsten’,” was singled out for having “led the Thomanerchor to world acclaim through the performance of all 198 extant motets [sic] of Bach on radio.” Jentzsch closed by asserting that “the German grammar school [Gymnasium] has realized its German mission. Today it forms political persons devoted to the community.”41 The rector was walking a tightrope, drawing on nationalist language peppered with Nazi tropes. Those themes were magnified in his essay, “On the Purpose of Our Work,” an expanded version of the speech published in a companion Festschrift. There he went on to claim that the Thomasschule had contributed the largest single group to the NS student union.42 The point was that “for the Thomana the great upheaval of 1933 did not amount to a fundamental change of course. But the National Socialist revolution did give a green light for the formation of a young men’s cohort of true German essence, ready for service in the Volk community. We aim at the education of young people according to National Socialist wholeness, so closely related to the ideal of Greek harmony. The formation of body, character, and spirit is the great triad that governs our work.”43 This was the HJ party line, and whatever his authentic allegiances, Jentzsch was willing to toe 40 Letter from Jetzsch to the choir parents, November 6, 1937, in Kunze and Lieberwirth, eds., Der Thomanerchor Leipzig, 111. 41 “Festaktus der 725jährigen Thomasschule,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, September 6, 1937, 5. Emphasis original. 42 Jentzsch, “Vom Sinn unserer Arbeit,” in Aus der Geschichte, 11. 43 Ibid., 14–15. Emphasis original.
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it. Straube himself had contributed marginally to the Festschrift, supplying a bibliography of modern Bach scholarship appended to a historical (and non-political) essay by the deceased Deputy Rector Richard Sachse.44 The Festschrift closed with a contribution by the choral inspector Heinrich Lehmann, who that same year had published a chronicle of the choir tours. The article, “The St. Thomas Choir during the Last Quarter Century,” commands twenty-seven pages in a paean to Straube, a narrative that starkly contrasted Jentzsch’s essay by steering clear of NS propaganda. But near the end, bizarrely intruding upon the author’s substance and tone, there appeared a plainly shoehorned paragraph conceived in the manner of a sensationalist news broadcast. “Just as these lines are printed, we have received news that the choir has been incorporated from now on as an independent unit of the Hitlerjugend,” it announced. “In this way a robust union has been achieved between the artistic vocation of the choir summarized in these pages and the ideals of youth formation in our new Germany. Both roles aim in the same direction, both with the objective to engage all abilities and all life’s energies for the honor and prestige of German essence and German achievement in the world.”45 The party had not only realized its goal in large measure but managed to hijack a minor school’s anniversary year to lend a sheen of high-minded legitimacy to the takeover. Thus in November, just after the exertions of the fall tour, Straube and his Spielschar were off to the Stuttgart Liederhalle to participate in a formal ceremony of incorporation during the HJ Reichsmusiktage. Clearly exhausted and surely demoralized, he passed the evening before the performance with his historian friend Johannes Haller, who in a letter to his son offered an unguarded snapshot of the cantor’s physical state (“aged, shriveled”) and his mental one (“completely unchanged”). “He wants to step down if difficulties arise for him from HJ quarters, and in any case as soon as he has performed the Matthew Passion in Paris and London. I fear that the Thomaner will be gradually transformed into an HJ choir that no longer sings in church, but rather at all the youth rallies: conformity [Gleichschaltung].”46 Straube felt he had more to accomplish with the Thomaner, but his endurance had limits. He evidently did not tell Haller of his September resignation letter. The 44 Richard Sachse, “Die Geschichte der Thomasschule vom Tode des Rectors Jakob Thomasius (1684) bis zur Zeit Bachs und Gesners,” ibid., 23–66. 45 Ibid., 135. 46 Letter to Hans Jakob Haller, November 14, 1937, cited in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 89.
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Stuttgart concert itself was a compromise, its first half featuring the usual fare of alte Meister (Hassler, Senfl, Schein), the second dedicated to “popular songs” of the nineteenth century. At the end Karl Cerff, head of the cultural office of the Reichsjugendführung and SS member besides, approached the cantor with a choreographed handshake, “thereby confirming the camaraderie that will join the Thomaner and the Hitlerjugend in the future,” as the press report went.47 The local HJ newsheet carried photographs of the event alongside an account of the concerts, “which have proven that the art of the HJ is attuned to the Volk and consciously tied to the great masters of German music.”48 These devastating optics were reprised on the home turf when a grainy photograph appeared on November 26 in a Leipzig paper, showing the choir performing at an official function opening the new school year “under its Thomaskantor Professor D. Dr. Straube, for the first time in the uniform of the Deutsches Jungvolk.”49 The Thomanerchor parading about in Hitlerjugend livery must have tested the cantor’s powers of diplomacy, though Straube’s 1945 claim of “unwavering loyalty” in the choir’s ranks sounds too pat. It is hard to imagine that at least some of these boys, who soon would sacrifice their short lives to Hitler’s crazed ambitions, did not receive their annexation into the HJ as a victory for blood and country. In any case, Jentzsch had made clear that at least one choir member made common cause with the HJ bureaucrat Richter to undermine the rector. Whether morale really had coalesced so unequivocally around a quietly dissenting cantor is a good question, and one doomed never to be answered. If Goerdeler’s departure and the HJ saga were two factors that informed Straube’s decision to step down that fall, surely a third was the long-anticipated conclusion of the radio cantatas. The Bach cycle had been Straube’s signature project since Easter 1931, every bit as vaunted as the tours. Almost no contemporary writing about choir and cantor, domestic or foreign, fails to mention it. Progress had been impeded not least by the state’s co-opting of airtime for its propaganda, making good on Goebbels’s 1933 maxim that the radio would be “placed in the service of our idea, and 47 Joachim Weinert, “Spielschar Thomanerchor auf den Reichsmusiktagen der HJ,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, November 13, 1937, 9. 48 H. Reinhardt, “Unsere Kulturarbeit muß sich im Leben des schaffenden Volkes bewähren,” Reichssturmfahne. Kampfblatt der Schwäbischen Hitler-Jugend, reproduced in Franziska Specht, “‘Ära Straube–Ramin’: Das Thomaskantorat zur NS-Zeit,” in Schinköth, ed., Musikstadt Leipzig, 371. 49 Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, November 26, 1937, 4.
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no other idea will have a say there.”50 The nominal domestic audience had grown significantly since 1933, thanks to the government’s introduction of cheap access through the Volksempfänger reception device. In 1937 the Thomaner offered its final twenty-four cantatas over twenty-two broadcasts, the effort cadencing on the fourth Sunday of Advent, December 19, with the Latin Christmas Cantata 191. Congratulatory remarks addressed directly to the cantor by the Nazi Director of the Middle German Radio, Carl Stueber, introduced the broadcast. A platitudinous press article by Waldemar Rosen echoed Stueber in framing the whole effort as a victory for authentic NS spirit, in which the cantatas were heralded as “a wonderful monument of loyal German work,” not least in Bach’s heroic overcoming of the religious texts that would have compromised the powers of a lesser composer. “Beyond the artistic impossibility of the objectionable texts,” Rosen effused, “which for the feeling of our time often border on the repulsive, even the ridiculous, in their rampant excesses, we sense the sublime, noble humanity that speaks to us from these sounds, born of an incomparable compositional proficiency.” Stueber had pledged that the cantatas “will sound again over air . . . if a way and framework is found to renew this great work to the honor of Leipzig and its musical tradition, above all to the honor of the German master Johann Sebastian Bach.”51 Straube must have known this was nonsense, as Stueber certainly did. Almost six months earlier, Stueber’s own office at the Reichssender Leipzig had responded to an inquiry from the city’s Kulturamt as to whether a repeat broadcast of the series was in the offing. It was not. “In our experience” general interest was down, also among the broadcasters. The economic burden was too great. The project’s dimensions would allow a repetition “if at all, only after a great interval.” Finally, “we know that the impact of these cantatas was bound essentially to the personality of the present Thomaskantor. We believe further that the Bach city of Leipzig, although it will not continue the cantata broadcasts after year’s end, will have rendered one of the greatest services to the work of the great Leipzig cantor.”52 The claim that the whole ambitious effort had been personality-driven was difficult to refute, 50 Goebbels to the director of the German radio, March 25, 1933, cited in Lieberwirth, ed., Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, 157. 51 Waldemar Rosen, “Eine musikalische Großtat vollendet. Sechs Jahre BachKantaten im Reichssender Leipzig,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, December 20, 1937. 52 Letter, July 1, 1937, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 116.
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and it plainly assumed that “the present Thomaskantor” was not going to be around for very much longer. It is easy enough to imagine that Straube felt the moment to offer a natural point of exit. Change certainly seemed in the air. That July, around the time the decision not to rebroadcast the cantatas was formalized, and just after he had huddled with Furtwängler over the HJ question, Straube retreated alone to Bad Kissingen, his legacy clearly on his mind. At the same time, Ramin, disillusioned as ever, was in quiet negotiations with Hamburg to become the Jakobikirche’s organist. If Hamburg were successful in securing him, there would be open season on the Leipzig cantorate once Straube bowed out. That summer he fell into conversation with one of the key actors in Ramin’s process. “He absolutely wants to bring Ramin to Hamburg,” he told Hertha, “because he doesn’t find him very suited to the St. Thomas cantorate. The remoteness of the post does not agree with his nature, which always tends toward the glamor of the virtuoso. This is right. The cantorate is really the job of a composer, and my tenure as cantor is only an intermezzo. Maybe it has been very good, but in the long term not the right thing for this office.”53 He had always seen himself as having sacrificed his keyboard virtuosity on the altar of the position. He plainly believed Ramin would not do the same. Maybe he felt relief that the post might now finally open to a career composer. In late July 1937, his chief ally at City Hall eliminated and extremist threats from the Hitlerjugend pressing in, he could see the end of the cantata broadcasts. At summer’s end Straube would return to Leipzig and tender his resignation, “after much consideration.” On January 1, 1938, he would wake up to a less burdened life.
53 Letter, July 30, 1937, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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Chapter Twenty-Eight
Tempelreinigung
Or not. On September 24, over two weeks after Straube’s petition but before his intentions went public, Hauptmann informed the Schulamt that the cantor was “prepared to withdraw his request to retire. Hence, pending approval by the Ministry of Education, he will remain in office and above all will carry through the Bachfest planned for 1938. . . . Concerning the length of further employment beyond the lawful age limit, Herr Stadtrat Bennewitz and I are agreed.”1 It was a stunning reversal. Upon receipt of Straube’s letter, Hauptmann’s Cultural Affairs office immediately signaled its intent to persuade him to stay, as it issued an extended memorandum that analyzed the city’s financial obligations to the cantor. The department prefaced its recommendations with the phrase “in the event that Professor Straube cannot be prevailed upon to remain in office.”2 Evidently Hauptmann had achieved just that in a personal exchange: a handwritten note at the bottom of the memo indicated that a positive response had been delivered “verbally,” and that “a written explanation is not to be expected.” In the meantime, Dresden had not yet pronounced on finances and an exception to the prescribed retirement age, despite Leipzig’s repeated pleas since April. The nature of the understanding between Hauptmann and Bennewitz about the timeframe is unclear, as is whether Straube was privy to it. What is reasonably clear, though, is that Hauptmann, and therefore wider National Socialist interests, had acted upon the cantor’s ambivalence in the retirement question—had he ever really intended to go?—largely so that the NBG’s Bachfest could go forward as planned the following April. He was staying in place for now. But the 1938 Bachfest was only in conceptual stages that September. It was the imminent tour that now occupied the cantor. Reflecting Berlin’s geopolitical designs, the Thomaner would appear in south Germany, Austria, 1 2
Addendum, September 24, 1937, to a memorandum of September 10, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 112. Memorandum, September 10, 1937, ibid.
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Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Silesian provinces, including debut stops in the “Führer’s” home territory of Linz, Vienna, Pressburg, Katowice, and Breslau. Ramin contributed solo organ and harpsichord recitals along the way. Almost immediately, Straube’s fragile physical condition manifested itself. At a concert in Vienna’s gilded Musikverein, he collapsed just before going on stage, leaving the choir to negotiate the program without him. Jentszch sprang into action and drafted Ekkehard Tietze, a former first prefect now singing as an alumnus, to conduct the program.3 Afterwards Straube sought to reassure his wife. “Don’t worry yourself,” he wrote from Budapest, plastering over the situation as best he could. “It was a mishap. The choir’s success was all the greater, since no one expected such a consummate performance without the cantor.” It had been “upon my entering the corridor to the green room [that] innumerable people bombarded me. This was too much for my nerves. Thank God that it didn’t happen on stage, with the result that the concert proceeded splendidly and unimpeded. Dazzling reviews.” He now had commissioned a group of men to “keep guard around me and . . . not allow anyone to approach me upon arrival at the green room. All visits by musicians have been declined.” Then, a stoic postscript: “Whether or not I remain in office, this we will leave to God. If not, this too will be alright. What do we know really of our own lives?”4 Having just accepted Hauptmann’s entreaty to stay on, and shaken by a relapse that would have caused a sensation had it arisen even a few minutes later, he remained ambivalent about his future. The show had to go on, and the choir proved musically effective as ever. The fresh set of accolades garnered from the tour demonstrated that the cantor was not merely going through the motions. The Viennese were struck by how the polyphonic “knottiness” emerged “pure and unclouded, as from a single mouth.” Straube, the virtuoso of legend, was imagined as commanding an “organ of people.”5 Other reviewers drew prescient attention to the larger context of the moment, like the Katowice critic who ascribed “heightened cultural-political significance” to the Thomaner’s foray eastward. “Beyond the purely musical sensation, this magnificent choir imparts to all lands the tidings of Germany’s superpower status in flawless purity and 3 4 5
Jentzsch, “Thomasschule und Thomanerchor,” 80; and Tietze, “Erinnerungen 1925–1950,” in Kunze and Lieberwirth, eds., Der Thomanerchor Leipzig, 54. Letter, undated, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. Neue Freie Presse (Vienna), undated cutting in a collection of reviews from the October 1937 tour of the Thomanerchor, StAL Thomasschule 21, 280.
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greatness,” that writer continued, intent to impress the irrefutable hegemony of German culture upon Upper Silesian Poles.6 The political factor was no mere metaphor, at least in those key venues where the Nazis wished to make a point. When the choir appeared at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, for instance, it was not merely the mayor and local officials who participated, but also a delegation comprised of members of the foreign and cultural ministries, the German chargé d’affaires, the German military attaché, the supreme deputy of the National Socialist party, and other representatives of Berlin’s interests.7 Those interests soon would be asserted in ways that went very much beyond the glories of Bach. Hungary would be pushed into the Axis alliance in 1940 and was occupied in 1944; Hitler took the Sudetenland in autumn 1938 and the rest of Czechoslovakia the following spring; and the Austrian Anschluss played out in March 1938, not five months after the tour. Whether he liked it or not, and regardless of how he later would evaluate the situation, Straube in effect was rowing in the same direction as the regime. In November 1937 the Hinrichsens struck an agreement with Straube to produce a new edition of Reger’s “Ein’ feste Burg,” op. 27, the paradigmatic work that had launched his collaboration with the composer almost forty years earlier.8 The close nature of that relationship, cut short by death, was the foundation on which Straube’s absolute authority in all matters Reger rested. His celebrity status in this regard had intensified with time, as Reger himself became part of history. As with the Eight Little Preludes and Fugues in 1934, Straube again turned his attention to a compact assignment, working with focus to deliver the finished product in mid-June 1938. Hinrichsen expressed delight and mild surprise at his tempo, undoubtedly wishing that Straube could apply similar industry to the languishing Bach edition.9 The Peters fall catalog advertised the result, an overtly subjective document that did for Reger in 1938 what Straube’s edition of pieces from op. 59 had done in 1912. In both cases, an “as-I-see-it” approach sought to anchor the composer’s language in the sound world of the time. In 1912 the guiding principle had been Sauer’s luxuriant tonal palette. In 1938 the same editor would (in the language of the parallel English preface) “attempt to prove that Reger’s organ compositions can be played on an instrument 6 7 8 9
Kattowitzer Zeitung (Katowice), ibid. “Der Erfolg der Thomaner in Budapest,” ibid., 279. Letter from Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen to Straube, November 30, 1937, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2152. Letter from Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen, June 11, 1938, ibid.
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which belongs to the tradition of the classical period of organ-building, but which has absolutely no capacity for producing tone-colours taken from the orchestra of romantic music.”10 Alongside fingering and pedaling, detailed registrations reflected the stoplist of the Leipzig Conservatory organ in its 1927 iteration. Terraced dynamic shifts appeared in place of gradual ones, a “simplification” that “strengthens” the architecture and demonstrates “the inner relationship of Reger’s art to the compositions of the great masters of former periods of German organ composition.”11 Straube’s intention to use the preface to address tempo in Reger’s music, apparent from correspondence, went unrealized.12 Whereas in 1912 the approach had been approved directly by a living composer, in 1938 it was supposed to be implicitly sanctioned by a dead one. The preface is at pains to justify editorial license because in 1903 Reger had approved Straube’s interpretation of op. 27 on the mechanical Haas organ of the Basel Münster. Furthermore, that consent had taken musical form in Reger’s op. 73: its dedication to Straube famously cites the date of the Basel performance. Strictly speaking, this was a weak, even desperate argument. If pressed, Straube surely would have admitted that the 1855/56 Haas instrument, with its Barker lever, cone chests, and Romantic tonal palette, was no more a poster child for classical principles (even as understood in 1903) than was the 1927 Conservatory organ. Indeed, in 1938 he continued to assume the free combinations and Walze of the latter instrument. It was likewise a stretch to read op. 73 as tacit approval of the “simplified” picture now on offer. But none of this really mattered, because the edition was at bottom a plea for the continued relevance of Reger’s music in an era that increasingly found the composer’s overwrought style problematic. In the context of the organ reform initiatives, others had made the point that Reger’s polyphony would benefit from the clean voicing of the neo-Baroque aesthetic. An edition by the iconic Reger avatar presumably lent that argument particular weight. One person who surely welcomed Straube’s efforts was the Reger apostle Fritz Stein, still director of the Berlin Hochschule and now at work on a biography of the composer. He shared with his Leipzig colleague not only 10 Max Reger, Phantasie über den Choral “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” Opus 27, ed. Karl Straube, C. F. Peters EP 4440, Preface (July 1938). 11 Ibid. 12 Letter from Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen to Straube, June 20, 1938, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2152.
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a high regard for Reger bordering on reverence, but also a disdain for Elsa Reger, whom both men found imperious and bogged down in distorting mythologies about her long-dead husband. Straube earlier had written Stein “that the woman has a fabulous talent for always thinking and doing the wrong thing,” and that “she lives in a hysterical dream world.”13 In 1930, when Fritz Busch vacated the chair of the Reger-Gesellschaft, Straube had proposed Stein for the post, in part because of his “critical attitude to the memoir-writing widow.”14 These tensions had not eased: in autumn 1938, just after the appearance of the reimagined op. 27, a mild controversy arose involving the upcoming premiere of the first movement from Reger’s unfinished Requiem WoO V/9. If op. 27 reflected the optimism of the Reger– Straube collaboration at its outset, the Requiem torso represented a nadir. Late in 1914 Straube had advised Reger to abandon the composition—even though he had been the one to propose a Latin Requiem in the first place—a development that had sent its psychologically fragile composer into a creative tailspin. At the time Elsa had lamented sharply to Stein’s wife about the destructive effects of Straube’s “cool, subversive spirit.”15 Reger had gifted the aborted manuscript to Straube. In 1938, once Stein decided to mount the premiere, Straube gave him permission to make a photocopy from which performance parts could be produced. Elsa agitated for access, but Stein and Straube navigated the legal questions to minimize her advantages. Undoubtedly, she perceived the bitter irony that Straube and his circle were to benefit from the performance of a work that he himself had vetoed. To Stein, the composer’s sister Emma would refer to the whole unsavory episode as “the Straube case.”16 Stein’s Reger biography appeared soon thereafter, with its Nazi-inspired peroration according to which “the master’s mighty figure extends into our great time of national awakening. He admonishes us to focus once more on the noblest powers of our national values.”17 Straube appeared on cue, Siegfried-like, as “the young hero” who had stirred the “officialdom of church and art” to the composer’s visionary music.18 One of the self-proclaimed 13 Letter, August 28, 1927, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 94. 14 Letter to Stein, January 23, 1930, MRIK. 15 Letter, December 16, 1914, cited in Susanne Popp, ed., Briefe an Fritz Stein, 193 n. 87. 16 Letter from Stein to Straube, October 4, 1938, ZbZ NL 117A Nachl. Straube. 17 Fritz Stein, Max Reger, 153. 18 Ibid., 30.
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distinguishing features of Stein’s study was that, unlike earlier authors, “who proceed from the organ music as the supposed crux of Reger’s work, we place chamber music at the fore. Precisely here the master’s absolute musicianship is reflected most purely.”19 Straube, who absorbed the book with typical alacrity, dispatched to its author a remarkable summa of his views regarding Reger’s music some twenty-three years after the composer’s death. He, too, identified “the chamber music as the highest achievement,” particularly as witnessed by the quartets, the Quintet op. 146, and the Sextet op. 118. “He surpasses Brahms in this area,” Straube wrote, “and Dvořák next to him is a gifted Bohemian minstrel, but nothing more.” The solo string sonatas were “miraculous,” the 1898 Quintet WoO II/9 an advance on Brahms’s op. 34, the keyboard music “untouchable achievements of mastery. Perhaps certain things among the organ pieces have become more brittle [brüchiger] than the piano works.” That qualified validity he now assigned to the organ works must be read against the organ reform’s agenda, and in concert with his efforts to rehabilitate the music in a demonstrative edition like that of 1938. Reger’s orchestral, choral, and art song repertories were weaker, excepting “towering works” like opp. 90, 100, 108, and 124. “Of course, measured against the works of contemporaries there is plenty of significance, but now and then, mannerism really does appear in place of inspiration, for instance in the architecture of the big intensifications with respect to their harmonic structure.” The Violin Concerto, op. 101, fell into that category due to “the uniformity of the solo line [and] insufficient imagination in the design of the virtuoso figuration.”20 He had reversed himself concerning op. 101, on which he had issued a detailed verdict to Hinrichsen in 1910. At the time, the Concerto had been “Reger’s most mature and original work, even compared with the Psalm [op. 106] and the Prologue [op. 108].” He had judged the Largo in particular as “surely one of the greatest slow movements in the repertory. . . . Young people have this impression in any case, and therefore Reger owns the future.”21 Now, that future seemed more tenuous as public opinion had moved on, his own tastes with it. The truth was that he had never accepted Reger’s music outright, and he was not about to make a shibboleth of it as time passed. 1938 had begun with Straube’s sixty-fifth birthday, prompting the usual outpouring of gratitude, some of it betraying the unsettling precipice on 19 Ibid., 98. 20 Letter, January 5, 1939, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 95. 21 Letter, December 8, 1910, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2151.
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which everyone was perched. Hinrichsen sent an unsolicited 500-mark honorarium. “As an incurable optimist,” he added, “I always have hope that one day the organ works of the holy Johann Sebastian will appear with Peters in an edition by Karl Straube, and that it will stand as the Bach organ work for many years to come.”22 Straube’s response reflected the dark developments of 1937 and the yet darker clouds gathering. “In your benevolent kindness the past year reached its highpoint, since benevolence and kindness have become rare things amid the storm of our times,” he wrote, bemoaning the extremists’ corrosive effect on civility.23 Very soon, Hinrichsen’s optimism would meet its brutal end, as would all pretense of civility. Another greeting from a choral alumnus resonated with the peril of the moment by wishing the cantor “yet many years” in office, “to the honor of our severely beset musica sacra.”24 Everyone knew that sixty-five was a watershed. Recognizing that he was transgressing retirement age, press notices now began to adopt retrospective overtones. One local writer, determined to draw every possible parallel with Bach, went as far as to observe that Straube now had reached the age Bach had been when he died.25 Another reporter elsewhere concluded that “for the one who performs this service there is no age limit . . . that could cause him to resign his office. Only death is able to compel him to rest.”26 The local critic Julius Goetz even interviewed the celebrated cantor and raised the prickly question of how he might “be able to allow himself somewhat more rest.” Straube replied unhelpfully that “I cannot conduct something that I myself haven’t prepared from the beginning.” And of Reger’s febrile muse, he remarked that “perhaps I should have tried sooner to encourage or even to constrain him. But I stood in such awe of him.”27 22 Letter, January 4, 1938, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2152. Emphasis original. 23 Letter, January 2, 1938, ibid. 24 Letter from Horst Günter, January 5, 1938, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube. 25 hy, “Bewahrer und Förderer des Erbes von Johann Sebastian Bach. Zu Prof. Karl Straubes 65. Geburtstag,” Neue Leipziger Zeitung, January 6, 1938. 26 “Ein Meister der Kirchenmusik. Karl Straube 65 Jahre alt,” Breslauer Neueste Nachrichten, January 6, 1938. 27 Julius Goetz, “Bildnisse führender Leipziger Musiker: Karl Straube. Zum 65. Geburtstag des Thomaskantors,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, January 6, 1938.
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City Hall sent greetings via Bennewitz and the new mayor, the veteran NS pawn Walter Dönicke. Both alluded to the open-ended nature of the cantor’s post by wishing that he “be granted yet many years to dedicate [his] energies to ‘musica sacra.’”28 Straube’s careful reply signaled his willingness not only to continue, but also to play ball on the regime’s terms, and with its rhetoric when necessary. On one level he invoked his usual themes: the weighty responsibility imposed by a cultural inheritance, the consciousness of a venerable municipal tradition, the matchless transcendence of Bach. But then: “Through this action the world will recognize how willing the Third Reich is to hold in reverence the goods of a great German past, so that future generations receive a great art in unspoiled purity and beauty [in unberührter Reinheit und Schönheit], and so that the eternal Germany [das ewige Deutschland] manifests itself to the world in its spiritual grandeur and power. Heil Hitler!”29 For those who knew the cantor and his priorities, there was nothing new in this ethic of obligation. But turns of phrase like in unberührter Reinheit and das ewige Deutschland were encoded to carry more sinister messages for those inclined to receive them, as Bennewitz was. If later on Straube was telling the truth that his proximity to the Nazis was merely a precarious Faustian bargain, it was no less the case that it occasionally pushed him to speak to the devil in the devil’s language. This was hardly the all-out defiant posture of liberal contumacy he embraced after the fact. Meanwhile, as the involved parties well knew, Dönicke and Bennewitz’s wish that Straube “be granted yet many years” in office was not entirely rhetorical. Since April 27, 1937—the date Bennewitz had communicated to Straube the city’s intent to grant a retirement exemption—Leipzig had appealed to Dresden no fewer than seven times to approve the arrangement, which had included the recommendation to maintain the cantor’s finances under the new national standards. The issue became more urgent as Straube’s birthday approached, since without Dresden’s and then Berlin’s approval, his tenure would expire at the end of January 1938. On January 5 the mayor’s office turned directly to the Reich Ministry of Education in a telegram pleading for clarity. Once the question finally gained traction, things moved quickly. On the 25th Berlin announced that Hitler had personally approved a two-year extension for the Thomaskantor through January 1940. Bennewitz, who had traveled to Berlin to grease the wheels, informed
28 Letter from Bennewitz, January 6, 1938, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 133. 29 Letter, February 2, 1938, ibid., 134.
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Straube on February 11. Questions about his exceptional financial package remained hung in the system, though, and would for some time yet. In 1938 the two most ambitious musical items on the calendar were the spring Bach festival and the fall tour. The twenty-fifth German Bachfest in Leipzig had been the immediate motivation for his staying in place as cantor. Its five days of events from April 22 through 26—shorter than the herculean Reichs-Bach-Fest of 1935, nevertheless longer than most annual festivals— embraced the theme of the Bach clan or Sippe, consonant with the regime’s xenophobic politics of genetic purity.30 Nazi-inspired overtones were all the more in evidence in that the festivities ran parallel to events marking the 125th birthday of Wagner, son of the city and favorite of Hitler. The press did its best to cast the Bach myth in the image of the state’s ethics, painting the family as embodying the naïve-völkisch qualities that went hand-in-hand with unadulterated Teutonic blood. In a keynote lecture meant to lend a sheen of academic legitimacy to such claims, the Nazi musicologist Joseph Müller-Blattau pushed the point that “in the Bach lineage is reflected . . . a stark, rustic faith in life rooted in blood and soil.”31 Tellingly, Straube himself fashioned an essay that ignored such rhetoric. In lofty language laced with references to everything from pietist Protestantism to Nietzsche, he surveyed instead the musical and intellectual currents represented by two centuries of Bachs.32 The festival’s schedule included laudatios to the present Thomaskantor, who now had committed to persevere in the name of Bach’s legacy. At an opening reception Mayor Dönicke presented Straube with a bronze sculpture of Bach commissioned from Johannes Hartmann, after which he entered his name into the city’s Golden Book.33 Such public ceremonial functioned in part to propagandize the comity a supposedly enlightened government shared with a revered cultural actor (and, it 30 Mutschelknauss, Bach-Interpretationen, 115–28. 31 Alfred Lehmann, “Das musikalische Erbgut der Familie Bach. Vortrag von Prof. Müller-Blattau,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, April 24, 1938, 50. See further Mutschelknauss, Bach-Interpretationen, 126–28. 32 “Leipzig feiert die Musiker-Dynastie. Thomaskantor Dr. D. Karl Straube zum 25. Deutschen Bachfest,” Leipziger Tageszeitung, April 17, 1938, 18; “Das 25. Deutsche Bachfest in Leipzig,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, April 17/18, 1938, 50; Fünfundzwanzigstes Deutsches Bach-Fest der Neuen Bachgesellschaft. Bach-Fest-Buch (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1938), 5–6. 33 “Auftakt des Jubiläums-Bach-Festes. Festliche Ehrung im Neuen Rathaus,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, April 23, 1938, 8.
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should be said, Parteigenosse) like Straube, no matter the ideological fault lines beneath the surface. The Bachfest’s dense musical substance signaled that Straube had no intention of slowing down. The Thomaner and the Gewandhaus Orchestra launched the schedule at St. Thomas with cantatas by various Bachs. The Motette the following Saturday afternoon programmed works for double choir, again by the Bach family and again closing with music of J. S. Bach, the motet Komm, Jesu, komm. Then on Sunday morning came the liturgy for Quasimodogeneti with its proper Cantata 67. As in 1935, Straube appears to have secured the homilist, this time his cousin Siegfried Knak, director of the Berlin foreign mission for the Confessing Church. That same evening Ramin conducted the B-minor Mass with the Gewandhaus Choral Union, the Lehrergesangverein, and the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Servings of chamber and orchestral works augmented the schedule, as did a wreath-laying ceremony at the Bach grave, an exhibition “Leipzig—die Musikstadt,” a tour of the Grassi Museum’s instrument collection, and an outing to hear period organs in Störmthal, Rötha, and Wechselburg. Strikingly—because events ran from the Friday after Easter through the following Tuesday—the festival culminated with an uncut St. John Passion at the Thomaskirche, sung by the Thomanerchor alone and “in the same original orchestral arrangement as [the St. Matthew Passion] in 1935,” as Straube remembered in 1946.34 Walther Vetter, the anti-Semitic musicologist who authored the program notes, skipped this detail, instead highlighting Bach’s realistic setting of the Jew choruses with corresponding printed musical examples.35 Neither cantor nor press made a secret of regarding the performance as a correlative to the 1935 St. Matthew with reduced forces. It likely did not escape Straube, either, that a certain theological rectitude justified a post-Easter St. John, with its iconic B-minor aria “Es ist vollbracht” interrupted by “Der Held aus Juda,” a hair-raising window onto the resurrection. Whereas Vetter and other hardline anti-Semites would have winced at the victorious “hero from Judah,” the press enthused over the result and lavished praise on the cantor. Goetz proclaimed that “one heard a choir of magnificent vocal chastity, with the inwardness of a string quartet and nevertheless 34 BAL Nachlass Straube 81a. In another version (81d) Straube noted “with the Thomanerchor and 21 gentlemen,” evidently a reference to the size of the orchestra. 35 Walther Vetter, “Zu Sebastian Bachs Johannes-Passion,” in Fünfundzwanzigstes Deutsches Bach-Fest der Neuen Bachgesellschaft. Bach-Fest-Buch, 81–83.
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with the expressive dimensions of a full orchestra . . . and one experienced the pure, authentic Bach.”36 Another reviewer noted that “the effort toward the most enhanced clarity resulted in consciously restrained tempi,” but that the cut-down forces “largely did justice to the streamlined, terse form” of the work.37 Now more than ever occupied with his legacy, Straube must have felt that he had closed a circle with his 1938 St. John. In the same church thirty-four years earlier, he had given it in an emotion-laden account as his first major musical statement with the Bach-Verein. Now in his career’s twilight, he had presented a reformed reading, at least for ears disabused of Romantic excess and illumined by “the pure, authentic Bach.” The regime countered the Bachfest’s brainy climate with the Reichsmusiktage in Düsseldorf, which launched on Wagner’s birthday, May 22, and ran through the 29th. The Thomanerchor did not participate. Straube instead was anticipating the fall tour, which would take the choir a third time to Paris. There he finally would be able to realize his dream of presenting the French capital with the complete St. Matthew “in kleiner Besetzung” at the Église Saint-Eustache. One account much later claimed that “three hundred French clergymen obtained permission from the Holy See to use the cathedral [sic].”38 Actually there were obstacles quite beyond any dealings with Rome, since the “Spielschar Thomanerchor” again was obliged to appear at the Hitlerjugend Musiktage planned for Leipzig that autumn. Schirach and his minions had waffled on the date, with the result that the October window traditionally reserved for the tour was jeopardized. A plainly annoyed Straube wrote Hertha that summer from Garmisch that he had telegraphed Jentzsch, pleading with him to convince the higher-ups to delay the HJ rally until November. “But he probably won’t have the courage to dance such an extra round.”39 He was well aware that the rector had stuck his neck out with the HJ before and might hesitate to do so again. “You are right to have reservations about all this traveling around,” Hertha would read some 36 Julius Goetz, “52. [sic] Deutsches Bach-Fest in Leipzig. Die Johannes-Passion mit den Thomanern,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, April 28, 1938, 12. Emphases original. 37 Kurt von Rudolff, “Würdiger Abschluß des Bachfestes. Die ‘Johannes-Passion’ unter Karl Straube in der Thomaskirche,” Leipziger Tageszeitung, April 28, 1938, 10. 38 List, Auf Konzertreise, 30. 39 Letter, July 21, 1938, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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days later, as the issue remained unresolved, and as Straube now castigated the state-sponsored propagandistic travel programs that had co-opted his choir. “It’s more a funfair than a taking in of the special character and value of another people or clan, as is expressed in the daily life of the various nationalities. To be capable of this requires intellectual training [geistige Schulung].”40 He of all people knew something about travel and what could be gotten from it. The expansion rather than the shrinking of horizons had always been the pedagogical point of the tours. And he was acutely sensitive to the fact that what he called geistige Schulung was not among the regime’s priorities. Once Germany marched into the Sudetenland that October, the Hitlerjugend rally was postponed until the following February.41 The Thomaner accordingly headed for France, the political climate more volatile than ever. As in 1935 and 1936 the Société Philharmonique collaborated under Straube’s direction, this time to offer the Matthew Passion in the vaulted spaces of Saint-Eustache over two evenings on October 27 and 29. The St. Nicholas organist Walter Zöllner and the Saint-Eustache music director Amédée de Vallombrosa served at the two continuo organs. A Parisian women’s choir was employed to sing the chorale “O Lamm Gottes” in the opening chorus. Straube was maniacally focused on the grand task at hand. Tietze, the alumnus who had jumped in to conduct at Vienna the previous year, recalled that the first evening “was preceded the day before by a four-hour intonation rehearsal. We did not practice the difficult choruses, but rather the chorales. . . . I suspect that for some, this drastic measure dampened the high spirits of the journey.”42 The extra effort paid off. The French press lauded the result, certainly one of the highlights of Straube’s entire career. Aubert, who had heard the Leipzigers at the Pleyel in 1936, once again noted that the Thomanerchor was “played like an organ” by its distinguished cantor.43 “There is no children’s choir comparable to the harmonious consonance, vocal quality, style, and discipline of these little singers,” pronounced one reviewer.44 Another 40 Letter, July 29, 1938, ibid. 41 Stoverock, Musik in der Hitlerjugend, 104. 42 Ekkehard Tietze, “Erinnerungen an den Thomaskantor Karl Straube,” in Held and Held, eds., Karl Straube, 115. 43 Louis Aubert, “La semaine musicale,” Le Journal, November 2, 1938, 6. 44 “Les Concerts. Le Chœur Saint-Thomas de Leipzig,” Le petit journal, November 9, 1938.
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ventured that during the first evening the unwieldy acoustic had caught the choir off-guard. Some passages “were more hesitant, as if the complete adapation to the frame of the immense church . . . was not yet found in all its parts,” whereas two days later, “room and personnel seemed united in perpetual harmony. . . . The work was . . . rendered in total, in all its magnitude and initimate grace (one of the only works where meet, without the slightest hint of artifice, the two meanings of the word grâce).”45 Yet none of this compared to the exuberant account registered by the Leipzig critic Julius Goetz, who had traveled to Paris to witness the historic performance of what he called Bach’s “most volkstümlich-monumental work.” To his compatriots at home he offered an epic verbal snapshot of the first evening. “In the vast church of Saint-Eustache some five or perhaps even six thousand people encounter the eternal language of the genius of the Leipzig Thomaskirche,” he wrote, setting the scene. “In the spacious chancel backed by the great high altar, the Thomaner stand. At the right front sit the five soloists. Behind the singers are placed the forty musicians of the two orchestral groups. Catholic priests have taken their place in chairs to the side. It is a scene of seemingly irreconcilable oppositions.” But once sound interrupted silence, “all contradictions dissolve and an indivisible congregation of believers experience the mystery of Golgotha, along with the pious heart and inspired soul of Johann Sebastian Bach.”46 Goetz waxed eloquent in his comparison to Straube’s 1935 premiere of the slimmed-down St. Matthew (“a musical Cleansing of the Temple [Tempelreinigung]”), and to the similarly chamber-like St. John that April (“like a revelation”). If the Germans had been caught unawares by such epiphanies from the oracle Straube, so much more so the French. The performance had “an almost greater cultural significance when carried out on the musicologically even less prepared soil of musical France. In a country for which . . . a romantically reinterpreted Bach framed in lush sonic discharges is particularly integral, Straube’s artistic deed must appear absolutely revolutionary.” The present cantor, after all, grasped Bach’s essence “as a richness of spiritual tensions and inner history, and not as a playground of grand sonic ecstasies. One need not be surprised 45 Claude Altomont, “Passion selon Saint-Matthieu, de Bach,” Le ménestrel, November 4/11, 1938, 248, evoking the theological (“blessing”) and aesthetic (“beauty”) connotations of grâce. 46 “Eine musikgeschichtliche Tat der Leipziger Thomaner. Paris hört zum ersten Male die Matthäus-Passion in der Originalgestalt,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten (n.d.), cutting in StAL Thomasschule 21, 271.
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if in isolated musical circles of the French capital, this Thomaner concert is regarded perhaps at first as more of an experiment, and not as what it is: a humble and at the same time combative profession of faith to the pure, authentic Bach [ein demütiges und zugleich kämpferisches Bekenntnis zum reinen, echten Bach].”47 “The pure, authentic Bach” was the same phrase Goetz had used to describe Straube’s St. John at the April Bachfest. The chauvinistic portrait of the French as musically superficial and musicologically immature counterpointed other language colored by the nefarious ideologies of the moment: the Passion as volkstümlich, the “combative” or kämpferisch ethic of the undertaking, Bach’s temple rendered “pure” by Straube’s bold Tempelreinigung. Particularly the latter was a longstanding Nazi trope based on Christ’s violent rejection of the Jewish menace. Even as Straube made history in Paris, events unspooled to transpose metaphor into reality. On Saturday, October 29, the final C-minor chord of the Passion echoed through Saint-Eustache. Five days later the Jewish teenager Herschel Grynszpan, living in Paris, received word from his Polish parents in Hannover that they had been turned out of Germany on the 27th in a deportation of Polish Jews mandated by Berlin’s Polenaktion. On the morning of November 7, the enraged boy appeared at the German Embassy in the Palais Beauharnais, just over a mile from Saint-Eustache, and assassinated the German diplomatic secretary Ernst vom Rath. In Germany, retributive attacks on Jews and their property began almost immediately, culminating in the night between November 9 and 10, as the government stood aside to allow a widespread pogrom coordinated through paramilitary units in civilian clothing. It would be called the Reichskristallnacht. In Leipzig, its first material casualty was the great nineteenth-century Old Synagogue near the Thomaskirche, set in flames around 3:00 a.m. During the same night two further synagogues and other places of worship burned in the city, as damage or total destruction was visited upon nearly two hundred Jewish businesses, thirty-four private residences, the Carlebach Israelite School, a Jewish cemetery, and the Israelite nursing home.48 The terror continued into the morning and afternoon of the 10th, not insignificantly Martin Luther’s birthday. In the Neu-Gohlis sector, mobs flushed Jews into the streets and carried out mass arrests in the hundreds. On the 11th, 151 Leipzig citizens were deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp. The next day 119 more joined them. Though many soon returned, Kristallnacht and its 47 Ibid. 48 Willingham, “Jews in Leipzig,” 105–15.
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aftermath marked the beginning of the end for one of the nation’s most vibrant Jewish communities. These brutal developments amounted to but the latest episode in an anti-Semitism that had grown more overt and legislated over the 1930s, much of it directed at foreign-born Jews, of which Leipzig harbored the greatest population nationally after Berlin. There had been the exclusionary civil servant laws (1933), the Nürnberg Laws (1935), the renaming of streets honoring prominent Jews, the banning of Jews from public baths, the marginalization and exclusion of Jewish students in the schools, the shutting of synagogues, controversies over Jews sitting in public green spaces, and more. In the Conservatory’s administration, the question of how “non-Aryan” students, foreign and domestic, could matriculate had played out over the 1930s.49 Deportations of non-German Jews from Leipzig had begun as early as April 1938, peaking that October as the Thomaner journeyed to Paris. The event horizon of early November erased any distinction between native and foreign-born Jews, between assimilationists and Zionists, between Vollblutjuden and Mischlinge, between the surface legitimacy of incremental legislative action and the unrestrained barbarism of genocide. The complicity of the citizenry will remain a stubborn historical and ethical question, no less so in Leipzig, and no less so for a prominent cultural actor like its Thomaskantor. Straube and his circle of course would have been unable to ignore these developments as the regime’s agenda was thrust brashly into the national consciousness. Indeed, the Nazi “temple cleansing” hit uncomfortably close to home. Among the many vandalized properties was Talstraße 10, home to Martha and Henri Hinrichsen and the Peters offices.50 Henri and Hans-Joachim were arrested, the latter temporarily deported to Sachsenhausen. The SS operative Gerhard Noatzke soon assumed oversight of the Peters firm, as he did for several other Leipzig publishing concerns. In 1939 Peters would be sold to the NS loyalists Johannes Petschull and Kurt Hermann. Straube’s last major collaboration with the Hinrichsens had been the 1938 Reger edition. If he were to go forward with the long-since shelved Bach project, he would have to do it with new, “Aryanized” personnel. Presciently, Straube had written his longtime benefactor Hinrichsen in
49 Goltz, Musikstudium, 105–14. 50 Bucholtz, Henri Hinrichsen, 301–13; and Lawford-Hinrichsen, Music Publishing, 262–81.
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January 1938 of “the storm of our times.” That storm now had made landfall in full force. By contrast, Straube’s own fortunes had seemed to settle as 1938 progressed. Between the Bachfest and the tour, the authorities had approved the complicated calculus of his benefits, so painstakingly negotiated with the city.51 Furthermore, his 1937 collapse in Vienna had gotten his attention: he had curtailed his workload and weathered the stress of his 1938 obligations without incident. He had never had more contractually set-aside downtime than at this moment, and he was making use of it now that his physical stamina was slipping. Summer 1939 found Straube isolated in Gastein, where he conceded to Hertha, “I’ve become old and have to make peace with the fact that I can’t climb up 1,900 meters as I could in 1938. But this is not going to change and doesn’t amount to a loss, but rather is a fact to be recognized.”52 He had always prided himself on his robust physical condition and had used his annual hiking tours to gauge it. Now aged sixty-six, he was slowing down and finding a way to be an optimist. But he was still Thomaskantor, saddled with the unrelenting regime of that office. He had succeeded in postponing retirement until the end of January 1940. During spring 1939 debates in City Hall got going about whether to advocate for another extension. By May it had emerged that “the appropriate Reich minister, in consultation with the Führer’s representative, can postpone the [Thomaskantor’s] retirement date beyond age sixty-five one or more times, but not more than one year at a time, and no longer than December 31, 1941.”53 Thus it would be possible to get almost two more years out of Straube if circumstances warranted. Kulturrat Hauptmann believed they did, and he promptly drafted a proposal to the Schulamt. “For the sake of its reputation,” the councilor wrote, Leipzig had to retain its cantor “for as long as possible. The exceedingly great worldwide popularity of Straube as Thomaskantor is of course amply known.” Thus he recommended a deferment until the end of 1941, “or at least to request extension of his service through January 31, 1941, as a preliminary step.”54 The “reputation” of which Hauptmann wrote was a strategic factor just when the regime’s 51 Letters from the Leipzig Schulamt to Straube, July 5 and August 10, 1938, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 153, 168. 52 Letter, July 20, 1939, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 53 Memorandum “Abschrift aus den Personalakten Ramin,” May 2, 1939, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 169. 54 Letter, May 15, 1939, ibid.
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irredentist designs and brutal anti-Semitic program were becoming more evident to the international community. To keep Straube in place would mean Leipzig was doing its part to maintain the face of refinement on a totalitarian state increasingly defined by barbarism, land grabbing, and sabre rattling. Bennewitz got to work and waded into the bureaucratic weeds. On May 23 he spoke with Deputy Mayor Haake, who had pursued the question with Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal attorney. Both Frank and Haake agreed with Hauptmann’s position. On the other hand, Kurt Lisso, head of the Leipzig Bureau of Personnel, told Bennewitz “that Professor St[raube] has become very frail” and that therefore in his view, an extension was not prudent.55 Bennewitz then summoned Straube himself for the 26th at 12:30. He found a cantor undiminished by health concerns and eager to serve. “He told me that at any time he would be prepared to follow the [city’s] wish concerning the extension of his time in office,” Bennewitz noted. If in future he should not be up to the job, Straube himself would say so. “Concerning Professor Ramin he is convinced that, for the time being and for the sake of his international reputation, R[amin] would like to develop himself more broadly before assuming the St. Thomas cantorate, which would tie him down more.” Bennewitz responded that “right away” he would pursue the maximum extension, January 31, 1941.56 That strategy went against the instincts of at least one councilor, namely Lisso. Straube for his part was putting words in Ramin’s mouth, though he spoke from a position of experience with respect to the latter’s restless ambition. He clearly wanted to stay, and to frame the situation as optimal for both him and his successor. That same day, in a conference with Dönicke, Hauptmann repeated his “urgent” recommendation that the Thomaskantor’s contract be extended by a year, confident that “Leipzig definitely will be able to retain Ramin.”57 Talks with the latter concerning succession thus were opened. A month later on June 27, Bennewitz could report to mayor and council “and made known a written statement by Ramin. After in-depth discussion it was agreed to extend the contract with Professor Straube for only one more year and to prepare a binding agreement with Ramin.”58 Accordingly, on the 30th 55 Memorandum, May 24, 1939, ibid. 56 Memorandum, May 26, 1939, ibid. 57 Partial copy of minutes from a meeting between Dönicke and members of the Leipzig City Council, May 26, 1939, ibid., 170. 58 Partial copy of minutes from a meeting between Dönicke and members of the Leipzig City Council, June 27, 1939, ibid., 171.
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Bennewitz submitted to Dresden the paperwork for an extension, informing the cantor of his action the following day. But something radical had transpired between late May, when Bennewitz and Straube had agreed that his term should be lengthened, and late June, after negotiations with Ramin. Straube replied directly to Dönicke on July 7. “After much consideration” he was requesting that the mayor cease efforts on his behalf “Since I have been granted again my full health and vigor, I would like to use the next years of my life to undertake and complete some musical work that has been expected of me for decades. Owing to my multiple official duties to the city of Leipzig, such work has not been possible for me in the past.” He now petitioned for release as cantor “effective January 1, 1940, with the pension guaranteed me in the letter of July 5, 1938.”59 As in 1937, Straube was reversing course. But this was not the sort of measured reasoning proffered before, however much it sounded that way. Here was a clear and sudden turning on the heel, a decision taken relatively quickly during the six critical weeks between May 26 and July 7, informed by deep personal resentment and bitterness. Straube’s own version of these pivotal events, recounted some six years later, offers a certain window onto that bitterness. In his telling, once Bennewitz proposed to pursue a new deferment, it became clear that “the offer carried within itself a grave affront to me. The implementation of the extension presupposed the affirmative consent of my designated successor, who had been my pupil and whose entire career I had built and shaped from the beginning through his claim to succession in the St. Thomas cantorate.” But it was beneath his dignity to reap advantages “from the graces of my former pupil.” He reasoned that Bennewitz, Kreisleiter Ernst Wettengel, and probably Haake “were in agreement and had repeatedly expressed it: my person was thoroughly intolerable to the party, and I had to go. All three exerted influence in this direction upon the newly installed Oberbürgermeister Freyberg and convinced him of the rectitude of their judgment. This is the story of my resignation from the St. Thomas cantorate, which, by the way, bears witness to the effect of my activities upon the party.”60 This narrative has been rehearsed repeatedly as a central element of Straube’s biography, one that wants to enact a maximum distance between the cantor and regime
59 Letter, July 7, 1939, ibid., 175. 60 “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” 159.
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operatives. A condensed version appears in his 1946 Lebenslauf: “On January 1, 1940, I was forced out of my office as Thomaskantor by intrigues.”61 Charlotte Ramin’s account does not essentially contradict this position. According to her, only after her husband took office did he learn of the circumstances of his predecessor’s sudden withdrawal. “Over the previous summer,” Ramin discovered that Straube “had expressed the wish to remain in office two further years. When asked his opinion, Ramin replied in astonishment that he did not find it right to limit the tenure of a Thomaskantor at all. . . . As I understand it, the Council then informed Straube that his tenure would be extended one year further; ‘Ramin approves of this.’ It is understandable that Straube immediately resigned upon this insulting news.”62 In her diaries she was less guarded, though, betraying a disillusionment surely shared by her husband. “How good it would have been,” she wrote in the transition’s aftermath, “if this man, who accomplished so much in his life, also would have had the magnanimity to recognize his great pupil alongside himself as his successor, in humane understanding and paternal friendship. But he was not capable of this. So one is forced to go forward without him.”63 The cantor’s indignant retreat exposed at least as much the soured relationship with his organist as any behind-the-scenes political agenda. Communication between the two had come to resemble the estrangement of a marriage gone bad, a situation that had registered in wider circles as the two increasingly went their separate ways. In Straube’s view Ramin was now as ever the enfant gâté virtuoso, focused on résumé-building rather than long-term dedication to a noble cause. He had said as much to Bennewitz that May, and the point continued to weigh on him. Once he had dispatched his decision to Dönicke, the lame-duck cantor had retreated to Gastein to reflect on his tenure, convinced that his egocentric successor would not bring the self-sacrificing rigor he saw himself as having done. “Whether he is prepared for this laborious and thankless task, this is the question.”64 Straube obviously thought not. He had not wanted Ramin called as organist in 1917, 61 BAL Nachlass Straube, 81a. Further retellings are in Christoph Held, “Karl Straubes Lebensstationen,” in Held and Held, eds., Karl Straube, 22; and Gunther Hempel, “Der Konflikt,” in Dieter Ramin, ed., Erinnerungen, 22–25. 62 Charlotte Ramin, Günther Ramin, 98–99; and Ramin, Weggefährten, 54–55. Emphasis original. 63 Cited in Hellmann, “Thomaskantor in schwerer Zeit,” 325. 64 Letter to Hertha Straube, July 20, 1939, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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and he would have preferred a better solution for the cantorate now. This was so not only because he considered his former pupil’s ambitious nature and lack of savoir faire as ill-suited to the job, but also because he thought Ramin would be less inclined to assert himself for the good of the institution as the political tides rose. As Charlotte recalled, “In earlier times Straube said once of Ramin that his was not a fighting nature.”65 This seems a polite way of expressing that personal ambition left no room to advocate for higher ideals. Of course, Straube’s own brand of soft diplomacy had not exactly incited him to march out in front, either, when it came to the Hitlerjugend in 1937 and 1938. Had the relationship developed along healthier lines—if the two personalities and their priorities had been more complementary, the channels of communication more open—Straube’s exit from the cantorate presumably would have gone more smoothly, whatever the motivations of the authorities. Charlotte’s claim that her husband was in the dark about the grounds for Straube’s rash withdrawal is credible given the acrid personal situation. Likewise credible is Ramin’s supposed support for Straube’s open-ended tenure, since the Leipzigers traditionally had preferred their cantors to exit office by death or incapacitating illness. Finally, if in fact Bennewitz told Straube of Ramin’s “consent” to his extension, the cantor surely was primed to misunderstand or misconstrue this, no matter what Ramin did or did not say. As it was, the fraught relationship itself provided the powderkeg that required only a single pointed phrase (“Ramin approves of this”)—clumsy or calculated, authentic or not—to precipitate the explosion. Straube painted his departure as a defenestration fueled by political animus: he “had to go” and accordingly “was forced out.” Whereas there is substance in his conviction that the regime had designs on the Thomanerchor, it is likewise true that the postponement of his retirement was sanctioned from the highest levels of the Nazi government down to the Leipzig bureaucracy. Plainly, the NS authorities had an interest in the Straube cantorate, in 1939 and earlier, and they demonstrably had worked hard to keep him in place. There were dissenting voices, but Bennewitz was not one of them, and neither, it appears, was Haake, the hardliner who had undermined Straube’s mayoral ally Goerdeler some time earlier. Councilor Hauptmann was not only a supporter of but also a prime mover in the cantor’s retention. In any case, Straube’s memory in 1946 was faulty: Alfred Freyberg did not succeed Dönicke as Oberbürgermeister until late August 1939 and therefore was not 65 Charlotte Ramin, Günther Ramin, 95.
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a player in the critical negotiations that spring. Further, no direct evidence supports the notion that Straube was proactive about requesting a two-year extension (as Charlotte Ramin seems to suggest, in recalling his wish to “remain in office two further years”), rather only “that at any time he would be prepared to follow the wish of the [city] with respect to the extension of his time in office,” as Bennewitz had noted. That “wish” emerged as the proposed one-year allowance through January 1941, as the same memorandum records. A trimming of his tenure from two further years to one as a result of separate discussions with Ramin seems never to have been the case, nor did Straube claim it was. There had been no “intrigues,” no “forcing out” from the side of the bureaucrats, but rather a storming out from the side of the cantor, brought on by long-accumulating mistrust and resentment. This was not the tale of temple cleansing Straube needed to tell in the context of the post-war exonerations, though. Hence the uncomfortable contradiction in his 1946 story: it is difficult to see how, on the one hand, the authorities were working to unseat him, and on the other, that the Nazi Councilor Bennewitz would approach with an offer to extend his tenure. Inevitably there were administrative difficulties with the transition that dragged on well into November. No one really had seen it coming quite so soon. It turned out that Ramin did not want to take over until the following Easter, so he would need to be persuaded or an interim worked out.66 Furthermore, because Straube in effect was insisting on early release—the agreed-upon date had been January 31, 1940, but he wanted to retire at New Year—the request bumped up against a new Reich ordinance according to which “civil servants employed for life or on a temporary basis may not retire without application.”67 But the wording left an exception for those over sixty-five, and now the Dresden Education Ministry requested justification to use it. Leipzig’s reply outlined bluntly the city’s comprehensive position with respect to the future of the cantorate. “The municipal administration has always endeavored to retain Professor D. Dr. Straube for Leipzig, and to keep him in office for as long as possible. We have been conscious of the support of the government’s agencies in this objective,” wrote the new mayor Alfred Freyberg, essentially speaking for Bennewitz. He further “did not feel justified in impeding or making impossible the completion of his artistic work. That he is unable to carry out such work alongside his official 66 Memorandum, August 26, 1939, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 182. 67 “Verordnung über Maßnahmen auf dem Gebiet des Beamtenrechts,” Reichsgesetzblatt Teil 1, September 1, 1939, § 3.
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duties is all the more credible since, as is known in our offices, the state of his health is altogether not as good as he sees it.”68 The “artistic work” in the reasoning here was the Bach edition. It is uncomfortably clear that the Thomaskantor commanded extraordinary respect from city officials who, contrary to his assertions in 1946, had worked long and hard to keep him in place. Since Goerdeler’s tenure the touch-and-go status of Straube’s health had been the closely monitored elephant in the room. Everyone had believed that this would be the deciding factor in the retirement question. That he tended to overestimate himself while in decline is likewise clear and “known in our offices.” There was more in Freyberg’s memorandum. He reported having “completed negotiations initiated already years ago with Professor Günther Ramin, considered as the successor in the office of cantor. From him I expect that the ecclesial ties of the Thomanerchor will be loosened.” Gauleiter Mutschmann had given the green light, and Goebbels’s ministry now requested further “that the union of the Gewandhaus Chorus and the St. Thomas Choir be reestablished. These plans can be realized only with the younger successor, however.” As to the present cantor: “For all these reasons—and not least because we are dealing here with a singular artistic personality who, had the extension of his tenure not been approved, would already have been retired, and whose service in another musical capacity is hardly possible,” Leipzig’s appeal to the applicable ordinance was justified.69 The authorities began to set in motion a plan to secularize the Thomanerchor under Ramin, seen as less weighed down by ideology and therefore more tractable. And thus emerged the paradox that Thomaskantor Straube, the “old heathen” whom so many over the years had accused of untethering the choir from its religious moorings, was standing in the way of the regime’s effort to achieve just that. The government had reasoned that the old cantor could carry on as long as he wished, particularly since his presence amounted to positive optics, but that his time was obviously limited. Afterwards Ramin would be a team player in moving both choir and school out of the Middle Ages and into the era of a secular totalitarian state, particularly since the first step toward that objective—the return of the Gewandhaus Chorus to the St. Thomas orbit—was something for which
68 Letter from the Leipzig Schulamt to the Saxon Ministry of Education, November 6, 1939, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 190. 69 Ibid.
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Ramin had passionately advocated years earlier in his ultimately unsuccessful battles with Abendroth. Once it became clear that Straube was not going to change his mind about backing out, the bureaucrats wasted no time in laying the groundwork. On September 19 Ramin was summoned to discuss terms with Freyberg, Hauptmann, and Bennewitz. It was agreed that Freyberg would open talks with Abendroth to relinquish the Gewandhaus Chorus. Further, “by all means an attempt should be made to reform the Thomasgymnasium into a Musisches Gymnasium recognized by the Reich”—that is, from the traditional curriculum of an ecclesial Latin school to that of a secular public (and politically committed) institution. Ramin was then dismissed from the meeting as Deputy Mayor Haake joined it. The ultimate agenda was the Thomanerchor itself, “the close ecclesial relationship” of which, “understandable from a historical perspective, in the future will gradually be dissolved.” Moreover, “It should be endeavored to preserve the Bach inheritance for the Leipzig population without harnessing the mediator of the same, the Thomanerchor, to the narrow confines of the liturgy.” Concensus emerged “that certain Reich authorities regard the Thomanerchor’s ecclesial ties as a kind of impediment to the transformation of the Thomasschule into a Reich-sanctioned Musisches Gymnasium.” At Bennewitz’s request, Freyberg would “undertake the first steps toward the dissolution of the Thomanerchor from its church work only after Ramin’s accession.”70 Unlike his predecessor Dönicke, Freyberg had come to Leipzig from the outside, most recently from a post with the Berlin secret service. Bennewitz knew, in a way that the outsider pawn Freyberg could not, that the incumbent cantor would buck if these covert plans became overt policy on his watch. But according to Straube himself, word had gotten around. Later he would claim that “during the last months of my tenure . . . I received credible news that no fewer than three messengers from the Reich Ministry of Education had turned up with urgent proposals” to launch the new school. He wrote further that “these intentions became known in Leipzig and occasioned great unrest.”71 There would be consequences for Straube’s continued involvement in the politics of the institution. Soon after the authorities’ consultation with Ramin, news of Straube’s retirement hit the press, first locally, then circulating through the national 70 Copy, September 21, 1939, of minutes from a meeting of September 19, StAL Ramin-Akten, 2. 71 “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” 159.
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papers during late September and October. Once again the cantor’s accomplishments were highlighted, warm wishes for his continued presence in the city’s musical culture expressed, and news announced of his ordained successor, “for a long time no longer a secret in Leipzig.”72 A public notice appeared in October reporting that Straube would retain his “secondary employment” on the Conservatory faculty as organ professor and CMI director. Both were post-retirement positions guaranteed him in the 1935 negotiations, although Straube was unaware that City Hall had recently ceded to Ramin the right to succeed him as head of the Institute.73 If the accrued mistrust in the Straube–Ramin relationship had supplied the ticking time bomb that set the cantorate transition in motion, a bomb of an exponentially greater disruptive power had exploded on September 1 as Hitler invaded Poland. It was a move long premeditated, encouraged by misguided policies of appeasement and enabled by the German economy’s disciplined focus on building a war machine. Two days later came the declaration of war led by the Franco-British alliance. By October 6 Poland had been vanquished as Stalin had pushed in from the east. The first mass deportations of Jews would begin soon thereafter. One of the unforeseen defining points of Straube’s tenure was to be the remarkable positioning of his cantorate over peacetime. He had stepped into the office on June 1, 1918, five months and eleven days before the end of the Great War. He would step out of it on December 31, 1939, three months and twenty-eight days after the outbreak of the next world war. No one could accuse him of bad timing. There was to be one final fall tour. The political convulsions and the upheaval around Straube’s now imminent retirement left the whole initiative hanging well into October, as questions of legacy coursed through the old cantor’s mind. In 1920, amid post-war tensions and to great acclaim, Straube had conducted the choir’s inaugural tour through Scandinavia. Now in autumn 1939, as the NS beast bared its fangs and the Scandinavian nations asserted neutrality, he would chart the same course in a farewell reprise. As with Paris the previous year, the Leipzig press dispatched an envoy to testify to this latest victory for German culture. Goetz quoted liberally from the Scandinavian papers and related the interactions of the boys with their host families. The shroud of current events shaped the reporting, dressed up 72 “Um das Leipziger Thomaskantorat. Prof. Karl Straube will zurücktreten,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, September 24, 1939. 73 Memorandum from Kulturrat Hauptmann to the Leipzig Schulamt, September 22, 1939, StAL Ramin-Akten, 3.
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as the righteous defiance of a German nation seizing its future. “Ten English orators couldn’t undo such a concert,” one Swedish-German host mother exclaimed according to Goetz, a not-so-subtle rebuff to the war rhetoric of Britain’s Chamberlain government. In saying so she had “with a pleasant smile shaken off a few memories of the hypocrisy with which anti-German voices from western Europe had sought to belittle German culture.”74 In Oslo, Goetz pushed the point by writing that a Norwegian reporter “regards the great art of the Thomaner as indicative of the cultural will of the German Volk, and he closed his enthusiastic appraisal with ‘We wish this Volk such life opportunities [Lebensmöglichkeiten] that all its energies can unfold in full freedom as a blessing for all of us.’”75 The Norwegians would not have to wait long to find out what unencumbered German Lebensmöglichkeiten looked like when realized on the level of war policy. The following spring Hitler would thrust into Denmark and Norway, another strategic step toward the realization of the großgermanisches Reich. With Straube on his valedictory trek through Scandinavia, preparations continued at home for his departure. Freyberg had officially nominated Ramin to the cantorate on October 24. On November 22 he received from Dresden Straube’s certificate of retirement.76 Earnest discussions arose as to how to honor the cantor. It was found that, despite a forty-two-year professional career, he could not receive Hitler’s recently established award for civil servants, the Treudienst-Ehrenzeichen, “because service to religious societies does not qualify as public service.”77 Freyberg ultimately decided that he should received from the city the complete works of Bismarck handbound in eighteen volumes, ornamented with an elaborate certificate of gratitude.78 In a meeting with councilors, the mayor solicited suggestions about what sort of ceremony would be best. Whereas Haake favored a function at the Thomasschule, “Hauptmann pointed out that Straube would like
74 Julius Goetz, “Die Thomaner begeistern in Skandinavien. Deutsche Musik in Malmö, Oslo und Kopenhagen. Von unserem nach Skandinavien entsandten Musikschriftsteller,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, undated cutting in a collection of reviews, StAL Thomasschule 21, 273. 75 Ibid. Goetz translated from the Oslo newspaper Aftenposten. 76 Letter to Straube, November 27, 1939, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 194. 77 Ibid., 196. 78 Otto Fürst von Bismarck, Gesammelte Werke (Berlin: Stollberg, 1924–35).
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to leave office quietly.”79 That wish was in character, but it also reflected latent resentment over the backroom dealings with his successor and the regime’s covert scheme to secularize the choir once he was put to pasture. Circumstances did not merit a celebration. Haake’s proposal to stage a school ceremony nevertheless gained traction. But on December 12 Johannes Pinckert, now acting rector, called the Schulamt to confirm Hauptmann’s point, signaling that “a ceremony would fail due to Professor Straube’s aversion to anything that could honor him.”80 A second memorandum, likely reproducing the cantor’s distinctive wording, relayed that “he has rejected ‘strictissime’ even the smallest ceremony.” He simply would offer a few words to the choirboys at his last rehearsal “and then disappear. . . . Perhaps he would come to an informal gathering of the faculty, but only on condition that no notice was made of him.”81 Pinckert accordingly recommended that Straube be summoned to City Hall on his last day on the job in order to bestow the certificate of retirement. “Dr. P[inckert] and the [choral] inspectors can be invited along. Then he recommends a notice to the press.”82 Shunning theatrics, Straube had trained his energies on eleventh-hour musical matters, above all the performance of the Christmas Oratorio’s first three cantatas at St. Thomas over the weekend of December 8–10 with the reduced forces he had employed for the Passions. It was his last major undertaking with the Thomanerchor and therefore an unusually visible performance to be broadcast over national radio on December 22. In one press review, the Johanniskirche cantor lauded “such a wonderfully clear performance, purged of all alien accretions derived from personal concepts and viewpoints.”83 Intentionally or not, that way of putting it managed to conjure the ideal Nazi state while singing the praises of historically conscious music-making. Perhaps not surprisingly, Ramin was absent. Heinrich Fleischer—likewise former pupil and Conservatory colleague, organist of the University Church—served instead. Ramin, who had undergone surgery the previous month, seemed anxious to smooth over the difficulties with his 79 Minutes of an advisory between Freyberg and councilors, December 8, 1938, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 202. 80 Memorandum, December 12, 1939, ibid. 81 Ibid., 203. Emphasis original. 82 Ibid., 202. 83 Willy Stark, “Letztes Oratorium unter Straube. Bachs Weihnachtsoratorium in der Thomaskirche,” Leipziger Tageszeitung, December 12, 1939.
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soon-to-be predecessor. Ahead of the Bach performance he sent Straube a poised letter expressing gratitude for all he had been bequeathed. “The seed that you have planted in my artistic soil rises now from the field and, I hope, will bear the fruit that you yourself have appointed and prepared.”84 It is fair to wonder whether these sentiments were returned. In the end it was acting Rector Pinckert’s suggestion that won out, so that on December 30 Straube was summoned to the mayor’s chambers to be honored in a private ceremony. Even Rector Jentzsch had gotten a short release from active military duty in order to attend. Freyberg presented Bismarck’s works and the artfully fashioned certificate.85 A longer letter from Freyberg accompanied these honors, wishing the retiree “still many years of intellectual agility and creative enthusiasm to complete your artistic work, for which your sacrificial, multifaceted official duties left insufficient time.”86 The press paraphrased the man-of-the-hour’s brief speech, words he earlier had insisted he would not offer. Straube “emphasized that [his] work would not have been so easy for him had he not always found in the city of Leipzig the greatest support from all key bodies. Already in his early youth he had looked up to the singular office of Thomaskantor with great respect and would never have dreamed that he himself was destined one day to hold this position.” He had fallen back onto these talking points many times before. “In his office he always aimed to make the tradition of the past alive for the present. His special thanks goes to the Oberbürgermeister and all those who stood by his side during his tenure.”87 Straube had never honestly believed that the city’s patronage had been so unqualified and unwavering, despite the fact that Leipzig had managed repeatedly to hold him. And it had not been Freyberg, Dönicke, or Haake who particularly had “stood by his side” over time, but rather Carl Goerdeler, now long removed from office, and who had begun to turn openly against the regime. As always, though, his words were cut elegantly to the moment. At least he had thwarted the posturing of a big farewell amid a political snakepit. Two days later he would stand before the Thomaner a final time, leading the fourth cantata of the Christmas Oratorio for the New Year’s Day liturgy at the Nikolaikirche. The concluding movement of that work, a stanza from 84 85 86 87
Letter, November 17, 1939, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. StAL Straube-Akten 2, 201. Letter, December 30, 1939, ibid., 218 (draft), 219 (final). “Verabschiedung von Prof. D. Dr. Straube. Durch Oberbürgermeister Freyberg,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, December 31, 1939.
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Rist’s chorale “Hilf, Herr Jesu, lass gelingen,” ended with the petition “Jesus, do not let me waver,” a sentiment perhaps felt as especially poignant. With that, his thirty-six-year tenure at St. Thomas was over. As organist and then cantor, he had drawn the musical establishment into the modern era and, as he put it, made “the tradition of the past alive for the present.” Under Straube, his predecessor Bach had become, and now would remain, the unchallenged centerpiece of the Thomanerchor’s curatorial work. The status of the Thomaskantor within the municipal structures had risen immeasurably owing to his conviction that artistic exceptionalism was the measure of the position, not school-teaching. He had built a “Straube system,” a multifaceted dispensation with connections to the entire cultural and intellectual life of the city, one that had managed to grow and prosper from the time of the last Kaiser through the republic through Hitler’s dictatorship. And he had done all this without composing one bar of original music. Just after the New Year Straube retreated alone to Garmisch to rest his nerves and consider the future. Among the many accolades over the last momentous weeks had been a Berlin press notice according to which “all musical Germany unites with his many students to wish Karl Straube an otium cum dignitate”—leisure with dignity.88 This was a well-meant but misplaced choice of words. Leisure, in the first place, had not been and would never be Straube’s game. More to the point, on January 1, 1940, the now former cantor would hardly have been able to imagine that achieving a life of dignity would be so hard during the next years, as the world began to pass away, violently and relentlessly.
88 Erwin Kroll, “Karl Straube. Der Thomas-Kantor tritt in den Ruhestand,” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, October 10, 1939.
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Part VII
Leipzig 1940–1950 I will never forget the words he spoke to me during my last visit at the beginning of 1950: “One labors a lifetime to uncover the enigma of this Johann Sebastian Bach—and once one believes himself to have achieved it, one notices all at once how everything slips like sand through the fingers.” —Ekkehard Tietze; “Erinnerungen an den Thomaskantor Karl Straube,” in Held and Held, eds., Karl Straube, 119–20
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Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Franciscan Way As 1939 gave way to 1940, retirement festivities for Straube elided with the usual toasts for his birthday. Blissfully isolated in Garmisch, he began the daunting project of responding to the outpouring of goodwill. “For your faithful remembrance receive my most heartfelt thanks,” he wrote in a note to his longtime friend Carl Boos, “and maintain this kindness for me also during those years in which I, far removed from singing and playing, will have to prove my existence like St. Francis in poverty.”1 Francis was hardly the go-to role model for someone who had wrangled as long over money and influence as Straube had done. But in another respect, the image well conveyed the watershed at which he found himself. Nearly a half century had passed since his apprenticeship with Reimann, and for the first time since then, he could ponder life from a vantage point emancipated from the relentless rhythm of church music. Already the previous July he had remarked to Hertha that in retirement, his new activity would be “above all not the sort of work that, cost what it may, has to be done over and over again within seven days!”2 Now he could afford to think in a longer arc, and he fell into philosophical flights of fancy about the vanity of human striving and the uncertainty of the future. “The separation from musical work has not been difficult for me,” he reflected that winter to his friend Otto Grüters, “since actually it was the same, year in and year out, and required the repeated engagement of all my energy and time. But was it worth it?” he asked. He continued candidly, replying to his own question: “The answer is doubtful for me. The separation from the boys has hit me harder, because the relationship to young people is liberating for an aging man, and that’s profitable.” To Grüters’s point that Straube had always achieved highly, he countered, “Ah, 1 2
Postcard, January 8, 1940, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. Letter, July 20, 1939, ibid.
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my dear, I was still young then and believed in myself, and I lived under the happy conceit that my work was worth something. Today I no longer possess the former, and I’m very skeptical of the latter. I’ll confide in you that service on the front lines during the last ten years has made me stupid. I have the feeling that my intellectual essence has constricted and I myself am devoid of every independent thought.”3 More than once Straube had expressed the suspicion that immersion in the musical machine had dulled his mind, and now he believed time finally would permit the indulging of his wider interests. Already when departing Leipzig for Garmisch, he had his long-term reading program settled, one that had little to do with music. He took along Meyer’s 1927 monograph on Bismarck as a rehearsal for the athletic task of absorbing the complete works gifted him by the city.4 He would use the beginning of his new “Franciscan” lifestyle to plunge into political history, even as Europe plunged into war. Had all his work over the years been “worth something” in the end? If in moments of self-doubt, he had ever entertained an answer in the negative, such thoughts did not stop him now from conceiving the future in terms of musical problems to be conquered. He finally would take up the Bach organ edition, he told Grüters in February 1940, imbuing it with “with the insights of my life’s work.” He repeatedly had put off “the execution of this assignment [dieses Auftrages], since the value of such work is always highly problematic.” He had convinced himself that an edition like his would be valid only “for ten to fifteen years,” that his instructions would give rise to misinterpretation “because what I actually mean can be conveyed only through personal contact,” that he was a mere “schoolmaster,” that “as a musician I’m actually untalented.” Yet further: “Adolf [Busch] knew this and put it to me one evening with the words that he would outpace us ‘all’ (he meant me) as musicians. He later feared that I would blame him for this, but regrettably I must confess that I absolutely share his opinion and find it completely right that he so judges.”5 A comprehensive Bach edition à la Straube thus would be not only the next big task, but also the final one, the opus magnum of his career. He rightly referred to it as an Auftrag, or commission, rather than a purely personal 3 4 5
Letter, February 15, 1940, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 111. Letter to Hertha Straube, January 5, 1940, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. Arnold Oskar Meyer, Bismarcks Kampf mit Österreich am Bundestag zu Frankfurt, 1851 bis 1859 (Berlin and Leipzig: Koehler, 1927). Letter, February 15, 1940, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 111–12.
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quest. Correspondence implies that, once the Nazis confiscated Peters in 1938, Straube had worried about whether the new leadership would nullify the longstanding agreement. It turned out, though, that the “Aryanized” firm wanted to stay the course. In June 1939 he had phoned Wilhelm Weismann to clarify the project’s status, extracting the assurance “that the future proprietor of the Edition Peters of course not only respects this agreement but also doubtless will greet its existence with enthusiasm.”6 Thus bolstered, Straube told his wife the following month that he wanted to begin that October to read “a lot of old dusty sources” to learn about performance norms “as taught, learned, and practiced in the decades from 1700 to 1750,” so as to apply the insights to the Bach volumes. “People probably will not recognize the value of the edition at first,” he confessed, convinced he was doing something ahead of its time, “but it will stand and have a stimulating effect up to twenty years after my death.”7 If there were one constant in Straube’s earlier and later approaches to editing, it was his conviction about the frail impermanence of such efforts, that the true Bach would remain elusive, that “here we have no lasting city.” Those who thought otherwise (as he certainly believed Schweitzer did) were deluding themselves. Alongside these grand yet qualified plans ran the well-worn talking point about lack of ability, emerging in the recollection of a conversation with Grüters’s brother-in-law Adolf Busch. Straube and Busch had parted ways over Straube’s failure to join Busch’s emigration. To Grüters Straube had lamented that Busch, “of whom I think so often, almost daily, has completely disengaged from me.”8 It sounds as if Busch made an off-the-cuff remark— the prediction about “outpacing” everyone in the room, as recounted to Grüters—that Straube eventually recast as a dismissal of his own musicianship, particularly against the background of regret at their falling out, given his tendency toward insecurity and self-criticism. It was nonsense of course. Straube had proven himself a trendsetting keyboardist and modernizer of the Thomanerchor. The notion that the “schoolmaster” needed “personal contact” with apprentice pupils rather than blind pedants carrying out orders on printed music spoke for a nuanced musicianship, not against it. His editorial ambitions in 1940 were hardly those of a snake-oil salesman.
6 7 8
Letter to Straube, June 1939 (date illegible), SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2152. Letter, July 20, 1939, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. Letter, February 15, 1940, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 111.
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Still, the battle raged undiminished within. He wrote another friend that winter to prosecute further his status as outsider, insisting that “my attitude to . . . what artistic task this institution [the cantorate] has to accomplish stands all too greatly opposed to the opinion of the day. Sooner or later I would have had to withdraw from service amid conflict.” It was true that “the opinion of the day” was not on his side. “Perhaps for Ramin it will be much easier to preserve the old form of connection to the ecclesial element,” he had continued. But then, “I have exercised a profession for which I am not sufficiently talented, that is, not called to. Only flawed things can come from such preconditions, and so appear the results of my labors. But nothing more can be changed about this.” Thus he would throw himself into the editor’s task “despite my severe reservations.”9 Here was a window onto a conflicted psyche that would have consequences as the decade progressed. How much of it did he actually believe? Did he really think that Ramin could navigate the treacherous political waters better than he had done? That his tenure as Thomaskantor had wasted his time and squandered the potential of the office? That he could realize a vast editing endeavor about which he confessed “severe reservations” up front? That he was not falling victim to depression after stepping down sooner than many had foreseen? Behind it all an ingrained inferiority complex seemed to assert itself, but also the opposed self-image of the outsider as hero. If on the one hand he claimed to have been a pretender cantor, on the other he believed that he was the one who grasped “what artistic task this institution has to accomplish,” and therefore he had been made to walk the via dolorosa as a visionary. The bureaucrats labored under no such illusions about the retiring cantor’s exalted status, a fact that runs counter to Straube’s later claims of maximum friction with the party. Among his less savory admirers in January 1940 was Hitler’s number-two man Hermann Göring, whose congratulatory birthday telegram was noted with pride in the press.10 Even before Straube’s official retirement, City Hall had remained intent on securing wider official recognition for his achievements. The veteran Nazi Councilor Lisso accordingly requested that the Schulamt produce a document for the Berlin Ministries of Education and Propaganda “so that [they] have opportunity possibly to
9
Letter to Johannes Haller, January 19, 1940, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 304–5. Emphases original. 10 “Auszeichnung Prof. D. Dr. Karl Straube durch Generalfeldmarschall Göring,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, January 9, 1940.
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carry out a particular honor for Straube.”11 It was Kulturrat Hauptmann who put his name to the resulting encomium that praised Leipzig’s famous citizen, “whose life has never stood still.” That was certainly true. The ensuing catalog aria ticked through Straube’s familiar biography and elevated him as “the most ideal guardian and custodian of Bach’s art who has gifted to Leipzig’s citizens—and with them the world—a new Bach.” The essay carried on in the overblown rhetoric of a Nazi rally. “Keen study of history as well as his extensive abilities at languages have provided him with a rare political farsightedness, so that he reveres our Führer and fully admires, recognizes, and affirms his overwhelming magnitude [überragende Größe]. Through his many-sidedness, his overwhelming [überragenden], never-tiring spirit, and his great drive to develop; and despite his outsized [übergroßen] modesty, human kindness, and magnanimity; he has won the esteem of all who really know him.” Further, his “intent to approach the enormous [ungeheure] task of the great Bach edition demonstrates that he will not stop and rest even after withdrawing from his post as Thomaskantor!”12 The evident point was not merely to document an extraordinary record of achievement, but also to place that record in lockstep with the sweeping worldview of “our Führer.” A choice of word like überragend to describe in close proximity both Hitler’s and Straube’s personalities, buttressed by related language (übergroß, ungeheuer), abandoned all subtlety to indulge the Nazi liking for grandiloquence. If the outgoing Thomaskantor had operated on this inflated ethic for the good of the new Germany, surely he deserved the state’s approbation. In the meantime, other efforts got off the ground that January. Rector Jentzsch wrote the Schulamt to propose that Straube be granted his full salary for life instead of the more modest pension package already agreed to.13 That suggestion got nowhere. Kippenberg donated an oil portrait by Walter Tiemann to hang in the rehearsal room of the Alumnat alongside those of other past cantors.14 Prompted by Mayor Freyberg, the new Leipzig Regierungspräsident Erich Teichmann approached Dresden to suggest the Goethe Medal for Straube, only to discover that Hindenburg had granted 11 Letter to Stadtrat Hauptmann, December 22, 1939, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 215. 12 “Das Wichtigste über Prof. D. Dr. Karl Straubes Entwicklungsgang und Bedeutung,” ibid., 216. 13 Letter, January 6, 1940, ibid., 234. 14 “Eine Ehrung von Thomaskantor Prof. D. Dr. Karl Straube,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, January 13, 1940; and Neue Leipziger Zeitung, January 13, 1940.
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it in 1933.15 Naturally, the old guard around Goerdeler would have known not to pursue this course, but apparently the Nazi newcomers were left to waste time stumbling upon such details themselves. Undeterred, city officials continued the quest to honor their Bach avatar. That May, the Conservatory submitted his name along with six others as nominees for Hitler’s Treudienst-Ehrenzeichen, Second Class, recognizing those who had completed twenty-five years of public service.16 For Straube it was a second route to that award, since he had been disqualified previously on account of service to a religious establishment. If he could not stand in his capacities at St. Thomas (thirty-six years since 1903), then surely his secondary position as Conservatory faculty (thirty-three years since 1907) would qualify him. The episode revealed just how inefficiently the bureaucratic gears could turn, particularly once the war effort had launched. By October the proposal found its way to Dresden, where confusion arose as to why Straube was being nominated as professor rather than cantor. In December the Saxon Ministry of Education announced to the Leipzig Oberbürgermeister that snags had arisen because “he did not serve in his principal office [of Thomaskantor] for 25 years, and I cannot recognize that service in a secondary capacity [of Conservatory professor] comprised at least half of his professional activity.”17 Both conditions were requirements for the medal. This put the burden of proof on the city to argue the relative weight of the Conservatory post in Straube’s portfolio, so that conversations along these lines were still being had the following spring. By April 26, 1941, the city believed it could defend its position, so that the nomination went up the pipe a second time.18 Straube finally would receive the Treudienst-Ehrenzeichen at a private ceremony in Freyberg’s chambers on December 23, 1941, almost two years after retiring.19 Naturally it was not an honor he would note in his post-war autobiographical materials, much less the exemplary perseverance of the local NS administration in having stumped for it.
15 Letter from the Saxon Ministry of Education, February 19, 1940, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 241. 16 Nomination form, May 27, 1940, ibid., 248–51. 17 Letter, December 20, 1940, ibid., 253. 18 Letter from Schulrat Philipp Segnitz to the Saxon Ministry of Education, April 26, 1941, ibid., 255. 19 Notice from Freyberg to the Leipzig Schulamt, December 23, 1941, ibid., 256.
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Likewise pushed to the side after 1945 was Hauptmann’s claim that the august cantor “reveres our Führer” due to his “rare political farsightedness,” yet the remark is not so easily written off as just another instance of Nazi bombast. After all, in 1934 Straube had praised Hitler as the “chancellor of caliber, a strong-willed political personality” when it came to German policy toward Austria. Perhaps subsequently he had been repulsed by the regime’s anti-intellectualist efforts to inject politics into education, and he may well have quietly disapproved of the worst anti-Semitic urges arising around him. But Straube’s stance toward the war effort in its early phases presented a more complicated, less stable picture than he later would paint, and it was not an original one. Historians have characterized the prevailing mood of the German population at the conflict’s outset as “at first ‘horror and resigned acceptance of the irrevocable.’”20 When, days before his final cycle of Christmas services, Straube turned to Raasted, he confirmed something approaching this attitude, venturing that “The song of the angels will draw near to all peoples of the earth, and we can hope that next year will see the fulfillment of the words ‘peace on earth.’” But Berlin had recently laid claim to all but the eastern regions of Poland, Hitler then having approached London and Paris with a cynical offer of rapprochement conditional on the recognition of German sovereignty in those territories. “This is the wish for the New Year,” Straube continued, “but whether it can be put into practice depends on the English, and it appears doubtful to me that they are willing. Therefore we must gear up for battle.”21 The English, of course, were not willing, as Churchill’s anti-appeasement coalition emerged the following May. Hitler invaded France on May 10, Mussolini on June 10. By June 14, 1940, the Germans had taken Paris, where the Thomanerchor had celebrated an international triumph not two years before. Hitler would continue to push westward by attacking Britain in July. Just as the Luftwaffe launched its offensive against his mother’s home country, Straube was vacationing in Austrian St. Johann. Ensconced in Alpine grandeur and alone with his thoughts, he responded to a letter from Gerhard Richter, a recent choral alumnus who had been called to military service. “As you once served great German music,” he counseled his former pupil, “so now dedicate all the powers of will and body to the great cause of the German Volk.” He pressed forward with the rhetoric of an inspirational 20 Reulecke, “Die Zeit der Weltkriege (1914–1945),” 379, citing Andreas Hillgruber. 21 Postcard, December 19, 1939, BhAE Nachlass Raasted.
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self-help speaker. “In everything demanded of you . . . you must serve the utmost aims in the preservation and protection of the life of the German nation. . . . In later years you will feel fortunate to have been one of those . . . who was there when the time demanded that the self be entirely put aside in order to live for Germany alone.”22 This was the sort of pep talk any card-carrying patriot might offer when it came to defending the nation’s honor. If Anglo-intransigence had made a longer war inevitable, as Straube had maintained the previous December, the ordinary citizen had to set aside personal agendas for the good of the country. The sacrifice of the individual to the “great cause” of a racially purified collective had been an enduring central plank in the National Socialist platform. Certainly there was no sign here that Straube believed Hitler’s territorial demands on Danzig and the Polish Corridor to be unjust. The aged cantor’s attitude was not essentially different from his euphoric tone at the outbreak of war in 1914. The German Empire ultimately was playing a defensive game, and one had to do one’s part. But Straube did not cadence there. Maneuvering from the patriotic to the theological, he addressed head-on Richter’s concern about being ill-suited to war. Richter was going to “encounter people who know nothing about how all existence is dependent upon the almighty power we call and recognize as God,” who fail to “inquire about the actual point of life. Through such inquiry one comes to the awareness that only in bowing before the eternal order of things do we, in the minuteness of our being, gain justification for existence.” This was “the global thought of deep piety: God—the Father,” as taught by Jesus, “the link that connects our lowly individuality with the eternal, so that we may say ‘in God we live, move, and have our being’ [‘in Gott leben, weben und sind wir’].” Here rested the imperative to embrace one’s responsibility to a higher power. “Our work in the brief span of our individual life must be such that its fruits bear witness to how we, despite attachment to the material of our bodies, strove to be not of the flesh, but of the spirit [nicht fleischlich, sondern geistig]. Only by such a life in the spiritual [Leben im Geistigen] does a person achieve immortality.” That view was out of step with an age laboring under materialist urges. “The thinking of the present is directed toward perceiving and seeking out the sense and goal of life in physical matter. Hence blood and soil. But the spirit’s power again will overcome this view, and the recognition that the spirit is life [der Geist ist 22 Letter, July 12, 1940, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 13–15. The Thomanerchor alumnus Gerhard Richter is not to be confused with the NS administrator of the same name.
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das Leben] will remain eternal law. What does it matter whether you experience this in your own lifetime, or whether dark times approach and the light of truth will gleam again only in one or two hundred years? Before God a thousand years are but a day [Vor Gott sind tausend Jahre wie ein Tag]!”23 These ruminations were not of the kind that had earned him the “heathen” sobriquet he so defiantly had claimed in another context, but rather those of a person formed in a family of missional Christianity, one who then spent decades marinating in the Pauline ethics of J. S. Bach’s church music and its traditions. Straube’s little sermon incorporates a remarkable network of biblical allusions and quotations dwelling on the flesh–spirit binary he cherished, some recalling text set by Bach, all of it immediately recognizable to a veteran chorister like Richter: “in Gott leben, weben und sind wir” (Acts 17:28, as in the opening chorus of Cantata 106); “nicht fleischlich, sondern geistig” (Romans 8:9, “geistig” there as “geistlich,” also as in the central fugue of BWV 227); “Leben im Geistigen” (Galatians 5:25, 1 Peter 4:6); “der Geist ist das Leben” (Romans 8:10, as in BWV 227); “Vor Gott sind tausend Jahre wie ein Tag” (Psalm 90, 2 Peter 3:8). This last may be read as a swipe at the “thousand-year Reich” of Nazi folly, as the blatant reference to “blood and soil” clearly was. There was nothing new about this ethics of personal responsibility and the primacy of the spiritual. Likewise not new, but revealed to Richter with particular clarity, was the dissonance between Straube’s nationalist and idealist urges. The admonition “to live for Germany alone,” to work for “the preservation and protection” of the national life, stands unapologetically alongside the conviction that materialist striving (“Blut und Boden”) is transient, vanitas vanitatum. Two years after Straube’s death that dissonance proved too uncomfortable for the editors of his correspondence, as they suppressed the first part of the Richter epistle for fear that it could place their hero too close to wartime demagogy. “Will not be used?” reads a question scribbled in the margin. A second hand proposed, “Or should we publish this second half of the letter (as a cut)? Here a clear position against Nazi ideology.” The reply: “That would be important for foreigners.” And finally, “The letter’s first half is too patriotic, so as to embolden the young man.”24 Not surprisingly, the “patriotic” half failed to make the cut in 1952, the evidence being redacted to favor the straightforward image of the political objector Straube himself advanced after the war. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. The entire letter was omitted from the 1959 East German edition.
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This ambivalent portrait comes into sharper focus when considered against the background of Straube’s friendship with the historian Johannes Haller, eight years his senior. The two met in February 1922 at Straube’s dedication of the renovated Walcker/Blessing organ of the Tübingen Stiftskirche, attended also by the publisher Adolf Spemann. It would emerge that Haller, on faculty at the University of Tübingen since 1913, shared a number of interests and personal characteristics with the famous organist-turned-cantor. In Haller, Straube discovered a formidable academic interlocutor who could indulge his twin passions for world history and politics. For his part, Haller maintained lively musical interests and in 1926 would send his son Hans Jakob to study with Straube. Both men were stark German nationalists and acolytes of Bismarck, both were wordsmiths, and both had issued from Protestant clergy families imbued with bicultural elements. Whereas Straube’s worldview had been shaped by his English mother and the Palmers, Haller came of age in a minority Baltic-German family in Estonia and emigrated to the German Empire in 1890. Both took pride in framing themselves as renegade voices in their fields. Haller ultimately would dedicate to Straube, albeit as an afterthought, his (unfinished) magnum opus on the history of the papacy, Das Papsttum.25 According to Haller, he and Straube fell into conversation immediately following the 1922 Tübingen recital. Spemann remembered the evening as “a display of authentic universal erudition. With full expert knowledge the historian was able to converse with the musician about his field, and the organist proved himself a person of such in-depth historical knowledge as I had not experienced before or since.”26 The precarious position of the new Weimar parliamentary system emerged as the topic of discussion. Haller had been and would remain a virulent opponent of the republican government and of parliamentary democracy generally. What was the best course for the nation at that vulnerable moment? “The only person who had an answer was Straube,” Haller recalled admiringly. “‘One must win over the working masses for the national cause,’ he said.”27 It was a telling and absolutely fundamental remark. By “the national cause” both meant a vigorous German-Prussian 25 Johannes Haller, Das Papsttum: Idee und Wirklichkeit, 4 vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1934–45). On the dedication see Hasselhorn, Johannes Haller, 245; and Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 99–103. 26 Spemann, Menschen und Werke, 195. 27 Johannes Haller, “Vom nationalen Staat. Nachklänge eines politischen Gesprächs mit Karl Straube,” in Gaben, 278.
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state buttressed by an astute foreign policy on Bismarck’s model, one permeated by the intellectual and spiritual values that were supposed to coalesce as the binding essence of the national identity. The realization of a politically robust “culture-state” through the arts, sciences, and religion would manifest the true character of German-ness, and this depended upon the elevation of the “masses” to embrace the cultural priorities of the Bildungsbürgertum. By 1922 such a position had found a home in the platform of the DDP in which Straube maintained membership. The overlapping issues of how the working classes fit into the social fabric at any given moment, through what media and to what ends they were given access to art, what their role was in the economy and the “spiritual” culture—these were enduring questions that had informed Straube’s political views over decades. Seen in this light, his entire career trajectory—the celebrated “as-I-see-it” keyboard artist to the touring cantor to the leader of the radio cantatas—had been no mere musical endeavor, but an overtly political one. In 1922 Straube had unfolded his views to Haller as a long-arched “historical treatment that began around Friedrich II of Hohenstaufen and ended with Bismarck. Once he finished, Haller paused and declared, ‘On the basis of your statements the University of Tübingen would readily grant you the honorary PhD.’ Straube smiled in reply, ‘I wouldn’t turn it down.’”28 He had never suffered from a lack of ambition. The notion that the so-called geistige Werte—the ethical-cultural potencies expressed in the great music and literature of the German heritage—had unified the tribes spiritually long before Bismarck unified them politically was no invention of Straube and his generation. The ultranationalist political historian Treitschke had taught it in his unfinished Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, a work the young Straube had absorbed during the 1890s. Roughly during the same period, Haller had studied with Treitschke at Berlin, where the polemical style and political substance of the teacher had helped form the views of the pupil. The mature Haller embraced his position as the “Tübingen Treitschke,” and Straube was admiringly aware of the continuity between the two.29 Haller’s pronounced anti-republican and ultranationalist positions, galvanized in his youth as an ethnic German in the Russian Baltics, made him particularly receptive to the authoritarian rhetoric of National Socialism 28 Spemann, Menschen und Werke, 195. 29 The idea of a “Tübingen Treitschke” is Heribert Müller’s; see Müller, “‘Eine gewisse angewiderte Bewunderung,’” 450.
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early on. In the wake of the Great War and the humiliation of Versailles, Haller, like Straube, entertained no illusions about a reprise of the monarchy, anticipating instead a figure who could stir the nation and further Bismarck’s project. About a year after meeting Straube, Haller completed what would become his most popular work, Die Epochen der deutschen Geschichte, a sweeping bestseller history of the German nation from the tenth century through the Great War. Its preface made clear that he was writing during the darkest period of German history not merely as an academic, but as an outspoken political activist. He wished “to bolster both faith and firm will in our Volk, so that from the misery of the present a better future may proceed, and so that a new race with new energy will reflect the purpose of German history. In this sense I understand the motto that I have set alongside the title: The day shall come!”30 Haller had taken the latter dictum out of context from Homer (Iliad 6.448–49) to express hope for the advent of a strong statesman-Messiah, one who would not issue from misguided experiments in western-style democracy. In October 1926, moved by “the magnificent artistic pleasures” and “stimulating hours in conversation” afforded him through contact with Straube, Haller would gift several copies of the book to the Thomanerchor.31 “I hope,” the cantor replied admiringly, “that the beautiful book, with its profound and rich content, will be a proper guidepost for the young people to recognize rightly the political entity so bitterly necessary for Germans.”32 Time passed, and in 1932 musician and historian underwent discrete processes of discernment “to recognize rightly the political entity” destined to rescue the country from the mounting chaos of Weimar democracy. Straube had thrown his weight behind the campaign to reelect Hindenburg that spring. Then he had supported a conservative coalition government that would avoid “the partisan rule of a group directed toward the radical right.”33 Haller, who had encountered Hindenburg personally in 1917, had on the other hand come to regard him as politically impotent and stained by the support
30 Haller, Die Epochen (1923), Vorwort, cited in Müller, “‘Eine gewisse angewiderte Bewunderung,’” 444. 31 Letter to Straube, October 11, 1926, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 180–81. 32 Letter, December 26, 1926, ibid., 184. 33 Letter to Hertha Straube, July 24, 1932, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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of the Communist Party.34 During the Weimar years Haller’s politics had swung further rightward than Straube’s, particularly in his sympathies for the extreme nationalist positions of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei.35 In April 1932 he had joined forty-one other academics in signing a public call by the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur aimed at the defeat of “cultural Bolshevism.” In the same month Haller had voted NSDAP in his home state elections in Württemberg. Just before the Reichstag elections that July, as Straube ultimately shrank from endorsing the National Socialists, Haller embraced them, signing another public “Erklärung deutscher Universitätsund Hochschullehrer” in which his Nazi allegiance was made explicit.36 Straube finally did sign on with the NSDAP after having not supported the party’s ascendency, whereas Haller, who had gotten behind Hitler in 1932, never took that step. The different career stages in which the two found themselves surely played a role in those calculations: Haller retired from academic life exactly at this time in 1932, whereas the somewhat younger Straube remained very much a public cultural actor. By autumn 1932, though, Haller’s faith in Hitler had begun to turn, as he witnessed the Nazi-instigated violence around the July elections, and as it became obvious that September that the party aimed at a totalitarian power grab rather than a good-faith conservative coalition. A socially conservative, intellectually enlightened state erected on the foundation of a specifically German Geistesleben was not in the cards for a nation led by weak-minded narcissist thugs, however politically talented. Haller promptly withdrew his support from the Kampfbund on grounds of its proximity to the Nazi party, writing bluntly that the latter had chosen “the proletarian direction,” and that “all the hopes and expectations that I, along with many others, placed in this movement were baseless and will never be realized.”37 Still, this was no outright rejection, however much it sounded that way. Haller, ultimately alienated by NS ideology but enamored of Hitler’s revanchist objectives, chose an uncomfortable posture that his biographer has aptly called “a mixture of accommodation and ‘inner emigration,’” a tightrope 34 Postcard from Johannes Haller to Roland Haller, March 15, 1932, in Hasselhorn and Kleinert, eds., Johannes Haller, 427. 35 Hasselhorn, Johannes Haller, 166. 36 Müller, “‘Eine gewisse angewiderte Bewunderung,’” 454–55; see also Hasselhorn, Johannes Haller, 217–20. 37 Letter from Haller to the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, September 17, 1932, cited in Hasselhorn, Johannes Haller, 220.
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that allowed him to cheer on aspects of the regime’s politics while quietly objecting to its anti-intellectualism and brutal tactics of coercion.38 In this he landed on a position in proximity to Straube’s own, particularly as the latter grew increasingly disillusioned with Nazi interference at St. Thomas and elsewhere after 1933. In 1934 Haller would publish a second edition of his Epochen extended through 1918, and in 1939 a third and final one that carried the narrative through the NS takeover. The concluding chapter of both second and third editions praised Hitler and his movement while counseling that Germany’s new rise could fail if its leaders embraced a unilateralism disrespectful of the community of nations. “Let us remain mindful,” Haller warned in the 1939 edition, “that a people, like an individual, can live only in community with others, and that the German nation least of all can disavow this community given the place assigned to it on earth. Let us not allow the lessons of history, for which we have paid a sufficiently heavy price, to be lost on us!”39 This was a sentiment long resonant with the internationalist side of Straube’s psyche. By the time of his retirement he had taken in the latest revision of the Epochen, which Haller promptly sent him in October 1939. He responded in a letter the following January, “enraptured by the masterful way you give organic form to the monumental material.” He admired “how you present clearly the problematic and fragile elements of German history in its tragic nature, even while affirming our Volk’s fate so positively and courageously. . . . In the two sentences: ‘Let us remain mindful . . . to be lost on us!’ is contained everything that you want to say to cognizant and insightful people about current events.”40 The “cognizant and insightful people” were not the Nazi zealots, not the advocates of a myopic nationalist populism. For both Haller and Straube it was possible to applaud the nation’s rejuvenation as an economic and military force in middle Europe—a feat of the “chancellor of caliber,” after all—while lamenting that such power would be squandered if it were not undergirded by German “spiritual” values. Put another way, by the time war broke out in 1939 Straube and like minds could reject the NS regime on ideological criteria while supporting it on political ones. Put still another way, as the cantor made unnervingly clear to Richter, casting aspersions about short-sighted Blut-und-Boden materialism did not prevent one’s getting behind the war effort as “the great cause.” As Haller and Straube settled into their conflicted Faustian positions, the war would escalate and 38 Ibid., 226. 39 Haller, Die Epochen (1939), 408. 40 Letter, January 19, 1940, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 301–2.
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the breathtaking extent of the regime’s barbarity would emerge. More was to be had from their exchanges in the future. In the meantime, as the fêted former cantor worked to chart a course through the “poverty” of his Franciscan desert, the new Thomaskantor had taken the wheel during the second week of January 1940, despite his earlier wish to begin only after Easter. On Monday the 8th in the Alumnat rehearsal room, Ramin was formally introduced to the choir in a modest ceremony officiated by acting Rector Pinckert. The magnitude of past intersecting future was everywhere palpable. The first prefect was struck even by Ramin’s “quick steps coming up the stairs, unusual compared to [Straube’s] leisurely gait.”41 That fresh energy manifested itself also in the new cantor’s inaugural address to the boys. He spoke frankly of a “drastic change” which nevertheless would continue the previous cantor’s work. “All of you singers and personnel of the Thomanerchor have experienced with undiminished clarity how Professor Straube, setting aside all his own interests, dedicated himself in tireless, unwavering, tenacious, and devoted work to the lofty duties of the choir, embodying with an exemplary sense of responsibility Nietzsche’s saying, ‘Do I strive for happiness? I strive for my work!’” He would carry on, “animated by the same wish as my predecessor.”42 These were reverential words calculated to show no daylight between former and present cantor at just the time their relationship had hit a nadir. They shunned all but the most oblique reference to the tense politics of the moment. The following Sunday Ramin’s former pupil Hans Heintze succeeded him as St. Thomas organist in a ceremony during the morning service, as Ramin led the Epiphany Cantata 65.43 The transition was complete and business as usual could proceed, on the surface at least. But the new guard would soon discover just how difficult it was going to be to maintain artistic ideals as the war demanded its sacrifices, and as the government pushed its nefarious domestic policies. Straube’s supposed Franciscan way would not shield him from the consequences. 41 Christoph Hohlfeld, “Der Kantoratswechsel 1939/40,” in Dieter Ramin, ed., Erinnerungen, 27. 42 Günther Ramin, “Worte der Begrüßung anlässlich der ersten Chorprobe des neuen Thomaskantors,” in Kunze and Lieberwirth, eds., Der Thomanerchor Leipzig, 123. Ramin lightly paraphrased from Also sprach Zarathustra (4/ LXXX). 43 Wilhelm Jung, “Hans Heintze als Thomasorganist eingewiesen,” cutting without date and indication of the newspaper (likely Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten) in StAL Straube-Akten 2, 228.
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Chapter Thirty
Perils The advent of Thomaskantor Ramin had come without much fanfare, and under the cloud of his venerable predecessor’s abrupt withdrawal. Like Straube, Ramin had been allowed to retain his Conservatory responsibilities, and Mayor Freyberg had committed to advocate for his succession as CMI director once Straube decided to step back. Concerning the Gewandhaus Chorus, he would take over completely once Abendroth’s contract expired in April 1943, thus reuniting what had been divided when Straube had given up the choir in 1933. For the moment he was allowed to retain leadership of the Berlin Philharmonic Chorus. Furthermore he had negotiated an extra thirty days of vacation for “artistic activity outside Leipzig and the implementation of ten concerts per year,” and he renewed permission for the Thomanerchor’s annual tour.1 In ordinary times one might have imagined a bright future for a new cantor set up for success. But these were no ordinary times. Although Ramin long had served St. Thomas as organist, the withered relationship with Straube had distanced him from the choir in recent years, yielding an atmosphere more charged with uncertainty and mistrust than had been the case at the last changing of the guard in 1918. This would have to be overcome. Then there was the new organist Heintze, called to military service in April 1940 to leave a critical post unoccupied. Ramin, as ever more energetic than strategic, evidently concluded that it was easier to do the job himself and sprang in to carry out cantor and organist duties in tandem. Further, the question of who should lead the Gewandhaus Chorus had ballooned into an intractable dilemma that turned on the personalities of Ramin and Abendroth in the first place, alongside the opposed intentions of the Gewandhaus and Chorus boards. Although Ramin was to assume these duties unequivocally after spring 1943, 1 “Bedingungen, unter denen der jetzige Organist der Thomaskirche Prof. Günther Ramin als Thomaskantor angestellt werden soll,” StAL RaminAkten, 16.
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the fraught matter of shared power in the interim had arisen amid negotiations leading to his appointment as cantor. There were even more pressing difficulties, namely in the form of intensifying efforts to secularize and thus politicize the Thomasschule, and by extension the Thomanerchor. Two distinct but interlocking avenues emerged toward this objective. First, once St. Thomas had its new cantor, local officialdom moved immediately to loosen the choir’s relationship to its traditional duties. Following consultations in early February the City Council stepped in to sever completely the time-honored liaison between the Thomaner and St. Nicholas, to extricate the choir from the choral requirements of the St. Thomas liturgies, and to reshape the Friday afternoon Motette from a prayer service into a more straightforward concert. Only with difficulty, arguing on grounds of the purely cultural value of Bach’s music, could Ramin insist on retaining the regular cantata and Passion performances in the Friday and Saturday Motetten and in the Sunday morning services.2 It was abundantly clear that the hardliners pursued these radical adjustments as mere first steps: the Council minutes of February 17 dictated that “for now [zunächst] the cantatas will continue to be offered in the previous form.”3 Both Ramin and Hauptmann registered objections to the word zunächst in the directive, evidently to no avail. The new arrangements would take effect on April 1. The second route to a secularized institution was the establishment of a Musisches Gymnasium alongside the St. Thomas Latin School. The first such politicized arts institute had been launched in Frankfurt in autumn 1939 on the initiative of Martin Miederer, head of music in the Reich Ministry of Education, with the school’s joint executive and artistic leadership vested in Straube’s former pupil Kurt Thomas. Now that the old Thomaskantor had been put to pasture, the bureaucrats intended Leipzig to follow as a second site. Already on January 8, 1940, Miederer had produced an official exposé, the very title of which—“Memorandum regarding the establishment of a Musisches Gymnasium in Leipzig with particular attention to the organic integration of the Thomanerchor”—betrayed the project’s overriding strategy.4 Ramin emerged as the favored candidate to direct the school. Evidently Ramin saw the move strategically. If control over the choral 2 3 4
Stiller, “Johann Sebastian Bachs Kantaten,” 37–46. Cited ibid., 44. “Denkschrift über die Errichtung eines Musischen Gymnasiums in Leipzig unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des organischen Einbaus des Thomanerchores,” cited in Heldmann, Musisches Gymnasium, 583.
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auditions lay with the “personal union” of cantor and school principal, he could thwart the state’s aim to populate the Thomanerchor with political zealots.5 Frank closed-door discussions at City Hall revealed what was at stake as Councilors Philipp Segnitz and Kurt Lisso outlined the pros and cons for entrusting Ramin with the office. On the one hand, an institute led by the Thomaskantor meant that the choir could serve the state’s political aims directly. Among the negatives was Ramin’s “pronounced artistic personality,” which might not “possess the necessary engagement with questions lying outside the artistic realm.” The councilors left no doubt about what they meant. “It is questionable whether Professor Ramin displays the union of artistry and military interests [Soldatentum] as is necessary for the leader of a Musisches Gymnasium,” read one memorandum. There was open doubt as to “whether Professor Ramin, who is not a party member, is so strongly anchored in National Socialism politically that the administration of a Musisches Gymnasium can be entrusted to him.” Even if a green light were given, then “he must in any case have at his side an Oberstudiendirektor with broad powers, to whom the administrative tasks beyond the actual overseeing of instruction are assigned.”6 The cantor would have to be propped up by a hardliner, and the success of such an arrangement would “depend primarily on the personalities” of those involved. But in the end, inside operatives like Segnitz and Lisso judged an apolitical and temperamental cantor just as impossible as an older, politically adroit but ideologically resistant Parteigenosse like Straube. No matter the official line, the real point of the institution was to be the cultivation of National Socialist Soldatentum, the military ethic that was primary among those “questions lying outside the artistic realm.”7 The matter dragged into 1941 as the war effort expanded. In July that year a contract was formalized for the opening of the school, which would occupy a handsome villa from which the Jewish publishing family Gebhardt had been ejected. Likewise in July Freyberg had decided to entrust his new cantor only with the institute’s artistic direction, not the wider authority normally placed in a principal or rector. Miederer had told Ramin bluntly that, if he aspired to the latter office, he would need to abandon both Berlin and his Conservatory teaching. “Like Professor Thomas in Frankfurt” he would 5 6
This was Charlotte Ramin’s claim in Günther Ramin, 102–3. Memorandum, February 8, 1940, StAL Ramin-Akten, 38–39. Emphasis original. 7 Heldmann, Musisches Gymnasium, 750–55.
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then “have to place his entire energies exclusively in service to the Musisches Gymnasium from 7:00 a.m. through 9:00 p.m.” Nothing less than total loyalty would do. Freyberg’s express justification for his decision lay with Ramin’s “lack of the necessary leadership qualities, the absence of organizational ability, especially the rejection of his leadership position by the party.” Further, “Professor Ramin wishes to live out his artistic personality in full, and not to give anything up. Until now there have been attempts to make him see reason. But if he absolutely has the ambition, his shortcomings will have to be articulated to him without reservation.”8 The list of perceived inadequacies rattled off by Freyberg was lingua franca for lack of party loyalty. The mayor and his charges knew Ramin well enough to see that he was not going to be brought to heel, any more so than his predecessor. Whatever the motivation—ethical principle, political calculation, personal ambition—he would not sacrifice his career on an altar of Nazi educational ideals. Thus the Thomaskantor was installed as artistic administrator alongside the Freyberg acolyte and Leipzig City Director Friedrich Hiller, who during wartime would function as the government’s liaison.9 The provisional Director of Schools, Gerhard Richter (against whom Straube would inveigh in 1945), was given authority over educational matters. In his constrained position, Ramin appears to have imagined that he could run interference and preserve the choir’s artistic autonomy in Straube’s wake. In fact the chain of command functioned effectively to marginalize the cantor’s influence.10 From the start things did not go well. In September and before the school’s official opening, Hiller called a press conference without informing Ramin, appearing to shut him out of developments. Added to this were administrative difficulties with the fast-approaching choir tour to Italy and Austria. By the 27th, the day before the official dedication ceremonies, the cantor had had enough and pivoted directly to Freyberg to request release.11 He had brought to his position neither the silver-tongued diplomacy nor the strategic patience of his predecessor, nor the nominal credibility of a card-carrying party member. The school’s highly visible opening the next day, at which Hitler’s education chief Bernhard Rust spoke while hosting members of 8
Philipp Segnitz, minutes of a meeting from July 18 in Freyberg’s chambers, July 19, 1941, StAL Ramin-Akten, 50. 9 Memorandum recording a Berlin meeting with Miederer, Hiller, and Segnitz, September 6, 1941, ibid. 49. But see also Goltz, Musikstudium, 97–100. 10 Heldmann, Musisches Gymnasium, 598. 11 Letter, September 27, 1941, StAL Ramin-Akten, 64.
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the Italian cultural ministry, would take place under the cloud of Ramin’s declared intent to retreat. At an emergency meeting on the 29th with Freyberg, Miederer, Hiller, and Segnitz, Ramin was talked off the ledge. The bureaucrats agreed privately that despite his undisputed artistic standing, “an ineptitude in administrative matters and a great sensitivity, together with a strongly pronounced artistic ambition” had hindered collaboration “despite all the good will surely present.” Hiller added bluntly that “as a matter of worldview, he must assimilate more to the tasks of a National Socialist Musisches Gymnasium, which can never promote merely pure art music.” Ramin then was issued into the meeting and, “after prolonged discussion,” retracted his resignation. “In the knowledge that the purely administrative tasks would only restrict him in his artistic work, he expressed agreement that he be entrusted with only the artistic leadership of the Musisches Gymnasium, not however with the administration.”12 That sentence suggests that, despite long-held doubts about his abilities, Ramin had been pursuing executive work anyway and thus running afoul of Hiller. Their relationship would continue for the time being, but only uneasily as Ramin did his best to erect a firewall around the Thomanerchor.13 It was abundantly clear that he stood at cross purposes with his superiors. He would not be able to hide behind his “strongly pronounced artistic ambition” in the long term. For now, though, while he aimed to honor his cultural responsibilities to high art above the political fray, the administrators pursued their priorities to harness populist music education as an avenue for militarism and authoritarian brainwashing. As Ramin became enmeshed in these dangerous initiatives, Straube was by no means impervious to their effects. In 1939 he had learned of the government’s plans to establish the Gymnasium and to absorb the Thomanerchor into its curriculum. Writing in 1945, he attested that an influential member of the choral alumni association, the Obermedizinalrat Dr. Schütz, had objected and enlisted Straube’s help. To that end, Schütz set up a meeting between Straube and Freyberg, during which the retired cantor extracted an agreement that “the Thomanerchor will be preserved and led forward in the traditions which have been in place since time immemorial.”14 That was a most optimistic assessment of the outcome, for the intricate fabric that had bound the choral establishment with religious life had been compromised 12 Minutes, September 29, 1941, ibid., 65. Emphasis original. 13 See Charlotte Ramin’s account in Günther Ramin, 102. 14 “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” 159.
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from the sides of both church and school.15 It is not at all certain whether Ramin knew of Straube’s off-the-record intervention with Freyberg, or whether the two musicians had spoken about these perils as they came to boiling point in autumn 1941. Their clouded relationship made such communication less likely and amounted to a divided opposition, an unwitting point of advantage for the Nazi higher-ups. Equally uncertain is how the episode’s timing fits with the circumstances around Ramin’s attempted resignation that September. Schütz himself confirmed Straube’s narrative in a 1945 letter lodged in the latter’s denazification file. He had “repeatedly” prevailed upon the mayor to meet with Straube. Once the audience was granted, Straube had “fearlessly presented his views about the necessity of the Thomanerchor remaining at the Thomaskirche,” succeeding “in causing Herr Freyberg’s dangerous plans to be swept under the table.”16 By the following April Straube could confide to a former pupil that “as long as Professor Ramin is at the helm, the Motette and the church music will be preserved.”17 Despite all that had transpired between them, he knew that they were on the same page in the end. As it happened, Ramin would resign the Gymnasium in December 1942 over a dispute with Hiller about the school’s Christmas concert. Hiller had vetoed Ramin’s program at the eleventh hour, replacing it with new repertory he himself would conduct, including a setting of Hermann Claudius’s “Deutsche Weihnacht” in which the “Führer” came in for praise. Ramin was permitted to execute his original program, but only in a private performance. To the mayor he protested the situation “as an extraordinary limitation of my authority . . . and I regret to determine that on such a basis, a productive collaboration will not be possible.”18 Freyberg’s swift reply did not mince words. Ramin was given to understand afresh that the school stood on “a fundamentally National Socialist philosophy” which “must be taught and lived without compromise.” Furthermore: “You, dear Herr Professor, live— and I ask that you not read into this the slightest reproach—in the ideal 15 Heldmann’s conclusion that “in the end everything remained as it had been,” and that Straube’s fears about secularization had been “unfounded,” should be relativized in the larger context of Nazi assaults on the institution. Musisches Gymnasium, 594–95. 16 Letter, September 29, 1945, BAL Nachlass Straube, 82g. 17 Letter to Ulrich Fischer, April 12, 1942, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 139. 18 Letter, undated (December 10, 1942), StAL Ramin-Akten, 95.
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world of the Thomaskantor and in the tradition of the Thomanerchor, which does not always afford the necessary space for the structuring of a National Socialist educational institution.” Freyberg concluded by saying that a union of Thomanerchor and Gymnasium was “not expedient. Hence I would like to refrain from such a plan, provided that the agreement of [Reich Education Minister Rust] can be secured. This solution would correspond to your wish, as I well may infer from your letter, which is to be released from the artistic direction of the Musisches Gymnasium.”19 The larger “wish” of Ramin and his allies, of course, was to hinder altogether the consolidation of the Thomaner with Hiller’s Nazi school. By the end of 1942 Freyberg stood ready to abandon the regime’s designs, owing not to Straube’s intercession the previous autumn, but rather the new cantor’s sheer obstreperousness applied over time. Ramin had made enough noise to show that a merger would not fly, at least not without the bad optics of an upset in the cantorate, and not as the war effort consumed increasingly more time and energy. This was a victory. The protracted question of the Thomanerchor’s status had amounted to political quicksand that threatened to undo the cultural heritage that Straube had made his life’s work. Yet it was not the only stressful issue that got his attention in 1941. That June the government had nationalized the Conservatory as a Staatliche Hochschule, and in August Hiller informed Freyberg that Gauleiter Mutschmann “wishes not the connection of Hochschule and Church Music Institute, but rather their dissolution.”20 The move was radical enough to meet opposition even with party operatives in the municipal administration. In January 1942 the mayor moved Mutschmann to promise that a newly named “Institute for Church Music” would be absorbed into the Hochschule, although its contractual ties with the state Lutheran Church would be nullified. Some two years later, what was left of the Institute in name was lodged under a new Department of Choral Conducting and Organ Performance.21 The teaching of liturgics had been banned, although Straube later claimed that he had been able to preserve the curriculum in practice by “camouflage.”22 Surely the psychological pressures of these machinations, alongside the ongoing perils at St. 19 Letter, December 16, 1942, ibid., 98–99. Emphasis original. 20 Letter, August 8, 1941, reproduced in Goltz, Das kirchenmusikalische Institut, 55. 21 Goltz, ibid., 53; Goltz, Musikstudium, 224–25. 22 “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” 159.
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Thomas, were the principal factors that precipitated Straube’s relapse into illness and nervous exhaustion during summer and autumn 1941.23 If retirement was supposed to afford peace and breathing room for creative work, he would be disappointed. In the wake of these crippling assaults, Straube crafted a long, unsolicited manifesto to Oberkirchenrat Hermann Kandler upon the latter’s birthday in 1943. “To enhance the status of the German church musician” had been his life’s objective, resulting in the founding of the CMI, which in turn had raised the bar nationwide. But prospects were dark as he had watched the systematic dismantling of his efforts, which in any case amounted to “mere patchwork.” He admonished Kandler that “the church must step in to secure what has been achieved. This presupposes a free and independent spirit that is conscious of the responsibility imposed upon the church in this case.” The Protestant musical heritage was “a precious possession in the spiritual culture of our Volk,” its conservation “an obligation for the church. . . . If things go the way they are going, later generations will rightly reproach [the church] for having been a bad housekeeper.”24 The aging Straube knew from experience that the “free and independent spirit” required to guard cultural treasure did not comport with the designs of the present government. His warning amounted to no mere pose projected up the chain, either. Just the previous August he had averred to Haller that the church amounted to “shaky terrain” for musicians, and that Haller’s son, his former pupil Hans Jakob, “should become a pianist above all” and secure a teaching post.25 The very survival of church music had devolved into a painfully open question. There were yet other wolves at the door. In early 1942 the Theological Faculty of the University of Leipzig fell into crisis as Mutschmann and the Dresden authorities moved to liquidate it altogether. Straube surely knew that the moment had a fraught history going back several years. Tensions between the regional government and the Leipzig theologians had escalated since spring 1935, when some 200 Confessing Church ministers in Saxony defied a Gestapo prohibition to participate in a coordinated condemnation of neo-paganism from their pulpits. As nineteen of the twenty-two arrested were removed to the Sachsenburg camp, the faculty registered a formal protest, staking out a position in support of the autonomy of the state churches 23 Letter to Haller, May 20, 1941, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 329–30. 24 Letter, February 24, 1943, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 140–42. 25 Haller reported the conversation in a letter to Hans Jakob Haller, August 30, 1942, cited in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 88 n. 28.
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and thus angering Mutschmann.26 From there developments led to the closing of all theological instruction at the University just as war broke out in the winter trimester of 1939/40. By then, Leipzig’s unenviable position on the NS chopping block had come to stand not only as an expression of Mutschmann’s personal ire, but also as one step in the consolidation and eventual elimination of all theological faculties Reich-wide. Thus, as Straube prepared to exit the cantorate in late 1939, his theology colleagues were reduced to teaching behind closed doors in their homes and at the local Office of Home Missions, a space exempt from the usual lecture bans. Only in January 1940 had instruction officially resumed, after repeated interventions by the Foreign Office and other Reich ministries.27 In November 1942 Mutschmann launched a fresh effort to eliminate theology on an order issued through the Saxon Ministry of Education. The renewed plan evidently had circulated discreetly through channels earlier that year, and it was Straube, however unlikely, who appears to have intercepted an official memorandum in March signaling that it was soon to be realized. He chose to phone Alfred Dedo Müller, who since 1930 had worked as Professor of Practical Theology and Preacher to the University. Müller would testify that he had been a Straube confidante before, having “since 1934 conducted very concrete discussions . . . concerning the cultural and political situation” with the Thomaskantor.28 Giving the timeframe of 1934 was probably no accident, since that year Müller’s professorship had been expressly targeted for elimination owing to his connections with Paul Tillich and F. W. Foerster, among others. His dismissal had been avoided.29 In the tellings of both Straube and Müller, their covert alliance in 1942 allowed the theologians to carry on working through back channels to avoid a second near-death experience. The circumstances themselves are maddeningly opaque. According to Straube he somehow “became aware of an official document from the regional administration in Dresden, one which
26 Meier, “Zur Resistenzbedeutung einer Institution,” 214; Habicht, “Evangelische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus,” 200–201. 27 Meier, “Zur Resistenzbedeutung,” 215–16; Meier, Die Theologischen Fakultäten, 440–44, 449–51. 28 Letter to the occupying authorities, November 3, 1945, BAL Nachlass Straube, 82h. 29 Meier, “Zur Resistenzbedeutung,” 207–8.
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undoubtedly was not intended for me.”30 For his part, Müller wrote that Straube had “assured me that he felt bound by conscience to thwart a plan that he regarded as a destructive attack on German cultural life and on the worldwide cultural role of the German spirit [die kulturelle Weltaufgabe des deutschen Geistes].” Müller then had consulted “with Herr Oberbürgermeister Goerdeler . . . to set in motion countermeasures via the Dean of the theological faculty, Professor D. [Heinrich] Bornkamm.” Müller added that, “despite personal danger, [Straube] wished to do everything in his power to stand resolute against the culturally destructive tendencies of National Socialism.”31 The mention of Goerdeler seems at first a slip of tongue, but maybe it was indeed the former mayor and Hitler opponent who was pulled into the dilemma to exercise behind-the-scenes influence. Whatever the case, the episode served Straube well when by late 1945 it became important to demonstrate active opposition to an abhorrent regime. The motivation for Straube’s intervention on behalf of the theologians serves further to illumine his mature posture toward institutional Christianity. Müller’s turn of phrase die kulturelle Weltaufgabe des deutschen Geistes sounds very much like the old cantor’s way of framing things. After all, it was theology’s role in the larger economy of Kultur and Geist that always had interested him, not the rote trappings of piety and doctrine. “Christianity is really a difficult matter,” Straube had written candidly to Haller a few years earlier. “Only a few highly gifted religious persons can fulfill the totality of its demands on the individual. Under pressure of the circumstances of earthly life, the moral demands lead to an inverted situation. What is supposed to be an act of love becomes hate and cruelty, all for the sake of Christ.” The Germans, at least, “acknowledge honestly the necessity of war,” whereas the English “are more piously disposed than we Germans.” This led them to “speak of ‘Liberty and humanity reigning in the world’ [English words used] but by this [they] mean the most brutal death blow possible to an onerous competitor.”32 For the historically minded Thomaskantor, long dedicated to the advancement of cultural-Protestant values, doctrinal Christianity had been the breeding ground for hypocrisy—a duplicitous ethics to which his 30 “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” 159. Meier adds, without evidence, that Straube had come upon the document “in Leipzig City Hall”; see Meier, “Zur Resistenzbedeutung,” 217. 31 Letter to the occupying authorities, November 3, 1945, BAL Nachlass Straube, 82h. 32 Letter, May 7, 1939, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 294–95.
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mother’s homeland still clung, in his reductive view. He might have been an “old heathen” in the institution’s eyes, but he regarded the Christian vision, whatever its distortions, as married to Western civilization. Doing away with it in favor of a new material society founded on Blut und Boden was no better than the double standards of Christianity’s superficial practitioners. Over wartime Straube developed these thoughts and many others in long letters to Haller, philosophical missives that connected the trends of world history as he understood them to current events, geopolitics, economics, and the battle of cultures. A fulsome stream of predictions about the alliances and objectives of the war’s various players alternated with granular analyses of recently absorbed books and essays, assessments of composers old and new, and meditations concerning the unfolding Nazi attacks on the institutions he treasured. One passage from August 1940 dwells on the political implications of populism, the dangers of self-serving nostalgia in the governing elite, the passing nature of political orders, the demise of Christian culture, and the desirability yet impossibility of sustained multilateralism in the international community. “The desacralization of the world” and “the rule of purely material powers” had been bound up with the rise of European humanism, and with the enduring problem of “the masses.” The horrifying result had been a wholesale embrace of materialist urges over the entire political spectrum. “The paradoxical nature of the whole situation lies in the fact that the opponents of Hitlerism—the wealthy upper class in England and America, furthermore Judaism—in fact also represent only material interests,” he observed, “and they confront the problem of the masses without comprehending it, with hostility. A victory for the one party as well as the other will necessarily lead to a barbarization of the inheritance of Western culture. . . . The deification of the state and the magic formula Blut und Boden arise from the same material view as everything else,” he continued, unwilling to let “Hitlerism” off the hook. “The study of history teaches us that a given political state, be it ever so secured by force and iron, can never be sustained longer than thirty years at best. But if people experience how all the promises of eternal duration prove to be empty straw, the catastrophe is upon us.” Christian culture “will be overcome and broken inwardly, namely if the present struggles end with a German victory.” The only salvation “from the calamity of material foundations” lay in the long term, with “the religious renewal of the West.” Politically, the post-Versailles rekindling of German power had failed to bolster a global community. “The human mind is not clever or sharp enough to perceive that, in view of the diversity of races, such unity is an impossibility for all times,” he cadenced pessimistically. “Pursuit
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of it will always lead to its opposite, the destruction of war.”33 These were the big themes on Straube’s mind at the war’s outset, and in large measure they served up a sharp critique of the regime’s superficiality. But not merely this. Those like Goerdeler, who during the 1940s still strove to revive the monarchy, were pursuing dead-end goals driven by romanticized visions. American-style capitalism was just as cancerous as Nazi-style maximalism. Yet these conflicted views did not prevent Straube from holding out an occasional measure of hope that an Axis victory could unify Europe under a Pax Germanica. Concerning Germany’s domination of France in 1940, he wondered aloud to Haller “whether this fact could lead to the USE [United States of Europe]. This is the question of the future. If it were the case, if Hitler should be the man who can reform Europe to a ‘family of strong nation states,’ then the war’s events take on a deeper inner sense and would be justified before God and man.”34 That remark came only weeks after his categorical rejection of such aspirations to the same correspondent, and it showed that he was still susceptible to Berlin’s rhetoric. Once France fell, influential voices in fact had begun to advance plans for a German-led European economic confederation. By early 1943 the Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop would stump for a broadly conceived European union “that would allay the fears of the now-dependent nations concerning direct rule by the Germans, and that would mobilize those countries to collaboration.”35 None of it mattered, of course: Hitler himself, who routinely dangled the notion of a “family” of European peoples as a smokescreen, dismissed any such multilateral policy, whether hatched in his own ministries or not. “The NSDAP and its organizations,” he would write summarily in 1942, “have no European or global mission to fulfill.”36 It was a zero-sum game. In Straube’s manifesto of August 1940 Judaism likewise came in for criticism under the threadbare stereotype of Jewish usury—a reminder that the venerable cantor was by no means impervious to an ingrained cultural racism. In the same letter, written just weeks after the dissolution of Pétain’s Third Republic, he professed to Haller that the French had been “hollowed out from within and possess neither national nor moral substance,
33 34 35 36
Letter, August 17, 1940, ibid., 310–12. Letter, October 25, 1940, ibid., 319. Emphasis original. Loth, “Rettungsanker Europa?” 203. Decree, November 4, 1942, cited ibid.
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a consequence of secularism, Freemasonry, and Judaism.”37 Even in 1942, once the Soviet Union and America had entered the conflict, he remained certain that worldwide Jewry posed a clear and present danger to German culture. When Hitler used a rambling Reichstag address on December 11, 1941, to declare war on the United States, Straube turned again to Haller. “Our situation has become very difficult since the Führer’s last Reichstag speech, and it appears that we cannot achieve our goal to secure the German Volk for all time by means of war alone,” he maintained. “All the less so, since Jewish influence is strong in Russia and world finance has invested millions in the East Asian market. All these things, all the relevant contexts are greatly fraught by the problem of Judaism, much to our disadvantage.”38 That position, as unflattering as it was spectacularly ill-timed, came in a letter of January 24, 1942. As Straube surely was aware, the “Final Solution” to “the problem of Judaism” had been rolled out at the Wannsee Conference just four days earlier, and over 700 Leipzig Jews had been removed to the extermination camp at Riga–Kaiserwald on the 21st. The dark days really had arrived.
37 Letter, August 17, 1940, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 313. 38 Letter, January 24, 1942, ibid.
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Chapter Thirty-One
Götterdämmerung 1943
As the assaults on Leipzig’s institutions unfolded, Straube stepped up his reading regimen. He now had more free time and wished to keep his mind nimble, sharpening the intellectual faculties he was sure the cantorate’s unrelenting musical demands had blunted. Perhaps his insatiable consumption of literature during this period—classical and contemporary, fiction and non-fiction, musical and socio-political history alongside analysis of current events—betrayed an escapism from the deterioration of the cultured world he thought he knew. But as best he could, he also was trying to make sense of that world as it splintered, in part by situating the present in a long narrative arc. In November 1940 he had plunged into Heinrich Mitteis’s Der Staat des hohen Mittelalters, a demanding study in comparative constitutional history of the Middle Ages. Like Haller’s Papsttum, this one bore Straube’s name as the dedicatee, here in gratitude for “the deepest impressions of my youth.”1 The eminent legal historian and medievalist Mitteis had studied at the Thomasschule and the University of Leipzig during Straube’s virtuoso years and, again like Haller, had bonded with him over common interests in music and history. Mitteis had shown such promise as a musician that Straube had drawn on him to conduct the Bach-Verein. On the cantor’s urging he ultimately would pursue an academic career.2 In the introductory chapter of his book Mitteis wrote that “already the [medieval] Germanic state rested completely on relationships between leaders and those led,” equating this incipient notion of government to “the strong feeling of attachment of all members of the Volk to success and failure,” in which they were invested equally. “Hence also the right of the people to rebel against the king if he should fail to show true loyalty.” Further, “the Germanic world is a world of rights,” and “the deepest sense of legal history” lay in the tracing of how 1 Mitteis, Der Staat des hohen Mittelalters, Vorwort, ix. 2 Brun, Leben und Werk, 16.
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the notion of rights is demonstrated through time.3 Mitteis’s treatment of classed society’s relationship to just systems of governance touched a topic that long had piqued Straube’s interest. It was at the heart of his concern for “the masses” and their posture toward “the national cause,” the issue he had articulated to Haller back in 1922. His initial enthusiastic response to Mitteis singled out all these passages and others as “the most essential and significant points in the first chapter,” to which he added epigrammatically, “All this is quite a ‘mene-tekel’ for our times.”4 What Straube meant by calling on the Aramaic “handwriting on the wall” phrase from the tale of Belshazzar is a good question, demonstrating just how difficult it can be to tease from his correspondence any definitive attitude toward “our times.” Perhaps it was “the right of the people to rebel” he wished to affirm, on the premise that the present regime had propagated an illusory and misplaced populism.5 Whatever the case, the book’s venerable honoree received Mitteis’s analysis as a warning to be heeded, not as a dry academic exercise. Many other such ruminations populated Straube’s letters during the war, several of them in dialogue with his reading projects, some in dissonance with the unequivocal posture of Nazi repudiation he would project after 1945. Once Gurlitt and Hudemann distilled Straube’s voluminous correspondence into the 1952 Briefe, Hudemann reported that “the publisher wishes that almost all political remarks be omitted.”6 As it happened, the editors granted far more space to the 1940s than any other decade, so that this directive had particularly incisive consequences. The ellipsis thus became one of the most effective tools for the shaping of the Straube image. Predictably, the discharged cantor was not content to spend all his time in an armchair with a book, or at a writing desk answering mail. The possibility of fresh creative work continued to occupy him intensely. With his legacy always in mind, Straube sent clear signals that the daunting task of editing Bach was no deterrent to his considering a plethora of other summative projects. He had always tended to bite off more than he could chew, now no less so. In 1941 he told Carl Leonhardt that “when I was still in my forties, I dreamed of writing a book in my old age on ‘Music in the Nineteenth Century.’” In authentic Straube fashion this was to have been 3 Mitteis, Der Staat des hohen Mittelalters, 7, 15, and 18. 4 Letter, November 4, 1940, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 119–20. 5 This is Brun’s reading in Leben und Werk, 138–40. 6 Letter, May 19, 1952, to Carl Leonhardt, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 6, 53.
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no straightforward narrative history but rather “a humanistic overview” that would “present music as expressive of the great political, intellectual, and social trends” of the period.7 With his newfound time he was considering afresh the need for such a book, concluding that “now I’ve become too old and tired . . . to be able to realize” the undertaking. Still, he went on to justify the need for the study, in effect drafting the preface to a book he would never write. As he had long professed with respect to politics, musical questions likewise turned on the problem of “the masses” and the dynamics of populism. He gave Leonhardt to understand that, in contrast to earlier eras, the romantic century had yielded a music “dependent upon political, philosophical, historical, and literary movements.” The longstanding “stratification of the Volk into the educated and uneducated . . . itself would be of no consequence, since art is an aristocratic matter, thank God. But through the capitalist-industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, music became the art of the wealthy, and therefore an economic object to be exploited capitalistically by businessmen.”8 The book would remain unrealized despite his appeals that Leonhardt himself write it for a publisher that he, Straube, had already secured. If he now considered a monograph project too ambitious, Straube nevertheless readily toyed with related ideas. Once he had absorbed Michael Schneider’s doctoral thesis on early nineteenth-century German organ technique, he wrote his former pupil to propose that the two of them co-author an organ method.9 Around the same time, he approached Peters with the idea of editing, in the words of the firm’s new executive Petschull, “one or another of the most important and most performed organ works of Reger held by Universal.”10 Neither initiative got anywhere, though he would continue to ponder a practical Reger edition over the next several years. In 1941 he managed to publish an essay marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the composer’s death, commissioned by Kippenberg’s Insel-Verlag and issued under handsome independent cover in 100 copies. Its lofty title, 7 Letter, June 12, 1941, ibid. Sig. 8, 40. 8 Ibid. 9 Letter, April 10, 1941, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 126. Schneider’s book is Die Orgelspieltechnik des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland, dargestellt an den Orgelschulen der Zeit (Regensburg: Bosse, 1941). 10 Letter from Petschull to Straube, February 5, 1942, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510.
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Max Reger: Werden und Vollendung (“Development and Consummation”), betrayed the content, which almost entirely bypassed Reger’s works to dissect the composer’s morally upstanding personality as it came in conflict with his environment, and ultimately to defend him against partisan charges of insufficient inspiration and cluttered writing. Preoccupied with theories of the Romantic period outlined to Leonhardt during the same months, Straube situated his deceased friend at the end of nineteenth-century culture, in which an earlier “essentially unified thinking and striving” had disintegrated into a “wealth of intellectual and social trends.”11 That atmosphere had produced a Strauss, who had “followed the changing of the times with the bubbly vibrancy of his intuition” and “with the incomparably poised gesture of the grand-seigneur.” But it also had yielded Pfitzner, who, despite “the German-ness of his art, the range of his intellectual formation, [and] the incorruptibility of his judgment” had met with his contemporaries’ “insufficient understanding and opposition.”12 Reger had issued “from completely different quarters,” namely from the German Kleinstadt and the unbending “moral demands of a classed society,” removed from “the problems of modern life.”13 Against this background— which indulged a worn Nazi talking point by privileging “healthy” bucolic living over urban life—Straube highlighted the dualism in the composer’s personality about which he had corresponded over the years. A fault line had compelled Reger’s inner “essence, so foreign to worldly life,” to struggle with the fragmented culture here darkly described as the fate of modern society. For Straube it had been a battle of Beethovenian grandeur, a more authentic path than Strauss’s, a more tragic and problematic one than Pfitzner’s. “From this experience he came to the artistic consummation of his late works, in which sounds the maturity of a foreboding awareness of the ultimate questions.”14 The essay underscored Straube’s status as ultimate doyen in all things Reger, even as it revealed an advance in his thinking. Whereas some fifteen years earlier he had told Stein that posterity needed to countenance the music alone, not the “muddle” of circumstances that had produced it, he now had found a way to couch aspects of his friend’s private life in a larger narrative, and to imbue that life with a sense of heroism. It would be his last public position statement on Reger. 11 Straube, Werden und Vollendung, 4. 12 Ibid., 5–6. 13 Ibid., 6, 8. 14 Ibid., 11–13.
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By 1943 the war had escalated even as the tide had begun to turn against the Germans, most dramatically with the capitulation of Hitler’s starved-out Sixth Army at Stalingrad on February 2, ending an unprecedented assault that had begun the previous August. Blind fanaticism and unchecked barbarism had replaced anything left of reason among NS loyals. On February 18 Goebbels pronounced “total war” and the monomaniacal drive to the Endsieg, even as the scope of the Nazi genocide had been exposed over November and December 1942. Straube’s immediate circle was not immune to these grim developments. He must have known that Henri and Martha Hinrichsen had fled to Belgium in January 1940, dispossessed and elderly. By September 1942 Henri had been deported to Auschwitz, where he met death in the gas chambers. Martha had died in 1941 of health complications exacerbated by stress. The French camp of St. Cyprien (Perpignan) had claimed Hans-Joachim’s life in 1940. Paul’s deportation to Neuendorf in 1941 was but the first step to Auschwitz, where he followed his father in death in 1943.15 Against the background of these dark times, Straube celebrated his seventieth birthday on January 6, 1943, also marking his fortieth anniversary in Leipzig. An avalanche of congratulations hailed the occasion like no other. Two months later Straube was telling a former pupil that he faced “over six hundred birthday letters” requiring answers.16 Composers likewise chimed in with dedications. From David’s much-touted muse he received the Variationen über ein Thema von Johann Sebastian Bach, op. 29a, for chamber orchestra. The Kaminski pupil Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling dedicated to him a setting of the seventeenth-century poem “Bis hieher hat mich Gott gebracht” (“God has brought me this far”).17 The press gushed praise and recounted once again his distinguished career and its significance for the German cultural treasure. His old ally Goetz gestured to his erudition, which “well may appear to his friends sometimes as a distant reflection of a Goethe-like fullness of existence.”18 Others like Schnoor, more openly com15 Lawford-Hinrichsen summarizes these developments in Music Publishing, 282–304. 16 Letter to Kurt Mayer, March 6, 1943, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 145. 17 “Herrn Professor Dr. Karl Straube zum 70. Geburtstag in Verehrung,” scored for SSAT, BAL Nachlass Straube, 95. 18 Julius Goetz, “Ein Leipziger Musiker macht Musikgeschichte. Zum 70. Geburtstag Karl Straubes am 6. Januar,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, January
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mitted to the nefarious cause of the times, framed his grand accomplishment as the ideal realization of Nazi values “since the renewal of German politics” ten years earlier.19 A like-minded Mannheim reporter concluded that Straube “was a mediator between generations of German music that strides beyond all crises into a new, grand future,” evidently a musical analogue to the “Führer” himself.20 Another essayist who had not done his homework assumed that the cantor’s Goethe Medal had been awarded by Hitler, whereas a correspondent in Breslau chose to foreground Straube’s “Goldene Ehrenzeichen der Hitlerjugend” (Gold Medal of the Hitler Youth) and even maintained that he had been active as a composer.21 Back in Leipzig, on the afternoon of January 6 an august cohort assembled in the rococo Festsaal of the Gohliser Schlösschen for a ceremony officiated by Mayor Freyberg, the acting Kreisleiter Willy Wiederroth, and Kulturrat Hauptmann. Hauptmann framed Straube’s work with the threefold motto dienen, führen, fördern (“to serve, lead, and nurture”), then gifted him a picture of the Schlösschen. Bringing greetings from the city, Freyberg proclaimed that Straube had earned the right to retain the title “Thomaskantor” into retirement, whereupon he was presented with the sixty-one published volumes of the Berlin Foreign Office’s documentation of the period 1873 through 1914, “a work long desired by the seventy-year-old” and an extravagant addition to his library. The mayor also extended a public invitation “further to assist him with his counsel to increase the glory of the music city of Leipzig”—an allusion, intentional or not, to Straube’s 1941 intervention on behalf of the Thomanerchor. The honoree was “moved” and delivered remarks “with the wisdom of age,” appealing to the musicians of Leipzig “to feel completely attached to their city . . . which is called to be one of the premier musical cities in Germany.”22 The afternoon closed with the music of Bach and Reger. 5, 1943. 19 Schnoor, “Ein Leben für Bach,” 2. 20 Peter Funk, “Der Elfte nach Bach. Zum Geburtstag Karl Straubes,” Hakenkreuzbanner, Mannheim, January 6, 1943. 21 “Karl Straube 70 Jahre,” Thüringer Gauzeitung (Erfurt), January 6, 1943; Kurt Mandel, “Ein Leben im Dienste deutscher Orgelkunst. Zum 70. Geburtstag von Prof. Dr. Dr. Karl Straube am 6. Januar, Schlesische Zeitung, Morgenausgabe, Breslau, January 6, 1943. 22 “Leipzig feierte den Thomaskantor Karl Straube,” Neue Leipziger Tageszeitung, January 7, 1943. See also Go. [Julius Goetz], “Leipzig ehrt den 70jährigen
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But even this was not all. Just before the Gohlis ceremony there had been a more exclusive midday gathering at the Straube apartment with representatives from the Conservatory, University, Thomasschule, Gewandhaus, and NBG. The Thomaner were on hand to bring a “birthday serenade,” although it is unclear whether Ramin was there to lead them. The centerpiece came when Kippenberg unveiled an ample Festschrift titled Karl Straube zu seinem 70. Geburtstag. Gaben der Freunde, 387 pages holding twenty-one essays printed to the sumptuous design of Walter Tiemann, the more remarkable given the lean wartime economy. The book, destined to become one of the few major touchstones of Straube biography, is curiously without a designated editor, and it is not clear on whose initiative the project was mounted or why it appeared with the Leipzig house of Koehler & Amelang, a firm with close ties to NS ideology. Kippenberg’s leading role in the presentation of the Gaben implies his involvement, though this raises the question of why his own Insel-Verlag had not hosted it. The Festschrift served overwhelmingly as a repository for encomia on aspects of the honoree’s life, the briefest of which was Furtwängler’s single-page tribute, an admirably minimalist argument that “with very few people does one feel so clearly as with him that the person is more than the profession he practices.”23 A procession of colleagues and former pupils— Hausegger and David, Ramin and Stein, Thomas and Matthaei, Gurlitt and Mitteis, Fritz Münch and Franz Adam Beyerlein, Max Schneider and the former Thomasschule Deputy Rector Bernhard Schwarz—examined what Furtwängler termed the “‘provinces’ of this universal personality.”24 Other authors, a minority, sought to make more or less academic contributions to those areas that reflected Straube’s interests. Kippenberg drew from his personal collection of manuscripts to insert a facsimile of a page in Goethe’s hand from 1831, discussed in a contextual study.25 Theodor Litt—social philosopher, pedagogue, former University rector, and the only contributor who would serve as a character witness for Straube’s denazification—meditated on music’s role in the formation of German character, culminating in the example of Bach.26 Karl Straube. Geburtstagsfeier im Gohliser Schlößchen,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, January 8, 1943. 23 Wilhelm Furtwängler, “Dem Freunde,” in Gaben, 113. 24 Ibid. 25 Anton Kippenberg, “Gruss und Angebinde,” ibid., 114–30. 26 Theodor Litt, “Musik und Menschenbildung,” ibid., 96–112.
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Günter Hartmann’s analysis of the Gaben as a document of NS ideology, one that betrays its honoree’s supposed position as a committed Parteigenosse, proves difficult to sustain given the divergent worldviews the volume hosts.27 The varied company Straube kept, reflected in the politically heterogeneous cohort of the authors, suggests if anything a situation similar to that revealed elsewhere, namely a susceptibility to certain elements of Nazi dogma alongside rejection of others. Litt, for example, had been an outspoken critic of the regime and lived at the time in forced retirement under a lecture ban. Gurlitt, who put in a piece on Straube’s significance to the Orgelbewegung, had been relieved of his Freiburg professorship and placed under Gestapo surveillance on account of his Jewish wife. Even Schnoor’s study of Carl Maria von Weber does not devolve into an outright paean to Nazi values, despite the rightist political commitments of its author and the overheated language of its final cadence, which admonishes Germans to “hold to the authentic and great visionaries” and “to look toward the future in order to extract hopes from the great lessons of the past for our continued national existence.”28 What “our continued national existence” meant to a committed National Socialist like Schnoor was clear enough to an informed reader, though the body of the essay did not address it. Further on appeared an article about Bach by the more liberal historian Peter Rassow in which the party-line racial politics of the Bach Sippe, so on display during the 1935 Reichs-Bach-Fest, were dismissed with an oblique swipe. Straube had met Rassow at a house party in late 1939, while the latter exercised a temporary teaching appointment at the University. The resulting relationship evidently grew intense enough to prompt Rassow’s contribution to the Gaben three years later.29 “As much interest as the musical talent of the Bach clan [Sippe] offers to genetics,” wrote Rassow, “it means nothing for the genius of the singular Johann Sebastian Bach.”30 Yet just before Rassow’s piece stands a rambling essay with the pompous title “Die Weltstunde: eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung” (“The World’s Hour: A Reflection on World History”) by Wilhelm Weber—ancient historian, Hitler devotee without party membership, Straube confidante— in which the present war, “which the eternally peace-less England has 27 Hartmann, Karl Straube und seine Schule, 239–52. 28 Schnoor, “Stufen des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Gaben, 260. 29 Letter from Straube to Haller, January 19, 1940, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 302–3. 30 Peter Rassow, “Bach in den Zeiten,” in Gaben, 353–54.
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unleashed,” is interpreted as having opened the door to a righteous and heroic German expansion eastward: “The domination of the Red Czar over the Eurasian mega-empire must be crushed. . . . With the military advance into the eastern lands . . . the Germans laid the broad foundation for wholeness and unity on the European continent, for security in the lives of all European peoples, and for the enhancement of their military potential.”31 This was a blatant glorification of German efforts on the eastern front, parroting the official line and appearing less than a month before the capitulation at Stalingrad. Weber implied that these thoughts, along with those unfolded in the forty pages following, came into focus “in the lovely summer days of 1941” as “we hiked through that peaceful mountain valley that you for so many years have loved to visit.”32 Of the academic contributions to the Festschrift, Haller’s “Vom nationalen Staat” is probably the most intriguing, and the one that upon close reading best reveals its author’s conflicted posture. Like Weber, Haller cites a conversation with Straube as inspiration. He explores the notion of the modern national state, as one recent writer has observed, “as usual from a historical as well as political-actualized perspective.”33 He argues that conflicting conceptions of the contemporary state—the German one based on “national” biological purity, the French (Revolutionary-democratic) one on “social” rights felt as inherent—are not mutually exclusive and must be reconciled. “What is a nation?” he asked. “Is it a community built on blood? Is it a community built on culture? Is it based on race, on language, on customs, perhaps even on religious faith?” Haller rejected these arguments to claim that “all modern nations have arisen over time from the interaction of nature and culture.” The NS party line of racial purity was based on fantasy. “As far as our knowledge goes, pure human races, in the sense of nature or breeding, have long ceased to exist,” and the process of “natural change” is ongoing.34 Still further, the expression of raw nationalist sentiment in a people is itself disagreeable—“life was more pleasant when nationalism had not yet seized the peoples, and no one has become kinder under its domination”—although this amounted to necessary growing pains for the 31 Wilhelm Weber, “Die Weltstunde. Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung,” ibid., 311–12. 32 Ibid., 311. 33 Hasselhorn, Johannes Haller, 257. 34 Johannes Haller, “Vom nationalen Staat: Nachklänge eines politischen Gesprächs mit Karl Straube,” in Gaben, 295–97.
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national state. It found in democracy (as of the Weimar period) its necessary presupposition.35 These sentiments distance Haller from the mainstream party stance and illumine his ultimate though by no means ringing rejection of the regime at war’s outset. As in his earlier writings, he was at pains to credit the “Führer” with having set out to realize the ideal national state. “In the end only a prophet could say how the new state is to be shaped. . . . After all, a way of life does not arise from the study rooms of scholars, or from thinking at all,” he contended, falling into Nazi rhetoric and in effect paying obeisance to the anti-intellectualism of the times. “The state of the future can be national only if it is also social. . . . It will remain to Adolf Hitler’s great credit that he recognized and proclaimed this with brilliant plainness, so that even the simplest person must understand it.”36 Haller maintained that the conflicts of his time had come about as the tectonic plates of society shifted to realize the union of the national and the social in the modern state. Whereas this movement was not exclusive to Germany, “its immediate fate depends on” the battle Germany was waging. He went as far as to associate the NS Zeitgeist with past revolutions in France and America. His own country now had taken up the torch for “human rights” characteristic of the latter. “If Germany now is the bearer of the idea of the national-social state [des nationalsozialen Staatsgedankens], it must be conscious of the fact that, with its own future, it fights simultaneously for a piece of global fate,” he concluded. “This requires redoubled courage, but also redoubled prudence, the highest degree of energy and the most objective sobriety, so that the idea’s torch does not smolder and extinguish, or set the house on fire.”37 Haller was an archconservative historical theoretician who desperately wanted to justify Nazi extremism by appeal to an ultimately noble, if skewed, narrative of world governance. His argument amounts to a high-wire act that made a contextual case for Hitler’s supposed genius while rejecting the debasement of fanaticism. In typically precise language, he appears purposeful in his reference to an ideal that is essentially nationalsozial rather than nationalsozialistisch in character, intimating a subtle distancing from a regime averse to
35 Ibid., 303–4. 36 Ibid., 307–8. 37 Ibid., 308–9.
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subtlety.38 One might read his attitudes, which have undeniable affinity with Straube’s own, as “internal critique” of the party line.39 Haller remarked to his organist son Hans Jakob that the Gaben had “deeply disappointed” him. “Actually, a nice foreword by Hausegger and a biographical piece by Beyerlein are the only satisfying things. The editing (Kippenberg?) is bad. I almost regret having participated.”40 Straube reacted pessimistically to Haller’s essay that October, offering a window onto his grasp of the historian’s position. The European mind, beset by “envy and jealousy,” had not grasped the high-minded socio-political order Haller had envisioned. In Straube’s view, continental multilateralism rather than merely national alliances would emerge as the dominant force in world politics, “led by the Anglo-Saxons and the always internationally oriented Jewish high finance” in accordance “with the geographical unity of the American mainland, the political amalgamation of which . . . must always be the evident continental goal.” Advocates of “the American world concept” would regard the possibility of a united Europe as a threat to their interests, and hence the American alliance with Britain and Russia would further “the world power status of these three states in complete independence from European affairs. Thereby they wish to make clear that a union of the other old-world countries left after 1918 would no longer be in a position to participate meaningfully in questions of world politics.” Hitler’s supposed plan for “a new ordering of European international frameworks” in fact had rendered Germany an “ethnic mixture,” a situation which “stands in complete contradiction to the purity of the idea of the national state.”41 Straube followed this sweeping analysis with a lamentation on Germany’s fate. What success the war had yielded had flowed from “the strength of moral powers born of a German consciousness.” He cited the conflict’s objective as “the overcoming of ethnic oppositions on our continent” and predicted that the Germans would lead the way in a “robust European thinking and action” to realize it. This was so because Germany’s position predisposed it to negotiate “life in a tension between West and East,” whereas other nations tended 38 This is Hasselhorn’s contention in Johannes Haller, 258–59, argued from Haller’s earlier uses of the term. 39 Schönwälder, Historiker und Politik, 377 n. 852, cited in Müller, “‘Eine gewisse angewiderte Bewunderung,’” 473. 40 Letter, January 31, 1943, in Hasselhorn and Kleinert, eds., Johannes Haller, 586. 41 Letter, October 7, 1943, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 359–63.
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to look inward upon their particular interests. Hence the “danger of isolation that we have lived through for centuries” and the “contradictory, enigmatic character” of the German consciousness, “which in turn is the reason for the mistrust shown by other peoples to such an ambiguous perplexity. The tragedy of German history grows out of these causes, so that we are one of the most unfortunate peoples on this earth, despite all talent and outstanding achievement. We have never succeeded at elevating the high idealism of our aspirations and the realities of life into a durable unity.”42 There was nothing new in this plaintive dénouement around the inevitable loneliness of the nation’s singular genius, here contextualized against a new politics of continental powers foisted upon the world by American ideals and internationalist Jewry. Just as Germany existed geographically “in a tension between East and West”—most recently manifest in the Russian and British-American aggressions respectively—so too were its people destined to wander a no-man’s-land between the spiritual verities the country guarded and the practicalities it lived. Straube clung stubbornly to the conviction that Germany’s war aims were benevolent and high-minded, reflecting the widespread mythology of Hitler as a second Bismarck. And he insisted that Haller’s national state could not flourish because the ethno-cultural pluralism implicit in continental unities transgresses the “purity” of the national-social ideal.43 Indeed, the “moral powers” of the untainted German character are advanced as the sole source of Germany’s present military successes—a category that itself expresses the desperation of wishful thinking by late 1943. The chauvinist, anxiety-ridden overtone of this position is on some levels remarkable for an English half-blood, someone who did not hesitate to capitalize rhetorically on his mother’s heritage given the right circumstances. On another level, though, Straube’s stance was consistent with his internationalist instincts, rooted in a bicultural background and a long career as an artist-teacher. The force of arms would not bind Europe together, but rather the population’s embrace of what he called “the complementary values and advantages among the various nations.”44 He saw himself as having promoted that perspective with the choir and its tours, and he believed firmly that it was Germany’s role to unify the continent under its ideals. As he had insisted to Hertha in 1938 concerning the regime’s politicization of tourism, 42 Ibid. 43 This betrays a misreading of Haller, who maintained that racial purity is notional. 44 Letter, October 7, 1943, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 360.
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cross-border understanding demanded intellectual formation as a deterrent to “envy and jealousy.” This worldview places Straube at some distance from NS positions, even though, as a close reading of the 1943 Gaben suggests, he must have remained open to certain aspects of party propaganda. Straube’s seventieth birthday had been the first major milestone after his retirement, hence an event that had allowed his allies to offer a summa of their admiration. The episode had taken on a retrospective character and inevitably fed his propensity for self-reflection on a life which, at so many junctures, he had tried to push in other directions. Nevertheless, by the time of his retirement Straube had made his peace with Leipzig. He had long regarded “little Paris” as provincial, small-minded, and bad at recognizing authentic talent. But if anything, this city bore a heritage that demanded responsible curation. In his birthday remarks in Gohlis he had exhorted the musical community “to feel completely attached” to Leipzig. As many in his audience were aware, that attitude had eluded him over forty years, though the appeal surely took on greater urgency given the wolves at the door of his cherished geistige Kultur. That spring the Conservatory-turned-Hochschule celebrated its hundredth anniversary, of course without reference to its founder Mendelssohn, and, as it happened, just as the contractual relationship between the state church and the now-former Kirchenmusikalisches Institut was nullified. Thus, in addition to his birthday, Straube had other prompts to turn inward and consider the sum of his efforts. A few weeks after the Hochschule celebration he wrote the City Library Director Johannes Hoffman in thanks for the latter’s birthday wishes, now framing his legacy with unusual clarity. “Actually it is astounding that I, as an outsider without any connection to Leipzig before 1903, was called to the Thomaskirche and then spent my entire life in this city.” On account of “a pronounced historical sensibility” he had received the obligation to the past with particular urgency, and he had realized that the city’s musical institutions were greater than the individuals who happened to lead them. “From this arose the goal of my striving, which from the beginning put aside personal success. I aimed instead to enhance the prestige of the old music city by animating the forces inherent in the institutions themselves. To whom was credited the outward success was a matter of complete indifference to me, so long as the reputation of the music city of Leipzig was thereby promoted and increased. This is the entire work I
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have accomplished.”45 His admiring inner circle would have applauded this credo to selfless dedication, whereas the Karg-Elerts and Oppels of the world would have found it cynically disingenuous, not without reason. Straube’s career, after all, could not be straightforwardly framed as an altruistic musical offering for the betterment of a city. Personal gain and stature also had been at stake, and he had long mastered the cross-institutional politics upon which his considerable influence depended. How one judged his way of working was always going to be a matter of perspective. The introspective letter to Hoffman concluded, “Whether the sum of what has been achieved will have significance in the future depends on further developments for which I no longer claim responsibility. But I trust in the strength of the musical institutions which, led and supported by a wise civic authority, will stand the test of time.”46 This was an unusually candid declaration of optimism, perhaps forced, from someone whose worldview had darkened over the years. Mirroring the servant in the parable he so liked to quote, Straube felt that he had tended the treasure entrusted to him and returned it with interest. And although he knew that the musical establishment had been severely tested as the bureaucrats moved to politicize it, the now septuagenarian cantor emeritus hoped for a brighter future. A brighter future was not in the cards for the Leipzig citizenry in 1943. Strides in aviation had made the air war a global wild card. Bombardments even of unfortified civilian areas now operated beyond the customary Hague Conventions, set up before air power became a significant player in the present conflict. With mixed results, the German High Command had drawn on its Luftwaffe since the invasions of Poland and France and the English Blitz. Among the Allies, particularly the British and then the Americans had pushed aviation technology as a strategic factor that would compromise industrial centers and break enemy morale. These efforts intensified significantly in mid-1942, as the Royal Air Force delivered devastating bombardments of Cologne and other centers. By October 1943, as Stuttgart endured fresh assaults, a “somewhat uneasy” Straube wrote Haller out of concern for his family’s well-being.47 His anxiety extended to other correspondents, too, as their homes came into the crosshairs of the air war.
45 Letter, April 30, 1943, UBL Autographen- und Siegelsammlung Rep. VI 25zh 7, Nr. 495. 46 Ibid. 47 Letter, October 7, 1943, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 369.
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Leipzig, now with over 700,000 residents the largest city in Saxony and among the most populous in the Reich, had remained at a relatively safe distance from these attacks owing to its position in the eastern sector. But as a major rail center and home to hundreds of industries that supplied the arms complex, it ticked high on the list of desirable targets. The first air raid sirens had sounded there already in August 1940, and since then a number of harrowing smaller incidents in the area had reminded the city how close it was to the hostilities. In August 1943 the RAF targeted Eutritzsch and Schönefeld, in October Paunsdorf and Stötteritz. All the while the Allied initiative had benefited from new four-engine bombers that could fly further into enemy territory and detect targets with increasingly sophisticated radar. It seemed only a matter of time. That time came in the early morning hours of Saturday December 4, crashing down upon the second weekend in Advent. The previous night Berlin had been subject to air attacks, and now the British would execute Operation Haddock, the first large-scale bombing of Leipzig in an early morning raid calculated for maximum surprise. Whereas night runs were routine, everyone knew that pre-dawn raids invited anti-aircraft interception on the return as daylight broke. The circuitous path of the British squadrons over north Germany created confusion about the target and delayed the alarm. But once the hour did come, things proceeded brutally and rapidly. When the alarm sounded at 3:39 a.m., air raid wardens issued jarred residents into the cellars.48 Even then a Thomasschule witness remembered, “One generally assumed that it was a few aircraft on the way back to England, and we were in no particularly hurry.”49 The official report emphasized that the raid “was not expected. The tower sentry at City Hall reported with surprise at 3:50 that almost the entire metropolitan area was illumined. Soon thereafter heavy detonations were perceptible. . . . Large fires spread very quickly and the smoke was soon so thick that the tower sentries . . . lost all visibility.”50 When it was over, the gruesome scale of the attack became clear. Over 400 RAF aircraft had flown north to south, raining destruction for about fifty minutes over a path cut two kilometers wide. Countless bombs had torn into the city, setting alight 48 “Luftangriff auf die Reichsmessestadt Leipzig am 4. Dezember 1943,” classified report, December 30, 1943, appendix 1 “Meldungen des LS-Warndienstes,” in Lehmstedt, ed., Leipzig brennt, 223–24. 49 Letter from Dieter Oppen to Frau Pöhlmann, December 29, 1943, in Kunze and Lieberwirth, eds., Der Thomanerchor Leipzig, 135. 50 “Luftangriff,” in Lehmstedt, ed., Leipzig brennt, 201.
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thousands of structures and causing a calamitous firestorm in the old center. The Leipzig fire brigade, much of which had decamped to Berlin to aid emergency efforts arising from the previous night’s bombing there, was ill-equipped to control the conflagration. Over 3,000 buildings were destroyed, many thousands more damaged, and about 140,000 residents—one in five of the population—rendered homeless. Deaths were estimated at between 1,600 and 2,000, relatively modest numbers compared to those resulting from larger attacks elsewhere before and after, but a grim reminder that the war now had come to the city of Johann Sebastian Bach.51 That Saturday morning, the pastor of the Nikolaikirche mounted that church’s tower to survey damage to the inner city. St. Nicholas itself had sustained only light damage. He recalled that “even the sun was visible only as a pale disc through the smoke. Up on the tower the heat rose 75 meters from the surface below. . . . From the market square to the Old City Hall, everything was in flames. Only the roof of the latter had burned away, and the upper section of the tower. The clock had frozen at 4:28.” He could not help but frame the scene as “the most sublime theater. In the space of an hour such riches were devastated. The human being yields in hopelessness to the power of the gods. Idly and in awe he sees his works perish.”52 One writer has observed of the many eyewitness narratives that “those who came from the world of opera and theater could hardly resist the temptation to stylize their account as a Götterdämmerung à la Wagner.”53 What had begun as a celebratory year for Straube now drew to a violent close. Stepping into the chaos, perhaps he was led to ponder anew the closing words of Haller’s Festschrift essay, which would have struck the Leipzigers that December morning as nauseatingly relevant. There Haller had aired doubts about Nazi maximalism, counseling discretion in the realization of Germany’s objectives “so that the idea’s torch does not smolder and extinguish, or set the house on fire.”54 On fire it was. In a moment, the old world had changed forever.
51 “Nachwort,” ibid., 263. 52 Friedrich Ostarhild, “Die Nikolaikirche im Flammenmeer. Der Angriff auf Leipzig am 4. Dezember 1943 erlebt im Nikolaipfarrhaus,” ibid., 98. 53 “Nachwort,” ibid., 265. 54 Johannes Haller, “Vom nationalen Staat,” in Gaben, 309.
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Chapter Thirty-Two
Gone with the Wind “What is transpiring in the world now is madness, the self-flaying of Europe, really of the world,” intoned Hausegger to Straube after Christmas, exasperated and defiant. “What humanity has built for thousands of years is being destroyed in blind fury. To what end? Only the spirit itself will remain inaccessible to them. Victory ultimately will come from this.”1 This credo to German Geistigkeit afforded little immediate comfort as Germany burned. Hausegger’s Munich had been targeted by air attacks throughout the war. The unprecedented destruction of its inner city would ensue only a few months later at the hands of the Americans and the British. Straube shared Hausegger’s view that the Allies aimed not merely to cripple the German war machine but also to undermine the nation’s morale. The cultural symbolism of a city like Leipzig inevitably informed that effort. Now, as the air campaigns ramped up, those like Straube who had always preached idealism were forced to retreat into it as the material world came crashing down. “But you are right,” Stein would write him from Berlin the following May. “Our enemies want to obliterate our cultural centers, to rob us of our possessions. [But] the works of our great masters remain indestructible and secure, and this eternal Germany is the focus of the enormous struggle that we must and will win.”2 Stein, too, wished to keep vigil for the “eternal Germany” of culture, if not of the so-called thousand-year Reich. Hausegger’s December 1943 letter would not reach his old friend in Leipzig. The Straube apartment had been burned out in the early morning of December 4, rendering its aged occupants among the homeless. Writing three days later in an unusually lean style reflecting the chaotic circumstances, Straube related to a former student that he and Hertha had passed the following night in the Conservatory’s cellar, departing on the 5th for refuge in Tübingen. The train journey had required twenty-nine exhausting 1 2
Letter, December 27, 1943, BStBM. Letter, May 8, 1944, ZbZ NL 117 A Nachl. Straube.
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hours. “Living with Herr Ludwig Schmidt, Münzgasse 17 I. Return to Leipzig [will be] on January 13, 1944; new address Leipzig C1, Grassistraße 8, Staatliche Hochschule für Musik. Exact quarters still unclear.”3 But as the smoke lifted, more became clear. The old Johanniskirche, host to the Bach tomb, stood in ruins. St. Thomas had escaped the worst, although the tower eventually caught fire, its cap and the 1539 bell crashing down over the south side the following day. The Thomasschule had been spared, yet the adjoining Alumnat had been hit. Alongside Ramin, the older choristers themselves rallied to extinguish the fires. Miraculously, there was no loss of life. Following a plan established in advance, the entire choir evacuated by bus to the outlying southeastern district of Grimma.4 On February 11 Straube unfolded to another friend much the same harrowing story he related just after the catastrophe, now extended. His return to Leipzig had been postponed until January 17, during which time he and Hertha had quartered at the Tübingen Tropen-Genesungsheim, a nursing facility run by the Lutheran sisterhood of Kaiserswerth. “Life in the convalescent center has meant peace and quiet and has been of infinite benefit to my wife,” he wrote, echoing only faintly the mental and physical trauma they both had suffered. Though his apartment had been annihilated, the old Conservatory building down the street had escaped with only light damage. Once it reopened on the 17th, Straube made a point of showing up to teach, “all the more since my many female and few male students had again assembled punctually. I call that courageux!”5 It was a matter of honor to him, one that spoke to the high premium he had always placed on personal obligation. On January 16 the Straubes were evacuated from Tübingen to live as refugees in the village of Penig, about sixty kilometers southeast of Leipzig, having found shelter through a personal connection. Their host was Gustav Kuntze, father of a St. Thomas choral alumnus and in Straube’s estimation a “top-notch person full of kindness and the wish to do good.”6 He knew well that the danger was far from over. Barely having arrived in Penig he 3 4 5 6
Letter to Friedrich Brinkmann, January 7, 1944, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 169–70. See further Günther Ramin, “Der Thomanerchor in der Zeit der Evakuierung (1943–1945), in Thomanerchor Leipzig Almanach 1 (April 1996): 11–13; and Charlotte Ramin, Günther Ramin, 107–11. Letter to Carl Boos, February 11, 1944, StBBPK. Letter to Max and Daisy Brockhaus, January 29, 1944, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 7, 20–21.
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informed friends that he appeared in Leipzig three times weekly “to fulfill my duties at the Hochschule. Secretly I’m very fearful for the fate of the Gewandhaus and Conservatory in the event of another terror attack on our city by the western bombers. But since all my students have assembled, I will work while it is still day.”7 In the face of near total material loss, an uncertain future, and old age, he had to keep himself busy, even if this exacted a toll. By March 1944 a concerned Johannes Haller reported to his son Hans Jakob that an acquaintance who had seen Straube in Leipzig found him “quite worn down and tired.” Haller, who for years had stewed over his friend’s health and had not hesitated to tell him so, continued. “In order to give his lessons he has to travel three hours from Penig to Leipzig and then another hour with the streetcar. The trip back is just as long, so eight hours, and that twice a week—a serious strain for a seventy-year-old. He told me that he feels obligated as a senior faculty member to set a good example.”8 Ensconced in Penig, Straube soon resumed his correspondence regimen to inform friends about his circumstances. “Furniture, carpets, pictures, piano, chairs, tables, beds, kitchen appliances and so on, everything is gone,” went one report. “One quarter of my books and scores lies in the Gewandhaus cellars, but since no one knows whether the house will be standing still after the third attack by the Anglo-Saxons, I have already written off even this last portion of my library.” His outlook was saturated with pessimism. “There will be no trace of happy twilight years, and quiet existence will perish under the noise of the street. But may our courage not sink, and in the meantime let us fulfill our obligations, in whatever way they were disposed. This is all we can do.”9 Even if he was determined to carry on with a semblance of normality, he had prepared as well as he could for the worst. “One quarter” of his library amounted to an inventory of about 1,200 books and between 300 and 400 large-format scores.10 Straube entertained no illusions about avoiding further air sorties, and during the weekend of February 19 he was proven right. As one of the first actions of the critical “Big Week” operation, the RAF targeted Leipzig’s southwestern districts with some 820 aircraft during the early morning hours 7 8
Ibid. Straube appealed again to John 9:4. Letter to Hans Jakob Haller, March 26, 1944, cited in Zielinksi, ed., Johannes Haller und Karl Straube, 371 n. 7. 9 Letter to Carl Boos, February 11, 1944, StBBPK. 10 He reported these figures in a letter to Erich Zeigner, September 3, 1946, cited in Goltz, Musikstudium, 321.
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of the 20th. The US Eighth Air Force followed around 1:00 p.m. with about 400 bombers to take out strategic sites to the northeast. The double mission represented a marked intensification over the December bombing, even as the death toll (972, with 1,658 recorded injuries) declined. The Hochschule suffered heavy damage, not least the destruction of its concert hall and organ. When thereafter classes and lessons were displaced some seventy kilometers south to Crimmitschau, perhaps the only positive outcome was the shortening of Straube’s commute from Penig. The Gewandhaus likewise was destroyed, though Straube would discover in time that his evacuated library had survived. Later in 1944 Kippenberg verified the inventory and reported losses to the wartime Bureau of Property Damage. “Actually this is less than courteous treatment from the side of my maternal countrymen,” Straube remarked cynically to Kippenberg, now bringing his English side forward. “Who would have expected this of a ‘gentleman’ [English word used]? Not I in any case.”11 The day after the February bombings Straube turned to Grüters in a long letter that cataloged the cumulative damage. The University and its libraries were no more. Museums, churches, theaters, performance halls, hotels, banks, the trade fair exhibition grounds, the publishing quarter—all or most of it in rubble. “The whole inner city must be regarded as annihilated, as well as many other areas. Leipzig is a ruin of the greatest proportions, and this is all that can be said. At this point no one knows whether the city ever will be able to regain its high stature as a city of the German middle class. The future does not point in this direction.”12 He pressed forward with a jeremiad on the state of international politics, channeling a dizzying array of rhetoric and cultural theory. Again he insisted that the enemy wanted “to destroy Germany as a power factor,” that the Reich’s economic aims posed a clear and present danger to “the monopoly status of capitalism,” that the true point of the war was a struggle between America and Asia over continental hegemony in world politics, that “Bolshevism” and “Americanism” were too materialist to host “a new religious revelation, which can grow only on the basis of a purified Christian faith.” Russia’s antipathy toward Germany had grown ultimately from the westernizing reforms of Peter the Great, but its ill will should have been directed toward France instead. “The Germans, in their emotional way, are more closely related to the Russians than the latter 11 Letter, November 13, 1944, DLAM A:Kippenberg-Archiv 64.1531, no. HS009177334. 12 Letter, February 21, 1944, StBBPK.
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suspect, and this is the deeper reason for the rejection of and opposition to everything German.” Finally: “Only at the so-called peace will chaos break out in Europe, and then God help us. This will not end with ten to twenty years of unrest, and not even Mr. Roosevelt’s four-engine bombers, which he has promised us as a pedagogical means to judicious submission, will be able to change anything about it.”13 He was right to imply one thing: the bombings of Leipzig would continue until days before American troops took the city the following April. In one sense this dark view was born of realism. At latest by the time of his displacement to Penig, Straube had become clear-eyed about the conflict’s likely outcome. Unlike impassioned interlocutors like Stein and Hausegger, he was not inclined to fall into defiant perorations about the inevitable Endsieg. Rather, he tended now to speak in terms of Germany’s responsibility to renovate itself pursuant to the “so-called peace.” This emerged candidly that February in an extraordinary missive to Max and Daisy Brockhaus, which advanced a condemnation of the regime’s short-sightedness alongside a renewed faith in the staying power of a country united under cultural and humanitarian values. “This unity is essential,” Straube wrote in elevated tone, “so that even in case the dominant political oppositions are settled in a way unfavorable to us, the actual essence of German-ness will not be destroyed, but rather will live further as a force in the world.” He continued, reflecting the popularity of Margaret Mitchell’s contemporary novel. “‘Gone with the Wind,’ this demise then will not befall us. The southern states of North America, rich in gold and an opulent form of life, did not possess what we have: a spiritual culture. This is the treasure that moth and rust cannot consume.” Recalling the glorious achievements of ancient Greece, he noted that it was German philosophers and musicians who “have conquered the world, and by their utterances they have most strongly influenced the mentality of the other nations.” Indeed in a figure like Goethe “are unified the most exalted potentialities of German Geistigkeit, possibilities that result from west–east relations and the tensions which the people in the middle [des Volkes der Mitte] are tasked to balance. . . . So long as this rich world of German Geist retains rank and standing on our earth as an effective potency, so long lives Germany.” Perhaps the experience of the war would teach the German people to “become conscious of the harmfulness of class antagonism, [and] only then is the prerequisite achieved for bringing the nation together . . . under the great notion of reverence [Ehrfurcht].” That vision 13 Ibid.
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would be realized “only when distinguished intellects take the lead and are willing to serve the whole Volk, likewise in reverence. . . . Before such a plan can be organized into one form or another, every effort will run into foolish opposition somewhere. But the coming total impoverishment of the German Volk perhaps will shape circumstances so that the will to rebuild can be given the possibility to construct its greatest work in the true union of the people.”14 This was a manifesto arising from an alchemy of resignation, disgust, and the conviction that Germany’s most noble destiny lay with the meting out of its idealist values as the Volk der Mitte. A unifying humanitarianism would prevail over the continent, buoyed by the gospel of German Geist. The denunciation of Hitler’s government was plain in the yearning for leaders who “are willing to serve the whole Volk, likewise in Ehrfurcht.” The cantor emeritus was not getting any younger. The extreme stress of the circumstances would exact its toll on the seventy-one-year-old, disrupting what semblance of a professional schedule he had left. To Haller he reported stomach discomfort and weight loss since arriving in Penig, so that he had been referred to Wolfgang Veil, Director of the Medical Clinic at the University of Jena, “from the end of July to the beginning of September.” Veil initially diagnosed a nervous dysfunction, and Straube embarked on treatments in Jena through that autumn.15 “I don’t know when I’m coming back,” he wrote to Hertha from the clinic during one visit. “Professor Veil wants to make me as healthy as possible. . . . A gall bladder infection is the cause of disorders in the stomach and intestine.”16 But a return to health was neither immediate nor easy. “Human beings are fated to walk through pain over the path to recovery,” he remarked laconically to Kippenberg that August.17 Reflecting the widespread food shortages, by November he was asking whether Kippenberg could arrange for fresh vegetables to be sent, and for coffee beans, “because on Professor Veil’s advice I’m supposed to imbibe this drink to encourage my heart to somewhat brisker activity. My pulse has become all too leisurely.”18
14 Letter, February 15, 1944, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 7, 22. Straube alludes to the “moth and rust” of Matthew 6:19–20. 15 Letter, October 6, 1944, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 379–80. 16 Letter, August 10, 1944, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12. 17 Letter, August 28, 1944, DLAM A:Kippenberg-Archiv 64.1531, no. HS009177325. 18 Letter, November 13, 1944, ibid., no. HS009177334.
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His heart was not the only thing with a pace that did not suit him. Whereas he showed authentic gratitude to his Penig hosts, Straube quickly discovered that he was none too wed to the tempo and mindset of the village lifestyle. “Small-town human relations sometimes appear oppressive to my wife,” he confided to Haller. He was talking about himself too. “In this small area one feels more strongly the need for individual recognition, the quality that is so characteristic of our race. . . . My situation is in some respects better, since I have a project in front of me that occupies me completely and rules out any closer contact with people I don’t know.” As ever, he was disinclined to small talk and superficial pleasantries, particularly with the general population, and particularly since retirement had removed him from the public eye. “In the big city a political judgment comes with a matter-offact assessment of the enemy, and without over- or underestimation of our achievements,” he continued. “In the small town almost all statements are bound up in personal or business relationships which over- or underestimate the enemy in purely emotional views, all according to the fortitude that fills the heart of this or that person rendering the opinion.”19 What he reduced to “purely emotional views” emanating from Dorf culture was not analytically rigorous enough for him. By January 1945 these feelings had intensified as he lamented to a former pupil, the theologian Manfred Mezger, that “the appreciation for money and the concrete assets of life is put ahead of everything” in Penig. “We painfully miss contact with like-minded people. . . . No conversation goes beyond day-to-day concerns and in the long run this is rather onerous. The movie theater is a pleasant affair for enthusiasts, but as the sole source of one’s formation it has its limits.”20 Besides, it occurred to him eventually that Penig was not entirely off the grid of the air war. Within weeks of his arrival that January he had indicated to Carl Boos that he expected to wait out the hostilities “in peaceful security and relative safety” in Penig.21 But by July that attitude had changed. Once Kurt Thomas’s Musisches Gymnasium had decamped from Frankfurt to the convent at Untermarchtal, Straube approached him with the request to find
19 Letter, October 6, 1944, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 387–88. The “project in front of me” was the Bach edition. 20 Letter, January 11, 1945, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. 21 Letter, February 11, 1944, StBBPK.
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“a three- or four-room apartment in Untermarchfeld that can be regarded as less vulnerable.”22 The Straubes would stay put nonetheless. One pleasant diversion in a year of unprecedented upheaval was an invitation from Prince Günther von Schönburg-Waldenburg to an audience at nearby Schloss Waldenburg, a picturesque castle and grounds with roots in a twelfth-century fortress about twelve kilometers southwest of Penig. The prince was an energetic patron of the arts and shared with Straube an interest in spreading the nation’s culture abroad. During the Weimar years he had opened his home as a cultural center, a posture that had incurred the ire of the Nazis, of whom he remained an ideological opponent. “You must not be absent from my appearance at Schloss Waldenburg,” Straube wrote in best humor that November to Kippenberg, who had helped orchestrate the encounter. “Rather you must act as a protector to guide my first, timid efforts on the parquet of a royal court with an encouraging smile, so that I do not fall on my butt—intellectually by an inappropriate remark, or even physically.”23 The visit ensued on December 16, Kippenberg in absentia. After a tour of Günther’s art collections, discussion fell to contemporary politics. Straube related to Kippenberg how “the prince, without any prejudice, praised Adolf Hitler as the person who in fact had managed to forge the German Volk into a unity, something no one previously had achieved. According to him, this would mean that National Socialism is the given form of state for Germany.” Since the Bismarck era—so said the prince in Straube’s telling—the aristocracy’s task lay not with politics but rather with guardianship of the cultural inheritance. “This was the answer to my thesis that the hereditary monarchy must be revived as the form of state suiting the German people. . . . In the democratic era the ruler must keep to the background and work through his ministers, who are responsible not only to Parliament but also to him.”24 This was just the sort of high-minded tête-àtête that had always gotten Straube’s blood racing, now with a well-heeled cultural actor with liberal-democratic tendencies who had fallen out of Nazi graces. Kippenberg would have recognized that his friend drew on an argot appropriate to the chill of the authoritarian atmosphere. Straube himself had long opposed the monarchy’s return, so that his “thesis” advanced to a prince surely amounted to more a diplomatic-academic exercise than any authentic 22 Letter, July 17, 1944, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 10, 50. 23 Letter, November 13, 1944, DLAM A:Kippenberg-Archiv 64.1531, no. HS009177334. 24 Letter to Anton Kippenberg, December 27, 1944, ibid., no. HS009177343.
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argument. Likewise Günther’s “praise” of Hitler and National Socialism “without any prejudice” rings hollow. Informing all these activities stood the intractable specter of the Bach edition, the project Straube had cited repeatedly as the intended centerpiece of his retirement. After the December bombing it was predictable that Petschull should write him to inquire “whether you were able to save at least the most important possession, your library—and the manuscripts for the Bach organ edition?”25 That wording implied progress already made, but Petschull discovered that everything accomplished thus far had to be written off. “To my great sorrow all the transcripts for the Bach edition burned,” went the despondent reply, “so that I have to begin the work once again.” Straube had not removed the critical papers to the Gewandhaus cellars, evidently having wished to keep them close for ongoing work. He went on to recount that volumes I through IV had been completed up to final proofreading. His collaborative method of working had proven an effective insurance policy against their demise. “The misfortune would have been still greater had I not provided the drafts of the individual pieces to my pupils for their study, so that I could monitor the effect of the performance indications in actual organ sound. Thus in the present circumstance I can use the copies from the student volumes to finish the work.”26 It was not the first time Straube had asked students to confirm the aural effect of his editing. Another methodological problem he had long turned over in his mind was the fact that the nineteenth-century Griepenkerl edition had broken up Bach’s ordering of the chorale-based works in favor of an alphabetical arrangement. As far back as February 1928 Straube had worked out new prefaces to volume V, and to a composite volume VI and VII, where charts disentangled the published sequences from those of the autographs.27 He intended to restore the chorales to their correct sequence in the various collections, a step he now justified in detail. Furthermore, he made the case that the chorale poetry needed to appear above Bach’s settings. Straube reassured Petschull that he was moving the whole project into high gear. “All misfortune aside, I consider it a good thing that I have been robbed of scores and (for me much more dangerous) books, and with them the peril 25 Letter, January 18, 1944, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. 26 Letter, February 27, 1944, ibid. 27 Drafts (typescript and hand) “Zu Band V” and “Zu Band VI und VII,” SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510.
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of distraction. Only later will I turn to other things,” he vowed.28 Even so, the idea that he was going to tame his voracious reading habit was less than credible. Correspondence reveals that he would keep to a brisk regimen in 1944, from the novels of Theodor Fontane and Guomundur Kamban to the natural philosophy of Edgar Dacqué to “works of history . . . particularly from the Austrian side,” as he told Haller that October.29 As 1944 wore on and Germany’s prospects deteriorated, Straube made progress in his relative isolation. Later he recalled that he had taken up the project in Penig “with a sort of fanaticism.”30 By April 1944 he could report to Hans Klotz that volumes I and IV had been “recovered.” He pulled back the curtain on his methodology in typical self-effacing fashion. “My Bach edition will be a disappointment to you,” he ventured. “It’s a very simple matter without spirited commentary, just articulation indications, fingering, registration suggestions, manual division, pedaling. I think that a new examination of the manuscripts is extraneous.” The source studies he undertook for the 1913 volume 2 had been “without results” and a waste of time. “The first volume will occasion opposition and annoyance, but that can’t be helped. If, after finishing the Bach edition, I should have a few years of life left, I’ll consider the question of a Reger edition.”31 This was an optimistic stance, one that betrayed misgivings about his heavy-handed editing of former times, as well as a pragmatic willingness to get on with the task. But as usual, the impression he offered depended rather on his mood and to whom he was speaking. In July he was telling Thomas that his resumption of the Bach project was “foolishness,” and that he regarded it “with great skepticism. What can an old man like me still offer to young people?”32 The answer, apparently, was quite a lot. If Straube had genuine doubts, they appear not to have slowed him down. In October he reported to Haller that he had “advanced through seven- and eight-hour workdays, so that six individual volumes have come to a certain closure.”33 Four days earlier he had written the same in a more thorough account to Petschull, where “a 28 Letter, February 27, 1944, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. 29 Letter, October 6, 1944, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 389. 30 Letter to Manfred Mezger, January 11, 1945, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. 31 Letter, April 28, 1944, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 11–12. 32 Letter, July 17, 1944, ibid. Sig. 10, 50. 33 Letter, October 6, 1944, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 380.
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certain closure” was defined as “articulation by simple slurs . . . fingering, and shortly also pedaling.” He still had to enter manual indications and “general registration suggestions,” all of which could be expected right away, “so that one need not fear a delay in the work’s further progress.”34 But for a person of such unrelentingly critical disposition, pitfalls were inevitable. He ran into intractable problems, for instance, with the big Vater unser BWV 682. Straube had long been convinced that the chorale melody, here conceived as a two-voice canon woven amid two other tortured chromatic lines plus bass, must be made to stand out aurally. To Weismann that June, he wrote that he had now “immersed” himself in Clavierübung III, “which I have not worked through with inner commitment since my organist years around 1908.” At that time he had “worked in vain” to lift out the tune via his trademark technique of playing on three manuals with two hands. Now, extrapolating from Bach’s transparent treatment of chorales in his vocal music, he continued to insist that the canonic melody had to be foregrounded somehow. To buttress this argument he proposed an unapologetically subjective interpretation according to which the melody, for Bach, was “a symbol for the prayer of his Lord and Savior, which will have meant to him, the reverential and pious Christian, a ‘noli me tangere.’”35 When Weismann pointed out that Bach may have had cause to embed the melody—that the canon stood for “the emulation of Christ,” whereas “the strange, uncannily jagged essence” of the free voices suggested the sinful world in which the believer strove to achieve the imitatio Christi—Straube rejected the insight categorically.36 In an essay published a few years later, but sent now to Straube in draft, Weismann argued strenuously that Bach had hidden the chorale canon on this hermeneutic. “The pure and godly is not dominant in the world of sin,” Weismann wrote there in closing, echoing the circumstances of the war’s last phases, “rather it grows in hiding and at certain times is completely drowned out by the opposition of degenerate forces.”37 Straube again was unequivocal in his reaction. “Johann Sebastian Bach would not have endorsed the final sentence of your essay,” he countered. The composer had suffered, of course, but “the unshakable knowledge of God’s omnipotence, the notion that ‘my thoughts are higher than your 34 Letter, October 2, 1944, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. 35 Letter, June 28, 1944, StBL Ms Weismann 426. 36 Letter, August 1944, ibid. 37 “Das große Vater-unser-Vorspiel,” 64.
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thoughts,’ gave him the strength for supreme confidence, for an affirmation of this mundane life despite everything, and for a faithful certainty that everything earthly is merely preparation for a blessed life before the throne of God.”38 Straube held fast to his old-fashioned view that the counterpoint needed to be disentangled for the ear. Weismann and Straube agreed that “supreme confidence” in the goodness of things was in short supply for lesser mortals in 1944, and this, too, had interpretive bearing on the latter’s editorial struggles. As for the ear, so for the eye. Straube furthermore was convinced from years of teaching that Bach’s linear polyphony was not visually clear enough in the old editions. The only viable solution was to prepare new manuscript copies with the parts distributed among the staves in a manner that suited him. “To accomplish this task I need twelve-stave manuscript paper, and lots of it,” he wrote to Petschull.39 The request may have given rise to some alarm at Peters that the project could get bogged down as its editor re-notated large swaths of score. Petschull delicately suggested that perhaps “the engraver . . . could find his way with your mark-up in the printed original,” and, if that were unacceptable, that Straube send ahead a sample of his autograph for inspection.40 A hundred sheets of manuscript paper were dispatched to Penig nonetheless. Straube pressed on. At the end of October he reported “the concluded working through” of volume VI, so that now he could claim seven completed volumes “in a first version.” He was still looking for an organ to serve as the model for registration suggestions, and he unfolded a detailed argument that certain chorale-based works should be omitted because of doubtful authorship.41 Reasonably it seems, this prompted Petschull to contact Hermann Keller for a second opinion from musicological quarters, particularly since at the time the latter was preparing for Peters a book on the Bach organ works.42 But Straube’s opinion of Keller’s work had eroded with time. In 38 Letter, June 28, 1944, StBL Ms Weismann 426. The allusion is to Isaiah 55:9. He was self-aware enough to admit that “the events of our time may not have been without influence on this exegesis.” 39 Letter, October 2, 1944, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. 40 Letter, 13 October 1944, ibid. 41 Letter, October 29, 1944, ibid. 42 Keller’s Die Orgelwerke Bachs: Ein Beitrag zu ihrer Geschichte, Form, Deutung und Wiedergabe appeared in 1948.
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1937 he had advised Hinrichsen against accepting a number of Keller’s organ transcriptions of movements from the Bach solo violin sonatas (“amusing but unfortunately failed attempts”).43 Keller, who had studied under both Reger and Straube in 1910/11, now cautioned against any absolute claims regarding inauthenticity of those works for which the extant sources did not provide sufficient argument. Petschull discovered that he had struck a nerve. “The view of Herr Professor Hermann Keller that the chorale preludes I have rejected come from Johann Sebastian Bach’s earliest period is an error,” went Straube’s ex cathedra reply. His sensitivity was rooted in what he saw as misdirected scholarship at the expense of real musical insight. His aggrieved stance was supported by praxis, not academics. “German musicologists and musicians are all too ready to view a piece of paper that looks yellowed, that evidences a somewhat antiquated style in its letters and notes, as a holy bequest and conclusive document,” he lectured Petschull. Spitta, “a philologist who practiced source criticism as he learned it at university,” had fallen into the same trap with the inclusion of ten cantatas and the St. Luke Passion in the complete works. On the other hand, old Rust had proven himself “a musician in the first place” with the “courage” to think for himself about the sources. “The volumes he edited are the most reliable of the complete works edition,” despite the fact that his prefatory remarks “do not always stay within the required bounds of philological rigor.” Concerning Keller’s forthcoming book, Straube wondered to Petschull whether there was room under the Peters roof for both it and his work, “since I rightly assume that considerable differences of a contradictory sort will reveal themselves between his views . . . and the results of my edition. Though it will remain unsaid, both will claim a relative validity of about ten years.”44 It was an odd ultimatum of sorts from a prominent figure who did not like his authority challenged. Straube’s irritation radiated plainly, and Petschull wasted little time to try to steer his editor toward reason. The long-expected edition, “the sum of your experience and knowledge of Bach” and bound to “the definitive authority of your name,” is “the practical counterpart” to the old Urtext, he replied in polished diplomatic tone, whereas “Keller’s book as a work of literature can in no way replace” it. Any difference of viewpoint amounted 43 Letter, October 13, 1937, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Leipzig Nr. 2152. He concluded nonetheless with an apology for having withheld approval for Keller, “whom I value very much.” 44 Letter, November 20, 1944, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249.
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to “a variation on the same theme so to speak, and variations are really a very musical matter.”45 This deft appeal seems to have smoothed ruffled feathers, and work continued at full steam that December in Penig. By mid-month Straube had waded deep into volumes XIII and IX, and he had called on Fleischer to help him take a last critical survey of volumes I and II. From a Graz organist he now had gotten the idea that metronome indications were necessary. Then, too, he still had to add dynamics and registration. “This all will cost very little labor, and with it the first two volumes are finished,” Petschull was told, now definitively. He seemed to have abandoned, or at least very much curtailed, the re-notating of long passages, and he was looking to Silbermann for a template stop list. It was Fleischer who suggested to him that the 1720/21 organ of the Dresden Sophienkirche would serve as a good model, on the rationale that it had been subject to fewer alterations than the instruments of the Frauenkirche (Silbermann 1736) or Hofkirche (Silbermann/Hildebrandt 1750/55).46 It sounded like a plan that finally had crystallized. At long last, everyone could see the light at the end of a decades-long tunnel. Straube was encouraged enough to inquire about a publishing timeline, which he knew would be compromised by wartime exigencies. But in a reply that demonstrated how badly Petschull wanted to shepherd the project to conclusion, the latter indicated that he intended no delays once the manuscript volumes left Penig. This approach needed to be held in strictest confidence, Straube was informed, owing to an ordinance in effect since August 1 disallowing new publications that were not already in process. “We must adopt the standpoint that this applies to your Bach edition,” Petschull wrote just before Christmas, “and we can do so insofar as the ordinance does not offer a more exact definition of what ‘in process’ means.”47 He thus was willing to interpret the regulation liberally, particularly given that Peters still had not contracted for the work. The nation was throwing everything toward its hopeless war effort, and if the Bach edition was going to appear, it would have to do so on the sly. With a mixture of hope and (it appears) cynicism reflecting the war propaganda, Straube reported to Boos in January 1945 that “completion [of the edition] can be counted upon, to use a small variant of the model for the military reports.” He advanced the usual talking points: the project “regrettably 45 Letter, December 8, 1944, ibid. 46 Letter, December 14, 1944, ibid. 47 Letter, December 21, 1944, ibid.
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has nothing to do with scholarship”; it was instead “a very simple pedagogical work that Hans von Bülow did much better”; its goal was “to open a practical path for the babies of the organist guild to the wide realm of the great Thomaskantor’s organ art.” He perceived that the nation’s fate would determine the edition’s fate. If his work failed to appear, “then I soon might become a so-called mythic figure. No one knows how I played the organ, no one will remember how my performances actually went, since my scores have burned, and with them the performance materials for the Passions, the B-minor Mass, and the Christmas Oratorio.” His “so-called posthumous fame” had galvanized solely in the 1943 Festschrift. “It’s a good thing when one celebrates a seventieth birthday every now and then.”48 Now well into his eighth decade, he felt his legacy threatened, a concern he held in irresolvable tension with his Pauline credo to the fragile vanity of earthly things. It is fair to wonder whether, in a moment of self-reflection, he ever asked himself how a person possessed of such incurable philosophical idealism could stew so earnestly over questions of reputation and image. This was one of the perennial mysteries of a complicated psyche. Straube continued to mull the editorial details, registration among them. Though Fleischer had gotten him to consider Dresden’s Silbermann organs, he now asked Mezger whether it would be better to offer “general suggestions” rather than “an exacting and detailed” approach based on a particular instrument. “I’m not able to do without a three-manual organ,” he wrote in January 1945. “I would have preferred to use the big new organ in the Conservatory’s concert hall for this purpose, but it has been burned out and destroyed. Not a single stop tab is left.”49 While that issue hung in the air, by the beginning of February he found himself bogged down in the final two volumes, “which for me have meant more work than all the previous seven.” Here, too, there emerged difficult issues of authenticity, of which pieces to retain and which to jettison. “As you can see,” he wrote Petschull, “despite war and its clamor I am working further on the task I’ve been given, although I am conscious that constellations could arise that would prevent the publication of my edition.”50
48 Letter, January 21, 1945, StBBPK. 49 Letter, January 11, 1945, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. “New” referenced alterations to Sauer’s op. 1343 undertaken before winter 1940. 50 Letter, February 5, 1945, ibid.
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Even at the writing of those words, such constellations in fact were arising as the German Reich crumpled. By late 1944 the howl of air raid sirens had become an almost daily occurrence. On February 7, 1945, Allied forces in London drew up a list of targets for intensive bombings over the next weeks. The 13th saw the first of four British-American missions over Dresden. Beyond the grim human toll in excess of 20,000 casualties, the Sophienkirche and its organ were reduced to rubble, setting an end to any plan Straube might have followed to reference that instrument in his edition. On the 9th and the 27th, Weimar and the area around the Buchenwald camp fell victim to heavy sorties, one of them including a low-flying squadron that mistakenly mowed down a procession of Allied prisoners of war marching toward Erfurt. For Straube it was a red line. “Of what use is it when in 1932 the world offers grateful homage to the memory of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and thirteen years later the same world defiles and destroys the sacrosanct memory of this great figure through desecration?” he reacted to Kippenberg, recalling the Goethe centenary. “One of these two acts must be hypocrisy, and I fear it is the former.” Materialist politics had infected the eternal realms of the spirit, “a development that will lead to nothing less than the unbridgeable alienation of the peoples from each other. This will touch precisely those strata of the German Volk who on their own initiative would stand ready to do their part and collaborate in the great task of the reconciliation of peoples. . . . In any case ‘the world’ has shown all too clearly how it confronts with uncomprehending perfidy such an intellectually rich people as the Germans.”51 This was an unflattering though predictable posture. It presented a strain of the kneejerk nationalism that had possessed Straube over his entire professional life, one that wanted to stake out the moral high ground of culture and humanitarian values even as the regime’s program of cold-blooded mass murder proceeded in the camps. Straube and like minds would discover that this illusory ground failed to sustain the weight placed upon it by mass genocide and the sheer hubris of ethnic nationalism. He knew well that the Nazis cared little about the benevolent geistige Kultur he claimed the best of Germany was defending. February 27 saw some 700 American Air Force bombers over Leipzig in an attack that brought the rail infrastructure to a standstill. With a death toll exceeding 1,000, it was the most costly air episode after that of the previous December. Wishing to avoid a repeat of that latter catastrophe, and 51 Letter, March 3, 1945, DLAM A:Kippenberg-Archiv 64.1531, no. HS009177352.
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now “pressed by my wife,” Straube had written Petschull on the 23rd to see if he could remove his marked-up Bach scores (“about twenty-two . . . volumes”) to safer quarters.52 Peters had since evacuated its operations northeast to Eisenhammer in Saxony-Anhalt, but even now, Straube appeared ready to proceed with a long-term, systematic plan. On the 27th, coincidentally the day of the Leipzig and Weimar bombings, a strategically oriented Petschull counseled Straube “to house the documents further to the west or southwest with one of your former students.” The Peters cellars in Leipzig offered no guarantee, whereas “Eisenhammer is questionable in the event of a further advance on the eastern front.” Petschull had been paying attention: the Soviets had taken Warsaw that January, and in a series of Russian offensives punctuated by Himmler’s failed Operation Solstice, the Red Army now stood at the Oder, about sixty kilometers east of Berlin. Peters was consumed with “the nearly intractable problem” of evacuating as much of its library and archives as possible from Eisenhammer.53 On March 2 Penig itself was hit from the air. “Today we froze for almost three hours in the cellar,” Straube reported to Kippenberg. “But yesterday was the first attack on Penig. Bombings, one factory (armament) destroyed, rail station and tracks hit weakly, many houses in ruins or heavily damaged more or less. People and animals were killed.” He had learned the hard way that small factory towns like Penig were now in the crosshairs of the air war, even as Russia advanced westward. “Because of all these reasons I come to you to ask whether you have learned anything about another place of refuge, or if in the coming days you might learn of one, to which a relocation might be in the realm of possibility for us. . . . I want to try everything to escape what is not exactly a reassuring situation.”54 But time was up as the Allied endgame now played out.55 Between March 7 and 8, and again on April 6, Leipzig suffered renewed air attacks, the latter under bad weather conditions that caused misplaced bombs to fall in the city center and other residential areas. The final mission of April 10 targeted the outlying rail infrastructure. In total the city had endured twenty-four air raids since August 1942, at a cost of around 6,000 lives, countless displaced persons, and the total 52 Letter, February 23, 1945, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. 53 Letter, February 27, 1945, ibid. 54 Letter, March 3, 1945, DLAM A:Kippenberg-Archiv 64.1531, no. HS009177352. 55 Horn-Kolditz recounts most of what follows. “Alltag in Trümmern,” 421–35.
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destruction of about 25 percent of its structural substance. At the hands of the Nazis around 14,000 Leipzigers had been deported and murdered in the camps. Rail and communication systems lay in ruins. Utilities had collapsed. Food shortages were common, basic hygiene compromised, the danger of epidemic outbreak high. Under these conditions the Americans moved to take the city. Already on April 13 their weaponry could be heard on the approach. While Leipzig officialdom urged calm, it and the Gestapo set about burning official records. At 2:30 a.m. on the 17th, the alarm announced the arrival of American tanks in the area, and on the 18th, the Second and Sixty-ninth Infantry stormed the city from the west and southeast. As these developments unfolded, nightmarish resistance broke out despite significant factions that argued for a peaceful surrender. But Himmler’s decree—“every village, every city must be defended and retained by all means available”—had appeared in the Leipzig press on April 12 and 13, and the hardliners were all too willing to indulge a final round of fanaticism.56 The most horrific episode arose at the Buchenwald extension camp in Abtnaundorf, just northeast of the city center, where around 300 ill and handicapped prisoners left behind after evacuation were rounded up in barracks and made to cover all the windows. SS and Volkssturm militia personnel set the structure in flames, positioning themselves outside to fire rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun volleys into the building, and at anyone attempting escape. Over eighty were burned alive or shot in a massacre that ended up at the Nürnberg trials. These were not the “intellectually rich” representatives of universal humanitarian values that the venerable cantor emeritus, still waiting things out in Penig, wanted to imagine. On the afternoon of the 19th the American flag flew over Leipzig City Hall. The occupying force quashed the final pocket of resistance around 2:00 a.m. the next morning. The formal handover to a military government under US Army Major Richard Eaton came on the morning of the 20th. The Americans would discover that City Hall had become a gruesome death chamber. Oberbürgermeister Freyberg had confined himself to official chambers on the morning of the 18th and committed suicide by potassium cyanide, together with his wife and daughter. The same went for Councilor Lisso, also with wife and daughter. The SA chief Carl Strobel had shot himself. Former mayor Dönicke and acting Kreisleiter Wiederroth followed on 56 Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, April 12 and 13, 1945, 1, cited in HornKolditz, “Alltag in Trümmern,” 424.
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the 19th under the same roof. Developments elsewhere accelerated as the ship went down. On the 16th the Soviets had initiated a final advance on Berlin. Hitler committed suicide on the 30th. The government, now led by Admiral Karl Dönitz, evacuated to Flensburg on May 3. Total surrender came on the 7th and 8th, the Dönitz government’s dissolution on the 23rd. “The self-flaying of Europe” was over, but for the Straubes as for many others, the struggle had just begun.
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Chapter Thirty-Three
Reckonings It was not as if the war and its horrors had intersected Straube only as air raids, material loss, and displacement. Human tolls had been exacted, too, on many levels. He and others would have to undergo the stressful denazification investigations initiated by the Americans and continued under the Soviets. Friendships had been severed, as with Adolf Busch, and professional relationships aborted, as with Bruno Walter. He had been close to many who themselves, or whose children, had lost their lives. Straube’s ally Goerdeler had been involved in the July 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life and was executed in February 1945. There had been the Hinrichsens, who had met their brutal end in the camps. There had been the students, marched off to the fronts in the name of “the eternal Germany.” As time passed he would learn of their gruesome fates. There had been the case of Hugo Distler, a bright light issuing from Ramin’s organ studio and Grabner’s composition class during the late Weimar years. In November 1942 he abruptly took his own life, unable to reconcile his career trajectory with the pressures of a ruthless regime, thus contributing to a sharply rising nationwide suicide rate. There were others casualties, closer to home. In its last phases the war had claimed Straube’s nephews Bertram and Peter, the only sons of his older brother William. In 1918, at the time Karl had acceded to the Leipzig cantorate, William, aged forty-seven, had married the violinist Dora von Möllendorf. With the two boys who soon issued from the union, the family had relocated in 1925 from Berlin to Lake Constance. The move evinced William’s general predisposition to turn inward. Whereas Karl’s personality was outgoing enough to sustain a career in the limelight, William’s sensitive and brooding psyche pushed him to withdraw from the mainstream and work outside the pressures of the art market. To Hertha, Karl fondly referred to his brother as “Willy, the taciturn one.”1 In 1929 William had retired early from teaching to dedicate himself to his painting. The brothers had 1
Letter, October 15, 1932, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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kept up with each other over the years, bound not least by common interests in music and art. It seems that William fell harder for Nazi propaganda than did his brother. Writing in 1935 concerning the artist’s social role, he had echoed Karl in citing “spiritual values” as the essence of art, but he had gone further in praising the “Führer” as “making [justified] demands of us. The will of the artist points the way forward. He expropriates himself to become the voice of all. Everyone will find the way to accomplish his work and integrate it into the social order.”2 He left no doubt about what he meant. That same year, as the Saar Basin was formally returned to the Reich, William had produced a large-scale oil painting called “Heimkehr der Saar” portraying a forward advancing mass of Parteigenossen, one in the Hitler salute and another waving a Hakenkreuz flag above the procession. “Straube was a naïve character and believed in the Führer, a view shared by his wife,” recalled the liberally disposed art collector Paul Weber, who broke contact with William after the latter revoked his friendship with the art historian Kurt Badt over Badt’s Jewish roots.3 When, in a bout of misplaced patriotism, William submitted one of his paintings for the regime’s first Große deutsche Kunstausstellung in Munich in June 1937, it was rejected. “I don’t entirely understand the réfus from Munich,” Karl had written, delicately replying to a lament William must have sent him. “But unfortunately there is no way to change it. The main thing is the preservation of the paintings, because one fine day they will be retrieved.”4 He was not simply playing the part of a younger sibling dispensing reassurance. To the contrary, Karl’s conservative tastes in art came down squarely on the side of the party line. When the national exhibition opened in Munich that June, the Nazis had counterpointed it with a second exhibit called Entartete Kunst (“Degenerate Art”) as a mockery of progressive modernism. Perhaps primed by his brother’s recent negative experiences, Karl made a point of attending both. “The entartete Kunst is absolutely sickening,” he told Hertha, just weeks after his encouraging reply to William. “Thank God that I never believed in it. I find the other exhibition to be quite good.”5 2 3 4 5
William Straube, “Verstreutes,” cited in Hinze, “Leben und Werk,” 321. Paul Weber, Lebenserinnerungen, 7; and manuscript notes from a conversation with Weber at the exhibition “Bilder aus der Sammlung Paul Weber,” Rathaus Singen, 1970; both cited in Hinze, “Leben und Werk,” 182. Letter, July 10, 1937, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 98. Letter, July 31, 1937, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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William’s failure to gain official sanction for his art gave rise to a creative crisis that sent him journeying through Italy and Yugoslavia over the next years. It also paralleled difficulties in his marriage which lasted through the war, and into which, judging from bits of surviving correspondence, Karl was drawn as a mediator. As the war escalated in early 1945, prompting Karl and Hertha to cast about for safer quarters beyond Penig, there must have been talk of escaping south to William’s home at Neufrach on the Bodensee. “We did not go to Neufrach,” Karl reported to the brothers’ cousin Siegfried Knak later that year. “Any attempt appeared impossible to me, given the antagonism between Willy and Dora. In the present circumstances of my existence, our stay in the house there now would be torture for everyone.”6 Knak must have known that raw grief over the recent deaths of Bertram and Peter informed the “antagonism” in Neufrach. How much that same grief had fueled any disillusionment William and Dora may have harbored about the failed tenets of National Socialism—this question remains unanswered. Whatever the case, William’s production of Nazi art went dry after 1937. Still another dark outcome from the war manifested in the alarming decline of Karl’s health. The gall bladder infection that had sent him to Jena was but a piece in a larger picture. Just days before the final Allied advances he confided to Beyerlein, “I myself am doing alright except for my hearing, which has suffered from the noise of the sirens, the humidity of the cellar, and is rapidly deteriorating. . . . Strenuous work over long years is likewise responsible.” And then, a telling admonition: “Do not mention anything about this if occasionally you should write me.”7 He did not need to be reminded of his condition, and his stubbornly independent nature was not inclined to sympathetic niceties. For a musician of his stature, one who continued to teach and publish, this was the most compromising and depressing of maladies, and it would only worsen with time. Alongside these difficulties came the inevitable effects of stress and malnourishment, as supply chains were cut and the economy was brought to a standstill. A photograph betrays more than words might. Among the American troops who rolled into the vanquished Reich from the west was Walter Hinrichsen: he had left for Chicago in 1936, enlisted with the US Army in 1942, and taken US citizenship the following year. Now he returned to the fatherland as a master sergeant, soon assigned as a music officer in Berlin. Sometime between the May surrender and the transfer of Leipzig to 6 7
Letter, September 22, 1945, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 25. Letter, April 7, 1945, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 198–99.
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the Soviets that July, Hinrichsen visited his hometown to reclaim the Peters firm for his family. A camera caught him outside the family home in the Talstraße. In the photograph he was reunited with the former Thomaskantor, who since Walter’s birth had played an avuncular role in his life. Once back in Chicago, Hinrichsen submitted the photograph along with others to the Music News.8 A frail man stands to Hinrichsen’s right, facial features drawn, head slightly askew, white hair tussled by the hat he has just removed, attempting old-world dignity in a suit that ill fits his shrinking frame. Hinrichsen, in sergeant’s dress, does not face the camera but rather casts a concerned look in Straube’s direction. Here was a tragic figure in rapidly declining health. Hinrichsen promptly sent a copy of the issue to Straube, who replied the following February in a long letter tinged with melancholy and loss. It unfolded as a hymn to the Peters publishing house under the Hinrichsens, laboring in service to Germany’s musical treasures, and as a condolence upon the demise of Walter’s parents. “Reverence for what has been, confidence in what has been achieved, hope for the future—these are the mental energies that will aid you in perpetuating and perfecting the charge allotted you in the spirit of your parents, who have entered into eternity.”9 No matter his private, reductive views about Jewishness, Straube was hyperaware that he had long been on the receiving end of the Hinrichsens’ generosity. But in his thinking, their barbaric deaths were transcended by the noble calling of the artistic enterprise they had piloted. Naturally, his ever-progressing Bach edition played into that calling. Straube advised Walter “to use the weight of all your rights to protect your property” so that Peters could flourish. “It is irrelevant whether this comes to pass in the future in Leipzig or in another city. The essential point is the conservation of the legacy, which will do honor to you and your house.”10 Actually, a diaspora of the Leipzig firm was already playing out. Walter would go on to found a New York branch in 1948, whereas Max had established Hinrichsen Edition Ltd. in London ten years before that. Together with Petschull, they would merge these firms with one in Frankfurt in 1950, as the Leipzig offices were absorbed into the new German Democratic 8
Music News 37/9 (September 1945), 7. The photograph reappeared in Straube’s obituary for the American trade journal The Diapason 41/7 (June 1, 1950), 3. 9 Letter (photocopy), February 9, 1946, private collection, USA. 10 Ibid.
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Figure 33.1. Straube with Walter Hinrichsen in Leipzig, summer 1945.
Republic. The resulting turbulent period in the press’s administration informed Straube’s thinking as he chipped away at his Bach project. By the time of his photograph with Hinrichsen, Straube had returned to live in Leipzig. On May 24, 1945, not a month after the capitulation and only a day after the de facto dissolution of the government, the Straubes relocated from Penig back to the city “in a truck with a great deal of luggage,” as he told Knak that September. Ultimately they took up residence in the Mainzer Straße near the Thomasschule, “in a friendly, modern villa in which we have two well-furnished rooms, and besides, a good Blüthner grand piano is at my disposal. This Form des Chambre garnie will probably remain our
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destiny until life’s end.”11 This was a rapid and more than adequate solution given the virtually insurmountable problems faced by the provisional government in relocating the population, which included vast numbers of native evacuees, refugees, foreign workers, war prisoners, returning soldiers, and camp survivors. Pressing concerns for sanitation, heating, and food supply chains complicated the situation exponentially, as did necessary first steps toward the revival of the eviscerated economy. On account of the emergency conditions, by the beginning of September the Soviets had imposed a ban on moving into the city without going through official channels for a permit.12 Just how the Straubes obtained their quarters is unknown, but it appears likely that the emeritus cantor’s status as a prominent public servant put him at the front of the line. The apparently well-to-do apartment in the Mainzer Straße was probably divided among two or more tenants (hence only “two well-furnished rooms”) and likely had been confiscated from owners stained by party involvement.13 From the September letter to Knak, it appears that the Straubes had not envisioned this outcome. Rather, at some point they had considered the feasibility of moving to Berlin to live with Karl’s cousin. The consolidation of family units was not uncommon given the conditions, and of course he also had weighed the idea of escaping Penig for the Bodensee to be with William. But there would be no going back to the capital. During his remaining years Straube would move about Leipzig, navigating mountains of rubble and burned-out structures, grisly reminders of a world that had passed away. Within weeks of his return to town, he once again was laboring over his scores. Musical questions and internal upheavals at Peters were presenting difficulties, but Straube had begun to put his life in some degree of order, and the edition was high on his list of priorities. “Things are going alright, although I feel the decline in my energies,” he told Haller in March 1946. “For this reason the completion of the Bach edition occupies me day and night. It is a kind of race with death, which of the two of us will reach the finish line first.”14 It was a light-hearted remark, but one meant in all seriousness. As 1945 drew to a close Straube fell into a quandary over the registration indications. The Silbermann organ of the Dresden Sophienkirche lay in ruins. He now revived his idea to use the likewise obliterated Conservatory 11 12 13 14
Letter, September 22, 1945, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 199. Horn-Kolditz, “Alltag in Trümmern,” 438 n. 57. Ibid., 449–50. Letter, March 19, 1946, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 438.
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instrument for the purposes of his edition. This at least could be achieved on the roundabout, namely by mining the scores of former students. Accordingly he turned that November to Beate Schmidt, who had studied with him during the war. Presumably others received similar requests. “Would it be possible for you to write out and send the registrations for all the Bach works you studied with me on the concert hall organ of the Leipzig Conservatory?” He continued, “In the meantime I have revised volumes I through IV a second and third time. It is a laborious matter of a pedantic sort, but very responsible too. This twofold peculiarity amounts to the burden of the work and repeatedly arouses in the editor skeptic criticism about the written-out performance indications, fingering, and pedaling.”15 Apparently that “skeptic criticism” was not intense enough to curb his ingrained predisposition toward editorial intervention. Despite claims of progress, persistent handwringing bogged him down, as it always had done with such efforts. Weismann remembered having been invited to Straube’s new Leipzig quarters to inspect “the almost completed first volume.” There he discovered “individual pages . . . littered with slurs and fingerings,” an approach more akin to the earlier “as-I-see-it” editions than to the hands-off methodology Straube now liked to advertise with his correspondents. “To his question about what I thought, I replied hesitantly that the pages gave a quite fulsome impression. I asked whether it might not be better . . . to work merely with suggestions, and to leave it up to the performer to mark the music. ‘No, that won’t at all do,’ said Straube. ‘You have no idea how little self-sufficient many organists are in their thinking. One must tell them exactly what they have to do.’” When Weismann suggested that he adopt a different slurring rationale and submit an engraving sample, Straube did so “only reluctantly” and ultimately rejected the proofs. “‘Impossible,’ he said. ‘I have to do that differently and assume that the six sonatas are works for pedal harpsichord. But that changes the articulation, too.’ So he began to mark up a new copy, but it took a long time before he hesitantly granted permission for an engraving. He was not satisfied.”16 So went such maddening encounters with a man convinced, on the one hand, that he was sealing an authoritative legacy with a final word on Bach, and on the other, that any such word would lose its validity in the foreseeable future. This would prove an irresolvable and entirely debilitating dissonance.
15 Letter, November 8, 1945, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 30–31. 16 F. Weismann, ed., untitled memoir of Wilhelm Weismann, 77–78.
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Even as Straube situated his editing labors at center stage in his correspondence, other matters competed for his time. For one thing, the Hochschule and CMI had to undergo restructuring in the context of a rapidly evolving civic and state authority. Following agreements largely hammered out at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, a Soviet military administration took control of Leipzig on July 2 as American troops withdrew. Straube’s old Social Democratic ally, Erich Zeigner, became mayor three days later, furnishing him with channels of influence at the highest levels. The City Council likewise rebooted as a power-sharing arrangement between the Communist and Social Democratic parties. In the coming weeks and months Straube would direct much energy toward shaping post-war Leipzig’s musical landscape, demonstrating an undiminished capacity to command the ear of the higher-ups, whatever their political stripe. By February 1, 1946, he had produced an exacting four-page letter to Zeigner, in effect a laundry list of candidates for positions at the Hochschule and Gewandhaus, with his evaluations appended. Among others these included the composer Ernst Pepping, his old pianist colleague Martienssen, and even Furtwängler.17 Not one was hired. Undeterred, and backed by a letter from Davisson, the acting-Hochschule director still, Straube on June 17 advanced a proposal for the re-establishment of the Kirchenmusikalisches Institut with the support of the Lutheran Consistory. Progress toward this end would extend through most of 1946, gummed up by a nexus of thorny problems including lack of clarity from the state church offices in Dresden, the sudden termination of all Hochschule faculty on August 20, 1945, and (it seems) politically motivated foot-dragging at state level toward the reopening of the Hochschule.18 He was determined to secure his former place at the Institute’s helm, “in order to lead this department . . . to the heights of its earlier performance capacities,” as went his aureate appeal to the new education councilor Helmut Holtzhauer that September. “Once this goal is achieved,” Straube added, “then a younger person can take my place.”19 He was still unaware that the sitting Thomaskantor had been assured that succession in the 1939 negotiations. It bore further witness to the chaos of the war years that Ramin would not receive a formal contract for the cantorate until 1947, including a provision that “the city of 17 Letter, February 1, 1946, StAL StVuR (1) 4544, 6–7. 18 Goltz, Das kirchenmusikalische Institut, 62–63, 65–67; Goltz, Musikstudium, 225–28. 19 Letter, September 9, 1945, StAL Kap. 32 Nr. 13 Bh6 Bd. 3, 190.
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Leipzig will advocate that the leadership of the Church Music Institute be transferred to Herr Professor Ramin at the next vacancy.”20 Longtime grievances undoubtedly contributed to Straube’s back-channel insistence that such a vacancy be deferred. The newly constituted Hochschule opened on October 1, 1946, and with it the so-called Department of Church Music under Straube’s still unofficial leadership. As rebuilding commenced at the musical institutions where Straube commanded influence even now, his long-held private misgivings about the city’s potential surfaced in correspondence. After all, he recently had told Walter Hinrichsen that it was “irrelevant” whether Peters remained in Leipzig. Just before that he had observed to Hans-Olaf Hudemann that “the Saxon wants to have a symphony in order to be able to dream during the sound of the tones,” whereas the Rheinlander (like Hertha) “is a rationalist who wants to receive the artwork consciously in order to participate actively in its reproduction.”21 He left no doubt as to which he sanctioned. In dialogue with Martienssen about the latter’s choice of Leipzig or Berlin for his future, Straube came down on the side of the capital. “There, a greater open-mindedness prevails than is to be found in a small town like Leipzig,” he wrote. “As you know, the Saxon nature tends toward pettiness . . . and overcoming this characteristic of narrowness is nearly impossible given the now prevailing conditions.”22 The former Thomaskantor may have remained loyal to “little Paris,” but now bowed by age and disappointment, his optimism about the city’s future clearly was tempered by “prevailing conditions.” This was not the same voice that had publicly encouraged local colleagues to show absolute devotion to the city in January 1943. Still, when Straube included Martienssen in the list of possible hires submitted to Zeigner two weeks later, he took a rather different tack, writing that his pianist friend “would like to come to us,” flimsily dismissing Martienssen’s party membership as “a cosmetic mistake.”23 A more urgent personal concern was the looming denazification proceeding mandated by the Potsdam Conference of July 1945, designed to purge Nazi elements. In Leipzig that process had begun under the American military government before the Soviet handover. In the chaotic months following the surrender, the time came to question systematically the former 20 21 22 23
Contract, February 24, 1947, StAL Ramin-Akten, 173. Letter, January 25, 1946, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 6, 37. Letter (photocopy), January 15, 1946, HMTLA. Letter, February 1, 1946, StAL StVuR (1) 4544, 7.
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cantor’s traffic with the regime. Not everyone had been aware of Straube’s unbecoming party association in the first place. Günter Raphael, who now would decline a return to Leipzig despite overtures from Straube and others, told Hans Gál that “Straube admitted to our amazement that he had been a member of the Party since 1933! . . . There were of course many exceptionally intelligent and cultivated people such as Straube who did the same. They believed that, by being members, they could raise the level of things.”24 By the end of 1945 that was in nuce just the argument Straube had advanced with the authorities. Presumably he used it in private as well, in dialogue with people who, like the “Halbjude” Raphael, had found themselves directly in the path of Nazi injustices. When for the first time after the peace, he turned to a conservative confidante like Haller, he spoke more pointedly. “Looking back on the last twelve years, the experience of this era seems like a chaotic dream. That the Germans could not resist the allure of a madman acting on delusion, this could be called a burlesque if the outcome of events were not so tragic.” Straube had never been an inveterate acolyte of Hitler, yet the image he had proffered ran the gamut, from the politically adroit “chancellor of caliber” of 1934 to the “madman acting on delusion” of 1946. Even now, though, it was not mass murder and ethnic cleansing he mourned in the first place, rather the squandering of cultural treasure, the loss of the nation’s credibility on the world stage, and the materialist worship of technology. “For centuries the German nation will be barred as an operative factor in political developments,” he predicted to Haller. The cultural heritage would be lost, too, unless the occupying authorities supported its maintenance. In that case “they would see to their astonishment how the spiritually animated classes again would take up the tradition of the great Weimar era, how willing they would be to pursue and embody these ideas.” A renewed society led by a cultural elite would be the happy result, with enlightened social policy “grounded in the phrase: ‘It is the spirit that gives life,’ not matter. If those in charge adopt this as their creed, the masses will choose to follow in the same awareness. From such unity, the social problems can be solved without a class war.”25 The old paternalism reasserted itself here, unapologetically commingled with nostalgia. Straube remained absolutely convinced that a state predicated on 24 Letter, November 5, 1946, cited in Haas, Forbidden Music, 288–89. The translation is Haas’s. 25 Letter, March 19, 1946, in Zielinski, ed., Johannes Haller, 437. Straube cited John 6:63.
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the intangible truths of Kultur would transcend class distinctions, unify the country, and allow Germany to take its position in the European political economy as the Volk der Mitte. The Nazi project had been a “delusion” for not having worked to this end. About a year later these sentiments had distilled further as he projected his appraisal backwards, again to Haller. “Looking back on the times from 1919 to 1945, how can we hide our shame about what happened?” he asked bluntly. As before, the real breach lay not so much in compromised ethics or misprision of high crimes, but rather in political miscalculation. “Since the Germans have not understood their task in European politics, the nation must bow out, left to perish as a small state. . . . We are undergoing the realization of this monstrous destiny. It is impossible to plunge into reflection about it. The despondency of spirit and soul is too great to give expression to our feelings in writing.”26 He toggled between pessimism and optimism, tragedy and hope, writing of the German nation as if speaking of a deceased hero. “Despite everything it remains our duty to preserve and defend the great legacy of the fathers, so that a later time will be able to learn of the spiritual significance of our people. Future generations will then become aware of how the Germans acted to leaven the world’s civilizations, in the sciences and arts, through their creative spirit.”27 He outlined his conviction that the root of the disaster lay with Europe’s choice to wage war in 1914, whereas that moment instead should have invited “the first developments toward the United States of Europe.” Thinking through this tortured arc of history had been exasperating. “The most sensible thing would be to turn away completely from that which has been in order to concentrate exclusively upon one’s own business. If only the field of music and the musician did not constitute such a narrow sphere over the course of a long life, one that makes those active in it egocentric.”28 This was a cynical critique of the blissfully ignorant specialist musician who felt no need to engage with the larger questions of existence. In life’s winter, Straube saw himself as having dedicated a career to the cultivation of students with broad intellectual horizons, a task made the more laborious by having to swim upstream against “the Saxon nature,” as he had so unflatteringly defined it to Martienssen. His pupils could avoid the trappings of mere virtuosity to act as responsible citizens of the Bildungsbürgertum. Perhaps if there had been more of the kind, he must 26 Letter, April 6 and 10, 1947, ibid., 447–48. 27 Ibid., 448. 28 Ibid., 448–49.
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have thought, the nation would not have found itself facing its present-day “monstrous destiny.” The Thomaskantor emeritus had not struggled with these post-mortem evaluations in a vacuum, but rather within the frame of reflection foisted upon him by the denazification process. Launched by the Americans but eventually executed under the authority of the Special Committee of the Antifascist-Democratic Bloc in Saxony, that process proved a serious housecleaning business. Time would show that the Soviets took a harder, more overtly political line than did the authorities in the western zones, since the initiative would serve not only to eradicate NS elements narrowly but also to bolster a socialist state broadly.29 Accordingly, by June 1946, 5,695 persons employed in the Leipzig public service sector had been terminated due to party ties, about 30 percent of the entire post-war workforce.30 Straube naturally found himself under the microscope. Evidence suggests a fragmented process executed in stages not necessarily coordinated with each other. On June 23, 1945, one month after returning to Leipzig, he drafted a four-page handwritten narrative petition for rehabilitation, a document eventually expanded to the “Rehabilitationsgesuch.”31 It remains unclear whether he presented the shorter or longer form of that narrative to the military administration, which in June still operated under the Americans. With it he submitted, or at least prepared to submit, one of the first Fragebögen distributed by the American military, the four-page bilingual form MG/PS/G/9. On the document, undated, he gave his address as “Karl Rothestr 9,” evidently a temporary residence before he and Hertha moved to the Mainzer Straße shortly thereafter.32 29 In the Soviet zone, the Bloc merged Communist, Social Democratic, Liberal Democratic, and Christian Democratic interests. Welsh, Revolutionärer Wandel, 59–61. 30 Horn-Kolditz, “Alltag in Trümmern,” 436 n. 50. 31 The handwritten version lodges at StAL StVuK (1) 4544, 211–12. The expanded (undated) typescript exists in two nearly identical versions, BAL Nachlass Straube 80. 32 Military Government of Germany Fragebogen Personnel Questionnaire MG/ PS/G/9, StAL StVuK (1) 4544, 209–210. This is the only document that records an address in the Karl-Rothe-Straße. Another question concerns why Straube used the four-page MG/PS/G/9 form in conjunction with his June 1945 essay, since the Americans had introduced the expanded six-page form MG/PS/G/9a already that May.
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Under the questionnaire’s list of NS-affiliated bodies he attested membership “since 1937” in the Volkswohlfahrt, the NS welfare organization, and since “??” in the Altherrenbund, the academic fraternity in support of the NS Student Alliance. As his official position between 1921 and 1941 he entered “head of the Church Music Institute,” giving under “Reasons for Cessation of Service” the “ecclesial identification of the Institute.” Remarkably, and at odds with his filing of a later questionnaire for the Soviets, he did not record his position as Thomaskantor. Under income between 1933 and 1944 he estimated 6,000 marks per year. “Democratic Party” was his answer to the question of pre-1933 political affiliation, reaffirming his personnel file’s claim of DDP membership. Where the form required a “List [of ] all journeys outside of Germany since 1933,” he dutifully entered the choir tours from 1935 through 1939, though he omitted, oddly, the 1934 Sweden tour. In answer to the question of financial support for international travel, he maintained that Münch had financed the French tours, that the appearance in Belgium had been “an affair of a concert agent in Brussels,” that “so far as I know,” the Austria-Hungary outing of 1937 had been “supported by the Ministry of Propaganda,” that the final Scandinavian tour had paid for itself. “Here too I had nothing to do with the financial concerns.”33 The larger point was that, except for 1937, the regime’s pocketbook had not been involved. In a final section soliciting “Remarks,” he chose to note his membership in the Reichsmusikkammer (“like all German musicians”), though not his leadership position for Protestant church music among the Reichsfachschaften, and not his ambition, plainly articulated to Stein in 1934, to have a new, more authoritative post created for him in that body.34 Whether and in what context these documents—narrative and questionnaire—played a part in subsequent deliberations toward Straube’s denazification is not known. Particularly in the longer, typed version of the narrative, he pursued in unprecedented detail a litany of considerations that placed him at maximum distance from the Nazis: his association with efforts to reelect Hindenburg; his resolve to remain in Germany; his decision to join the party to protect the Thomanerchor; his open friendships with and high regard for Jews; his resistance to prominent government figures, and their resulting consternation toward him personally; the political intrigues leading to his resignation as Thomaskantor; his subsequent behind-the-scenes work to thwart the choir’s absorption into the Musisches Gymnasium, to preserve 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid.
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the CMI’s mission after its formal closure, and to hinder the dissolution of the University’s Theological Faculty. Only in the longer version he asserted that “if I were again to stand in the same difficult position, I would have to make the same choice” to join the Nazi party. That version came with a memorable cadence—weary, embittered, disillusioned, indignant. Had he followed Adolf Busch’s advice, he would today enjoy a secured existence as a university professor in the US. Instead: “For my wife and me, possessions and meager savings for old age are lost. My efforts to safeguard and promote the spiritual life of the music city of Leipzig, true to the traditions of a great past—which for me inevitably was possible only by joining the party—can, so it appears, earn me defamation, although I existed away from the party in every respect. That is the sum of a long life full of effort and work!”35 The tone was unmistakable, the position categorical. He was casting himself and his legacy as the victim of an unscrupulous environment. When the essay finally appeared publicly in 1992, an anonymous footnote informed that “already early on it was made available in copy to Straube’s friends.”36 He at least seems not to have been shy about airing his views. One correspondent from November 1945 implied that the narrative had made its way to him more or less immediately.37 Most telling is that he wanted an informed second opinion about what he was writing. For this he turned to Ernst Eichelbaum, the St. Thomas choral inspector and teacher who had been removed in 1943 on account of Jewish ancestry, and who now was well on his way to becoming an influential political voice. As Straube crafted his narrative, Eichelbaum was co-founding the liberal-conservative Christian Democratic Union party in Leipzig. The following year he would rise to the position of vice-mayor. It was he who would convey the former cantor’s denazification application with the endorsement of the newly constituted CDU. When he read over Straube’s draft that September, Eichelbaum suggested the addition of a strategic sentence, further justifying his party entrance with the claim that any other cantor in Straube’s position would necessarily have taken the same step in 1933. Much after the fact, Eichelbaum reflected on his concern “that old Straube didn’t incriminate himself unduly. At the time he tended to a certain self-devaluation,
35 “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” 163. 36 Ibid., 157. 37 Letter from Walter Tiemann to Straube, November 12, 1945, BAL Nachlass Straube 82l.
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leading to unfairness toward his own person.”38 If that was true, it could be counted as just another manifestation of Straube’s self-critical psyche, now fueled by the war guilt expressed to Haller and others. “Seen objectively, this is probably right,” Straube replied to Eichelbaum’s comment that other cantors would have behaved similarly, “but in this case not really applicable.” He then insisted that party entrance had hinged upon his endorsement of Hindenburg, without which “I never would have thought to join the party. There would have been no reason to do so.” He had made this sacrifice only to rescue the “ethos” of the Thomaner, rooted in the “spiritual energies” of humanism and its inheritance.39 Eichelbaum’s proposed revision did not make the cut. Straube wanted to show that his Nazi entanglements arose from a unique political calculus rather than from the general moral sense of just any cantor. And certainly, everyone could agree that he had been not just any cantor. Around the same time of his essay draft, but after the administrative transfer of the city to the Soviets that July, Straube assembled a dossier of no fewer than eleven character witness statements, the earliest dated October 29, the latest November 12, 1945. The lineup included, undoubtedly by calculation, several figures who had run afoul of the regime: Heinrich Fleischer, university organist, former pupil, colleague, and remarkably the only professional musician on the list; Edgar Lux, formerly of the civic tourism office and thus inside witness to the city’s bureaucracy; Erwin Jacobi, “Mischling” law professor and dean dismissed in 1933; Eichelbaum, in effect his shadow political adviser; a joint statement by five choral alums, among them Harald Thomas, Walter Leo, and Richard Rensch; Theodor Litt, philosopher, former rector, Festschrift contributor, and marked opponent of National Socialism; Heinrich Schumann, Oberkirchenrat and St. Thomas Superintendent, who had voted with Straube during the July 1932 elections; Eva Schneider, the only female voice, otherwise unidentified; Dr. Schütz, the Obermedizinalrat who had collaborated in the Gymnasium affair; Dedo Müller, the practical theology professor involved in the 1942 effort to prevent the demise of the Theological Faculty; and Walter Tiemann, the graphic artist who had designed the 1943 Festschrift. Not unlike the contributor list to that Festschrift, this was a cohort drawn together to speak from the varied areas of Straube’s interests. They now joined to circle the wagons. 38 Letter to Hans-Olaf Hudemann, May 31, 1968, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 6, 18. 39 Letter, September 21, 1945, StBBPK.
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Having arrived in Leipzig as a student around Easter 1932, Fleischer recounted in sworn testimony having seen his teacher’s name advertised in association with the Hindenburg Committee, and having witnessed ad hominem attacks against him as “no longer acceptable for the new times.”40 Lux implicated Bennewitz in efforts to push the cantor out of office and added adroitly that the Social Democratic activist Barnet Licht had expressed his admiration of Straube as “the number one choral conductor in Germany,” thus implying the support of a persecuted Jew.41 Jacobi revealed that the cantor had associated openly with him after his dismissal, and that he had been invited to both private and public events associated with Straube’s seventieth birthday. “His attitude was absolutely critical in helping me through the difficult years of the Hitler regime.”42 Eichelbaum brought a perspective from inside the Thomanerchor, claiming, as had Straube, that the choir was uniformly “immune [gefeit] to the spirit of Nazism. It stands beyond doubt that the spirit of the singers was the spirit of their cantor.” Further, Straube had encouraged Eichelbaum in friendship after the latter had been shown the door in 1943.43 His sentiments were echoed in the testimonial of the choral alumni, who cited an “unbiased education” in the choir, one that “inspired healthy criticism and independent political thinking.” Accordingly they had “rejected the Hitler regime out of inner conviction” and were “immune [gefeit] to its influences.”44 Litt attested “since 1933 . . . many intimate discussions” concerning the NS dictatorship with Straube, who shared his distaste, “as was to be expected given his whole way of thinking.”45 Schumann concurred, writing that he had been “completely surprised when he informed me a while ago that he had been a Pg. To the contrary, I recall very vividly a conversation with him from which his antifascist attitude clearly emerged.”46 Then came the intriguing voice of Eva Schneider, whose recollections implied an association with the city’s school system. She recounted a meeting 40 Attestation, October 29, 1945, BAL Nachlass Straube 82a. 41 Attestation, October 29, 1945, ibid., 82b. Licht had been among those aboard the final transport from Leipzig to Theresienstadt that February. 42 Attestation, October 29, 1945, ibid., 82c. 43 Attestation, October 30, 1945, ibid., 82e. 44 Attestation (n.d.), ibid., 82d. The repetition of gefeit suggests that Eichelbaum’s declaration was coordinated with that of the alumni. 45 Attestation, October 29, 1945, ibid., 82i. 46 Attestation, October 30, 1945, ibid., 82k.
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in 1934 with education Councilor Stahl, who then was embroiled in controversy with “a Nazi women’s organization,” and who remarked to her in that context, “‘It’s exactly as with Thomaskantor Professor Straube. I said that one should bring me a force equal to him. As long as that doesn’t happen, he’s staying in office.’ I was taken aback by this comment, since I perceived that even this person, of such great merit to Leipzig’s cultural life, stood under attack from the side of National Socialism.”47 This was followed by Schütz’s account of the maneuverings around the regime’s targeted assimilation of the Thomaner. The cantor was “much too historically educated a person not to have recognized immediately the dangers of fascism,” and he had “never made a secret” of his attitude.48 Müller, like Schumann, attested surprise at having learned of Straube’s party association after the fact.49 Tiemann’s letter was the last written, and the only one addressed to Straube directly. Pointing to Nazi damages inflicted on the culture and economy, he declared that Straube was owed gratitude for having “guide[d] the ships of the Thomanerchor and the Church Music Institute . . . through the Scylla and Charybdis of a godforsaken party management,” and this “by means of a merely superficial camouflage (as we all know) of your true political views.” Since “this infernal nightmare is over,” his work should be acknowledged as “a sacrifice made to the good, holy cause.”50 All these voices argued in the strongest possible terms that, despite Straube’s nominal party membership, he had made of himself an annoyance to the authorities, had thrown up roadblocks to policy, had befriended the outcast. In “camouflage” he had used his diplomatic savvy to preserve the Thomanerchor and its mission. Exhibit A for the government’s ire toward the obstructionism of a venerable, highly visible Thomaskantor was his untimely exile from the post. It cannot be underscored emphatically enough that the resulting portrait overpaints in black and white a landscape actually dominated by hues of gray. But of course the exploration of gray areas— ruminations, say, about “the problem of Judaism” as rolled out to Haller as late as 1942, or the real efforts of Bennewitz and others at City Hall to keep him in office beyond 1939, or his having gotten behind Hitler’s aggressive foreign policy during the 1930s—had no place in a narrative crafted to position a discredited regime at arm’s length. And at least for the time being, 47 48 49 50
Attestation, November 2, 1945, ibid., 82f. Attestation, October 29, 1945, ibid., 82g. Attestation, November 3, 1945, ibid., 82h. Letter, November 12, 1945, ibid., 82l.
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it appeared that narrative was up to the task. On April 11, 1946, Dresden issued its unanimous certificate of rehabilitation, thus approving Straube for entrance into one of the leftist coalition parties governing Saxony. “Decisive for the resolution was the fact that you, in [our] unanimous view, waged a conscious fight against Nazism.”51 Eichelbaum would recall that Straube had been “denazified as the first person recommended by the CDU.”52 Not a year into peacetime, his name had been cleared. “My so-called ‘rehabilitation’ has been pronounced,” Straube notified Grüters that May, in words tinged with indignation. “I want to inform you of this in case the topic should come up.”53 That was a prescient remark, for the topic in fact would come up again, and soon. October 1946 saw Straube busy assembling, now for the Soviets, a seven-page Lebenslauf or vita claiming, “On January 1, 1940, I was forced out [hinausgedrängt] of my office as Thomaskantor by intrigues.”54 That language represented a rhetorical escalation over the 1945 narratives, which had posited merely a “resignation [Rücktritt] from the St. Thomas cantorate.”55 It appears likely that the 1946 Lebenslauf was to supplement a new questionnaire issued by Saxony’s Human Resources Department, completed in Straube’s hand and dated March 21, 1947.56 Unlike the American form, this latest Fragebogen required that a “detailed Lebenslauf” be appended. Straube turned to Kippenberg. “Apparently my relations with the Nazis are being examined again, since I have had to fill out a new questionnaire,” he wrote, surely irritated. “In this one I have indicated that in 1939 I was forced out [hinausgedrängt] of my office as Thomaskantor by the Leipzig city bigwigs.” Since the document required two witnesses, he was tapping Kippenberg “because you are the only person to whom I related what went on behind the scenes at the time. The sentence I wrote in the questionnaire reads, ‘In 1939 I was forced out of my 51 Certificate of rehabilitation by the Sonderausschuss des AntifaschistischDemokratischen Blocks Sachsen, April 11, 1946, ibid., 83. Emphasis original. 52 Commentary, October 19, 1979, appended to Straube’s letter of September 21, 1945, to Eichelbaum, StBBPK. 53 Letter, May 5, 1946, StBBPK. 54 BAL Nachlass Straube 81a (hand) and 81d (typed). The dossier includes a shorter handwritten Lebenslauf (undated, 81b) and two further typed CVs (likewise undated, 81d) that reflect the latter. 55 “Rehabilitationsgesuch,” 159. 56 Fragebogen Landesregierung Sachsen Personalamt Form.1.7500.1.47 Leipzig M104–4090, StAL StVuR (1) 4540, 274–75.
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office as Thomaskantor, since it was common knowledge that I was an opponent of the party. I belonged to the circle around Goerdeler.’”57 His identification with Goerdeler was truthful, but also calculated to show express allegiance to an anti-Nazi martyr. And he was reproducing the “forced out” language of the previous October. The likely trigger for a reinvestigation of Straube’s case lodges in the complicated dynamics between, on the one hand, the executive Allied Control Council’s efforts to standardize policies of political cleansing across the four occupation zones, and, on the other, the Soviet Military Administration’s implementation of those efforts in the eastern sector. The Soviet Special Committee’s exoneration of Straube in Dresden had just overlapped, but largely preceded, these initiatives launched at the pan-German level. In January 1946 the Allied command had issued its Directive no. 24, establishing uniform guidelines for denazification proceedings across Germany. In March there had followed Law no. 104, which set up five categories of relationship to the Nazi regime: Hauptschuldige/Major Offenders; Belastete/ Offenders, Activists, and Militarists; Minderbelastete/Lesser Offenders, Mitläufer/Followers, literally “go-alongers,” and Entlastete/Exonerees. Straube’s case would have fallen under the scrutiny of the January Directive, which among other points called for obligatory dismissal of persons from positions of responsibility who had joined the Nazi party before May 1, 1937. For reasons that are still debated, the Soviets maintained an ambivalent posture to the standardized procedures and delayed their official adoption until the end of 1946, namely via Command no. 351 that December. In Saxony the daunting practical result was a reboot of the entire denazification project, so that cases closed earlier were reopened and subjected to scrutiny felt to be, at least nominally, more rigorous and systematized than before.58 Straube’s would have been no exception. The 1947 Fragebogen, like its 1945 American counterpart, confirms certain pieces of evidence while presenting new information. Straube now gave “Thomaskantor” as his principle occupation “in January 1933,” with the CMI directorship in second place. Here it was the cantorate he wanted to foreground. Concerning financial circumstances at the outset of 1933: “Records burned. Yearly income until January 1, 1940, about 16,000 RM. Savings about 28,000 RM. Securities nominally 27,890 RM.” For January 57 Letter, April 1, 1947, DLAM A:Kippenberg-Archiv 64.1531, no. HS009177370. 58 Welsh, Revolutionärer Wandel, 67–74.
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1945 he indicated “Thomaskantor retired,” followed by “Head of the Kirchenmusikalisches Institut until April 1, 1945. Monthly [income] about 1,100 RM. Savings about 40,000 RM.” As to party membership, he submitted November 1933 as the date of entry, contradicting without explanation the claim of May 1, 1933, recorded both on the 1945 Fragebogen and in his personnel file. He reaffirmed membership in the Altherrenbund but not in the charity Volkswohlfahrt (as in 1945) nor in the Opferring (as in the personnel file). On political affiliation before 1933: “Demokratische Partei” and “1919–1933 Leipzig.” To the question of whether his spouse had been a party member, the answer was no, Hertha had not joined. For the two witnesses, he chose Edgar Lux a second time, alongside Kippenberg. How the spring 1947 investigation unfolded from there is unknown. Whether Straube again opened channels to the now vice-mayor Eichelbaum, or to other CDU advocates at whatever levels, is likewise unknown. The great majority of cases examined over the first half of 1947 ended in exoneration.59 The only unequivocal point is that denazification hung over Straube’s head for about two years, longer than has been assumed. Furthermore, at just the time his own second process had launched, he was called to give written testimony in another such proceeding carried out in the British zone. It examined the difficult case of the venerated Germanist historian and poet Ernst Bertram, at the University of Cologne since 1922. The author of a widely admired monograph on Nietzsche, the politically unaffiliated Bertram had both participated in and glorified in poetry the 1933 book burnings. By 1946 the British had relieved him of his position. Presumably it was Bertram’s publisher Kippenberg who requested that Straube join the chorus of writers advocating Bertram’s rehabilitation. Straube and Bertram in fact had a history. The latter had touted Bach’s “Nordic” nature in a rambling lecture at the 1933 German Bachfest in Cologne, citing the Thomanerchor as “the finest boys’ choir in the world.”60 In 1947 Straube would claim to have gotten to know Bertram some time before, launching “a friendship mediated by Johann Sebastian Bach and his art.”61 Straube took the assignment seriously and in January 1947, while assembling his own second round of materials, he had turned for advice to Bertram’s friend, the sociologist Heinz Ronte. He wondered on paper 59 Ibid., 73–74. 60 “Johann Sebastian Bach,” in Bertram, Deutsche Gestalten, 34. 61 Sworn declaration, March 24, 1947, DLAM A:Bertram/Entnazifizierung 85.520,5, no. HS009177174.
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whether the English condemnation of Bertram had been motivated by the latter’s “wonderful” nationalist poetry “calling for extreme resistance during the last months of the war.” If that was so, Straube wrote, he would turn the issue back upon the Anglo-inquisitors. “What would the English have done in the same position, given an enemy invasion on British soil? In light of national pride and a willingness to make sacrifices motivated by a burning love of the fatherland, nothing other than a battle to the end.”62 The “shame” expressed to Haller around this same time evidently did not dissuade Straube from dismissing Göring’s relentless 1940 bombing campaign of London and other targets as “an enemy invasion on British soil.” Now as ever, he was the rhetorically shrewd patriot, prepared to cheer his country’s defense, if not its policy. He soon put this fervor to work. Bertram had “worshipfully live[d] out the traditions of German culture,” and “could not show sympathy to National Socialism, which for its part wanted nothing other than to eradicate this cultural synthesis of a thousand years’ history in a fit of envious vandalism.” Furthermore he had “viewed the persecutions of Christians and Jews as a disgrace,” and “the thought never occurred to him to see in the German Volk a master race. Like every far-sighted person, Bertram reverentially admires everything on earth of eternal value in the arts and sciences produced by the nations of the world.”63 But the squeaky-clean dissident praised in 1947 did not comport with the nationalist academic of reality. In 1934 Bertram had authored an “Assessment of the physical and national-political education of our students” in Cologne, and by 1938 he was supporting race theory as a “necessary science” for Germanic studies.64 Straube’s view that politics had no place in education would have found no favor with him. And as to “the thought never occur[ing] to him to see in the German Volk a master race,” Bertram’s 1933 verse “On German Destiny” testified plainly to the contrary. The well-read Straube surely could have recalled its concluding rhetorical gesture: “But as to which Volk God has set uppermost as master of the peoples, ask the hardest destiny, ask the brightest eye, ask the pure word, the deepest sound.”65 Despite Straube’s paean to the worth of the world’s cul62 Letter, January 15, 1947, DLAM A:Bertram/Sammlung Heinz Ronte HS.2011.0011.00039, no. HS00571343X. 63 Sworn declaration, March 24, 1947, DLAM A:Bertram/Entnazifizierung 85.520,5, no. HS009177174. 64 Haupts, Die Universität zu Köln, 200–201. 65 “Vom deutschen Schicksal,” cited ibid., 205.
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tures, it strains reason to imagine Bertram having adopted it. The academics in Bertram’s circle were left to choose between their regard for his scholarship and their distaste for his politics, the latter dismissed by the Germanist Robert Faesi—generously, it seems—as the “aberrations of a noble, pure, somewhat unrealistic spirit.”66 That phrase was, too, a more or less fitting description for the political loyalties of Karl’s brother William. In the end the British would hold to a harder line: Bertram’s petition to be rehired was rejected in May 1947.
66 Cited ibid., 207 n. 390.
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Chapter Thirty-Four
“Like sand through the fingers” “Old age has arrived with me,” a plaintive Straube had written Mezger late in 1945. “Everything taken together has made of me a fretful, sullen geezer, as is the way of the world.” Mezger had accepted Straube’s commission to write a foreword to the chorale-based volumes of the Bach edition, which, as the latter pointed out in the same letter, needed to emphasize “the religious content” and “reveal also to the French and the Americans knowledge of the spiritual values in this wonderful art.”1 He was nothing if not determined, now framing his work as a last opportunity to preach Bach abroad. By March 1946, and evidently at his own urging, he had in hand a contract from Peters promising 1,200 marks as honorarium for each of nine volumes.2 Incredibly, for the first time in decades, there was an official mandate to proceed. Yet Straube continued to stew over the work’s ultimate relevance. He fixated on his old conviction about the vanity of human striving, even as he became painfully conscious of himself as a relic. The war’s destruction had exacerbated these perceptions, not only because it had taken a toll on his health, but also because it had driven a vivid wedge between past and future. He had issued from a world that now lay in rubble. How could his views on Bach claim currency in a new era? Going forward, such questions played on a loop in his mind, even as those to whom he articulated them offered encouragement. “The name Karl Straube is magical and will remain so,” Hella von Hausegger admonished him. “And particularly given today’s uncertainty about style, it’s very important that someone like you, who 1 2
Letter, November 10, 1945, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. Contract, March 1, 1946, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters, Musikverlag Leipzig, Nr. 3366.
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knows the right approach, nails down his thoughts.”3 He was increasingly prone to compare his “right approach” to the work of others, particularly those west of the Rhine. With evident cynicism he told Mezger that requests for “an instructive foreword” had come from the Americans, “who it seems have not been completely convinced by the program-music interpretations of an Albert Schweitzer.”4 Now more than ever after the Allied victory, he remained aware of the French bias among American organists, even as he aired disdain for what he had long regarded as Schweitzer’s dabbling dressed up as authenticity. Beyond Schweitzer, Straube wanted to know what was going on in France with respect to Bach. In late 1946 he prevailed upon his former student Karl Matthaei to supply him a copy of Marcel Dupré’s sumptuous Bach edition in order to learn how Dupré approached pedaling.5 With one volume in hand by June 1947, Matthaei laboriously copied out passages from the preface’s “General Technical Rules,” including the several signs and guidelines for fingering and pedaling, and dispatched them to Leipzig. Eager to impress upon his mentor that he had not fallen into French heresy, Matthaei pointed out that Dupré’s approach “does not exactly inspire confidence,” and that he “at all costs” avoided making such material available to students. “I am absolutely not edified that he degrades everything down to a template, since from case to case, the laws of agogic accent, dynamics, tempo, and not least also acoustics do play into one’s considerations,” he elaborated, rejecting particularly the doctrinaire cutting short of tied pitches. “I have come upon Bach scores that are maltreated in this French manner, and it occurred to me that here and there, the abusive eradication of the tie destroys the harmonic relationships among the voices. Otherwise [Dupré’s rules] concern self-evident matters that the artistic consciousness must evaluate.”6 This was a fair résumé of Straube’s own subjective approach, set in relief against the “French manner” of a current star organist. He unquestionably had enjoyed cordial relations with the big French names, also before the choir’s Paris tours. In 1929 Charles Tournemire had written, for instance, asking permission to
3 4 5 6
Letter, July 29, 1946, BStBM. Letter, November 10, 1945, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. Oeuvres Complètes pour Orgue de J. S. Bach annotées et doigtées par Marcel Dupré, 12 vols. (Paris: S. Bornemann, 1939–41). Letter, June 29, 1947, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube.
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dedicate to Straube a copy of his L’orgue mystique.7 And just before that, in 1928, Straube had reacted positively to news that Dupré wished to play in Leipzig.8 But Bach interpretation was another matter entirely, and he likely perceived in Dupré’s rationalisms just another version of Schweitzer’s approach. He must have spoken about this occasionally with confidantes, as he did with Högner in correspondence about his own edition in utero. “Things came to light there,” Högner ventured after Straube’s death, “that would sound unpleasant in the ears of those younger persons who wished to benefit from their familiarity with Herr Marcel Dupré, and to belittle their old teacher Straube.”9 Dupré was certainly the name of the hour. Ultimately it fell to Mezger to articulate the irreconcilable cleft as “two altogether differently conditioned cultural and intellectual spheres of Bach interpretation.”10 While keeping his finger on the pulse of the competition, Straube pressed on. But life continued to intervene in ways both welcome and gratifying, distracting and debilitating, and in counterpoint with the protracted denazification case. In late October 1946, a little over a year after having settled into their two rooms in the Mainzer Straße, the Straubes uprooted again, this time to relocate across town under the roof of the Peters offices at Talstraße 10, “where we . . . got our own apartment of three rooms, referred by the city.”11 By “our own” Straube meant a self-contained living arrangement, an improvement over the previous digs with respect to both privacy and space. “Compared to Munich standards, three rooms for two people is downright luxurious,” exclaimed Hella von Hausegger that December.12 Whatever the city’s role in the arrangements, the Talstraße move was an extraordinary twist of fate for the Straubes, who now came to roost at the longtime address of the dispersed and decimated Hinrichsen family, and just steps from the publishers with whom he partnered so closely. It would be Karl’s last move and, as it happened, one that Hertha had to endure without him. For much of October his health had forced a retreat to nearby Bad Lausick, from which he returned on the 22nd to discover, as he informed Söhngen, “the condition of 7 8
Letter, March 6, 1929, ibid. Letter to Günther Ramin, July 30, 1928, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 79. 9 Letter, October 22, 1951, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 6, 36. 10 Mezger, “Bachs Amt und Erbe,” 195. 11 Letter to Manfred Mezger, March 4, 1947, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. 12 Letter, December 30, 1946, BStBM.
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a chaotic change of residence.”13 Still at the end of November he was speaking of “the chaotic upheaval of our not yet completed move.”14 Insult would be added to injury: he ultimately was unable to outfit the new quarters with that surviving portion of his library earlier warehoused in the Gewandhaus cellars, since the entire lot had disappeared. “I am reluctant to think that malicious scoundrels robbed me,” Straube told Michael Schneider. “It must have been connoisseurs who knew what was valuable and what not, on a monetary scale. I didn’t recover a single volume. Anyhow, I still have about 1,500 books.”15 He would remain the incurable collector. The disruptions of autumn 1946 would have passed relatively quickly had the utilities in the Talstraße been up to the cold winter following. Instead, it seems that heating issues forced the couple out by mid-February. They repaired northeast to the old hunting castle at Thallwitz on the invitation of its remarkable proprietor, their longtime friend Wolfgang Rosenthal.16 A baritone who had collaborated countless times with Straube, Rosenthal graduated the Thomasschule in 1902. He had paralleled concertizing with a brilliant medical career, specializing in reconstructive facial surgery while occasionally writing up medical leave certificates for Thomaskantor Straube. In 1943, fearful of the inevitable air raids on Leipzig, he had secured rooms for an outpost orthopedic clinic in the Thallwitz castle of Heinrich Prince Reuß, extended over the entire property after the war. Straube, Ramin, and Thomaner alums would be guests as Thallwitz offered bucolic relief from the grim post-war reality of the city. “Friends received us here with the greatest kindness and warmth,” Straube informed Petschull on February 18. “Already over these four days, my wife’s hands and even mine have defrosted and look very mannerly.”17 They were still there in early March.18 In the meantime Petschull had told Straube that the water lines at Talstraße 10 had frozen and burst. He expressed hope that his exiled editor should “complete the manuscript of the Bach edition as 13 Letter, November 15, 1946, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 213. 14 Letter to Fritz Stein, November 29, 1946, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 98–101. 15 Letter, July 27, 1947, ibid., 42–43. 16 On Rosenthal’s several connections to Straube, see Ackermann, “Die ‘Wolfgang-Rosenthal-Klinik,’” 22–53. 17 Letter, February 18, 1947, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510. 18 Letter to Manfred Mezger, March 4, 1947, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249.
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soon as possible, preferably volume by volume beginning with volume 1.”19 Petschull wanted to inaugurate the coming season’s catalog with the work and apparently was confident enough to promise this in print. Just a month later a high-spirited Straube wrote that he had seen the news in the papers and that “volumes 1 and 2 should be ready to go to press in autumn 1947. So: ‘To new deeds, dear hero!’ [‘Zu neuen Taten, teurer Helde!’]”20 If he could deliver, he surely would be hailed as the Siegfried of the Bach congregation. But this was not to be. Responding, it seems, to a deep-seated psychological need to remain relevant, he proved too willing to countenance other offers and requests that came his way. One of them was a July 1947 invitation to author an introduction for a book of Arnold Mendelssohn’s writings to appear with Insel. That project would go nowhere, though it generated well over a year’s paper trail before succumbing to its would-be author’s incapacitating ambivalence.21 Another such divertissement, one with deeper roots but leading to the same dead end, was the still simmering desire to edit Reger’s organ works. Ever since the 1938 “classical” version of op. 27, the idea of a more comprehensive effort had incubated in his mind. He still believed that the organ was not the most musically significant element of Reger’s corpus, and that the pieces suffered from uneven writing. This did not deter him. As long ago as 1929 he had exclaimed to the then-aspiring composer Wilhelm Weismann that “you have to write every day, like Reger. It doesn’t matter if in the middle of it all some crap comes out.”22 As an editor at least, he would countenance an approach to the oeuvre as a coherent unit, “crap” and all. And so, when in October 1946 Söhngen came calling with the proposal that Straube issue the whole of Reger’s organ output in a “musicological” edition for the Merseburger Verlag, he was inclined to listen. His initial willingness appears the more remarkable in that the request arose amid the drawn-out disruptions of the move to the Talstraße, struggles with bad health, and the unrelenting pressures of the Bach project. The following 19 Letter, February 24, 1947, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510. 20 Letter, March 23, 1947, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. 21 Correspondence with the Insel editor Friedrich Michael extends from July 10, 1947, through September 14, 1948, DLAM SUA:Insel-Verlag/Autoren SU.2010.0001, no. HS01024125X. The book appeared in 1949 without an introduction. 22 F. Weismann, ed., untitled memoir of Wilhelm Weismann, 75. Weismann insisted that Straube had expressed himself “word for word.”
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month Söhngen was rewarded with a long-breathed letter that explored, in a way only Karl Straube could, the enigma of his deceased friend’s personality, the anything-but-straightforward relationship of the composer to his notation, Reger’s own music-making as he recalled it, and how all this informed the calculus of a potential edition, which in any case had to be “practical” rather than “musicological.” He had insisted on that distinction for decades, consistently finding his calling in the former. If Söhngen agreed, Straube cadenced, “many organists will pleased about it, and I will attempt to get started on the plan, even if perhaps, at my age, I will not be able to complete it.”23 At least there was a whiff of realism in this answer. Upon receiving Söhngen’s reply, Straube appealed for advice to his old friend, the Reger apologist Fritz Stein. Predictably, he now turned the full power of his ambivalent self-questioning upon the would-be undertaking, thinking onto paper the various issues and problematizing all of them. Was such an edition even necessary? Would Reger’s original publishers consent to a transfer of rights to Merseburger? Should he proceed on the assumptions of a “classical organ,” as in 1938, or return to the “orchestral” instrument that had given him his first triumphs? “As I must admit openly, the sound of a Sauer organ means nothing to me anymore,” he postured, “although it is an instrument of thoroughly original tonal substance and hence of discrete significance in the development of organ building.” What had replaced it was “the sound of the Arp Schnitger or the Silbermann organ,” even though “the organ per se unfortunately cannot be called an organically matured instrument, like the string instruments are.”24 The dismissal of Sauer’s tonal palette captured an aging organist in a moment of disingenuity. Now approaching life’s end, Straube was psychologically hamstrung between the glories of his virtuoso career, long since fodder for legend, and the party line of the historicist Orgelbewegung, long endorsed by academic musicians he respected as a symbol of modernist progress and liturgical propriety. Even in rejecting the Sauer aesthetic, he could not help but envision the possibility of a Reger edition that would honor its parameters. As late as 1943 he had recommended to Heinz Wunderlich his 1913 version of op. 59 nos. 7 and 9.25 And in 1948 he would write the Halle organist Walther Kunze, weighed down with melancholy that “the Willibrordikirche, the beautiful Sauer organ of this church, almost the whole city of Wesel is 23 Letter, November 15, 1946, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 213. 24 Letter, November 29, 1946, ibid., 214–15. 25 Letter, May 7, 1943, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 10, 75.
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no more.”26 No matter how much he was lauded as an open mind ready to embrace enlightened new thinking, the great Romantic instruments of his youth remained an unimpeachable strand in his life’s emotional fabric. This was the soundtrack of Bismarck’s Reich he so revered, a sonic parallel to the Bülow orchestra. It was the sound that still evoked the spaces and places in which he had labored, and the people alongside whom he had labored, in the name of art. And particularly for someone of Straube’s habit of mind, the best orchestral organs would not be dismissed with some superficial rhetorical flourish in the name of progress. In a 1960 radio address Hudemann would acknowledge this situation, if delicately. “He did not defend this strict historic style fanatically. He always allowed room for vibrancy,” Hudemann said, where “vibrancy” meant a certain interpretive liberty.27 The dissonance was captured most trenchantly in a now well-known anecdote: “As Straube worked with one of his last pupils, Amadeus Webersinke, to arrange a [Bach] work from ‘volume 2 new,’ he said, ‘The way we’ve done it here and now is surely correct. But you know—before, it was more beautiful.’”28 He was nothing if not consistent. The 1904 Alte Meister preface, after all, had touted the binary opposition of “serv[ing] history” on the one hand and proceeding “as I see it” on the other, between the objective and the subjective, the musicological and the practical, the correct and the beautiful. Now as then, his first love was beauty. That the Reger proposal had come expressly from Söhngen was rooted in matters that had at least as much to do with post-war economics as they did with Reger. In 1951 Söhngen would relate how, owing to the Straubes’ “very difficult financial circumstances,” he “had gotten the Oberkirchenrat to pay him a recurring monthly stipend of 300 marks” nominally tied to the Reger commission.29 If the old cantor saw that the financial supplement was tied to a worthwhile project instead of bald charity, so reasoned Söhngen and his associates, he would be more likely to accept it. This was no small matter, and one by no means confined to this instance. As with so many, the Straubes’ assets had been frozen when the German economy collapsed. Students and friends at home and abroad united to support them over the 26 Letter, September 22, 1948, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 238. 27 Hans-Olaf Hudemann, transcript of an address for the Süddeutscher Rundfunk (Stuttgart, April 26, 1960), BAL Nachlass Straube (Manuskripte) no. 16, 4. 28 B., “Karl Straube 1873–1973,” 12. Emphases original. 29 Letter, August 3, 1951, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 6, 98.
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next difficult years. For his part, Straube appears not to have let his pride get in the way of asking for help. For one thing, upon moving to the Talstraße he had negotiated with Petschull a discounted monthly rent.30 Once the Peters Leipzig branch went to state ownership in 1949, he again turned to the on-site custodian Emil Kirsten to request a rent reduction in light of the 226.10 marks he and Hertha would receive as monthly retirement income in the new East Germany. “That way a small foundation would be built that could be rounded out with charity,” he concluded, knowing well that they depended largely upon the goodwill of others.31 The stipend mediated by Söhngen surely played into his motivations in accepting the Reger project. Still, Straube never would manage to direct his waning energies to a Reger edition, no matter what cross signals he gave. Still in late 1948 he was radiating optimism, reporting to Söhngen that, despite the heavy ongoing demands of the Bach project, “I hope to integrate the music of the younger master as a welcome diversification of my workload.” He gave the impression that he was operating not merely with good intentions but also with an actual strategy. “First I will take on the seven great chorale fantasies and notate them in the versions that Max Reger repeatedly heard from me, performances to which he gave his approval with respect to dynamics and agogic.”32 It all was wishful thinking. He had expressed that plan in November 1948, but conceded defeat only a month later. Now he turned to Söhngen with a new proposal to cede the project to someone else who could lend an authoritative voice, even as Söhngen pledged continued financial supplements to support the Bach edition instead.33 Perhaps the task should fall to Fritz Heitmann, who had studied much of the music with him between 1909 and 1911, and who “had seen [Reger], which always made a big impression.” Straube largely was at a loss, though. “The great players, Dr. Klotz, Professor Dr. Michael Schneider are in the west, which is regrettable. In the east Günther Ramin can be considered, but he knows individual pieces and plays them as a virtuoso. This is not serviceable to us for a complete edition.” That latter stance reflected ongoing chilly relations with the sitting Thomaskantor, whom Straube viewed as too self-serving a musician 30 He renewed the request in a letter, October 6, 1948, SäStAL Musikverlag C. F. Peters Nr. 2510. 31 Letter, March 31, 1949, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 148. 32 Letter, November 9, 1948, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 82. 33 Letter, January 10, 1949, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube.
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to take on a project of scope. “You cannot count on me. God can call me from this earth any day.”34 Still a month later he was pondering who might be up to the task, informing Söhngen that he had identified leads in certain eastern-zone candidates.35 Nothing more could be done. Even before Straube confronted questions about a Reger edition in autumn 1946, he was preoccupied with yet another proposal of a different nature and of potentially greater consequence. Grüters had notified him earlier in the year, in April, about the possibility of a teaching position in the Rhineland. He had begun high-level campaigns with contacts at the Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf and the University of Bonn, and he intended to open further channels in the days following, all the way up to the rector of the University of Cologne and the Minister of Culture for Nordrhein-Westfalen. The cantor emeritus had always been inclined to consider outward offers, and, if destiny were to lead away from the eastern zone to Hertha’s native Rhineland, so much the better. Besides, Straube worried about how life was going to shape up in a new state steered by the Soviets. “Right now we feel little of this,” he wrote the choral alumnus Christoph Vollmer that October, “but we stand before proletarian conditions in our future standard of living!”36 In April Grüters came directly to the point. Would he accept an organ teaching position at either Düsseldorf or Cologne, or would he rather take a musicology professorship at Bonn or Cologne? “I already see Master Straube in spirit at the center of the Bach celebrations in 1950.”37 Straube responded that an offer in musicology from Bonn would be “tempting.” Despite two honorary degrees—“the University wanted to make up what they had neglected between 1723 and 1750”—he could not submit academic credentials, although experience supplied what intellect could not. “But whether the rector and Senate of the University would consent to such a transgression of the professional codes, this seems very questionable to me.”38 This was sufficiently encouraging for Grüters to pursue the various avenues, resulting in an offer, tendered by the Cologne Hochschule director Walter Braunfels in late July 1947, to assume leadership of the institution’s Church Music Institute. Straube was still pondering the move that 34 35 36 37 38
Letter, February 12, 1949, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 83. Letter, March 9, 1949, ibid., 84. Letter, October 14, 1946, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 10, 52–53. Letter, April 21, 1946, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube. Letter, May 5, 1946, StBBPK.
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October, when he appealed to Kippenberg to help him talk through the pros and cons.39 But 1947 marked a distressing turn in his health, making any such move less palatable. “Since the end of July I have been overtaken by neuritis, arthritis, and rheumatism,” he lamented to one correspondent later that fall, “exactly at the time the first letter arrived from Professor Braunfels calling me to Cologne.” He ultimately had backed out, and now he proceeded at some length to describe his dilapidated state, which disallowed travel. “My diseased hands cannot carry a light handbag, and my arms hurt at the slightest touch, or at my own cautious attempts to move them. Hence I am a poor Lazarus who can demonstrate nothing to his pupils.” The prognosis was unclear. “The physicians have delighted me with injections of glucose, insulin, and hormones, as well as mud packs and at first also electric radiation,” he continued. “Everything has been in vain, and the situation remains the same. I don’t know why this disease has been inflicted upon me. I’m like Moses, who saw the Promised Land in the distance but was not allowed to enter it.”40 Perhaps Moses was a more apt equivalent than Lazarus. This adequately evoked not only the fate of a potential exit westward, but also an increasingly tempered optimism around his editing projects. As his powers flagged, Straube became less inclined to imagine that he finally could break ties with Leipzig. None of this kept others from trying to pry him away. As he was rejecting the Cologne offer, Straube pivoted again to Söhngen, who had pursued for him the possibility of a position at the Berlin Dreifaltigkeitskirche. That move would have closed an attractive circle, no doubt. In 1897 the brash young organist had premiered Reger’s op. 16 there, but the church had been burned out in 1943 and reappropriated as an air-raid bunker, its ruins now detonated and removed. In 1951 Söhngen told Hudemann that he had been alarmed, upon his first post-war visit to Straube in Leipzig, “at how bad he looked, how much his spiritual vigor had suffered, and how obviously unhappy he was.” He therefore had tried to draw him to Berlin, namely to clothe a position that would be “a sort of sinecure,” obviously so in the case of a ruined church.41 The reply was melancholic, philosophical, 39 Letter, October 8, 1947, DLAM A:Kippenberg-Archiv 64.1531 no. HS009177399. 40 Letter to Emma Wallenborn, October 26, 1947, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 10, 64–67. 41 Letter, August 3, 1951, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 6, 96–98.
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Figure 34.1. Straube in the late 1940s. Reproduced with permission from the Archiv des Thomanerchores Leipzig.
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and unequivocal. “I’m an old man,” Straube conceded, “who has to be happy if some gifted talents assemble around him, ready to hear his thoughts on the great life’s work of Johann Sebastian Bach.” Further, “The congregation would have experienced an old cantor and organist who no longer has a future.. . . It has to be a person who through his abilities elevates the church-musical significance of this place of worship, hallowed for all time by Schleiermacher’s work.”42 It pained him that he was no longer capable of such a vaunted mission. It was to be the very last time that a door stood open for a return to his hometown. As Straube considered these various scenarios for a future elsewhere, another prospect surfaced across the English Channel. Susi Jeans, née Hock, the Viennese organist and harpsichordist who had studied with him first in 1932, had gotten news of his compromised post-war circumstances. This motivated her to re-establish contact in May 1946 with an invitation to visit Cleveland Lodge, her spacious home in the English countryside near Dorking.43 It was a communication full of goodwill from a successful former student with whom Straube shared a German-English background. But her letter had arrived just before the frenzied move to the Talstraße, so that Straube had misplaced it. Jeans tried again two years later, in May 1948, this time dispatching a gift of clothing. A protracted exchange followed, likely the last one with his mother’s homeland. He replied with, among other things, a revealing apology for his silence in 1946. “The thought of coming to England was so attractive that it seemed feasible to me,” he confessed. “Also at the time I suffered from the consciousness of German war guilt, so that my inner constitution would not allow travel to foreign countries.”44 This reprised the “shame” he had earlier confessed to Haller, though the “war guilt” appeared deeper in certain senses than in others, and it got expressed to differing degrees depending on the conversation partner. But the appeal of an end-of-life return to England was surely authentic and more than a little touching. The correspondence extended well into 1949, just months before the new German Democratic Republic began its official life as a Stalinist state. “Portugal sends sardines, from the West comes Canadian cheese, preserved fish from USA, and England the best of all: English tea,” he wrote to her in poised English in one such exchange, sharply aware of how dependent he 42 Letter, November 14, 1947, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 77. 43 Letter, May 31, 1946, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube. 44 Letter, July 9, 1948, RCOLB, Archive.
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and Hertha had become upon western benevolence. “And we poor sinners stammer out: Many thanks for all your kindness.”45 In the end his physical condition would rule out any visit to the land of the Palmers. “Unfortunately I must inform you that since July 1947 I have been a sick man,” he revealed to Jeans in March 1949. “It’s my nerves. Rest and quiet are supposed to be the remedies to these nuisances.” And as always, that course of non-action did not sit well with a person accustomed to productivity. “It seems impossible to me to live void of intellectual pursuits, no matter how much I try to reach the height of idleness.”46 He still had his sense of humor. By spring 1949 his status quo had changed fundamentally. In October 1946 Straube had been re-enlisted to teach organ on a per-lesson basis, and as director of the so-called Church Music Department. But in 1948, still living on a shoestring budget, he discovered that the higher-ups in state and church had tapped Ramin “as the favorite, if I may put it that way, to succeed me as director of the Church Music Institute. He appears not yet to have been designated, although it is spoken of this way in certain in-the-know circles,” he informed Söhngen, plainly irritated. He was prepared to resign in protest: could the church administration be counted upon to guarantee him further support in that case? He estimated that he could finish the Bach edition in three to four years, given the chance to concentrate on it exclusively. The stakes were high. “The French organ school has the same plans for such a publication. A German edition must appear, because otherwise we will be shut off from the general Bach movement spreading over the world. I intend first to attempt to assemble financial aid from friends. Should I succeed in raising the same amount that you . . . have made available to me, I would dedicate my entire energies to the Bach edition and say Valet to the Hochschule.”47 Germany, defeated in every other respect, could not cede its culture to others. If he and Hertha could get by on charity, he was willing to accept it for the sake of completing his life’s mission. But the real impetus for this plan had come from what he had heard about Ramin’s impending succession. The fact was that a promise to elevate the latter to the helm of church music had served to secure him as cantor. Straube was inclined to suspect a replay of the back-room politics of 1939 and, as in the latter episode, he was prepared to demur and walk out. Now as then, he held that Ramin’s personality and priorities made him a less than 45 Letter, March 1, 1949, ibid. 46 Letter, March 29, 1949, ibid. 47 Letter, June 1, 1948, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 79.
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ideal choice to tend his hard-won achievements. “Günther Ramin’s fortune in being allowed to take over the Gewandhaus Chorus and the Thomaner at the height of their success could give rise to inconveniences if the choirs begin to slip,” Straube had confided to Schneider the previous summer. His view was unequivocal: Ramin had not only assumed those positions, but he had been “allowed” to do so. Musical Leipzig was too conceited to contemplate the danger. “But such concerns are absent,” he had continued, with more than a little cynicism. “The Leipzigers are satisfied and quite delighted with both choirs, actually now more than ever.”48 To an aging cantor emeritus struggling with diminishing capacities, Ramin’s rising star showed just how little the city had really appreciated him. Hence the untoward remark to another former pupil that “only since the successes in Paris” had he “won the benevolent recognition of the Leipzigers. Naturally Günter [sic] Ramin is by far the more brilliant musician! That goes without saying.”49 Remarks like these surfaced with increasing frequency, surely driven by a combination of dark psychological factors—old axes to grind, entrenched self-doubt, regrets over paths not taken. But Straube could not reasonably complain of being undervalued. This was particularly so in January 1948 and his seventy-fifth birthday, another milestone that prompted the usual hymns of praise in the press and deposited piles of mail on his doorstep. Owing to depleted energies, he ordered pre-printed thank-you cards rather than craft individual letters to his admirers. From the wording, those in the inner circle at least would have detected the wounded soul who doubted that his work had been worth it. “It will remain for me a fond memory,” the card read, “that those persons qualified to judge have again expressed their approval of my aspirations and intentions as Thomaskantor. Such words serve as a sign that my life’s work has been blessed, and was not in vain.”50 There was authentic gratitude here, but also depression, insecurity, and an implication that those not “qualified to judge” misunderstood what he had achieved and would squander his legacy. Unhealthy and disgruntled, Straube stepped back from the Hochschule in summer 1948, thus ending his longest association with a single institution. Just that February he had written Raasted that his earnings there “give us the means to exist,” but that “to teach five days a week, three to four hours each
48 Letter, July 27, 1947, ibid., 42–43. 49 Letter to Beate Schmidt, January 3, 1948, ibid., 35–36. 50 Printed card, 1948, BAL Nachlass Straube, 96.
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morning, is rather substantial for a seventy-five-year-old.”51 If this really were the schedule he relinquished a few months later, he had not slowed down all that much. The financial maneuverings around this final retirement caused a last unpleasant run-in with Ramin, whose predetermined succession had contributed to his withdrawal in the first place. The tiff was set in motion by Ernst Eichelbaum, who related to Ramin Straube’s claim that his relinquishing of teaching put him and Hertha in material danger, their budget having been propped up by a meager Hochschule income. Once Eichelbaum began efforts to solicit financial support for the Straubes, Ramin reacted, incensed that the situation created an impression that the church music department under his direction was standing aside callously as its venerable founder struggled. He turned directly to Straube that November to say that he was receiving “the most varied and alarming inquiries” as Eichelbaum initiated his charitable campaign in both eastern and western sectors. The truth was, Ramin wrote in typically ruffled tone, that once he had been asked to take the reins of the CMI that summer, he had informed the administration “that I would do this only if you continued to receive your salary without interruption.” Moreover, to balance the books he had “personally waived compensation for my increased duties at the Kirchenmusikalisches Institut and to date have received no such compensation.” Upon inquiry he had ascertained that Straube’s salary continued to be paid as arranged. “Therefore it is incomprehensible to me how such a claim could issue from your side, which has landed not only me personally, but also the Kirchenmusikalisches Institut and our entire faculty, in a quite unpleasant situation.”52 To be fair, it appears that the generous arrangement Ramin described arose only after Straube’s remark to Eichelbaum, which in turn preceded his decision to withdraw from teaching. In Ramin’s rather impulsive view, Straube had misrepresented his financial circumstances to legitimize charitable fundraising on his behalf, and to cast aspersions in the direction of the institution. This was hardly the happy parting of ways one would have wished after a forty-year tenure.
51 Letter, February 26, 1948, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 120. About a year earlier he had waxed poetic to Mezger that “fifteen pupils have had the courage to gather around me, an old worn-out organ war horse, so that I can instruct them in the earnest craft of the organist.” Letter, March 4, 1947, ibid., 75. 52 Letter, November 11, 1948, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Karl Straube.
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All this and more weighed heavily on the old man. In early 1948 he had been speaking of “mental depressions . . . which I have not been successful in overcoming.”53 He had been a person of irrepressible energy, a firebrand always on this or that musical mission for the good of “spiritual culture,” a sought-after teacher, and the influential wizard of a painstakingly constructed, cross-institutional “Straube system.” Now having cast off his last official duties, forced to rely on the charity of others, Straube concluded that he had outlived his usefulness. Illness increasingly drove him to health resorts, leaving Hertha behind to deal with the household. In summer 1949 he turned to his brother in a depressive missive saturated with melancholy. “I have never been an independent individuality, rather more an honest broker [ein ehrlicher Makler] with goods not his own,” he wrote, now summoning the full powers of his debilitating self-criticism to assess his life’s work. “Hence I feel myself fully superfluous to the world and wish for death with all my might. Unfortunately it doesn’t come, despite this being a modest request at seventy-six-and-a-half years. It isn’t really fitting for a ‘has-been Thomaskantor’ to commit suicide. These two words say it all.” He now found himself on the path to total deafness. “For a musician a special delight, since then at least I’ll share something with Beethoven. My eyes likewise are causing problems, but I won’t say more, so that a few novelties remain for the next letter. . . . Write me about your art and how it is appreciated. This is a more attractive topic than the lamentations of a miserable Lazarus.”54 Similarly dispiriting letters came to Hertha from Thallwitz, where Straube retreated that August under Rosenthal’s care. He tended to color even the most positive reports on his health with dark forebodings. “If it continues this way, I, like my brother, perhaps will reach my nineties, which troubles me very much. Maybe the winter months will bring me deliverance.”55 He simply could not accept his compromised state and was growing weary of the struggle. Surely these thoughts alarmed those around him. Straube was not altogether the discarded Lazarus projected by his despressive psyche. As honorary chair of the reconstituted Neue Bachgesellschaft, he maintained his longstanding voice there, and he participated in various 53 Letter to Georg Eismann, January 25, 1948, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 7, 31. 54 Letter, July 31, 1949, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 10, 3–4. The old Bismarkian theme of the ehrlicher Makler surfaces in other correspondence from this period. 55 Letter, August 19, 1949, StBBPK N. Mus. Nachl. 12.
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Bach-related initiatives as the anniversary approached. As late as February 1950 he would accept a request from Radio Bremen to supply a lecture text for the Bach year, even though “my working energies are entirely occupied” with the organ edition.56 Earlier, in 1949, Kippenberg had drafted him to revise his preface to Terry’s Bach biography, and to advise on a new edition of the book, proposals which Straube met with his old enthusiasm.57 Yet earlier, and most consequentially, around Christmas 1948 Matthaei had requested from him an essay for a Bach-Gedenkschrift of the Internationale Bachgesellschaft, which was delivered promptly the following April as the retrospective “Rückblick und Bekenntnis.”58 That article was Straube’s last public writing, a long-breathed apologia pro vita sua that surveyed his musical roots in Berlin’s organ culture, his refining of Reimann’s Bach interpretation, his aims as an editor, the translation of his idiosyncratic Bach style to the Thomanerchor, and the ethical urgency of the whole effort. Noticeably absent was any mention of the Nazi aberration, though a sensitive reader might have detected overtones in his remark that “I had to reclaim for the Bach practice of the Thomaskirche the cultic bond established through Bach’s personal work, which was not possible without instances of resistance.”59 In the end, he saw his career as the spearhead of a noble struggle against forces that would misappropriate the nation’s heritage. The eloquent valedictory sentences expressed the ambivalence of his worldview, an acknowledgment of the irreducible enigma of Johann Sebastian Bach: “The more I reflected on the mystery of [Bach’s] singularity, the less I could grasp him with the scrutinizing intellect. The power of faith that his art radiates makes me the more humble, but also the more blessed.”60 Struggling to realize his opus ultimum in the Bach edition, he had thought long and hard about the composer who had commanded his life’s work, and whose position he had occupied. The ineffable in Bach issued from the composer’s warm-blooded humanity, the source of an unparalleled world of emotion that would always elude academic attempts to nail it down. Despite 56 Letter to Siegfried Goslich, February 2, 1950, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 225–26. 57 Letter from Straube to Kippenberg, November 11, 1949, DLAM SUA:InselVerlag/Autoren SU.2010.0001, no. HS01024125X. 58 Matthaei requested the essay in a letter, December 22, 1948, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube. 59 “Rückblick,” 16. 60 Ibid., 17.
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whatever obeisance to the virtues of objectivity, Straube had never abandoned his quest for an expressive interpretation worthy of the music’s matchless potency. Still in 1944 he was warning a scholar like Gurlitt against “a formal, static account of an art that is dynamic in its most inner essence.”61 Similarly, he had professed to Hans-Georg Gadamer that it was a mistake to imagine Bach as a purely transcendent figure. Rather, it was the “connection of heaven with earth” that “gives Bach’s art the serenity of the inspired . . . that no other of the great masters of German music can demonstrate in his life’s work.” Further, “he is the first of the great German musicians who offers in his works a profession of his own self.”62 Bach was a Romantic, plumbing the depths of the subjective. This view crystallized with particular clarity during Straube’s last years, charged with philosophical insight but throwing up roadblocks to the practical progress of an editor. If Bach was “sand through the fingers,” so would be the fate of the much-anticipated edition as Straube repeatedly second-guessed himself—withdrawing, reversing, refining, dithering. It was typical of him to write Beate Schmidt that “only in June 1947 the scales fell from my eyes as I recognized the right path.”63 To Klotz he elaborated upon “the right path,” unpacking his revelation that the scattered slurring in Bach’s organ music reflected string articulation. “The hand of the future organist must achieve the same sensitivity as the bow of a violin, led by the hand of a great master like Adolf Busch.”64 Straube underscored that rationale also in his retrospective for Matthaei, writing that he aimed “to sketch out a Bach style for which only a single key exists—Bach himself.”65 It was Bach’s orchestral writing that pointed the way, a Damascus-road insight that reprised the impression from his youth of having heard Joachim perform the solo violin repertory, and of having translated the resulting “vast melodic powers” to organ playing.66 He was maniacally concerned that his work prove durable, liberated from modern fads to reveal a common denominator representative of Bach’s own assumptions. “After I have, as always, made very many detours to reach my goal, I have arrived at a way of notating the articulation that is clear and unambiguous, so that this attempt may have validity for some time,” he had 61 62 63 64 65 66
Letter, December 2, 1944, in Gurlitt and Hudemann, eds., Briefe, 231. Letter, June 24 and 25, 1946, “Ein Brief Karl Straubes,” 139–40, 144. Letter, January 3, 1948, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 35–36. Letter, July 12, 1947, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 24. “Rückblick,” 13. Ibid., 11.
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written Raasted early in 1948, intent to subject the first two volumes to yet another thorough revision.67 Furthermore, as if these questions did not present sufficient obstacles, he was still on a search for the model organ on which to base his tonal ideal. Lacking confirmation of his approach in the sound of a relevant instrument, he was unwilling to release his work to the public. Shortly before his death in 1948, Oskar Walcker had impressed upon Straube the significance of the 1746 Hildebrandt organ of the Wenzelskirche in nearby Naumburg, famously examined by Bach and Gottfried Silbermann, and from 1748 presided over by Altnikol. “We cannot stand still and proclaim the reawakening of the north German Baroque organ and its sound as the goal of the German Orgelbewegung,” Straube announced to Walcker with a preacher’s conviction. “Musical reasons make it necessary to realize a synthesis with the tonal resources of the classical period’s organs. The standard is this Hildebrandt organ, without promulgating the selection of the instrument’s individual stops ‘ex cathedra.’” He did not wish to follow his earlier methodology and print registrations based on a particular disposition. And he had become convinced that a certain harshness of sound in earlier organs neither represented Bach’s ultimate aesthetic nor would make the music attractive to modern audiences. “If we do not take this approach, the forte of the Baroque will grate on people’s nerves, as was the case in the nineteenth century, and the queen of instruments will again become a Cinderella who finds no lovers.”68 Now, just as during his virtuoso years, Straube’s concern lodged less in purely academic questions and more in “musical reasons” directed toward reception. His intuition remained that of the consummate performer. But he quickly discovered that the Naumburg organ was unplayable, causing him to search for other possibilities as he put his work in a holding pattern. “I have gotten bogged down with my Bach edition,” he complained to Söhngen early in 1949, “because with the organ murders of the last war, an instrument suitable to my purposes is hardly to be found.”69 It all was a recipe for getting nowhere. As months turned to years, Straube had fallen victim to his musical instincts, to a doomed search for how Bach wanted to communicate his subjective self in the objective shell of notation. A late pupil of his surely did not exaggerate when recalling how “one literally had to pry the worked-through
67 Letter, February 26, 1948, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 120. 68 Letter, June 16, 1948, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 10, 61. 69 Letter, February 12, 1949, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 9, 83.
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volumes from his hands.”70 By early 1949 Straube was beginning to concede defeat. “My Bach edition will probably remain a fragment,” he confessed to one former student. “The times are not favorable to it.”71 Neither, it should be said, was the working method of its editor. As it turned out, he was able to arrive at something like a finished version of volume IV by the end of 1949. Walter Hinrichsen recalled that “as late as 1949 the family and their friends had the joy of hearing him play Bach by the hour on the grand piano in the music room of the Peters Music Library.”72 This likely amounted to no mere pastime, but rather the last leg in the “race with death” he earlier had announced to Haller. In December Weismann was able to submit volume IV for expedited approval to the central publication oversight agency in East Berlin. “We cannot lose any more time, given the editor’s advanced age and weakened working capacities.”73 That was a smart strategy, meant to move things along through the layers of the new state’s bureaucracy. But from Weismann’s communication to the engraver the following month, it was clear that “the content is not yet conclusively fixed” due to “the in-part incorrectly placed slurs of the editor.”74 As the Bach year dawned, everyone was struggling to realize a product, even a single volume, as Straube’s energies flagged. The Peters executives had every reason to communicate a sense of urgency, even desperation, to the censors. 1950 began with the observance of Straube’s seventy-seventh birthday. “New year, Straube year, Bach year!” exclaimed Hans Schnoor in his congratulatory letter, not wanting to miss the connection.75 A predictable wave of well-wishes arrived, and Straube responded to many of them with wearied, qualified optimism. “I am happy that today the spirit of the Thomaskirche, despite the hostile zone borders, is regarded in the whole world as an irreplaceable cultural treasure,” he told the new Leipzig mayor.76 But this was 70 Amadeus Webersinke, “Erinnerungen ehemaliger Schüler,” in Held and Held, eds., Karl Straube, 76. 71 Postcard to Georg Kugler, January 29, 1949, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 8, 32. 72 [Hinrichsen], “Closing Chord,” 93. 73 Letter, December 13, 1949, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. 74 Letter to the Röder firm, January 9, 1950, ibid. 75 Letter, January 1, 1950, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube. 76 Letter to Max Ernst Opitz, January 17, 1950, BAL Nachlass Straube, Briefe 55. The SED politician Opitz had succeeded Zeigner following the latter’s
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diplomatic veneer. In truth, he was sure that the current political circumstances—divisive, materialistic, anti-religious—would prove poisonous to the heritage he so painstakingly had tended. Some correspondents struck a melancholy tone, inevitably reminding Straube that many of his friends had already quit the stage. “This world is often difficult—incomprehensible— when one looks around,” wrote Hella von Hausegger, whose husband had died in 1948, “but God surely has plans for us beyond this last short span of our lives.”77 Indeed, life seemed not quite done with him. On January 3 the Finnish Music Teachers’ Association named Straube an honorary member.78 In March would follow induction into the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.79 Moreover, the international community had continued to support Karl and Hertha amid their difficulties, making of the situation something of a cause célèbre. Money, food, clothing, and further offers of support arrived insofar as the unpredictable strictures at the eastern border allowed. “The fact that there is money for me in Basel is as surprising as it is gratifying,” Straube wrote upon hearing of one such charitable gesture from Grüters in late 1949. “This news allows my wife and me to realize our plans for next summer. It is very important to me to take part in the first Bachfest of the Internationale Bachgesellschaft anno 1950.”80 This was not to be. In February 1950 Hertha delivered a discouraging snapshot of domestic circumstances. Hudemann had sent over a plum pudding and suggested soliciting donations for a new hearing aid. “My husband is not doing well,” she wrote candidly. “He has not been out of the house for weeks. Walking is very difficult for him. And last week his heart was so weak! Naturally he is very ill-humored.” Given the difficult economy she did not want to pressure students for contributions. “Can we not get it on loan? . . . And we don’t know whether he will get used to the hearing aid. The one you sent was judged at first to be good. Now it lies unused in the writing desk, with its two predecessors!”81 Hearing troubles
death in April 1949. 77 Letter, January 4, 1950, BStBM. 78 Certificate, January 3, 1950, BAL Nachlass Straube, Urkunden. 79 Telegram, March 31, 1950, BAL Nachlass Straube, Telegramme; letter from David Åhlén to Straube, April 12, 1950, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube. 80 Letter, November 17, 1949, StBBPK. 81 Letter, February 5, 1950, StAL Teilnachlass Hudemann Sig. 13, 65–66.
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were compounded by mobility issues, which apparently necessitated a knee operation and confinement to bed.82 At some point, probably in April, Straube was admitted to the Stadtkrankenhaus St. Georg in Eutritzsch, north of the city center. He likely had contracted bronchopneumonia over the winter. “He was glad for visits,” recalled Johannes Piersig. “Despite the seriousness of the medical diagnosis, no one actually expected his passing.” His mind had slipped as well. Piersig had presented him with a bottle of red wine and returned the following day. “Naturally he had forgotten everything and received me, ‘Imagine, dear Piersig, I can invite you as a guest even at my sickbed. I have here a superb bottle of red wine. We must drink it together now. Imagine, this was brought to me yesterday by a young little admirer!—Terribly odd!’”83 Such episodes signaled that the patient was not going home again. Death came peacefully the following morning, April 27, at 11:45. The official cause was “senium, general arteriosclerosis, cerebral sclerosis, bronchiopneumonia.”84 It was the end of an era.
82 [Hinrichsen], “Closing Chord,” 93. 83 Piersig, “So ging es allenfalls,” 119. 84 Sterbeeintrag Carl Mondgomery Rufus Siegfried Straube, April 28, 1950, Standesamt Leipzig I no. 1520 (1950).
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Epilogue Musical Offering The following day, Friday April 28, the regular Motette was given as a moving first memorial, repeated on Saturday and, according to press reports, “attended by thousands of Leipzigers.”85 Services followed at noon on Sunday the 30th in the main chapel of the South Cemetery with the gravitas of a state funeral. At Straube’s request, at the center of the rite stood Bach’s motet Jesu, meine Freude, with its alternation of Johann Franck’s iconic chorale and St. Paul’s credo to the primacy of the Spirit. There hardly could have been a more undiluted summation of his ideals, musical and theological. Likewise honoring a wish of the deceased, Siegfried Knak delivered a eulogy that anchored Straube’s personality in the central tenets of Christianity. His faith had “made him forbearing even during the last years,” the source of “the noble, bitter-free composure with which he answered in silence the injustices inflicted upon him.”86 That was Knak’s unmistakable jab at the Nazi detractors, and an indication that the old wounds around Straube’s retirement had never really healed. The ceremony concluded with an honorary laying of wreaths and a litany of shorter reflections from local and area luminaries. The remains were laid to rest at the modest gravesite where Elisabet had been interred over twenty-five years earlier. The weight of the moment was palpable as the city and its institutions now took their leave of Karl Straube. William and Dora did not come up from the Bodensee, the artist’s faltering constitution now preventing his travel. Knak testified to him that “Karl always carried your letters with him in his handbag. He was overjoyed at your most recent successes,” a poignant acknowledgment of the recognition the older brother now enjoyed.87 The bond between them had 85 W. N. [Walter Niemann], “Trauerfeiern für Prof. D. Dr. Karl Straube,” Leipziger Volkszeitung, May 3, 1950. 86 Knak, “Karl Straube zum Gedächtnis,” 34. 87 Letter, May 2, 1950, cited in Hinze, “Leben und Werk,” 219.
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Figure E.1. Funeral order, April 30, 1950. Reproduced with permission from the Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
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remained strong, even at a distance. William would pass four years later, on May 3, 1954. If Knak’s homily had touched obliquely on “injustices,” Hertha was more direct in her letter to the City Council. “He remained true to the city, despite the fact that his involuntary withdrawal from the post of Thomaskantor at the turn of the year 1939/40 weighed heavily upon him, and despite the fact that, well into his final years, he received honorable offers for positions elsewhere.”88 In saying so she wanted to foreground not mere loyalty, but rather loyalty in the face of adversity from the side of the civic administration, which in forcing him out (as she felt) had failed to act honorably. Over decades of labor he had tendered to this complacent “little Paris” a musical offering—in the double sense of gift and self-sacrifice—of enduring vision and significance. Not unlike his great predecessor, he had faced the headwinds of the city and its entrenched attitudes. By 1965, then eighty-nine, Hertha had concluded that age prevented her from maintaining the household and she began to explore the possibility of leaving Leipzig for Hamburg, where she could live in the care of a niece.89 These plans were realized in June 1966, in the context of a hardened Marxist-Leninist state and an even harder border. In Hamburg she would die peacefully at home, in the night between March 9 and 10, 1974, at the remarkable age of ninety-eight. Her remains joined those of her daughter and husband. She had stuck by Karl through adversities, tragedies, and triumphs, public and private, professional and domestic. She proved a quiet presence whose story still lives unjustifiably in the shadows. In 1950 tributes and condolences of all sorts poured forth, from the routine and platitudinous to the hagiographic. Some betrayed larger agendas, like the succinct obituary in an American trade magazine reporting Straube’s demise “in the Russian zone which accounts for the stupidity & socialism greed that withheld news of his death for some time. . . . He knew his business too: a better man than ten billion Russians put together.”90 That rough-hewn rhetoric reflected more the tone of the Truman administration’s containment policy than it did Straube’s polished wordsmithing, even though the former cantor would have endorsed the premise. Others, too, wanted to say that circumstances had dealt him a bitter and undeserved hand. Kurt Thomas 88 Letter, May 15, 1950, BAL Nachlass Straube, Briefe, 59. 89 Letter to the Leipzig City Council, September 7, 1965, StAL Straube-Akten 2, 265. 90 The American Organist 33/4 (April 1950): 142.
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spoke for many in asserting that “everyone . . . must stand appalled at the deep internal and external loneliness with which this once so celebrated artist has departed from us after difficult years of suffering.”91 On the day of the funeral Davisson lamented to Hertha “that his life’s end was so shadowed by suffering. A carefree existence in old age, the deserved reward for his tireless work, actually failed to materialize. . . . Once again a formidable piece of the best German music tradition sinks into the grave.”92 Inherent in such expressions was a distinct sense of a golden era that would not return, of glories attained but fading. From the Straube circle emanated the conviction that a hero’s legacy, meticulously and thoughtfully cultivated, was now being eroded in bad faith. Around the time of what would have been Straube’s eightieth birthday, in 1953, one admirer reported disapprovingly to Hertha from Zurich that “Herr Ramin is roving around Switzerland” and behaving “pretty arrogantly. Also he has an odd form of signing his name. He calls himself ‘Günther Ramin, Dr. h.c., Thomaskantor, successor of Johann Sebastian Bach.’” Whereas Ramin’s predecessor had embodied the humility proper to the office, “now there is this traveling about, not for the love of high art, but rather simply out of conceit. . . . Also the quality of accomplishment is not the same. Is that not deplorable and repulsive? . . . The times have certainly taken a hard turn.”93 They had, at least, in the eyes of those who prized the old cantor’s brand of modesty and cultured savoir faire. The animus behind observations like these may have reflected real musical differences, but this one also projected the master’s own narrative of the unduly favored enfant gâté. Ramin had much less time than anyone suspected: he went on to extend the choir tours to Russia and South America before succumbing suddenly to a brain hemorrhage six years later, on February 27, 1956. The 200th anniversary of Bach’s death struck the fundamental tone in 1950, and observances proceeded as Straube was laid to rest. For many the showpiece event would be the NBG’s twenty-seventh Bachfest in Leipzig between July 23 and 30, which provided the backdrop for another solemn interment. The Bach skeleton exhumed from the ruined Johanniskirche now was to be laid beneath the choir of St. Thomas on the composer’s birthday. Particularly for those accustomed to reverencing the recently deceased Thomaskantor as the Bach avatar, the parallel burials two months apart 91 Thomas, “In memoriam Karl Straube,” 178. 92 Letter, April 30, 1950, ZbZ Mus NL 117A Nachl. Straube. 93 Letter (unsigned), January 4, 1953, ibid.
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would have taken on particular poignancy. It had been Wolfgang Rosenthal, the singer-surgeon long a part of Straube’s life, who had certified the authenticity of Bach’s remains on the basis of skeletal exostoses he termed “Organistenkrankheit.” Absent from Bachfest 27, of course, was any part of the organ edition so long in the making. Still, the effort had been too monumental, the struggle too long, and the anticipated results too meaningful for the inner circle to leave the project dead in the water. Not a month after the festival’s conclusion, volume IV of the Neue Ausgabe von Karl Straube appeared, helped over the finish line by Julius Goetz and Karl Richter, and introduced by a brief preface that did its best to frame the material as representative of its editor’s final wishes. Correspondence betrayed a different picture. “Unfortunately the question of the publication of Straube’s posthumous Bach edition is quite problematic,” confessed Weismann to Mezger at just the time volume IV hit the market. The work had been too plagued with indecision and contradiction. “You will be as aware as I am that it would be wrong to speak about this with just anyone, particularly in view of the arrangements that may yet be published.”94 The marketing point was to present the definitive last word of a person who, as anyone close to him knew, had been incurably averse to definitive last words. In the meantime, Goetz, whom the volume IV preface announced as Straube’s preferred collaborator, determined that volumes I, II, and III were possible to release, “not however the chorale-based works, with exception of the six [“Schübler”] and eighteen [“Leipzig”] chorales.”95 Volume I appeared under two covers in 1951, the chorale collection in 1956. The latter was held up in part by religious questions uncomfortable for the East German regime, eventually resolved with Mezger’s collaboration, yet undermining Straube’s wishes.96 The entire compromised effort then came to a standstill, the old cantor’s efforts left enshrined in the often inconsistent markings of the study scores that remained behind. Karl Straube’s legacy would not be found in an opus ultimum organ edition, however much he may have envisioned it that way. His offering had been much deeper and wider, not merely musical, and expressive of the 94 Letter, August 24, 1950, SäStAL VEB Edition Peters Leipzig, Musikverlag, Nr. 249. 95 Letter from Wilhelm Weismann to Manfred Mezger, November 15, 1950, ibid. 96 Letter from Mezger to Weismann, October 16, 1952, ibid.
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seismic upheavals in his world’s restive socio-political landscape. It was more flawed, more contradictory, more irregular, more plagued by indecision, indeed more human, than his admirers wanted to argue. In the end it may have been his chief modern detractor Günter Hartmann who got it just about right when he observed that “genuine investigations into Straube” would engage those “whose main interest lies somewhat less with the analysis of music and its masterworks, and somewhat more with the elucidation of music and its political implications. . . . Musicology simply might be the wrong discipline to illustrate the Straube phenomenon.”97 The eleventh Thomaskantor after Bach would not have disagreed.
97 Karl Straube und seine Schule, 17.
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bibliography ❧ 541 Tietze, Ekkehard. “Erinnerungen an Karl Straube.” Musik und Kirche 43 (1973): 1–7. Treitschke, Heinrich von. Deutsche Geschichte im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert Erster Teil. Bis zum zweiten Pariser Frieden. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1879. ______. Deutsche Geschichte im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert Zweiter Teil. Bis zu den Karlsbader Beschlüssen. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1882. Varges, Kurt. “Wilhelm Furtwängler und der Chor.” Allgemeine Zeitung (Dec. 7, 1954): n.p. Voigt, Woldemar. Betrachtungen über das Leipziger Bachfest 20.–22. Mai 1911. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1911. Voppel, Konrad. “Karl Straube und das Wesen des deutschen Orgelspiels.” Musik und Kirche 25 (1955): 90–96. Wagner, Andreas. “Machtergreifung” in Sachsen: NSDAP und staatliche Verwaltung 1930–1935. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2004. Walter, Bruno. Thema und Variationen: Erinnerungen und Gedanken. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1947. Wegner, Konstanze, and Lothar Albertin, eds. Linksliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik: Die Führungsgremien der Deutschen Demokratischen Staatspartei und der Deutschen Staatspartei 1918–1933. Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1980. Weismann, Franziska, ed. Untitled memoir of Wilhelm Weismann. Private publication, 1983. Weismann, Wilhelm. “Das große Vater-unser-Vorspiel in Bachs drittem Teil der Klavierübung: Versuch einer Deutung.” Bach-Jahrbuch 38 (1949/50): 57–64. Welsh, Helga A. Revolutionärer Wandel auf Befehl? Entnazifizierungs- und Personalpolitik in Thüringen und Sachsen (1945–1948). Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1989. Wilhelm, Georg. Die Diktaturen und die evangelische Kirche: Totaler Machtanspruch und kirchliche Antwort am Beispiel Leipzigs 1933–1958. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004. Willingham II, Robert Allen. “Jews in Leipzig: Nationality and Community in the 20th Century.” PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin (2005). Wolf, Werner. “Das Arbeiter-Händel-Fest 26. bis 28. Juni 1926 in Leipzig.” In Funktion und Wirkung der Musik Georg Friedrich Händels in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, edited by Walther Siegmund-Schultze, 87–94. Halle/Saale: MartinLuther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1976. Wolgast, Johannes. Karl Straube. Eine Würdigung seiner Musikerpersönlichkeit anlässlich seiner 25jährigen Tätigkeit in Leipzig. Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1928. Zielinski, Herbert, ed. Johannes Haller und Karl Straube. Eine Freundschaft im Spiegel der Briefe: Edition und Kommentar. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2018. Zillinger, Erwin. “Das Vermächtnis des Orgelmeisters Karl Straube.” Der Kirchenmusiker 11/2 (Mar.–Apr. 1960): 49–53.
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542 ❧ bibliography Zurlinden, Hans. Letzte Ernte: Schriften. Erlenbach-Zürich and Stuttgart: Eugen Rentsch Verlag, 1968. ______. Wolfgang Graeser. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1935.
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Index Abendroth, Hermann, 167, 335, 356, 369, 406, 430 Aber, Adolf, 198–200 Abraham, Max, 107 Achtélik, Josef, 325 Ackermann, Max, 180, 202, 204, 219– 20, 240 Adenauer, Konrad, 309 Adler, Guido, 244 Aibl, Josef, 65, 69 Albert, Eugen d’, 84 Alkan (Morhange), Charles-Valentin, 79–80 Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein, 84, 104 Altnikol, Johann Christoph, 518 Andrássy, Gyula, 228 Anschütz, Reinhold, 112–13, 115, 246 asteroid 1023 Thomana, 282n12 Aubert, Louis, 372, 395 Augener, George, 38 Auguste Victoria, Queen of Prussia, 36 Auler, Wolfgang, 321 Bach, August Wilhelm, 26, 41 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 15, 23, 25, 27–30, 32, 34, 42, 49–50, 57, 68, 70, 72, 79, 81–84, 89, 91–92, 102–3, 110–11, 118–20, 122, 139, 151, 173–74, 178–79, 185, 216, 221, 228, 232–33, 235–36, 240n25, 245, 251, 257–58, 280, 287, 292–301, 312, 328–29, 350, 353, 355–59, 368, 379, 386, 411, 423, 444, 448–50, 458, 475, 481–84, 503–504, 507–8, 511–12, 528; and National Socialism, 317, 355–56, 381–82,
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391–98, 406, 409, 419, 431, 450, 497; and Orgelbewegung, 267–68, 271, 286; comparisons with Straube, 21, 183, 303–4, 326, 335–36, 390, 519, 526–27; Straube’s interpretation of, 52–53, 87, 100–101, 113, 115, 117–18, 129, 249–50, 260, 300, 357–58, 363–64, 367, 372, 393–97, 416–17, 467–73, 483–84, 500–502, 506, 516–19, 527. See also Bach, Johann Sebastian (choral works); Bach, Johann Sebastian (organ works); Bach, Johann Sebastian (other works); Internationale Bachgesellschaft; Neue Bachgesellschaft Bach, Johann Sebastian (choral works): Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV 4), 294; Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248), 116, 144–45, 260, 409–11, 473; Christus, der ist mein Leben (BWV 95), 299–300; Die Elenden sollen essen (BWV 75), 357; Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen (BWV 66), 114; Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde (BWV 201), 114; Gloria in excelsis Deo (BWV 191), 382; Gott ist mein König (BWV 71), 358n16; Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (BWV 106), 423; Halt im Gedächtnis Jesum Christ (BWV 67), 366, 393; Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht (BWV 105), 114; Jesu, der du meine Seele (BWV 78), 372; Jesu, meine Freude (BWV 227), 372, 423, 523; Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen? (BWV 81), 113–14; Komm, Jesu, komm! (BWV 229), 393; Laß, Fürstin, laß einen Strahl (BWV 198), 145; Magnificat (BWV 243), 215, 286;
544 ❧ index Bach, Johann Sebastian (choral works) (cont’d) Mass in B Minor (BWV 232), 149–50, 259, 271, 328, 356–57, 393, 473; St. John Passion (BWV 245), 113, 117, 144–45, 150, 215, 260, 293, 303, 356–57, 363, 393–94, 396–97, 409, 431, 473; St. Luke Passion (BWV 246), 471; St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244), 113, 116, 119, 124, 144–45, 147, 260, 293, 356–58, 363, 371, 380, 393–97, 409, 431, 473; Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (BWV 211), 114; Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen (BWV 65), 429; Singet dem Herren ein neues Lied (BWV 225), 281, 366– 67; Wachet! betet! betet! wachet! (BWV 70), 113–14; Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit (BWV 111), 311–12; Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten (BWV 93), 113 Bach, Johann Sebastian (organ works): Clavierübung III (BWV 552, 669–689, 802–805), 469; Concerto in D Minor (BWV 596), 61; Fantasy in G Major (BWV 572), 293; Fantasy and Fugue in C Minor (BWV 537), 71; Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor (BWV 542), 60, 65, 71; Fugue on a Theme of Legrenzi (BWV 574), 35; “Leipzig” chorales (BWV 651–668), 527; Orgelbüchlein (BWV 599–644), 101, 140; Passacaglia in C Minor (BWV 582), 61, 80, 140; Prelude and Fugue in A Major (BWV 536), 147; Prelude and Fugue in A Minor (BWV 543), 35, 105; Prelude and Fugue in B Minor (BWV 544), 293; Prelude and Fugue in C Major (BWV 545), 147; Prelude and Fugue in C Major (BWV 547), 147; Prelude and Fugue in D Major (BWV 532), 35; Prelude and Fugue in E Minor (BWV 548), 140, 147, 271; Prelude and Fugue
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in E-flat Major (BWV 552), 114, 271; Prelude and Fugue in F Minor (BWV 534), 147; Prelude and Fugue in G Major (BWV 541), 35, 40; “Schübler” chorales (BWV 645–650), 527; Six Sonatas (BWV 525–530), 484; Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C Major (BWV 564), 32, 114, 140; Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 538), 35; Vater unser im Himmelreich (BWV 682), 469–70 Bach, Johann Sebastian (other works): The Art of Fugue (BWV 1080), 261–63, 356; Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F Major (BWV 1046), 303; Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major (BWV 1048), 372; Goldberg Variations (BWV 988), 320; Musical Offering (BWV 1079), 261, 356; Orchestral Suite in D Major (BWV 1068, 1069), 366 Bach, Wilhelm Friedemann, 132 Badt, Kurt, 479 Banchieri, Adriano, 104 Bau, Gerhard, 360–61, 371 Becker, Albert, 21–22, 24, 36, 61, 70; Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor (op. 52), 24 Beckmann, Gustav, 85 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 55, 141, 147, 166, 446, 515; works: Missa solemnis (op. 123), 335; Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major (op. 73), 161; Symphony No. 7 in A Major (op. 92), 77 Benedict, Julius, 13, 23 Bennewitz, Arthur, 354, 373–74, 378, 384, 391, 400–404, 406, 493–94 Benso, Camillo, 231 Berlin: Alte Garnisonkirche, 40, 79, 85, 102, 117, 120; Bethlehemskirche, 7, 19–21; Cathedral, 24, 126, 236, 343, 348; Dreifaltigkeitskirche, 42–44, 95, 509; Friedrichwerdersche Kirche, 37; Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche, 10, 20–21,
index ❧ 545 29, 36–37, 39–41, 51, 68; Institute for Church Music (State Academy for Church and School Music), 10, 31, 51, 122, 199, 216, 233–34, 346; Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, 29, 32, 36, 41, 43, 45, 49, 51, 120, 126, 133; KlindworthScharwenka Conservatory, 23–24, 31; Marienkirche, 26–27, 29–30, 41, 321; Matthaeikirche, 79; Mozart Choir, 376; Opera, 22, 24, 152; Philharmonic Chorus, 340, 369, 430; Philharmonic Orchestra, 22–23, 31, 79–80, 246; Philharmonie, 22, 30, 32, 36, 41; Singakademie, 36, 40; Staatliche Hochschule, 84, 217, 333, 338, 340, 346–48, 351, 353, 387; Staatsbibliothek, 21, 24–25, 31, 122– 23, 133, 145; Stern Conservatory, 24 Berlin Olympic Games, 372, 375 Berlinski, Hermann, 320 Bertram, Ernst, 497–99 Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von, 161 Beyerlein, Franz Adam, 166n25, 329, 449, 453, 480 Bismarck, Otto von, 1, 42, 55–56, 226, 231, 282, 292, 408, 410, 416, 424– 26, 466, 515n54; and Kulturkampf, 29, 33, 95–96; compared to Hitler, 323, 454; venerated by Straube, 2, 23, 184, 223, 228, 317, 506 Böhm, Georg, 108–9 Böhm, Karl, 303 Boos, Carl, 415, 465, 472 Bornkamm, Heinrich, 439 Bosse, Gustav, 327 Boulanger, Lili and Nadia, 366 Boyvin, Jacques, 232 Brahms, Johannes, 21, 31, 38–39, 42, 55, 64, 76, 83–84, 140, 147, 151, 156, 244; works: Piano Quintet in F Minor (op. 34), 389; A German Requiem (op. 45), 162; Symphony no. 2 (op. 73), 2; Violin Sonata No. 1 in G
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Major (op. 78), 95; Academic Festival Overture (op. 80), 77; Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major (op. 100), 95; “Auf dem Kirchhofe” (op. 105, no. 4), 154; Eleven Chorale Preludes (op. post. 122), 139 Braunfels, Walter, 508–9 Brecher, Gustav, 313 Breitkopf & Härtel, 81–82, 91, 93, 109, 115, 117, 143, 242, 248, 255, 261, 281, 326 Brockhaus, Max and Daisy, 313, 463 Brod, Max, 105 Brosig, Moritz, 31, 61, 83 Bruckner, Anton, 21, 84, 138; Symphony No. 8 in C Minor (WAB 108), 79 Brüning, Heinrich, 305, 308–9, 325 Brussel, Robert, 367 Buchholz, Carl August, 29–30 Bülow, Bernhard von, 161 Bülow, Hans von, 22–24, 29, 37, 81, 118, 147, 271, 473, 506 Burkert, Otto, 73 Busch, Adolf, 215, 259, 293, 318, 416– 17, 478, 491, 517 Busch, Fritz, 388 Buse, Franz, 268 Busoni, Ferruccio, 55–58, 72, 79–80, 82, 84, 87, 93–94, 104, 125, 162, 244; Violin Sonata No. 2 (op. 36a), 95 Bußmeyer, Hans, 196 Butler, Hugh, 260 Buxtehude, Dieterich, 57, 60, 68, 72, 79, 82, 102–3, 109, 120, 232, 271, 286 Byrd, William, 60 Cabezón, Antonio de, 276 Calvisius, Sethus, 173 Carl, William C., 135 Center Party (Catholic), 191, 305, 309– 10, 312 Cerff, Karl, 381 Chamberlain, Arthur Neville, 408 Chopin, Frédéric, 77
546 ❧ index Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 491, 495, 497 Christian, Palmer, 236 Chrysander, Friedrich, 254–55, 274 Chrysander, Rudolf, 255 Churchill, Winston, 421 Claudius, Hermann, 435 Colles, Henry Cope, 260 colonialism, 226–27 Confessing Church, 393, 437 Coolidge, Calvin, 236 Cordes, Karl August Seth, 177n7, 180, 185, 210 Cornelius, Peter, 40 Dacqué, Edgar, 468 Dandrieu, Jean-François, 60 David, Hans T., 261–62 David, Johann Nepomuk, 333, 447, 449 Davisson, Walther, 259, 309, 315–16, 328, 332, 369–71, 485, 526 Dawes Plan, 275 Day of Potsdam, 312, 314 Dayas, William Humphreys, 57, 104 Dent, Edward Joseph, 260 Deutsche Christen, 321, 345. See also National Socialist Party Dienel, Otto, 26–32, 37, 49–50, 54, 81, 108 Dinse, Oswald and Paul, 36, 79 Disraeli, Benjamin, 231 Distler, Hugo, 478 Doles, Johann Friedrich, 122 Dollfuss, Engelbert, 322–23 Domizlaff, Hans, 100, 107, 136, 166n25, 183, 186, 366 Dönicke, Walter, 376, 391–92, 400–403, 406, 410, 476–77 Dönitz, Karl, 477 Döring, Willi, 14, 15n26 Draesecke, Felix, 55 Dulichius, Philipp, 372 Dupré, Marcel, 366, 501–2 Dvořák, Antonin, 151, 389
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Eaton, Richard, 476 Ebert, Friedrich, 191, 252 Eichelbaum, Ernst, 317n37, 491–93, 495, 497, 514 Eichhorn, Arno, 331 Einstein, Albert, 295, 297 Einstein, Alfred, 247 Engländer, Richard, 271, 303 Fest, Max, 185, 187 Fischer, Edwin, 244, 293 Fischer, Walter, 20–22, 31, 36, 126, 135 Fleischer, Heinrich, 409, 472–73, 492–93 Flinsch, Gustav, 264, 333 Foerster, Friedrich Wilhelm, 438 Fontane, Theodor, 468 Forberg, Robert, 65 Forchhammer, Theophil, 83 Forkel, Johann Nikolaus, 7 Francis of Assisi (Saint), 35, 415 Franck, César, 55, 79, 140; works: Final (op. 21), 66; Choral in A Minor, 139 Frank, Hans, 400 Frankfurt am Main: Café Bauer 59–61, 165; Paulskirche, 59, 61 Frederick II (the Great), 33, 317, 357 Frescobaldi, Girolamo, 60, 66, 68, 70, 93, 104, 276 Freyberg, Alfred, 348n25, 401, 403–6, 408, 410, 419–20, 430, 432–36, 448, 476 Friedrich II, Hohenstaufen, 425 Friedrich Wilhelm I, 317 Furtwängler, Philipp, & Hammer, 78, 286 Furtwängler, Wilhelm, 122, 200, 246–48, 317, 325, 367, 377–78, 383, 449, 485 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 517 Gál, Hans, 248, 487 Gallus (Handl, Händl), Jacobus, 372 Gatscher, Emanuel, 330 Gellert, Christian, 328 Georg II, Duke of Saxony-Meiningen, 164
index ❧ 547 Gerber, Heinrich Nikolaus, 7 Gerhardt, Paul, 52, 73, 93, 135, 143, 176 German Communist Party (KPD), 305– 6, 308, 310–11, 427, 485 German Democratic Party (DDP), 190– 91, 305–6, 310, 490, 497; platform, 224–25, 227, 229–30, 245, 425 German Democratic Republic (DDR), 2, 481–82, 511, 527 German National People’s Party (DNVP), 310–12, 427 German People’s Party (DVP), 305–6, 309–11 German State Party (DStP), 229, 310 Gervinus, Gottfried, 254 Giesecke, Alfred, 328 Gladstone, William Ewart, 2, 11 Goebbels, Joseph, 296n16, 331, 349, 353, 356, 360, 371, 377, 381–82, 405, 447. See also Hitler, Adolf; National Socialist Party Goerdeler, Carl Friedrich, 325–26, 328, 343, 347–49, 351–53, 355–56, 359, 370–71, 381, 403, 405, 420, 441; opposition to National Socialism, 316–17, 374–78, 410, 439, 478, 496 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1, 92, 139, 147, 245, 292, 325–26, 447, 449, 463, 474; Faust, 161 Goetz, Julius, 393, 396, 407–8, 447, 527 Göring, Hermann, 343, 418, 498 Görner, Hans-Georg, 321 Gottschalg, Alexander W., 76 Grabner, Hermann, 332, 478 Graeser, Wolfgang, 261–63, 267–68 Graf, Oskar Maria, 231 Griepenkerl, Friedrich Konrad, 135–36, 144, 467 Grimm, Julius Otto, 76, 78 Grünfeld, Heinrich, 40 Grüters, Otto, 230, 259, 415–17, 462, 495, 508, 520 Grynszpan, Herschel, 397
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Guilmant, Alexandre, 50, 104, 135; Sonata No. 5 in C Minor (op. 80), 35, 66 Günther von Schönburg-Waldenburg, Prince, 466 Gurlitt, Wilibald, 165–66, 222–27, 230–31, 247, 444, 449, 517; and Orgelbewegung, 232, 267, 269, 271, 273–76, 287, 358, 450. See also Jahnn, Hans Henny; Mahrenholz, Christhard Haake, Rudolf, 375, 378, 400–401, 403, 406, 408–10 Haas, Friedrich, 387 Haas, Hans, 280–81 Haas, Joseph, 167 Haller, Johannes, 248, 320, 358, 380, 437, 439–44, 456, 461, 464, 468, 483, 487–88, 492, 494, 498, 511, 519; as Treitschke pupil, 55, 425; political views, 424–29, 451–54, 458 Haller, Hans Jakob, 424, 437, 453, 461 Hallwachs, Karl, 87 Handel (Händel), George Frideric, 21, 71, 78, 114, 254–57, 262, 273–74, 280, 286, 355; works: Belshazzar (HWV 61), 119, 144–45, 254–55; Dettingen Te Deum (HWV 283), 147, 214, 254; Hercules (HWV 60), 256; Jephtha (HWV 70), 254; Judas Maccabaeus (HWV 63), 119, 254; Messiah (HWV 56), 255; Samson (HWV 57), 119, 254, 256, 335; Saul (HWV 53), 119, 254; Semele (HWV 58), 254; Solomon (HWV 67), 254–55; Theodora (HWV 68), 254 Handschin, Jacques, 129, 247, 274 Harms, Gottlieb, 268 Harriss, Alfred, 237 Hartmann, Günter, 4, 228, 257, 314n28, 450, 528 Hartmann, Johannes, 392 Hase, Oskar von, 115, 170
548 ❧ index Hasse, Karl, 20, 101, 128–30, 166, 176 Hassler, Hans Leo, 381 Haupt, Carl August, 29, 31 Hauptmann, Friedrich August, 356, 372, 384–85, 399, 403, 406, 408–9, 419, 421, 431, 448 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 325 Hauptmann, Moritz, 174, 262 Hausegger, Hella von, 500–502, 520 Hausegger, Siegmund von, 94, 119–20, 182, 200–201, 203, 205, 209–10, 330, 449, 453, 520; and National Socialism, 315, 317; attitude toward Leipzig, 122, 196; attitude toward war, 159–60, 459, 463; compared to Reger, 129 Hauswald, Werner, 316 Hechler, Ada, 361–62 Hechler, Catherine Cleeve Palmer, 11 Hechler, Dietrich, 11 Hechler, Hannah, 361–62 Hechler, William Henry, 11–12, 141–42, 319, 361–62. See also Straube, Sarah Palmer Hecht, Gustav, 359 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 161, 222 Heintze, Hans, 429–30 Heitmann, Fritz, 160–61, 507 Herbst, Franz, 286 Hermann, Kurt, 398 l’Hermet, Hans, 246 Herrmann, Johannes, 173 Herzl, Theodor, 11, 142, 319, 361 Herzogenberg, Heinrich von, 83, 111 Heuss, Alfred, 254, 364 Heyer, Fritz (Heyer collection), 283, 287, 393 Heynsen, Carl, 125 Hilbert, Gerhard, 299 Hildebrandt, Zacharias, 472, 518 Hiller, Friedrich, 433–36 Hiller, Johann Adam, 329 Himmler, Heinrich, 475–76
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Hindenburg, Paul von, 253, 305, 315, 325–26, 328, 419; re-election of, 308–9, 426, 490, 492–93; relations to Hitler, 311–12 Hinrichsen, Hans-Joachim, 398, 447 Hinrichsen, Henri, 109, 114, 116, 120, 132–34, 144–48, 150, 159, 165, 168– 69, 191, 242–45, 267, 269–70, 319, 359, 386, 389–90, 471; and National Socialism, 398, 447; as Straube benefactor, 107, 115, 136, 239–40, 326. See also Peters, C. F. Hinrichsen, Martha, 132, 398, 447 Hinrichsen, Max, 359, 368, 481 Hinrichsen, Paul, 447 Hinrichsen, Walter, 132, 134, 146, 480– 82, 486, 519. See also Peters, C. F. Hirsch, Paul, 322 His, Wilhelm, Jr., 239–40 Hitler, Adolf, 2, 142, 228, 252, 292, 306, 311–12, 315–16, 318–20, 332, 341n3, 347, 350, 362, 370, 372, 375n25, 376, 381, 385–86, 391–92, 399–400, 407–8, 411, 433, 435, 439, 447–48, 450, 452–54, 477–79, 493; Straube’s view of, 308–9, 318–20, 322–23, 331, 343–45, 360, 419–22, 427–28, 441–42, 454, 464, 466–67, 487, 494; visits to Leipzig, 344, 356. See also National Socialist Party Hochrein, Max, 369–70 Högner, Friedrich, 328, 332, 502 Holst, Gustav, 258–60, 276 Holtzhauer, Helmut, 485 Homeyer, Paul, 99–100, 121, 125, 137, 249 Honegger, Arthur, 200 Hoyer, Karl, 186–87, 332 Huber, Hans, 79, 93–94 Hudemann, Hans-Olaf, 444, 486, 506, 509, 520 Hutton, Elizabeth Paddon, 12 Hutton, James Harriman, 12 Hutton, Rufus, 12
index ❧ 549 Insel-Verlag, 445, 449, 504 Internationale Bachgesellschaft, 516, 520. See also Neue Bachgesellschaft Jackson, William, 12 Jacobi, Erwin, 313, 492–93 Jäger, Georg, 154–56, 158, 183 Jahnn, Hans Henny, 267–74, 321, 339. See also Orgelbewegung Jeans, Susi (Hock), 511–12 Jentzsch, Alfred, 368–69, 377–81, 385, 394, 410, 419 Joachim, Joseph, 29, 37, 76, 114–16, 517 Jugendbewegung, 200 Kafka, Franz, 105 Kahl, Heinrich, 22, 25, 36 Kamban, Guomundur, 468 Kaminski, Heinrich, 447 Kandler, Hermann, 437 Kant, Immanuel, 222 Karg-Elert, Sigfrid, 249–52, 257, 333, 341, 456 Kästner, Helmut, 368–70, 373 Keller, Hermann, 470–71 Kestenberg, Leo, 216, 220 Keußler, Gerhard, 176, 183 Keyserling, Hermann, 225–26, 231 Kierkegaard, Søren, 212 King’s College, Cambridge, 368 Kippenberg, Anton, 242, 303, 328–29, 371, 419, 445, 449, 453, 462, 464, 466, 474–75, 495, 497, 509, 516. See also Insel-Verlag Kirchner, Theodor, 71 Kirnberger, Johann Philipp, 7 Kirsten, Emil, 507 Klengel, Julius, 309 Klinger, Max, 1, 166n26 Klotz, Hans, 468, 507, 517 Knak, Friederike Straube, 8 Knak, Gustav, 8, 19, 102 Knak, Ludwig, 8
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Knak, Siegfried, 8, 10, 19, 21, 44, 50, 52, 54, 130, 393, 480, 482–83, 523, 525 Knappertsbusch, Hans, 198 Koch, Hermann Ernst, 251 Kodály, Zoltán, 200 Koehler, David Henning Paul, 122 Koehler & Amelang, 449 Krehl, Stephan, 234, 243, 246; Tröstung (op. 33), 142 Kretzschmar, Hermann, 111, 114, 199, 247 Kreutzer, Leonid, 244 Kroyer, Theodor, 68, 286–87 Küchel, Bernhard, 86, 211–12 Küchel, Getrud Sels, 86 Kühn, Theodor, 335–36 Kuhnau, Johann, 173, 342 Kümmerle, Salamon, 31 Kuntze, Gustav, 460 Ladegast, Friedrich, 138 Landau, Elisabeth (Lizzie), 104–5 Lange, Samuel de, 71 Lassner, Oscar, 329 Lasso, Orlando di, 81 Lauterbach & Kuhn, 109–10, 286 Lebègue, Nicolas, 66 Lederer, Hugo, 281 Lehmann, Heinrich, 380 Leipholz, Wilhelm, 21–23, 31 Leipzig: Arion Chorus, 174, 339; as “Bach city,” 112–13, 278–79, 282, 330, 353, 373–74, 382, 458; Bach-Verein, 111–17, 119, 121, 123–24, 134–36, 142–47, 149–50, 152, 162, 165, 169– 70, 173, 179, 184–85, 200, 209–10, 254, 283, 292, 358, 394, 443; Café Hannes, 165; Carlebach Israelite School, 397; Church Music Institute, 197–200, 234, 243, 245, 251, 280, 316, 320, 327, 332–33, 349, 352, 407, 430, 436–437, 455, 485–86, 490–91, 494, 496–97, 512, 514;
550 ❧ index Leipzig (cont’d) Conservatory (Hochschule), 3, 91–93, 100, 104, 106–7, 123, 125–26, 137–38, 142, 163, 165, 168–69, 173, 179, 186, 197–99, 202, 234, 240, 243–46, 249–51, 253, 263–65, 273–74, 276, 287, 294, 308, 315–16, 320, 328–29, 332–33, 336, 339–40, 346–49, 351, 353, 363, 370, 387, 398, 407, 409, 420, 430, 432, 436, 449, 455, 459–62, 473, 483–86, 512–14; Friedrich-List-Schule, 357; Gewandhaus, 91–93, 114, 121, 124, 137, 162, 168, 174, 179, 200, 246, 254, 260, 263, 286, 287, 293–94, 313–14, 328, 335, 339, 356–57, 363, 371, 375, 379, 393, 430, 449, 461–62, 467, 485, 503; Gewandhaus Choral Union, 200–201, 209, 246, 255, 271, 279–80, 283, 328, 335, 337, 357, 369, 393, 405–6, 430, 513; Grassi Museum, 283–84, 286–87, 294, 296, 393; Grotrian-Steinweg Orchestra, 245; Institute for the Formative Education of Workers (ABI), 256–57; Johanniskirche, 409, 460, 526; Lehrergesangverein, 339, 357, 393; Nikolaikirche, 123, 178, 299, 335–36, 395, 410, 431, 458; Nikolaischule, 310; Old Synagogue, 256, 397; Philharmonic Orchestra, 246; Riedel-Verein, 111, 174, 357; Stadttheater, 198; State Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Trade, 238– 39; South Cemetery (Südfriedhof ), 1, 91, 240, 523; Symphony Orchestra, 340; Opera, 91, 313, 329; Thomaskirche, 24, 87, 89, 91–93, 95, 99–102, 105, 107, 111, 113–15, 119, 122–26, 135, 137, 151–52, 160, 162, 170, 173–74, 178–79, 187, 221, 247, 254, 269, 271, 294, 298–301, 318, 339, 357, 397, 409, 420, 435, 455, 460, 516, 519, 526; Thomasschule,
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91–92, 159, 173–74, 176–78, 182, 186, 189, 192, 195, 197, 217, 235, 279, 281–82, 308, 314, 323, 336, 352, 357, 379–80, 406, 408, 431–35, 443, 449, 457, 460, 482, 503; University Church, 409; University, 92, 154, 165, 176, 233, 245, 251, 280, 283, 294, 313, 329, 340, 364, 369, 437–39, 443, 449–50, 462, 491; Volkshaus, 313 Leisner, Emmi, 149–57, 161, 164, 182, 192–94, 203–205, 214–15, 237, 241 Leistner, Albrecht, 282–83 Leonhardt, Carl, 444–46 Lessmann, Otto, 39, 80 Leuckart, F. E. C., 255 Levin, Julius, 233, 262–63, 303 Lewandowski, Max, 116 Ley, Robert, 344 Licht, Barnet, 256–58, 319, 493 Liesche, Richard, 331 Lindner, Adalbert, 73 Linnemann, Richard, 243 Lissmann, Hans, 329 Lisso, Kurt, 400, 418, 432, 476 Liszt, Franz, 32, 35, 38, 79, 84, 104, 120, 140, 176; works: Ave Maria von Arcadelt, 37, 40; Fantasy and Fugue on BACH, 34–35, 40, 68, 73, 102; Faust Symphony, 124; Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, 125; Variations on “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen,” 34, 61, 102, 139; Trauerode, 37 Litt, Theodor, 309, 449–50, 492–93 Lloyd George, David, 2, 161 Loeser, Ewald, 343 Loewengardt, Max, 43 London: All Soul’s Church, Langham Place, 237; Bach Society, 257; Hampton Court Palace, 259; National Gallery, 259; Royal Academy of Music, 12, 42; Westminster Abbey, 259 Louis, Rudolf, 127–28 Löwe, Ferdinand, 138
index ❧ 551 Lübeck, Vincent, 268 Ludwig, Max, 357 Luther, Martin, 65, 103, 301, 397 Lux, Edgar, 492–93, 497 Macfarren, Walter Cecil, 42 Machaut, Guillaume de, 71 Maclean, Quentin Morvaren, 237 MacNaghten, Anne, 259, 318 MacNaghten, Malcom, 259 Mahler, Gustav, 109 Mahrenholz, Christhard, 247, 271, 273–75, 286, 356–58. See also Orgelbewegung Mandyczewski, Eusebius and Albine, 139–41 Mann, Thomas, 325 Martienssen, Carl Adolf, 327, 349, 485–86, 488 Marx, Ernst, 42 Matisse, Henri, 87 Matthaei, Karl, 262, 272–73, 315, 449, 501, 516–17 Max-Reger-Gesellschaft, 167–68, 388 Meinecke, Friedrich, 230 Meiningen Court Orchestra, 163 Melanchthon, Philip, 328 Mendelssohn, Arnold, 56, 207, 243, 248– 49, 280, 283–84, 319, 504; Geistliche Chormusik (op. 90), 249 Mendelssohn, Felix, 26, 32–34, 55–56, 91, 100, 121, 375, 455; Six Organ Sonatas (op. 65), 83 Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Edith, 167, 319 Messiaen, Olivier, 366 Mezger, Manfred, 266, 465, 473, 500– 502, 527 Meyer, Waldemar, 37, 39, 63 Middle German Radio (MIRAG), 287, 293–301, 303, 311, 328, 382 Miederer, Martin, 431 Migendt, Johann Peter, 20 Mirbach, Ernst Freiherr von, 122 Mitchell, Margaret, 463
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Mitteis, Heinrich, 226, 247–48, 443–44, 449 Mittelschulte, Wilhelm, 135 Möllendorf, Dora von, 478, 480, 523 Monteverdi, Claudio, 286 Moser, Hans-Joachim, 247 Mottl, Felix, 127 Mozart, Wolfgang, 55; works: Ave, verum corpus (K. 618); Idomeneo (K. 366), 77; Symphony No. 38 in D Major (K. 504), 366; Vesperae solennes de confessore (K. 339), 77 Muffat, Gottlieb, 35, 60, 286 Müller, Alfred Dedo, 438–39, 492, 494 Müller, Gottfried, 333 Müller, Hermann, 305 Müller, Ludwig, 347, 349 Müller-Blattau, Joseph, 392 Münch, Charles, 263, 363, 366–67, 371–72, 490 Münch, Ernst, 363 Münch, Fritz, 449 Munich: Conservatory (Academy), 68, 71, 128–29, 196–205, 330; Kaimsaal, 66, 79, 85; Odeon, 119, 293 Mussolini, Benito, 2, 421 Mutschmann, Martin, 314, 356, 405, 436–38 National Socialist Party (NSDAP), 253, 256, 276, 294, 297, 304–24, 327–28, 333, 343–46, 350, 371, 374–76, 384, 386, 391–92, 403–4, 407, 418–20, 422–23, 425–28, 440–41, 447, 450–53, 455, 466–67, 474, 479–80, 486–99, 516, 523; and the Leipzig Conservatory/Church Music Institute, 315–16, 320, 327n15, 333, 398, 436–37; and the Reichs-Bach-Fest, 355–58, 450; and the Thomasschule, 314–15, 317, 323, 330–31, 379–80, 406, 428, 431–36; and the University of Leipzig, 437–39; Hitlerjugend, 376–81, 383, 394–95, 403, 448;
552 ❧ index National Socialist Party (NSDAP) (cont’d) Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, 346, 427; Kristallnacht, 397–98; National Socialist German Student Union, 313, 315–16, 333; Straube’s joining of, 4, 228–30, 312–19, 323–24, 343–44, 427, 487, 490–97; Opferring, 312, 497. See also Confessing Church; Deutsche Christen; Hitler, Adolf Nestmann, Alf, 282 Neue Bachgesellschaft, 114–16, 120, 142–43, 170, 209, 355, 364–65, 384, 449, 515, 526 Nielsen, Carl, 157 Niessen, Wilhelm, 77–78 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 272, 392, 429, 497 Nikisch, Arthur, 63, 93–94, 113, 119, 121–22, 124, 162, 245–47 Nikisch, Mitja, 326 Nitsche, Paul, 279–80, 283 Noatzke, Gerhard, 398 Novalis (G. P. F. Freiherr von Hardenberg), 147 Ochs, Siegfried, 115–16, 118 Ollendorff, Paul, 150, 255, 307 Oppel, Reinhard, 264, 333, 456 Orgelbewegung, 200, 232, 266–77, 321–22, 345, 358, 387, 450, 505, 518; conferences, 272–74, 287; German Orgelrat, 274–76, 280, 287. See also Gurlitt, Wilibald; Jahnn, Hans Henny; Jugendbewegung; Mahrenholz, Christhard Pachelbel, Johann, 35, 60, 82, 114, 286 Paddon, James, 12 Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, 81 Palmer, Catherine Cleeve, 11 Palmer, Elizabeth Hutton, 11–12, 361 Palmer, Emily, 12, 141n28 Palmer, Gertrude, 12, 42 Palmer, James, 10–11 Palmer, Joanna Veale, 11
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Palmer, John, 11 Palmer, John Hinde, 11 Palmer, Hannah Hay Aldis, 12 Palmer, Maria, 12, 141n28 Palmer, Samuel, 10–11 Palmer, William Henry, 10–12, 15, 361. See also Straube, Sarah Palmer Palmer, William Henry, the younger, 12 Pank, Oskar, 95–96, 99, 106, 121–23, 125, 184 Papen, Franz von, 309–11 Paris: Dôme des Invalides, 366; Église Saint-Eustache, 394–97; Palais Beauharnais, 397; Pantheon, 366; Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 371; Salle Pleyel, 366, 371–72, 395 Parry, Charles Hubert Hastings, 258 Pauer, Max von, 244–45 Pepping, Ernst, 485 Pétain, Philippe, 441 Peters, C. F., 91, 93, 114, 248, 262, 307, 390, 475, 486, 502, 507; as collaborator with Straube, 107, 109, 132–36, 143–48, 243, 254–55, 269, 358–59, 386–87, 445, 470–73, 500, 519; Nazi takeover, 398–99, 417, 481–83. See also Hinrichsen, Henri; Ollendorff, Paul; Straube, Karl (editions) Petri, Egon, 244 Petschull, Johannes, 398, 445, 467–68, 470–73, 475, 481, 503–4, 507. See also Peters, C. F. Pfitzner, Hans, 200, 296, 446 Phear, Arthur, 260 Philipps, Hans von, 240 Piersig, Johannes, 3, 107, 521 Pinckert, Johannes, 409–10, 429 Piutti, Carl, 87, 93, 100, 104, 197 Pohlenz, Christian August, 92 Poincaré, Raymond, 227 Poister, Arthur, 250 “Praetorius organ,” 232, 267, 269, 272, 287. See also Gurlitt, Wilibald; Orgelbewegung; “Straube organ”
index ❧ 553 Purcell, Henry, 260 Putsch, Hermann, 37 Raabe, Peter, 228–29 Raasted, Niels-Otto: as Ramin correspondent, 239, 242, 270, 273, 312, 315, 337, 369; as Straube correspondent, 110n18, 156, 158, 166–67, 195, 202, 253, 258, 339, 365, 421, 513, 517–18 Rath, Ernst vom, 397 Ramin, Charlotte, 239, 271, 298, 337, 341, 402–4 Ramin, Gabriele, 340 Ramin, Günther, 169, 186–88, 191, 195, 202, 204, 212, 228, 230, 232, 235–37, 240, 242, 259, 282–83, 328, 332, 335, 337–38, 346–48, 358, 369, 385, 393, 449, 460, 478; and Orgelbewegung, 268–74, 277, 286, 322; and Reger interpretation, 507–8; as favored pupil, 183, 186; as improviser, 283, 340; as successor to the Leipzig cantorate, 341–44, 348, 350–51, 353, 383, 400–410, 418, 429, 485–86, 512–14, 526; attitude toward National Socialism, 312, 315, 317, 340–44, 430–36; compared to Schweitzer, 365; North American tours, 337, 340–41 Raphael, Günther, 248, 283, 319, 329, 332–33, 370–71, 487 Rassow, Peter, 450 Ravanello, Oreste, 65 Regensburger Domspatzen, 376 Reger, Elsa, 86–87, 102, 141, 159, 162, 176, 241, 257; relations with Straube, 127, 167–68, 388 Reger, Emma, 62–63, 69, 388 Reger, Max, 35, 38, 44, 47, 53, 55–57, 59–77, 79–83, 85–87, 89, 97–104, 106–13, 115, 124–31, 134–35, 138– 40, 174, 184, 186, 237, 246, 248–51,
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292, 296–97, 340, 346, 386–90, 448, 468, 471, 504–8; and Bach interpretation, 127, 129, 163; and Orgelbewegung, 287, 386–87, 505–6; as pianist, 152; attitude toward Jews and Judaism, 120–21; attitude toward Straube, 23, 93–94, 102–3, 110–11, 116, 164; compared to Straube, 60–1, 118, 129–30, 132; death, 162–69; Straube’s image of, 62–63, 72–73, 82–84, 108, 127–31, 166–67, 272, 341, 389–90, 445–46, 504–5. See also Reger, Max (organ works); Reger, Max (other works) Reger, Max (organ works): Suite in E Minor (op. 16), 42–44, 61–62, 509; Fantasy on the Chorale “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” (op. 27), 64–66, 71, 79–80, 102, 386–88, 504; Fantasy and Fugue in C Minor (op. 29), 65, 68–69, 73; Fantasy on the Chorale “Freu’ dich sehr, o meine Seele!” (op. 30), 65, 71, 83; Sonata No. 1 in F-sharp Minor (op. 33), 69–70, 73, 79; Fantasy on the Chorale “Wie schön leucht’t uns der Morgenstern” (op. 40, no. 1), 70–71, 73, 79, 82–83; Fantasy on the Chorale “Straf mich nicht in deinem Zorn!” (op. 40, no. 2), 73, 79, 82–83; Fantasy and Fugue on BACH (op. 46), 73, 79–80, 84–85, 101–2; Six Trios (op. 47), 84; Fantasy on the Chorale “Alle Menschen müssen sterben” (op. 52, no. 1), 74, 85; Fantasy on the Chorale “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (op. 52, no. 2), 75, 80, 102; Fantasy on the Chorale “Halleluja! Gott zu loben, bleibe meine Seelenfreud!” (op. 52, no. 3), 75, 85; Symphonic Fantasy and Fugue (op. 57), 64, 85, 102, 237; Twelve Pieces (op. 59), 85, 168, 505; Sonata No. 2 in D Minor (op. 60), 102; Monologen (op. 63), 102; Twelve Pieces (op. 65), 100, 168;
554 ❧ index Reger, Max (organ works) (cont’d) Ten Pieces (op. 69), 102; Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme (op. 73), 66, 119, 387; Twelve Pieces (op. 80), 168; Four Preludes and Fugues (op. 85), 168; Introduction, Passacaglia, and Fugue in E Minor (op. 127), 163–65; Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor (op. 135b), 163–65; Chorale Prelude “O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid” WoO IV/2, 39–40; Schule des Triospiels (Bach-B8), 85, 110 Reger, Max (other works): Violin Sonata in D Minor (op. 1), 38; Two Spiritual Songs (op. 19), 62; Gesang der Verklärten (op. 71), 110; Violin Sonata in C Major (op. 72), 110; Sinfonietta (op. 90), 127–28, 389; Serenade (op. 95), 127; Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Hiller (op. 100), 389; Violin Concerto in A Major (op. 101), 389; Psalm 100 (op. 106), 142, 389; Symphonischer Prolog zu einer Tragödie (op. 108), 389; String Sextet in F Major (op. 118), 389; String Quartet in F-sharp Minor (op. 121), 163; An die Hoffnung (op. 124), 389; Römischer Triumphgesang (op. 126), 163; Eine Ballett-Suite (op. 130), 163; Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart (op. 132), 372; Clarinet Quintet in A Major (op. 146), 389; Andante and Rondo Capriccioso in A Major (WoO I/10), 165; Piano Quintet in C Minor (WoO II/9), 389; Incidental Music to “Castra vetera” (WoO V/1), 75–76; Requiem (WoO V/9), 163, 388; Twelve German Spiritual Songs (WoO VI/13), 84; Seven Spiritual Folksongs (WoO VI/14), 84; Vater unser (WoO VI/22), 163; Beiträge zur Modulationslehre, 110 Reid, James, 276 Reid, Margaret and Victoria, 276
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Reimann, Heinrich, 21–22, 24, 27, 29, 31–45, 49–50, 52, 54, 57, 61, 68–70, 72, 81, 83, 94, 108, 120, 126, 132–33, 135, 250, 292, 415; as Bach player, 32, 516; as music critic, 33–36, 38–39, 56; Chorale Fantasy on “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern” (op. 25), 66, 70, 108 Reimann, Ignaz, 31 Reinbrecht, Friedrich, 51–53, 76, 93 Reinecke, Carl, 51 Reubke, Julius: Sonata on the 94th Psalm, 66 Reum, Albrecht, 309–10 Reuschle, Walter, 238–40. See also Straube, Elisabet Reuß, Heinrich, Prince, 503 Rhau, Georg, 173, 342 Rheinberger, Joseph, 56, 68–69; works: Sonata No. 2 in A-flat Major (op. 65), 71; Sonata No. 7 in F minor (op. 127), 72; Sonata No. 8 in E Minor (op. 132), 71; Sonata No. 9 in B-flat Minor (op. 142), 71; Sonata No. 12 in D-flat Major (op. 154), 66, 71, 73; Sonata No. 13 in E-flat Major (op. 161), 71; Sonata No. 14 in C Major (op. 165), 72; Sonata No. 15 in D Major (op. 168), 35, 37, 65; Sonata No. 16 in G-sharp Minor (op. 175), 65; Sonata No. 18 in A Major (op. 188), 66, 71; Sonata No. 19 in G Minor (op. 193), 68, 71 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 441 Richards, Emerson, 318–19, 335 Richter, Alfred, 24 Richter, Gerhard, 376, 378, 381, 421–23, 428, 433 Richter, Karl, 527 Rieger Orgelbau, 138 Riemann, Hugo, 24, 38–39, 60, 70, 73, 93, 247, 277. See also Reger, Max Rietschel, Georg, 115 Rinck, Johann Christian Heinrich, 29
index ❧ 555 Robert-Tornow, Gustav, 3, 130–31, 166 Rochlich, Edmund, 111 Röhm, Ernst, 314–15, 323 Ronte, Heinz, 497 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 463 Rosen, Waldemar, 382 Rosenthal, Wolfgang, 212, 215, 503, 515, 527 Rössler, Richard, 120 Rotary Club, 307, 329 Roth, Herman, 254 Rothe, Hans, 268 Rothe, Karl, 176, 178–79, 192, 194–95, 197, 200–201, 203–205, 216–17, 219, 233–35, 279–81, 309 Rubens, Peter Paul, 147 Rüfer, Philipp Bartholomé, 21–22, 24, 36, 70; Sonata in G Minor (op. 16), 24, 35, 40 Rust, Bernhard, 349, 353, 433, 436 Rust, Wilhelm, 174, 176, 262, 342, 471 Sachse, Richard, 380 Sahm, Heinrich, 308–9 Saint-Saëns, Camille, 55, 65–66, 80, 104 Sauer, Wilhelm, 29, 36, 108, 169, 232, 505; attitude toward Straube, 97n20, 120; organs of, 32, 40–43, 45, 51–53, 69, 79, 92–94, 100, 125, 137, 165, 263, 271, 473n49 Scarlatti, Domenico, 84 Scheidemann, Philipp, 190 Scheidt, Samuel, 55, 60, 132, 273 Schein, Johann Hermann, 173, 372, 381 Schelle, Johann, 173 Schenker, Heinrich, 247, 254, 264, 333 Scherchen, Hermann, 237, 245–46, 257, 340 Schering, Arnold, 247 Schiller, Friedrich, 35 Schirach, Baldur von, 378, 394 Schlag & Söhne, 29–30, 32, 36, 41 Schleicher, Kurt von, 311 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 8, 42, 83, 511
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Schmid, Heinrich Kaspar, 244 Schmidt, Beate, 484, 517 Schmidt (Schmid), Bernhard, 60 Schmitt, Florent, 367 Schneider, Eva, 492–94 Schneider, Max, 183, 215, 220, 245, 247, 357, 449 Schneider, Michael, 445, 503, 507 Schnitger, Arp, 268–70, 275–77, 339, 505. See also Orgelbewegung Schnoor, Hans, 327, 330, 447–48, 450, 519 Schober, Johannes, 65 Schoenberg, Arnold, 244, 246, 295 Schreck, Gustav, 24, 93, 106, 111–12, 115, 119, 169–70, 173–74, 177, 189, 197, 200, 217, 242 Schreker, Franz, 296 Schubert, Franz, 151, 156; Symphony No. 9 in C Major (D. 944), 141 Schücking, Levin, 329 Schultz, Helmut, 286–88 Schulze, Johann Friedrich, 79 Schumann, Clara Wieck, 76, 91 Schumann, Georg, 116 Schumann, Heinrich Eduard, 301–2, 309–10, 492–93 Schumann, Robert, 32, 39, 91; Piano Concerto in A Minor (op. 54), 77 Schütz, Heinrich, 81, 242, 326, 355 Schütze, Arno, 77 Schwarz, Bernhard, 449 Schwarz, Leo, 313, 319 Schwarz-Schilling, Reinhard, 447 Schweitzer, Albert, 271, 359, 363–66, 417, 501–2. See also Münch, Charles Segnitz, Philipp, 432 Seiffert, Max, 37, 40, 68, 94, 108–9, 134, 247, 254 Seiller, Rudolf von, 139 Seffner, Carl, 1, 115, 166, 168 Senfl, Ludwig, 381 Serkin, Rudolf, 318–19. See also Busch, Adolf
556 ❧ index Shaw, George Bernard, 259 Siemon, Hermann, 76, 78 Sievers, Johannes, 215 Silbermann, Andreas, 363 Silbermann, Gottfried, 273–74, 359, 472–74, 483, 505, 518. See also Orgelbewegung Sinding, Christian, 214 Sistermans, Anton, 109 Sistine Chapel, 236 Sitt, Hans, 111, 113 Sittard, Alfred, 121, 124 Smend, Julius, 247, 364 Social Democratic Party (SPD), 43, 191, 252, 256–57, 305–6, 308, 310, 485, 493 Søderblom, Nathan, 213, 215–16 Söhngen, Oskar, 78, 502, 504–9, 512, 518 Soltmann, Hans, 238 Soviet (Russian) communism, 305, 311. See also German Communist Party (KPD); German Democratic Republic (DDR) Spemann, Adolf, 424 Spengler, Oswald, 262 Spitta, Friedrich, 115, 247 Spitta, Philipp, 109, 111, 174, 326, 471 Staegemann, Helene, 77 Stahl, Friedrich, 336, 494 Stalin, Joseph, 2, 407 Stanford, Charles Villiers, 258 Steggall, Charles, 12 Stein, Fritz, 44, 130, 244, 256, 338, 346– 53, 358, 375, 446, 449, 490; advocacy for Reger, 84–85, 168, 387–89, 505; and National Socialism, 346, 388, 459, 463, 505 Stein, Max Martin, 101 Stephani, Hermann, 254 Strasser, Gregor, 271n14 Straube, Bertram and Peter, 478, 480 Straube, Carl Augustin Friedrich, 8 Straube, Carl Augustin Friedrich Victor, 8–10, 102
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Straube, Dorothea Knak, 8 Straube, Elisabet, 1–2, 106, 132, 149–50, 154–55, 158, 211, 237–43, 253, 263–64, 270, 334, 523, 525 Straube, Hertha (Christine Josefine Johanna Küchel), 1–2, 86–87, 97–99, 106, 109, 126, 132, 149–50, 152, 154–56, 186, 192, 211, 213–14, 219, 237–38, 240–41, 263–64, 301, 459– 60, 480, 489, 502–3, 507, 511–12, 514–15, 520, 525–26; and National Socialism, 317n37, 360–62, 497; and the Rhineland, 122, 486, 508 Straube, Johann Augustin, 7–8 Straube, Johannes, 7, 10, 12–14, 16–17, 20–21, 27, 29, 31, 33, 36–37, 43, 101, 149, 157, 296 Straube, Karl (Carl) Mondgomery Rufus Siegfried: as ensemble trainer, 77, 179–80, 214, 395; as improviser, 29, 50, 260n31; as organ teacher, 3–4, 110n18, 137–38, 169, 195, 272, 460, 511, 513–14; as pianist, 23–24, 64, 76–77, 151–52, 154; as writer and critic, 81–84, 269–70, 291–92, 358, 380, 392, 444–46, 516–17; attitude toward cities, 17–18, 446, 465; attitude toward Jews and Judaism, 292, 313–14, 319–23, 361–62, 370–71, 421, 440–42, 453–54, 481, 490, 493–94; attitude toward Saxony, 121–22, 247, 455, 486, 488, 513; awards and honors, 164, 233, 280–88, 325–29, 355, 392, 408–10, 418–20, 447–55, 508, 520; compared to Dupré, 501–2; compared to Guilmant, 104; compared to Schweitzer, 366; denazification, 449, 486–87, 489–97, 502; military service, 158–60, 162, 170, 190; musicality, 4, 28–29, 37–38, 40, 52–53, 68, 80, 84–85, 104–5, 113, 115, 117–18, 147, 152, 177, 214, 260, 271–72, 340, 358, 396–97, 469–70, 506; tastes in art, 281, 479
index ❧ 557 Straube, Karl (Carl) Mondgomery Rufus Siegfried (editions): Alte Meister des Orgelspiels, 25, 108–9, 133–34, 243, 269, 276, 359, 364, 506; Alte Meister Neue Folge, 243, 269–71, 276–77, 286, 359; Ausgewählte Gesänge des Thomanerchores, 242–43; Bach Acht kleine Präludien und Fugen, 358–59, 386; Bach Magnificat, 135; Bach “Peters vol. II,” 25, 72, 135–36, 143– 47, 150, 157, 160, 271, 359, 468, 506; Choralvorspiele alter Meister, 132–34, 136, 144, 146, 359; Orgelkompositionen von Franz Liszt, 107–8, 159, 169; Handel Dettinger Te Deum; Handel Solomon; Reger Drei Orgelstücke, 145–46, 168, 386–87, 505; Reger “Ein’ feste Burg,” 66, 386–88, 398, 504; Reger Präludien und Fugen, 168–69; Schneider Pedalstudien, 135 “Straube organ,” 286–88, 294. See also Orgelbewegung Straube, Sarah Palmer, 7, 11–16, 21, 23, 32, 43, 126–27, 133, 141–42, 257, 281, 424 “Straube trumpets,” 286 Straube, William, 7, 11, 13, 18–19, 26, 44–45, 65, 87, 119, 157, 159, 238, 320, 478–80, 483, 515, 523, 525; and National Socialism, 479–80, 499. See also Möllendorf, Dora von Strauss, Richard, 22, 24, 42, 55, 64, 82–83, 151, 156, 165, 167, 446; Salome, 118 Stravinsky, Igor, 366 Stresemann, Gustav, 310 Strobel, Carl, 476 Stueber, Carl, 382 Sweelinck, Jan Pieterszoon, 81, 134, 232, 276, 282 Tandberg, Jens Frølich, 210 Tausig, Carl, 84
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Teichmann, Erich, 419 Teichmüller, Robert, 186 Telemann, Georg Philipp, 91, 114 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 11 Tennyson d’Eyncourt, Clara, 11 Terry, Charles Sanford, 258, 356, 516 Teschner, Hermann, 20 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 238 Thayer, Alexander Wheelock, 258 Thomas, Kurt, 248, 280, 283, 332–33, 349, 357n12, 431–32, 449, 465, 468, 525–26 Tiemann, Walter, 312, 419, 449, 492, 494 Tietze, Ekkehard, 299–300, 385, 395 Tillich, Paul, 438 Titelouze, Jean, 232, 276 Tittel, Karl, 179, 182, 189, 192, 194, 234–36, 259, 336, 350 Treitschke, Heinrich von, 55–58, 69, 130, 425. See also Haller, Johannes Toscanini, Arturo, 377 Tournemire, Charles, 366, 501–2 Truman, Harry S., 525 Ugrino, Glaubensgemeinde, 268–69, 272. See also Jahnn, Hans Henny Uhlmann, Johanna, 77 Vallombrosa, Amédée de, 395 Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 257–60, 271, 276; Mass in G Minor, 258; Sancta Civitas, 259 Veil, Wolfgang, 464 Versailles, Treaty of, 161, 211–12, 215, 224, 227, 229, 322, 362, 426, 440 Vetter, Walther, 393 Vienna: Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, 139, 141; Musikverein, 138–39, 385; St. Stephen’s Cathedral, 367 Vogler, Georg Joseph (Abbé), 29 Volkland, Alfred, 111 Wagner, Joachim, 20, 29–30, 40, 79
558 ❧ index Wagner, Richard, 32, 38, 91, 122, 143, 147, 272, 315, 344–45, 364, 392, 394; works: Der Ring des Nibelungen, 2; Götterdämmerung, 377, 458; Parsifal, 271 Walcker, Eberhard Friedrich, 29, 59, 61, 66, 92, 119, 137 Walcker, Oskar, 232, 269, 273–74, 343, 518 Walter, Bruno, 200, 303, 313–14, 319, 478 Weber, Alfred, 230 Weber, Carl Maria von, 450 Weber, Paul, 479 Weber, Wilhelm, 248, 450–51 Webersinke, Amadeus, 506 Weigle, Carl Gottlieb, 29 Weismann, Wilhelm, 257, 417, 469–70, 484, 504, 519, 527 Wellesz, Egon, 244–46, 319 Welte, M. & Söhne, 232–33, 271, 296 Wendling, Carl, 95 Wesel: Hotel Dornbusch, 86; St. Willibrord Cathedral, 50–51, 54, 65, 85–86, 92–93, 96, 505 Wesley, Samuel Sebastian, 12
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Wettengel, Ernst, 401 Widor, Charles-Marie, 66, 271, 358, 363, 366; Symphonie gothique (op. 70), 66 Wiederroth, Willy, 448, 476–77 Wildung, Fritz, 219 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 23, 51, 157, 162, 190, 226, 411 Wilson, Daniel, 15–16 Wilson, Woodrow, 170 Wolf-Ferrari, Ermanno, 56–57, 97 Wolff, Paul, 96 Wolfrum, Karl, 83 Wolfrum, Philipp, 83 Wolgast, Johannes, 332; as Straube biographer, 8, 10, 12–15, 21–23, 25, 31, 35–36, 40–43, 49, 78, 94, 99, 112, 138, 266–67, 271, 281 Wunderlich, Heinz, 505 Zeigner, Erich, 251–52, 257, 485–86, 519n76. See also Social Democratic Party (SPD) Zilcher, Hermann, 244 Zimdars, Katharina, 40 Zöllner, Walter, 395