The Inextinguishable Symphony

Martin Goldsmith

Description

NOW AN ACCLAIMED DOCUMENTARY, Winter Journey

Set amid the growing tyranny of Germany's Third Reich, here is the riveting and emotional tale of Günther Goldschmidt and Rosemarie Gumpert, two courageous Jewish musicians who struggled to perform under unimaginable circumstances—and found themselves falling in love in a country bent on destroying them.

In the spring of 1933, as the full weight of Germany's National Socialism was brought to bear against Germany's Jews, more than 8,000 Jewish musicians, actors, and other artists found themselves expelled from their positions with German orchestras, opera companies, and theater groups, and Jews were forbidden even to attend "Aryan" theaters. Later that year, the Jüdische Kulturbund, or Jewish Culture Association, was created under the auspices of Joseph Goebbels's Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Providing for Jewish artists to perform for Jewish audiences, the Kulturbund, which included an orchestra, an opera company, and an acting troupe, became an unlikely haven for Jewish artists and offered much-needed spiritual enrichment for a besieged people—while at the same time providing the Nazis with a powerful propaganda tool for showing the rest of the world how well Jews were ostensibly being treated under the Third Reich.

It was during this period that twenty-two-year-old flutist Günther Goldschmidt was expelled from music school because of his Jewish roots. While preparing to flee the ever-tightening grip of Nazi Germany for Sweden, Günther was invited to fill in for an ailing flutist with the Frankfurt Kulturbund Orchestra. It was there, during rehearsals, that he met the dazzling nineteen-year-old violist Rosemarie Gumpert—a woman who would change the course of his life. Despite their strong attraction, Günther eventually embarked for the safety of Sweden as planned, only to risk his life six months later returning to the woman he could not forget—and to the perilous country where hatred and brutality had begun to flourish. Here is Günther and Rosemarie's story, a deeply moving tale of love and the remarkable resilience of the human spirit in the face of terror and persecution.

Beautifully and simply told by their son, National Public Radio commentator Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony takes us from the cafés of Frankfurt, where Rosemarie and Günther fell in love, to the concert halls that offered solace and hope for the beleaguered Jews, to the United States, where the two made a new life for themselves that would nevertheless remain shadowed by the fate of their families. Along with the fate of Günther and Rosemarie's families, this rare memoir also illuminates the Kulturbund and the lives of other fascinating figures associated with it, including Kubu director Kurt Singer—a man so committed to the organization that he objected to his artists' plans for flight, fearing that his productions would suffer. The Kubu, which included some of the most prominent artists of the day and young performers who would gain international fame after the war, became the sole source of culture and entertainment for Germany's Jews. A poignant testament to the enduring vitality of music and love even in the harshest times, The Inextinguishable Symphony gives us a compelling look at an important piece of Holocaust history that has heretofore gone largely untold.

Prelude.

Alex and Gunther.

Julian and Rosemarie.

1933.

The Kubu.

The Mask.

Pathetique.

La Vie Boheme.

Kurt Singer.

A Protest in Paris.

Chocolate and Canaries.

Two Newspapers.

The March.

Vaterland und Vaterhaus.

"One Slap after the Other".

Prinzenstrasse.

Sempre Libera.

New World--and Old.

Appointment in Quito.

Eine Kleine Curfew Music.

The Resurrection Symphony.

The Inextinguishable Symphony.

"Crying Like Dogs."

"It Will Be on Your Conscience".

Coda.

Acknowledgments.

Bibliography.

Index.

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Historical
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Martin Goldsmith
• Nazi Germany
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 24 août 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470254080
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The Inextinguishable Sympnony
A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany
Martin Goldsmith

JOHN WILEY SONS, INC.
New York Chichester Weinheim Brisbane Singapore Toronto
This book is printed on acid-free paper. @
Copyright 2000 by Martin Goldsmith. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc. Published simultaneously in Canada
The following have generously given permission to use quotations from copyrighted works. From the play Sheppy by W. Somerset Maugham. Reprinted by permission of A. P. Watt Ltd, on behalf of The Royal Literary Fund. From the poem September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden. Copyright 1940 by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. and in the British Commonwealth by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. The poem It Goes Out by Heinrich Heine, from The Complete Poems of Heinrich Heine: A Modern English Version , translated by Hal Draper. Copyright 1982. Reprinted by permission of Suhrkamp/Insel.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 101580012, [phone], fax [phone], email: [e-mail].
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Goldsmith, Martin.
The inextinguishable symphony: a true story of music and love in Nazi Germany / Martin Goldsmith.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 333).
ISBN 0-471-35097-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-471-07864-6 (paper : alk. paper)
1. Goldsmith, George, 1913- 2. Goldsmith, Rosemary, 1917-1984. 3. Jewish musicians-Germany-Biography. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)-Biography. I. Title.
ML395.G65 2000
940.53 18 092243-dc21
[B] 00-025955
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7
To my family
Music is Life, and like Life, inextinguishable .
-Carl Nielsen
The past is never dead. It isn t even past .
-William Faulkner
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long .
-William Shakespeare
CONTENTS
C HAPTER 1 Prelude
C HAPTER 2 Alex and G nther
C HAPTER 3 Julian and Rosemarie
C HAPTER 4 1933
C HAPTER 5 The Kubu
C HAPTER 6 The Mask
C HAPTER 7 Path tique
C HAPTER 8 La Vie Boh me
C HAPTER 9 Kurt Singer
C HAPTER 10 A Protest in Paris
C HAPTER 11 Chocolate and Canaries
C HAPTER 12 Two Newspapers
C HAPTER 13 The March
C HAPTER 14 Vaterland und Vaterhaus
C HAPTER 15 One Slap after the Other
C HAPTER 16 Prinzenstrasse
C HAPTER 17 Sempre Libera
C HAPTER 18 New World-and Old
C HAPTER 19 Appointment in Quito
C HAPTER 20 Eine Kleine Curfew Music
C HAPTER 21 The Resurrection Symphony
C HAPTER 22 The Inextinguishable Symphony
C HAPTER 23 Crying Like Dogs
C HAPTER 24 It Will Be on Your Conscience
C HAPTER 25 Coda
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
CHAPTER
1
Prelude
The first scene of the opera Die Walk re , the second of the four operas making up Richard Wagner s Ring Cycle, takes place in the house of Hunding, a fierce warlord. The central feature of Hunding s house is a mighty ash tree, its trunk soaring up from the floor, its branches forming a canopy over the roof. Embedded in the massive trunk is a golden sword the god Wotan has left for his son, the hero Siegmund, to find and wield at his hour of need.
In the house where I grew up with my father, my mother, and my brother, there was also an enormous tree growing up through the roof, its great trunk dominating the enclosed space. In many ways we shared a perfectly ordinary family life. My father spoke to my mother. My mother tucked me in at night. My brother and I played with each other, when we weren t fighting.
But none of us ever acknowledged the tree.
The tree wasn t real, of course. But its impact on my family was overwhelming. The effort it required for all of us not to take conscious notice of it was also huge. This enormous presence in our house was the fate of my parents families-Jews who lived in Germany in the 1930s-and my parents escape from that fate. Their story, so similar to and yet so different from the six million other stories of that time and place, affected everything these two people did. It was at the root of their lives and grew ever upward as they grew older. And, as in so many other families like ours, it was something we never spoke of.
Not that I was completely unaware of the tree and the shadow it cast on our house. When my friends talked about visiting their grandparents at Thanksgiving or going to the ball game with Uncle Ed, I knew that something from the past had made similar excursions impossible for me. And returning to our house following an afternoon of playing in the neighborhood, I was often conscious of taking off my own real personality, hanging it up in the closet with my jacket, and donning a sort of internal costume that would enable me to blend in with the emotional scenery. But, again, we never spoke of such things.
Let me hasten to say that such talk was never overtly forbidden. By no means was I or my brother ever shushed when we attempted to steer the conversation in certain directions. We simply never made such attempts. As a family we didn t discuss what had happened in Germany for the same reason that we didn t discuss bauxite mining in Peru. They were both subjects that did not exist for us.
Nor do I want to give the impression of a dark and gloomy household where silence reigned. Not at all. Life revolved around my mother s activities as a musician-a violist-first as a member of the St. Louis Symphony and later as a member of the Cleveland Orchestra, and that meant that there was always music in the house. My parents friends and colleagues would often come by for after-concert parties, when the house would resound with music and laughter.
But every year the tree grew taller. And as I grew older, I came to be more and more aware of its presence, and of how odd it was that we never spoke of it, since it dominated the landscape. Its leaves turned yellow and drifted to the ground when my mother died in 1984. The tree itself remained, however, casting its prodigious shadow over my relationship with my father. Finally, as we both grew more aware of the ever-quickening passage of time, I decided to do something about it.
In 1992, the year I turned forty, I was traveling in Europe while my father, who was nearly seventy-nine, was also in Europe with his new love, Emily Erwin. We arranged to meet in Oldenburg, my father s hometown. We visited his childhood home, and he told me something of his memories of that long-ago time. He took me to where his fathers store had been and told me that Nazi thugs had organized a boycott of the store in April 1933, an action that led to his fathers having to sell the family house. He showed me the Pferdemarkt, the Horse Market, where his father had been taken following his arrest in November 1938. Slowly, those shadowy figures, my grandparents, whom I d never known, began to take on human form. And for the first time, my father and I began to take notice of the huge tree in our house.
It wasn t a fast process, by any means. A year later, while visiting my father in Tucson, I tried to get him to talk more about his youth. He spoke only briefly, however, and quickly moved the conversation on to something else. It was obvious that he found these trips into the past very painful. But I persisted in my efforts to talk to him about those days, believing that coming to terms with them would somehow benefit both him and our relationship. And that visit to Tucson resulted in something extraordinary: he agreed to come to Washington, D.C., and tour with me the newly opened United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
A few days before my father s arrival, I happened to mention our plan to Alex Chadwick, a friend at National Public Radio. Alex asked if he could come along with a microphone and record my father s reactions. Both my father and I agreed, and in late January 1994, the three of us visited the museum.
Those hours marked a turning point in my father s life, and in our relationship. At first, I thought I had made a terrible mistake in asking him to come to the museum. To tour the permanent exhibition, you enter an elevator that takes you to the top floor, from which you slowly walk back down to ground level. When we stepped out of the elevator, the first image that met my fathers eyes was a huge photograph of General Eisenhower touring a concentration camp after the war, surrounded by the skeletal remains of former prisoners. He gasped and tried to get back into the elevator, but the doors had already closed. Alex and I steadied him and we made our way through the rest of the museum-the names and faces, the piles of shoes and eyeglasses, the cattle car, and an oboe played by the man who sat right next to my father in the Berlin J dische Kulturbund orchestra.
My father took it all in and spoke very little. But the next day he came to NPR and recorded an interview with Alex, trying, he said, to explain the unexplainable. Alex prepared a feature for NPR s Morning Edition , and suddenly peopl