[ Post a Response | The MusicWeb Message Board ]
CELEBRATING 20,000 Classical CD reviews on-line; 21,000 visitors each day.
Return to MusicWeb International
Posted by Martin Walker on January 24, 2007, 11:55 am
213.36.26.150
Raymond Walker writes: "Benatzky, Stolz, Aletter, Kreisler, Strauss, Lincke could have been Hitler’s henchmen!" While I appreciate the "light"-hearted tone of the context & that it refers to the effect the names might have had, there is a sombre side to the implications of that remark which makes a clarification appropriate: Johann Strauß was of course dead long before the Nazi terror & was, it turns out, Jewish (as in the case of Léhar, Hitler said "I decide who is Jewish"); Robert Stolz left Vienna for Paris shortly before the outbreak of war, was interned & rescued by a woman who arranged his emigration to the USA & then married him; Benatzky was married to a Jewish woman, was himself falsely excoriated as Jewish by the Nazi press from 1933 on and emigrated first to France then the USA; Kreisler also moved first to France then to the USA at the outbreak of war - he had a Jewish father, though his Nazi-sympathising wife, an American, attempted to cover up the fact; it is true that Lincke did not emigrate - he was in his mid-70s at the outbreak of war; Wilhelm Aletter died in 1934.
Message Thread:
« Back to thread
Thank you for using the MusicWeb Message Board.
Len Mullenger - Founder of MusicWeb