A Musical Reconciliation ... of sorts

The Bayreuth Festival, the celebration of all things Wagnerian which takes place every year in the composer’s hometown, marks its 100th anniversary this year. And yesterday, it kicked off in style, with a controversial interpretation of the composer’s opera, Tannhäuser.

This, however, will not be the festival’s main attraction, nor its most contentious. That honour falls to the Israeli Chamber Orchestra who will perform the Siegfried Idyll in the composer’s home town tonight.

The recital will mark the first time Israeli musicians have played a Wagner piece in Germany. Indeed, Israeli opposition to the German composer runs so deep that the orchestra did not even rehearse the piece in their homeland, preferring to wait until the arrived in Germany to begin preparations.

It is hardly surprising that the subject of Richard Wagner is such a highly-charged and emotional issue for the people of Israel. A favourite of Hitler and the Nazi party, the composer’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) was played every year on the opening night of the Nuremberg Rallies. Indeed, Wagner’s music provided the soundtrack to the rise of Third Reich. Used almost exclusively to advance the personality cult of Adolf Hitler, and to mythologize the notion of a heroic German master-race, Richard Wagner, for good or ill, has become indelibly associated with Nazism.

So, while neither the composer nor the people of Israel will ever be wholly free from the spectre of Hitler and Nazism, perhaps tonight’s performance will go some way towards finally laying a painful past to rest.

The Bayreuth Festival continues until August 28th.

Lest We Forget

“All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing”.

The sentiment expressed in this oft-used phrase forms the basis for Hans Fallada’s extraordinarily moving novel, Alone in Berlin. Published in Germany in 1947 under the title, Every Man Dies Alone (Jeder stirbt für sich allein), it is based on true events.

The novel tells the story of an unassuming, working-class couple, Otto and Anna Quangel who, distraught by the death of the son in the Second World War, begin a campaign of resistance against Hitler and the Nazi party. Their acts of rebellion are small, some would even say insignificant – they write one postcard a week, inciting civil disobedience by denouncing Hitler, the Nazis and the war that killed their son. The postcards, dropped randomly all over Berlin, were intended to be a rallying call, imploring recipients not to blindly succumb to the tyranny of the Nazis. Despite the small-scale nature of Otto and Anna’s revolt, a Gestapo inspector becomes obsessed with tracking them down. He eventually succeeds, and the Quangels pay the ultimate price for their deeds – they are imprisoned, tortured, subjected to a show-trial and eventually executed.

It quickly becomes apparent to the reader, however, that the actual subject of the novel is not Otto and Anna Quangel – the real focus of the book is in fact the Nazi regime, and more precisely, its brutality and effectiveness at suppressing all opposition, however small. The author paints a vivid picture of what life was like for everyday Germans living under Nazi control … and therein lies the novel’s greatest achievement. Fallada masterfully evokes an ominous atmosphere of pervasive anxiety, apprehension and distrust, where ordinary citizens live in abject fear of the Gestapo, and as such are prepared to turn a blind eye to their atrocities. One tends to forget that, quite aside from his crimes against Jews and other elements of society he deemed undesirable, Hitler’s despotism and cruelty was directed at all German citizens – the Führer proved himself to be equally adept at killing his own people as he was at killing Jews.

Alone in Berlin is a story of man’s inhumanity to man. There is no uplifting or redemptive ending, just as there was no uplifting or redemptive ending to the Second World War. The novel is bleak and utterly depressing, and for this very reason it is an absolute must-read … because if we are to learn lessons from history, we must never forget it.

Otto and Elise Hampel, the couple who inspired Alone in Berlin