Music and politics after the Holocaust: Menuhin’s Berlin concerts of 1947 and their aftermath
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2011.751n5006Keywords:
Post-World War II era, Germany, displaced persons, jewish community, Yehudi Menuhin, Wilhelm FurtwänglerAbstract
Between September 27 and October 3, 1947, Yehudi Menuhin gave six performances in Berlin, two of them together with Wilhelm Furtwängler, who had just been cleared by the denazification tribunals in Austria and Germany. Because of the German audience and the Furtwängler collaboration, these concerts led to a scandal in the Jewish community and the Displaced Persons camp in Germany as well as Jewish communities abroad. I turn first to the historical background of these performances, specifically the position of Menuhin and Furtwängler toward each other and their roles in postwar Germany. I will then chronicle the events of September and October 1947 through the lenses of Abraham S. Hyman, legal consultant to the American Advisers on Jewish Affairs in Germany, and Yehudi Menuhin and his biographers, to reveal the complexity of the events. Lastly, I will scrutinize the reception of the concerts to shed light on the reasons for and impact of the scandal. I argue that these concerts were mishandled in their organization and aims, in that politics played too large a role in the events during a time when the Jewish people suffered severe trauma in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
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