Music among the Ruins: Classical Music, Propaganda, and the American Cultural Agenda in West Berlin (1945-1949).

Abstract

With Germany’s unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945, the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) prepared to implement the most ambitious cultural re-education program it had ever undertaken. An examination of classical music culture in West Berlin reveals how the American Military Government used classical music as a tool for re-education and re-orientation. Between the years 1945 and 1949, the American agenda evolved from combating Nazism to containing Communism, as alterations in music control policies reflected the incipient Cold War. An analysis of concert repertoires, interviews, musical scores, photographs, program notes, radio broadcasts, and governmental correspondence, exposes how American authorities altered the performance context of German classical music The early postwar experience of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, under American cultural officer John Bitter’s guidance, exemplifies the irony of encouraging greater artistic freedom through increased censorship and control, providing an illuminating case study with regard to American cultural re-education efforts. As the primary ensemble residing in the American sector, the Philharmonic would be complicit in its own symbolic domination, to borrow Pierre Bourdieu’s term, by acquiescing to certain American Military Government requirements in order to resume concertizing, such as performing for American troops and agreeing to certain alterations in personnel. By the end of 1947, as tensions increased between American and Soviet forces, Berlin’s cultural life became a new battleground as each occupier vied for the support of German artists and audiences. The evolving role of American occupying forces within Berlin’s political culture was paralleled by their treatment of German arts organizations, as the agenda shifted from a punitive position to one of patronage in the span of a few short years. Although much scholarship on postwar Berlin has rendered its ruins simply as allegories for the moral depravity of a nation, I believe we can instead locate a productive tension within the city’s destruction. Berlin’s cultural Wiederaufbau occurred not over but rather within the ruins of the cityscape, transforming the ruin from a passive space to a site of negotiation, renegotiation, and even transgression.