East German Music and the Problem of National Identity

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Notes

*An earlier draft of this article was presented at the 2008 World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities. The author wishes to thank Martin Mevius and Dean Vuletic for their helpful comments and criticism. Translations of German sources are by the author unless otherwise noted.

Schlenker, Das kulturelle Erbe in der DDR, 54–56.

Applegate and Potter, “Germans as the ‘People of Music,’” 1–35.

Mevius, Agents of Moscow, 11–12.

Quoted in Frolova-Walker, “‘National in Form, Socialist in Content,’” 331.

Ibid., 363.

See, for example, Ernst Hermann Meyer, “U¨ber sozialistischen Realismus,” Report from Musikfest und II. Kongreß des Verbandes Deutscher Komponisten und Musikwissen-schaftler, Leipzig, 23–31 October 1954. Reprinted in Dibelius and Schneider, Neue Musik im Geteilten Deutschland, 131–32.

These endeavors are described in detail in Chapters 5 and 6 of Mevius, Agents of Moscow.

Dessau, “Einiges, worüber wir Musiker nur wenig oder gar nicht sprechen,”12.

Lemke, “Foreign Influences on the Dictatorial Development of the GDR,” 98.

Janik, Recomposing German Music, 49ff.

Protokoll der Zentralen Delegiertenkonferenz am 23. und 24. Feb. 1957 in Berlin. In the Deutsches Musikarchiv Berlin, Musikinformationszentrum des Verbandes der Komponisten und Musikwissenschaftler der DDR, 51.

Köster, “‘… Wunderbar, Meister,’” 25.

Ulbricht, Speech at the Fifth Party Conference of the SED, July 1958. Quoted in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, 536.

Zur Weihen, Komponieren in der DDR, 34.

Janik, Recomposing German Music, 265.

Musicological studies of the twentieth century often divide musical developments into separate sections on Eastern and Western Europe. For example, see Morgan, Modern Times.

“Entschließung der zentralen Delegiertenkonferenz des VDK,” 10.

“Die deutsche Kultur ist unteilbar.” Quoted in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, 136.

Amos, Auferstanden aus Ruinen, 68.

Becher, “Zur Verteidigung der Einheit der Deutschen Kultur,” 280.

Ibid., 295.

Calico, “The Politics of Opera in the German Democratic Republic,” 255.

Ibid., 323.

Meeting of the VDK Executive Committee, 13–14 December 1958. In Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Künste, VDK Archiv, No. 90, 2.

Ibid., 4.

Calico, “The Politics of Opera in the German Democratic Republic,” 327.

Ibid., 323.

Ibid., 322.

This division was not established until 1954. The 1952 issues of Musik und Gesellschaft divide the reports into only two groups: one that mingles reports from East and West Germany (though admittedly including more reports from the East), and another of reports from the “people's republics”—i.e. from the Eastern Bloc. In 1953, reports fall into five categories: East Germany, West Germany, the Soviet Union, “people's republics,” and “further reports from abroad” (Weiteres Ausland).

Abusch, Speech to the Kulturbund, December 1961. Reprinted in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, 745–46.

“Stellungnahme des Verbandes Deutscher Komponisten und Musikwissenschaftler zu Stand und Aufgaben des musikalischen Schaffens in der DDR,” 386.

According to the Potsdam agreement, only the agreement of all four powers could end the occupation of Berlin. Therefore, West Berlin was not legally part of West Germany, but remained under the control of the Western Allies. While the West German Constitution had a line stipulating that all laws of the Federal Republic automatically applied to West Berlin, the SED maintained that West Berlin was a separate entity, and that Germany had actually been divided into three parts: West Germany, West Berlin, and the GDR.

Quoted in Borowsky, “Abgrenzung nach Westen.”

Klingberg, Politisch fest in unseren Händen, 65.

“Entschließung der Zentralen Delegiertenkonferenz des VDK,” 8.

Meyer, Musik im Zeitgeschehen, 151.

Norris, “Socialist Realism.”

Examples of socialist realist works include Ernst Hermann Meyer's Mansfelder Oratorium, which traces the history of mining in the German town of Mansfeld, Ottmar Gerster's Festovertüre 1948, which quotes from a number of political songs (including the “Internationale”), and Dmitri Shostakovich's Song of the Forest.

Serialism is a technique based on the strict ordering and manipulation of rows (series) of pitches, rhythms, and/or other musical elements.

For more on ideological interpretations of compositional techniques on both sides of the Iron Curtain, see my article “Between Dissonance and Dissidence.”

Quoted in Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 114.

Quoted in Slonimsky, Music since 1900, 1340.

Quoted in Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, 277.

Köster, Musik–Zeit–Geschehen, 59–60. Barsky's letter to Laux is reprinted in Dibelius and Schneider, Neue Musik im Geteilten Deutschland, 58–62.

Köster, Musik–Zeit–Geschehen, 68.

Lauter, “Der Kampf gegen den Formalismus in Kunst und Literatur, für eine fortschrittliche deutsche Kultur,” in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, 180.

Meyer, “Realismus: Die Lebensfrage der deutschen Musik,” in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, 188.

Ibid.

Finke et al., Arbeits- und Studienmaterial zur Frage des Formalismus und Realismus in der Musik, 3.

Ibid., 7.

Ibid., 21. The other two characteristics include the reflection of societal truth and the artistic mastery of form.

During this same period, cultural campaigns in the Soviet Union began to focus on the evils of “cosmopolitanism,” rather than “formalism.” While the term itself made its way to the GDR in the early 1950s, it appears to have had somewhat different uses and implications than it had in the Soviet Union. Indeed, as Kiril Tomoff has noted, the term “cosmopolitanism” in the Soviet Union had a number of different meanings. On one hand, the term undoubtedly had anti-Semitic connotations, seen especially in the use of terms such as “rootless” and “unpatriotic.” On the other hand, cosmopolitanism could also entail the favoring of Western culture (particularly popular culture) at the expense of Russian culture. Moreover, the musical campaigns against cosmopolitanism in the Soviet Union had the greatest impact on the membership of musical organizations (seen in efforts to increase Russian and decrease Jewish membership) and in attacks on musicologists, theorists, and critics—rather than composers and new music. See Tomoff, Creative Union, 152–53. While cosmopolitanism clearly still carried anti-Semitic overtones in the GDR as well, the written references I have found to cosmopolitanism appear to lack much of the other veiled anti-Semitic language seen in Soviet writings.

Meyer, “‘Lukullus’—erste Eindrücke von einer Probe,” memo to Nathan Notowicz, 12 March 1951. Reprinted in Dibelius and Schneider, Neue Musik im Geteilten Deutschland, 176.

Lauter, “Der Kampf gegen den Formalismus in Kunst und Literatur, für eine fortschrittliche deutsche Kultur,” in Dibelius and Schneider, Neue Musik im Geteilten Deutschland, 111.

Quoted in Dessau and Reinhold, “Let's Hope for the Best”, 97.

Calico, “The Trial, the Condemnation, the Cover-up,” 324. See also Lucchesi, Das Verhör in der Oper.

Calico, “The Politics of Opera in the German Democratic Republic, 1945–1961,” 203ff.

Meyer, Musik im Zeitgeschehen, 225–32.

Quoted in Köster, Musik–Zeit–Geschehen, 40.

Pollack, “Ostdeutsche Identität—ein multidimensionales Phänomen,” 301–2, 310; Jaeger, “Only in the 1990s Did I Become East German,” 143–55.