Music: Furtw

The London Clipper last week brought to Manhattan a copy of the first dispassionate and detailed account of music in Adolf Hitler's Germany. The Baton and the Jackboot by Berta Geissmar (Hamish Hamilton; 155) is the record of a Mannheim Jewess who managed to stay in the midst of Nazi musical politics until her escape from Germany before the war. Miss Geissmar was secretary of the Berlin Philharmonic. Her book gives an intimate picture of one of Nazi Germany's two world-famed musical figures, Conductor Wilhelm FurtwĠngler (the other: Composer Richard Strauss).

Furtwängler is generally rated among the first half-dozen maestros of the...

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