Because music is so important to Lieder-loving Germans, music is also important to the German Government. For generations opera houses and music schools have been supported by the state. When, in 1933, the Nazis came into power, one of their first concerns was the organization, with characteristic German thoroughness, of Germany's musical life along strictly Nazi lines. Dominant in the official Nazi attitude toward music were: 1) the Nazi theories of race, 2) Nazi objections to all satirical, "unwholesome" or experimental types of art. Public performance of works by Jewish composers like Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler was banned. Likewise banned (though somewhat less systematically) were the discordant works of atonalists and other modernist composers.
Last week in the industrial town of Düsseldorf, Nazi musical authorities opened a Reich Music Congress, attended by musical big& little-wigs from all over Germany. Outstanding event on the program was an exhibition of "degenerate music" patterned after the exhibition of "degenerate art" that drew throngs in Munich last summer (TIME, Aug. 2). Scheduled for the pillory were compositions by Atonalists Schönberg, Berg and Hindemith, jazz, theoretical and critical writings by Jews and modernist sympathizers.
Sponsoring this meeting was the world's most formidable cultural organization, Germany's Kulturkammer (Chamber of Culture). Under the directorship of club-footed Minister of Propaganda Paul Joseph Goebbels, the Kulturkammer controls all artistic activity that takes place within German borders. Important among its seven sub-chambers (literature, music, press, theatre, art, cinema, radio) is the Musikkammer, presided over by 65-year-old Peter Raabe, one of Germany's numerous lesser symphonic conductors. Every musician in Germany, from symphonic composer to drummer in a town band, must be a member of the Musikkammer. The Kammer fixes and assures collection of composers' royalties, decrees what type of music shall be played and who shall or shall not be permitted to play it. Securely under its thumb are the activities of Germany's world-renowned opera houses, music conservatories, symphony orchestras. Periodically the Musikkammer makes recommendations to Chancellor Hitler himself who bestows upon deserving Nazi musicians the title of Professor (now an honorary designation without academic significance). Membership in the Musikkammer (and hence participation in Germany's professional music life) is limited to qualified and politically tractable "Aryans."