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While the Musikkammer's ban on music by Jewish composers has been rigidly enforced, racial borderline cases, Jew-"Aryan" collaborations, and other knotty problems have kept Nazi theoreticians in a perpetual dither. "Aryan" Composer Richard Strauss's operas have escaped the ban, though several of his most successful (Die Schweigsame Frau, Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra) have librettos by Jews. Also unbanned, and of Jewish authorship, are librettos of "Aryan" Composer Franz Lehar's operettas (The Merry Widow, et al.). Carmen, a perennial favorite in German opera houses, was written by French Composer Georges Bizet, who is generally credited with some Jewish blood. Kulturkammer authorities got around this difficulty by officially "Aryanizing" Bizet. Although music by such Jewish composers as Mendelssohn, Mahler. Meyerbeer is now unheard in Germany, German publishing houses go on publishing it for export, and do a pretty good business at it.
In this penumbra of exceptions and compromises is jazz. Though officially condemned by Nazi authorities, it has never been absolutely banned. Negro jazz bands are not permitted; swing music has been publicly damned. But records by Josephine Baker, Guy Lombardo. Victor Young, Benny Goodman, Leo Reisman are still selling in Germany, as are the sheet-music compositions of George Gershwin and Irving Berlin. And British-born "sweet" Jazzband Leader Jack Hylton recently finished a two-month engagement at one of Berlin's variety show houses.
Fact is that, though they can find plenty of substitutes for blacklisted symphonies and operas, Nazis on dancing bent hardly know which way to turn. Last month an article in Die Spielschar, organ of the Hitler Youth Movement, moped long and heavily over this question. Die Spielschar agreed that the motions prescribed by swing are unworthy of a sober man, but protested that rump-slapping peasant dances were equally inappropriate for sophisticated Germans. With these two categories of dancing verboten, there would be nothing left but waltzes. "For those who seek a way to graceful and natural German dancing," sighed Die Spielschar, "the points of departure . . . are terrifyingly few."
*While the music of Jewish Atonalist Arnold Schönberg was immediately blacklisted, compositions by "Aryan" Atonalist Paul Hindemith have occasionally been heard, those of "Aryan" Atonalist Alban Berg were heard as late as 1934. Russian Modernist Igor Stravinsky is still a popular composer in the Third Reich.