Jazz in Germany - Years of National Socialism, The 30s and The Missing 40s

Years of National Socialism, The 30s and The Missing 40s

Jazz was much more than just a creative pastime; in fact, people saw jazz as the "essence of the era's modernism," a strong surge toward greater equality and emancipation, posing as a perfect advocate for a democracy in Germany. With its debonair, carefree interdependence on chorus-line culture of the cabarets of Berlin, some dubbed jazz as the "incarnation of American vitalism." Yet, despite the liberal attitudes of the Weimar democracy, the public and private sentiment toward blacks, including African Americans, was ambivalent; there was a lack of black jazz musicians in Germany. Regardless of their social situation, the deeply engrained and institutionalized racism of German society was not tolerant of blacks. For instance, many nationalistic student fraternities rejected student members who were colored or married to colored females. Furthermore, in 1932, all the conservative musicians and critics were denigrating jazz as a product of "negro" culture, which provided the government the fodder to forbid hiring of colored musicians. Thus, for many African American artists, popularity was a mere facade of a grim reality of being seen as a "racial alien." One critic even went as far as to call jazz a mere "negro noise," having only one purpose: "to introduce obscenities into society."

Paul Schewers, a music critic, brought forth crude images of lewdly dancing black boys and girls in the service of procreation, implying that the lower forces were always surging through blacks, overtaking the rational light of morality and reason the way the white man grasped it. Undoubtedly, sensuality has an affinity with dance, and it was pervasive in jazz and in the lyrics, but this became a means of judging it as void of morality, and even aesthetics, reduced to being inferior to "high German culture."

In neighbouring European countries the trend continued in the 1930s. Fan magazines were created for jazz and so-called "hot clubs". The Nazi regime pursued and banned the broadcasting of jazz on German radio, partly because of its African roots and because many of the active jazz musicians were of Jewish origin; and partly due to the music's certain themes of individuality and freedom. For the Nazis, jazz was an especially threatening form of expression. An anti-jazz radio broadcast From the Cake Walk to Hot sought a deterrent effect with "particularly insisting musical examples."

Perhaps the source of the critique against Jazz was the modernity it implied; in fact, many of the Jazz critics were those who were against any form of modernity. Those WWI veterans with Fascist pretensions and of the anti-Semitic Freikorps banded with other members in the National Socialist movement in denouncing Jews and blacks. This burgeoning hatred of jazz and its subculture infected the entire Nazi party structure that Hitler and his associates were trying so desperately to erect.

Needless to say, Hitler was not fond of modernism in the arts, which included music; in the Nazi party's program of February 1920, he threatened to enforce future governmental laws against such inclinations in art and literature. Even though he never publicly spoke out against jazz specifically in the Weimar Republic, one can infer that Hitler's sentiments toward jazz must have had strong ties to his perception of racial hierarchy, with jazz, not surprisingly, being at the very bottom.

In the 1930s, jazz began to see its downturn and started to suffer. In the eyes of the social and racial bigots, Jazz's potential for being linked with the down-trodden minorities and pariahs of German society - the blacks and Jews - rendered it suspect. To a great extent, Jazz shared a similar fate with other postwar modernist art such as atonal music. It wasn't until 1931 that many crucial British and American jazz players began to leave the country as they faced increasing xenophobic harassment from colleagues and authorities. Many thought that the death of Jazz was upon them, but little did they anticipate that it would be reborn into vitality and health under a dictatorship.

Up until 1935, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, had hoped to convince and persuade the public via anti-Jazz propaganda, rather than prohibit Jazz. However, jazz was officially banned in 1935 (WFMU Staff). In 1935, the Nazi government did not allow German musicians of Jewish origin to perform any longer. The Weintraub Syncopators - most of whom were Jewish - were forced into exile. They worked abroad during much of the ‘30s, touring throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East before settling in Australia in 1937. Even people with a single Jewish grandparent like swing trumpeter Hans Berry were forced to play undercover or to work abroad (in Belgium, the Netherlands or in Switzerland).

Other dance bands and musicians were not even that fortunate. For example, Mitja Nikisch, son of the celebrated classical conductor Arthur Nikisch and himself a respected classical pianist, had created a fine popular dance ensemble in the '20s, the Mitja Nikisch Tanz Orchester, which played in prominent venues. The Nazi regime brought about its demise, leading Nikisch to commit suicide in 1936.

From 1937 onward, American musicians in Europe couldn't cross German borders. Admittedly, in spite of such persecution it was still possible, at least in major cities, to buy jazz records until the beginning of the war; however, the further development of, and the contact with, the American Jazz World were largely interrupted. Officially the "Reichsmusikkammer" (Reichs Music Chamber) supported dance music that bore some traits of Swing, but listening to foreign stations, which regularly played jazz, was penalised from 1939 on. Even after certain songs and performers were banned in Germany, several radio stations played jazz music by printing a new, German-centric label. For example, the song “Tiger Rag” became “Schwarzer Panther,” or the “black panther.” “Joseph! Joseph!” became “Sie will nicht Blumen und nicht Schokolade,” which translates as “She wants neither flowers nor chocolate” (WFMU Staff).

Some musicians did not want to follow this command. Thus, for example, when Jazz was finally prohibited by the Nazis at the beginning of the war, the clarinettist Ernst Höllerhagen left Germany for exile in Switzerland.

At that time, only a relatively small number of people in Germany knew how jazz music sounded in America - at that time, swing - and that it was Jazz. With the pressing wartime effort from 1941–1943, the Nazis accidentally fostered the jazz craze by forcing bands from Nazi-occupied nations in Western Europe to perform, bringing hot swing. Eventually, the Nazi party realized that jazz could not be removed entirely from Germany (WFMU Staff). The Nazis even re-developed and newly produced some pieces, giving them new lyrics, in special studios. One example is the song "Black Bottom", which was presented as "Schwarzer Boden". For some Germans, the banned foreign stations with jazz programs were very popular.

The Nazis on the one hand would jam transmissions from the Allies' stations, but on the other hand would also copy them. The band Charlie and His Orchestra is considered as a negative example, also called Mr. Goebbels Jazz Band. Several of Germany’s most talented swing musicians, such as saxophonist Lutz Templin and vocalist Karl “Charlie” Schwedler, were active in a Jazz band. Here the Nazis replaced the original texts with their own provocative propaganda texts that were pro-Nazi and anti-American/British. For example, the lyrics for “Little Sir Echo” has anti-American/British appeal with lyrics such as “German U-boats are making you sore, You’re always licked, not a victory came through…You’re nice, little fellow, but by now you should know that you can never win this war!” Goebbels’ propaganda was broadcast over pirated short-wave frequencies into America, Britain, and Canada in order to spread fear and weaken the morale of Germany’s enemies (WFMU Staff).

The situation intensified in 1942 with the entry of the United States in the war. For diplomats of foreign embassies and Wehrmacht members, a couple of jazz clubs continued to remain open in Berlin. In addition, individual, illegitimate venues and private parties still played jazz. In 1943 jazz record production was stopped.

The Swing-Jugend, or Swing Youth, was a movement among mainly youth from 14–20 years old who dressed, danced, and listened to jazz in defiance of the Nazi regime. The Nazi party acted against this movement by detaining several of the young leaders of the Swing Youth and sending them to concentration camps. However, the Swing Youth continued to resist the Nazi party by participating in prohibited swing and jazz activities (Neuhaus). Charlie and His Orchestra was moved in the still bombproof province. Jazz was also incorporated into musical works such as operas and chamber music through “art-jazz,” which utilized jazz-inspired and ragtime-inspired syncopated rhythms and modes. Famous operas such as Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf! and Boris Blacher’s Concertante Music for Orchestra are examples of art-jazz (Dexter).

The Nazi regime passed notorious edicts banning jazz records and muted trumpets calling them degenerate art or entartete Kunst. “Degenerate Music” was an exhibit sponsored by the Nazi regime which singled out “degeneracy” or the use of atonal music, jazz, discordant-sounding organization of tones and the individual composers and conductors, both of Aryan and non-Aryan descent. The “Degenerative Music” exhibit actually had the opposite effect of what the Nazis had hoped because soldiers became interested in genuine jazz (Potter). The documentary film "Swing Under the Swastika" looks at Jazz music under the Nazi regime in Germany, and at the cases of the Madlung sisters who were sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp merely for owning jazz records. There are also interviews with jazz drummer and guitarist Coco Schumann and pianist Martin Roman, who were saved in the camps so they could and had to play for SS officers and during executions in Auschwitz as part of the `Ghetto Swingers'.