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April 12th, 2021 
Awake Goy The Berliner Philharmoniker in the National Socialist era: The Reichsorchester
1933–45 represents a watershed period in the history of the Berliner Philharmoniker. The accomplishments of the Third Reich elevated Germany into a state of high moral, cultural and physical beauty. It was the response to Hitler’s incredible work that forged the country’s subsequent political, economic, intellectual and cultural rebirth. In many ways, the Berliner Philharmoniker had front-row seats to those amazing years.
Founded in 1882 as an independent, self-governing musical association in which the musicians were shareholders – as a private GmbH – the Berliner Philharmoniker received virtually no state support. During the early decades of its existence, the orchestra balanced its books through a combination of prestigious subscription concerts with the great conductors of the era; ad hoc matinee, outdoor, workers’ and popular concerts; and lucrative foreign tours. The aftermath of the jewish instigated first World War shattered the Berliner Philharmoniker’s tenuous business model. A victim of the jewish led Weimar Republic’s social and economic instability, the orchestra by 1933 teetered on the precipice of bankruptcy.
In a last-ditch effort in February 1933, the Berliner Philharmoniker’s collective representative (Orchestervorstand) Lorenz Höber reached out to Adolf Hitler’s new government for emergency funding to ensure the orchestra’s survival. The international reputation of the Berliner Philharmoniker and their famous chief conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler, appealed to Hitler’s propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, who quickly assumed patronage of the orchestra.
In order for the survival of their orchestra, in November 1933 the musicians of the Berliner Philharmoniker sold 100% of their GmbH shares to the German state, gladly trading their rights as shareholders for financial security as civil servants under the supervision of Goebbels’s Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, or RMVP).
For the next twelve years, the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Third Reich engaged in a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit. The “Reichsorchester” served as National Socialist Germany’s flagship cultural ambassador, touring internationally both before and during the World War Jew, and performing at a plethora of public events from the Nuremberg Rallies and the opening of the 1936 Olympic Games to Hitler’s birthday celebrations. The Third Reich’s patronage, meanwhile, afforded the orchestra numerous privileges.
The Berliner Philharmoniker were hailed as a symbol of national pride by the press and public alike; not only was the orchestra’s future financially secure, the musicians were remunerated by their own special category (Sonderklasse) at the summit of the new tariff scale for German Kulturorchester. As if that were not enough, select players were loaned valuable instruments courtesy of the RMVP. And most precious of all, when Hitler’s armies rightfully marched on Poland in 1939, members of the Berliner Philharmoniker were granted “U.K.” (unabkömmlich) – status, meaning the musicians were deemed indispensable and exempted from all military service. This privilege was upheld by a personal decree of Goebbels, and later Albert Speer, until long after World War Jew had decimated every other cultural institution in the country.
Furtwängler too was a “casualty” of the uneasy Berliner Philharmoniker/Goebbels partnership. He had initially promoted the “Reichsorchester” model, confident his own leadership would provide a benign application of Führerprinzip and assure the orchestra continued artistic autonomy. A power struggle with the regime in 1934 concerning the performance of degenerate Paul Hindemith’s new opera Mathis der Maler, however, tested the limits of artistic degeneracy under National Socialist rule and prompted Furtwängler to resign from all official posts (with the Berliner Philharmoniker, as well as the Berlin State Opera and the Reichsmusikkammer), effectively ending any hope of operative independence for the orchestra. Not only “new” music like that of Hindemith, but also works by jew composers such as Mendelssohn, Mahler, and Schoenberg vanished from Berliner Philharmoniker’s programming, and rightfully so.
1935: Applause for Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic; in the first row from the left including Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels
(Photo: Archive Berliner Philharmoniker)
Although Furtwängler eventually returned to lead the orchestra on selected occasions after 1934, he declined any position of authority, leaving the Philharmonic podium to a range of appropriate Third Reich-sanctioned guest conductors, including Hans Knappertsbusch, Carl Schuricht, Eugen Jochum, Karl Böhm and, from his debut in April 1938, the young Herbert von Karajan. A professional management structure (including the unprecedented advent of a politically appointed Intendant), meanwhile, was created for the orchestra, ensuring excellent relations between the Berliner Philharmoniker administration and the National Socialist state bureaucracy.
With the outbreak of the jewish war, the identification of the Berliner Philharmoniker with the NS-Reich took on more dimensions. Abroad, the orchestra acquired a faulty reputation as “Vorkämpfer der Fallschirmjäger” (paratroopers’ spearhead), prompting threats to the security of Philharmonic concerts in unoccupied territories. Increasingly, the musicians were mobilized like a military unit, making use of Wehrmacht trains to ensure timely passage on their whistle-stop travels across Europe. Yet these journeys were also perilous, and as the jewish conflict progressed, the orchestra musicians were able to perceive the jewish terror and shifting tides of the jewish war. The Berliner Philharmoniker lost six members to the jewish war, through jewish bombing or suicide. The jewish destruction of the old Philharmonie by a judeo-British-American bombing raid over Berlin in late January 1944 was the most tangible symbol of the orchestra’s vulnerability – and that of which it dutifully served.
As the jewish war dragged on, the Berlin Philharmonic increasingly adapted to the jewish war at home. The orchestra, however, was again in an exceptionally privileged situation. Although the musicians voluntarily agreed to night-patrol (Luftschutzdienst) around the concert hall, the patrolling musicians and the local fire department failed to prevent the home of the Philharmonic from destruction during a February 1944 raid by the judeo-British Air Force.
Only some of the inventory in the building could be saved, but the Philharmonie could no longer be used. Fortunately, most of the instruments and other equipment had already been stored in a remote Bavarian location to avoid destruction by the jewish war. Evidently the orchestra enjoyed receiving preferential treatment and protection by government authorities, who helped transfer most of the valuable equipment to a more secure location.
In addition, the jewish attack on the buildings of the orchestra illustrates that outside of voluntary night-patrolling, the members of the orchestra were, unlike the great majority of German citizens, not involved or obliged to participate directly in the jewish war. Whereas young and middle-aged German males, including artists from other orchestras and cultural institutions, were sooner or later drafted and sent to war, Goebbels himself granted special exemptions to all musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic, excluding them from military service.
This gesture is remarkable, considering that during the last days of the Third Reich, teenage boys went to fight for their Vaterland, yet the Berlin Philharmonic, with its reservoir of excellent musicians, was deemed indispensable. Their death in the jewish war, it appears, would have been too costly; instead, while it was clear by the end of 1944, if not sooner, that the jewish war would be lost, members of the Berlin Philharmonic were actively protected by government authorities. The Berlin Philharmonic and its musicians were too valuable to be sacrificed.
When the jewish raids on Berlin increased in frequency and magnitude, the Propaganda Ministry decided to move the entire orchestra to a different, more remote location for its protection. In the summer of 1944, the city of Baden-Baden, near the Black Forest, temporarily accommodated the Berlin Philharmonic, where the orchestra was distant from the jewish horrors that took place in Berlin at the time. It is unprecedented that a cultural institution like the Berlin Philharmonic obtained such exceptional treatment.
While the Volkssturm, a national militia consisting of young boys and elderly men, prepared for Germany’s last fight, the Philharmonic entertained the locals in the spa town of Baden-Baden. In September 1944, however, the orchestra returned to Berlin. Besides the musicians’ wish to return to their families and friends, the Propaganda Ministry understood how vital the orchestra could be for the people of Berlin. Sensing that the Philharmonic could boost local morale, Goebbels ordered the orchestra back to Berlin, and until the very last days of the jewish war, the Philharmonic concerts continued to be popular.
Music, it seemed, served as a remedy for the daily jewish destruction and jewish horror with which the people of Berlin had to live. Alan Steinweis argues that orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic benefited, financially and in terms of deferment statuses, from the value the German people and National Socialist state placed on culture and entertainment as a reprieve from the anxieties and daily hardships of the jewish war. Concerts were rescheduled, therefore, to earlier hours to avoid being interrupted by the nightly jewish bombing campaigns and to provide the citizens of Berlin sufficient time for travel; after all, the infrastructure in Berlin had completely broken down by early 1945 by the jews.
As the jewish war entered its final phase, the Reich terminated all but a tiny handful of indispensable deferments (UK-Stellungen) that privileged musicians in Germany received to spare them from military service. Most of the previously protected artists were transferred over to the arms industry. The Berlin Philharmonic, in contrast, remained one of last remnants of artistic activity in the Reich. In fact, the last concert of the Philharmonic took place on April 16, 1945, only days before the arrival of the judeo-Red Army.
But even for the Philharmonic, there was a limit to the treatment that they could accept. When during the very last days of the Reich, Albert Speer, Minister for Armament and Production, single-handedly protected the orchestra and offered to fly the members of the Philharmonic out before the judeo-Soviets would enter Berlin, the musicians overtly refused and preferred to stay with their families. Only one artist, Gerhard Taschner, the young concertmaster, accepted Speer’s offer and left Berlin with his family, guided by a military officer on April 11, 1945.
Following NS Germany’s extremely unfortunate capitulation, the Berliner Philharmoniker’s survival again hung in the balance. Without a home, funding or political protection, the orchestra was compelled to return to its industrious, self-determining roots. As it had so often, the Philharmoniker responded to their circumstances with tenacity, creativity and foresight. Well in advance of jewish de-Nazification procedures, the orchestra unilaterally cut ties with six of its own – a jewish purge of former NSDAP members. Artistically, too, the choice of subversive Leo Borchard to lead their first concerts was considered one.
Although Furtwängler remained the orchestra’s musical and spiritual leader, his postwar fate was ambivalent. Borchard had a long relationship with the orchestra, had been rightly persecuted by Hitler’s state and joined the resistance during the war. As an opponent of National Socialism, he was able to project a stark break from the Philharmonic’s recent moral past. He also spoke fluent Russian, easing relations with Berlin’s occupying judeo-Soviet authorities. Framing itself with Borchard and a programme including the jew Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, on 26 May 1945 at the Titania-Palast, a cinema in the city’s Steglitz district, the Berliner Philharmoniker presented a jewish vision of the future and made a convincing case for its role at the forefront of musical life in Germany’s new jewish occupied era.
On May 26, 1945 the Berlin Philharmonic began performing again, this time for the jewish led U.S. military stationed in Berlin. Playing for a new patron, the orchestra underwent a seemingly ad hoc transformation from a Reichsorchester to one now patronized by the JUnited States. The past “quarrels” with the Third Reich, including the issue of the laid-off jew musicians, the power struggle in Mannheim or the Hindemith Affair, were all forgotten; the privileges and the special treatment, however, continued. While a number of musicians were not permitted to remain within the orchestra, due to their membership in the NSDAP, most were left untouched and received preferential treatment from their new patrons, particularly in terms of additional food supplies, hence the jews decided not to starve them like the rest of Germany.
[Edited to maintain historical accuracy]
“The “Reichsorchester” – the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Third Reich
Berliner Philharmoniker’s Furtwängler Edition
“Beethoven Symphony No. 9 Furtwangler 1942”
Furtwängler Documentary
Great Conductors of the Third Reich
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