The Reich's Orchestra:The Berlin Philharmonic 1933-45

This book represents the first comprehensive study of the relationship between Hitlers regime and its musical crown jewel, the Berlin Philharmonic. Nazi patronage afforded the Berlin Philharmonic innumerable privileges unique among German cultural institutions. The orchestra accepted these benefits with a combination of gratitude, apprehension, and vindication. As the musicians attempted to balance their exceptional status with a degree of artistic and organizational autonomy, tensions among ideological principle, legal jurisdiction, personal taste, and pragmatic regulation revealed profound contradictions at the heart of the Nazi State. In terms of institutional development, the transformations of the Berlin Philharmonic between 1933 and 1945 remain the model for the orchestras organization to the present day. Drawing together documents from orchestra, state, and private archives, this book reflects the experience of a major cultural institution, at once distressingly typical of Germanys Nazi experience, and astonishingly distinct.