The playwright who changed Furtwängler’s tune

Herbie G says:

Are you for real, NL??? Furtwangler was vociferously opposed to the Nazis and initially refused to sack the Jewish players in the BPO despite increasing pressure from Goebbels and his henchmen. He never joined the Nazi party. He was bold enough to write open provocative polemics excoriating Hitler and Nazism; he refused to give the Nazi salute at this concerts and, when under pressure, he strode on to the podium with his baton held aloft in his right hand. He refused to conduct at Hitler’s birthday concerts (he was diplomatically unwell at these events). When he was warned of the consequences of failing to sack his Jewish players this became inevitable (if he didn’t, someone else would) so he gave the players letters of commendation that enabled them to find work in the countries to which they fled.
Furtwangler also resigned his state appointments because the Nazis had branded the composer Hindemith (not a Jew) as degenerate and banned the performance of his works.
The Nazis demanded that Furtwangler swear allegiance to the party, but he refused to do so, merely agreeing that Hitler was in charge of cultural policy – a real no-brainer.
As for Furtwangler profiting from the Nazis, he reputedly turned down a huge monetary reward offered to him in the form of a pension. He never conducted the Horst-Wessel song and never attended political meetings. Only twice did he conduct in Nazi-occupied territory – in Prague, where he performed Czech nationalist music. He assisted refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany and was friendly with the German Resistance Movement that planned the 20th July assassination plot against Hitler.
I may have a faulty memory – correct me if need be – but when I saw the play ‘Taking Sides’ it was all about the determination of an obsessive American general deputing Major Steve Arnold to ‘get the bandmaster at all costs’ to make an example of him. During the play Arnold questions Furtwangler, to make sure that he is convicted at his forthcoming denazification hearing, but his subordinates discover, as does he, that there is virtually nothing that can indict him for collaboration in the Nazi machine.
In these circumstances, I fail to see how NL ‘saw Furtwangler in a different light’ as a result of seeing Harwood’s play. From where I am sitting, he was courageous to the point of recklessness. If one excoriates him and accuses him of ‘collaboration’, then the same applies to every butcher, baker and candlestick-maker who lived in Germany between 1933 and 1945. In fact, he believed that music was the final bastion of sanity in a Germany gone mad and that’s why he remained at his podium until the final months of the Third Reich, when the Gestapo were after him, and he fled to Switzerland. His denazification hearing exonerated him but he was a broken man and died shortly afterwards.
For my part, I have no axe to grind – I am not that fond of Furtwangler’s performances (although Edwin Fischer’s performance of the slow movement of Furtwangler’s Symphonic Concerto under the composer’s baton is, in my opinion, magnificent) and on the other hand I do like Karl Boehm’s recordings – and he was undoubtedly a collaborator.
The other side of the coin is Karajan, the Nazi party member who was chosen to succeed Furtwangler. At the end of the war, Walter Legge wanted him to come to London and make recordings for EMI, which he did, without having to account for himself in a denazification enquiry.
I cannot find it in myself to have any kind of ‘view’ of a musician’s artistic endeavours just because he was a pleasant or unpleasant person. What does NL think about Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Legge’s wife, a party member who never accounted for herself up to her death? What about Walter Gieseking and Wilhelm Backhaus? Wolfgang Schneirderhan? Reginald Goodall?