The pianist that Furtwängler couldn’t save
NewsI am just about to devour a new book by Oliver Hilmes, titled Shadow Time.
The subtitle is Germany 1943: Everyday life and abysses.
Hilmes, author of a bestselling book on 1936 Berlin, turns his attention to the tragic tale of the brilliant young pianist Karlrobert Kreiten, denounced by his mother’s neighbour for a casual remark, condemned to death by the notorious Roland Freisler and hanged in September 1943, aged just 27. Wilhelm Furtwängler was among several musicians who appealed in vain for a reprieve.
Hilmes, unearthing much new documentation from family and Gestapo archives, describes the book as ‘the anatomy of a judicial crime’.
It is also a biography of the year 1943 when Berlin went to concerts while the Holocaust was reaching its murderous peak.
The book is published by Siedler in Germany at the end of January.
If true, this is another positive detail in WF’s favor.
Yes, we must save the reputation of that anti-American, anti-democratic, Antisemitic scoundrel who chose to work on the side of genocide and crimes against humanity. Good job M2N2K.
Dude, take some xanax, and listen up.
What’s missing in discussions like yours is that Furtwangler and other non-political figures in the Third Reich were forced to REACT to events swirling around them over which they had no control. They are not the ARCHITECTS of those events. How well would ANY OF US do in such unthinkable, unwinnable situations?
Yet arguments like yours seem 100% to lose sight of all of this.
It is possible to visit the room where Kreiten was murdered
https://www.gedenkstaette-ploetzensee.de/en/
A chilling experience.
Mr. Hilmes is a first class researcher and writer. I look forward to his latest work.
you might also enjoy “Overture for Hope” by Isabel Vincent available from the Met and Juilliard book stores, etc.
Will this be published for kindle in an English translation?
This is good to know. Since his terrific books on Liszt, Cosima Wagner, Alma Mahler all eventurally came out in English editions, I hope one for this new book will hurry along for us monolingual people…you, know, Americans.
I hope it appears in translation(s) very soon.
Hope there is an English translation soon.
This sounds like a very interesting read.
Claudio Arrau is said to have considered Karlrobert Kreiten “one of the biggest pianistic talents I ever met”. Decades later in an interview Arrau is still visibly affected by Kreiten’s death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeAFroNrlTI
After Kreiten’s execution in 1943 a Nazi-propagandist wrote an article in which he expressed satisfaction, that this was how an “honourless” artist should be dealt with. The author was Werner Höfer, who in postwar-years would make a career as the host of the popular and long-running political TV-show Internationaler Frühschoppen. Knowledge about Höfer’s journalistic activity during the Third Reich had been made public since 1962, but at that time nobody seemed to care. In 1973 he was even awarded the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany. It was only in 1987, in a different political climate concerning how to deal with Germany’s dark past, after a report by the magazine Der Spiegel about the “execution hymn”, that Höfer was forced – amid public pressure – to step down from his show. After initial denials of his involvement (the article had been redacted by others etc.), Höfer continued to downplay his role. He was able to continue working as a TV host until his death in 1997.
It is stories like these that send shivers down your spine.
Not to mention that only after Kreiten’s murder were his parents informed of his demise, along with a bill of 639.20 Reichsmark as a ”material contribution to the carrying out of the killing, payable within 8 days”.
As a young man in Hitlerian Germany a Wehrmacht soldier called Peter Wapnewski had been accused of defeatism, same as Karlrobert Kreiten. Wapnewski survived, Kreiten didn’t. In his 2005 memoir “Mit dem anderen Auge” the eminent mediaevalist and Wagner scholar Wapnewski dedicates a chapter to Karlrobert Kreiten, as a plea not to forget what men are able to do to other men. But also as a hope that deaths like the one of Karlrobert Kreiten will help the survivors to lead a better life.
In the vein of those murdered for their refusal to collaborate, I highly recommend Terrrence Malick’s recent film “A Hidden Life” based on the true story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant farmer born and raised in the village of St. Radegund.
In June 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued an apostolic exhortation declaring Jägerstätter a martyr. On 26 October 2007, he was beatified in a ceremony held by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins at the New Cathedral in Linz.
The movie was filmed in the Dolomites and is exceptionally beautiful.
There are about a half an hour of his solo piano recordings posted on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYp-0pGyKDU
The recordings date from 1934-38, and were reissued on LP in 1984.
Some very fine playing, which is made all the more poignant for the listener by the tragedy of his story.