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Citizen of the Staatsoper: Erich Kleiber's Musical Migration
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2021
Abstract
Conductor Erich Kleiber was born in Vienna, made his reputation in Berlin, fled Nazism for Latin America, and tried briefly to return to postwar East Berlin before dying in 1956. His life illustrates the wide diversity in mid-century migratory stories. For so many of Kleiber's fellow migrants, flight disrupted established structures, contexts and networks. More recently, scholars have emphasized refugees' creative self-reinvention. Kleiber's story illustrates both these outcomes while embodying neither; his narrative is one of musical and political continuity, involving a particular kind of Habsburg cultural nostalgia, insulated by his wealth and fame.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Central European History Society of the American Historical Association
Footnotes
I am grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies, the Botstiber Foundation, COMEXUS (the Fulbright-García Robles Commission in Mexico), the German Fulbright Commission, the Honors College at New Mexico University, the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin for their support of this project. I also thank audiences at Lynchburg University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Salem State University, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Texas at El Paso, as well as at yearly meetings of the German Studies Association, the Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the American Historical Association. Insights from Monica Black, Paulina Bren, Katrin Paehler, and the two anonymous CEH reviewers greatly strengthened this piece. Finally, Pepe García-Bryce led me to Kleiber, and to the larger book project from which this article comes.
References
1 Carolyn Wray, “Carlos Kleiber Voted Greatest Conductor of All Time,” BBC Music Magazine, March 17 2011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/bbcworldwide/worldwidestories/pressreleases/2011/03_march/carlos_kleiber.shtml).
2 Vierra, Sarah Thomsen, “Central, Not Subsidiary: Migration as a Master Narrative in Modern German History,” in Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective, ed. Meng, Michael and Seipp, Adam R. (Berghahn Books, 2020), 200–16Google Scholar.
3 On musical mobility both within and beyond art music, see Applegate, Celia, The Necessity of Music: Variations on a German Theme (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 3.
4 Gregor, Neil and Irvine, Thomas, “Introduction,” in Dreams of Germany: Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor, ed. Gregor and Irvine (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2018), 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 John Russell, Erich Kleiber: A Memoir (London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1957), 147.
6 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 187, author's emphasis and exclamation points. This comment is most likely “Austria rediviva,” or “Austria revived,” incorrectly transcribed by Russell. Thanks to Rok Stergar for his assistance.
7 Malachi Ha-Cohen, “From Empire to Cosmopolitanism: The Central European Intelligentsia 1867–1968,” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 5 (2006): 117–33, esp. 118.
8 On this concept, the classic statement is Krista O'Donnell, Renate Bridenthal, and Nancy Reagin, eds., The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). Regarding the history of music and musicking, Celia Applegate's work is central, in particular, The Necessity of Music as well as Applegate and Pamela Potter, eds., Music and German National Identity (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2002). Also see Gregor and Irvine, Dreams of Germany.
9 Russell, Erich Kleiber. On Russell and the Kleiber correspondence, see Rosamund Bernier Russell, private email to me, February 1, 2013. The two main archival holdings of Kleiberiana are Kleiber's correspondence with composer Alban Berg, in the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus and the Österreichischer Nationalbibliothek (which contains a few other Kleiber letters), and Berlin's Bundesarchiv-Lichterfelde. The Teatro Colón archive (inaccessible to me) contained a few Kleiber letters, some of which are translated in Duilio Abelardo Dobrin, “Erich Kleiber: The Argentine Experience (1926–1941)” (Ph.D. diss, School of Music, Ball State University, 1981). The several interesting biographies of Carlos Kleiber do not deal in much depth with the subject of his father.
10 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 19–23, 36–37, 43; Gerhard Brunner, “Kleiber, Erich,” The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (https://libezp.nmsu.edu:2072/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.15119); “Kleiber, Erich,” Oxford Music Dictionary (https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.15119).
11 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 19–23, 36–37, 43, 54–56; Brunner, “Kleiber, Erich,” The New Grove Dictionary of Opera; “Kleiber, Erich,” Oxford Music Dictionary.
12 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 62–63, esp. 71. The year 1923 was also the occasion of Kleiber's first guest-conducting stint in Vienna: see Matthias Pasdzierny, “Erich Kleiber,” in Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und Musikerinnen der NS-Zeit, ed. Claudia Maurer Zenck, Peter Petersen, and Sophie Fetthauer (Hamburg: Universität Hamburg, 2014) (https://www.lexm.uni-hamburg.de/object/lexm_lexmperson_00001840).
13 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 14, author's emphasis.
14 Russell Erich Kleiber, 76–78, 134–35; Brunner, “Kleiber, Erich,” The New Grove Dictionary of Opera.
15 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 67, 70.
16 There is some disagreement about Kleiber's presence in Milan. Gerhard Brunner in the New Grove Opera Dictionary claims that Kleiber's Italian opera debut came as late as the 1951 Maggio Musicale in Florence; John Russell discusses multiple appearances at La Scala beginning in the 1920s.
17 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 103–4.
18 I. G. Labastille, “Music in Argentina: South America's ‘Spring’ Season Enriched by German and Italian Guest Leaders,” New York Times, December 22, 1929.
19 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 104, 108.
20 The Kleibers worshiped at and had their son baptized at St. Hedwig's Cathedral, behind the Staatsoper and a center of anti-Nazi sentiment as opposed to their neighborhood church, St. Bernhard's: Charles Barber, Corresponding with Carlos: A Biogaphy of Carlos Kleiber (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011), 12; Russell, Erich Kleiber, 60. Ruth Kleiber does seem to have had Jewish ancestry. See Alexander Werner, Carlos Kleiber. Eine Biographie (Mainz: Schott Verlag, 2008), 21ff.
21 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 130; Margaret Notley, “1934, Alban Berg, and the Shadow of Politics: Documents of a Troubled Year,” in Alban Berg and His World, ed. Christopher Hailey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 223. Emphasis in original.
22 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 141–42, 145–47. The Nazi authorities had rejected Kleiber's programming the Berg suite once before, in April 1934: see Notley, “1934, Alban Berg, and the Shadow of Politics,” 227, including excerpted letter from Kleiber to Berg, October 24, 1934, on 249. Kleiber and Furtwängler worked together at the Staatsoper, Berlin Philharmonic, and Staatskapelle. Kleiber suspected Furtwängler of pressuring him as a means of improving his own position after having supported the composer Paul Hindemith, whose jazz-inflected work the Nazi regime considered “entartete Kunst,” or degenerate. On the Hindemith affair, see, among others, Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
23 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 146.
24 Herbert F. Peyser, “Berg's ‘Lulu’ Wins Acclaim in Berlin,” New York Times, December 1, 1934, cited in Notley, “1934, Alban Berg, and the Shadow of Politics,” 257.
25 “Nazi Papers Score Dr. Furtwaengler,” New York Times, December 8, 1934. Russell notes that the Nazis had once arrested Kleiber at the German border, but does not provide specifics: Russell, Erich Kleiber, 149. Claudia Maurer Zenck clarifies that Göring tried unsuccessfully to stop Kleiber from leaving Germany. See Maurer Zenck, “Rücksicht vs Rückgrat. Miszellen zur Uraufführung der ‘Symphonischen Stücke aus der Oper Lulu,’” Die Musikforschung 64, no. 3 (2011): 259–67.
26 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 148; David Wooldridge, Conductor's World (New York and Washington: Praeger Publishers, 1970), 183–85; “Kleiber Again Resigns Post with Prussian Opera,” New York Times, January 2, 1935, 15.
27 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 147, 149; Matthias Pasdzierny, “Erich Kleiber.”
28 Barber, Erich Kleiber, 16: Alain Paris, Lexikon der Interpreten klassischer Musik im 20. Jahrhundert, 1992, 377; Nicolas Slonimsky, Dear Dorothy: Letters from Nicolas Slonimsky to Dorothy Adlow, ed. Electra Slonimsky Yourke (Rochester and Suffolk: University of Rochester Press, 2012), 505; David Patmore, A–Z of Conductors, Naxos Online (http://www.naxos.com/person/Erich_Kleiber/31643.htm#Arranger).
29 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 166–67.
30 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 159–60, 164, 166–67; “Won't Direct at La Scala: Kleiber Refuses Because of Milan Opera Ban On Jews,” New York Times, December 30, 1938, 10.
31 On immigrant “colonies” in Buenos Aires, see, inter alia, Samuel Baily, Immigrants in the Land of Promise: Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City 1870–1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999); María Mónica Bjerg, Historias de la inmigración en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2009); Benjamin Bryce, To Belong in Buenos Aires: Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralistic Society (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018); José C. Moya, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). César A. Dillon's work on the Asociación Wagneriana de Buenos Aires and other German-speaking cultural centers provides useful context: César A. Dillon, Asociación Wagneriana de Buenos Aires (1912–2002): historia y cronología (Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken, 2007). On Axis cultural relations, see Benjamin G. Martin, The Nazi-Fascist New Order for European Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 29. Martin concludes that the Nazi-Fascist “cultural Axis” was “not quite real,” in that it did not involve true alliance and coordination, but that it was useful to both sides to appear to be unified; see esp. 105.
32 Úrsula Prutsch and Gisela Cramer, ¡Americas Unidas! Nelson A. Rockefeller's Office of Inter-American Affairs (1940–1946) (Madrid: Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2012) as well as National Archives documents make clear that Nazi efforts to conduct other kinds of cultural diplomacy in Latin America, for example via radio, were always anemic and had basically ended by 1943.
33 Vera Giannini, “Fritz Busch: A Son Remembers His Father,” The Opera Quarterly 4, no. 2 (1986): 57–74, esp. 57, 59. Contrary to the depiction of the March events in Busch's son Hans's memory, the Bundesarchiv documents indicate that some employees of the Stadtstheater may have conspired with local Nazis to force Busch out: Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BArch) R/9361/V, Archivsignatur 78259.
34 Fritz Busch, Pages from a Musician's Life, trans. Marjorie Strachey (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1971), 211, 213; Grete Busch, Fritz Busch Dirigent (Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1970), 77; Peter Ebert, In This Theater of Man's Life: The Biography of Carl Ebert (Sussex: The Book Guild, 1999), 90; J. Hellmut Freund, “Fritz Busch. Ein deutscher Musiker draussen in der Welt,” in Musik im Exil: Folgen des Nazismus für die international Musikkultur, ed. Hanns-Werner Heister, Claudia Maurer Zenck, and Peter Petersen (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993). On Goebbels's funding German opera at the Colón, see BArch R55 15.9, Theaterwesen im Ausland, Akte 20553 (Argentina 1933–1943), for example, letter dated February 13, 1937, Bühnennachweis.
35 BArch RK H0033, file Carl Ebert.
36 BArch RK H0033, file Carl Ebert, letter “N.S.Betriebestelle Städtische Oper 20 May 1933.”
37 BArch R55/20553, Abschrift, letter from Buenos Aires German embassy to the Auswärtiges Amt, July 24, 1935. Ambassador von Thermann wrote to Berlin for money to pay for better Spanish-language translations of Wagner works like the Nibelungenlied and Tannhäuser.
38 Busch was the founding musical director of Glyndebourne, in Sussex, England, from 1934 on, bringing on Ebert as his director; he took long-running positions in Denmark and Sweden. But he did take Argentine citizenship in 1936, bought a vacation home in Uruguay, and returned to the Colón for brief stints thereafter until his death in 1951. BArch) R55/20553, Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda Abt I Argentinien, December 1, 1936, Thermann report about the German opera season.
39 BArch) R55/20553, Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda Abt I Argentinien, letter from von Thermann, April 13, 1937.
40 BArch) R55/20553, Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda Abt I Argentinien, February 13, 1937, letter from Bühnennachweis Vermittlungsstelle Berlin, Abteilung Gastspiele.
41 Barber, 17, 29; Russell, Erich Kleiber, 195.
42 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 195.
43 John Gunther, Inside Latin America (New York: Harper, 1941), 282–83. More generally, see J. P. Daughton, “When Argentina Was ‘French’: Rethinking Cultural Politics and European Imperialism in Belle-Epoque Buenos Aires,” The Journal of Modern History 80 (December 2008): 831–64; Jeane Delaney, “Immigration, Identity and Nationalism in Argentina, 1850–1950,” in Immigration and National Identities in Latin America, ed. Nicola Foote and Michael Goebel (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014); Sandra McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation: A History of Argentine Jewish Women, 1880–1955 (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2010); Robert Kelz, Competing Germanies: Nazi, Antifascist, and Jewish Theater in German Argentina, 1933–1965 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2020); Ronald C. Newton, “Indifferent Sanctuary: German-Speaking Refugees and Exiles in Argentina 1933–1945,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 24, no. 4 (November 1982): 395–420; Stefan Rinke, Der letzte freie Kontinent. Deutsche Lateinamerikapolitik im Zeichen transnationaler Beziehungen (Stuttgart: Heinz, 1996); Nicolas Shumway, The Invention of Argentina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
44 Barber, 20, 27.
45 Barber, 29; Rosalie Sitman, Victoria Ocampo y Sur: Entre Europa y America (Buenos Aires: Lumiére, 2003). See also Rosalie Sitman, “Protest from Afar: The Jewish and Republican Presence in Victoria Ocampo's Revista Sur in the 1930s and 1940s,” in Rethinking Jewish-Latin American Relations, ed. Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 132–60.
46 Nicolas Slonimsky, Dear Dorothy: Letters from Nicolas Slonimsky to Dorothy Adlow, ed. Electra Slonimsky Yourke (Rochester and Suffolk: University of Rochester Press, 2012), 186.
47 This is a vast literature. A sampling: Paulo Drinot and Alan Knight, eds., The Great Depression in Latin America (Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press, 2015); Michael Goebel, “Reconceptualizing Diasporas and National Identities in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1850–1930,” in Immigration and National Identities in Latin America, ed. Nicola Foote and Michael Goebel (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2014); Nicola Miller, In the Shadow of the State: Intellectuals and the Quest for National Identity in Twentieth-Century Spanish America (London and New York: Verso, 1999); Alexandra Stern, “Mestizofilia, biotipología y eugenesia en el México posrevolucionario: Hacia una historia de la ciencia y el estado, 1920–1960,” Relaciones. Estudios de Historia y Sociedad XXI, no. 81 (2000) (https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=13708104); Pablo Yankelevich, ed., Nación y extranjería (Mexico City: UNAM, 2009).
48 Carol A. Hess, Representing the Good Neighbor: Music, Difference, and the Pan American Dream (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), esp. chap. 2.
49 Corinne Pernet, “‘For the Genuine Culture of the Americas’: Musical Folklore, Popular Arts, and the Cultural Politics of Pan Americanism, 1933–1950,” in Decentering America, ed. Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 134, 141.
50 “Los conciertos sinfónicos del maestro Erich Kleiber,” La Prensa, October 8, 1931.
51 Letter dated September 19, 1939, cited in Russell, Erich Kleiber, 177.
52 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 190; letter cited is from January 1940.
53 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 193–94.
54 Samuel Claro Valdés, Rosita Renard, pianista chilena (Santiago: Editorial Andres Bello, 1993), 216.
55 Abel Eisenberg, Entre violas y violines: Crónica crítica de un músico mexicano (Mexico City: Edamex, 1990), 30–39, 53.
56 For Kleiber's multiple immigration documents into Mexico, see Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Mexico City, Mexico: F209/5/1 Departamento de Migracion 1927–1950 Argentinos, Caja 02 Dellacanonica-Laporte 134050/183/178.
57 Of this already small number, historians estimate that only twelve to eighteen hundred German-speaking refugees in Mexico were Jews. On immigration to Mexico in the 1930s and 1940s, see Haim Avni, “Cárdenas, México y los refugiados, 1938–1940,” Estudios interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 3, no. 1 (1992): 5–22; Daniela Gleizer, El exilio incómodo: México y los refugiados judíos, 1933–1945 (Mexico City: El Colegio de México/UAM-Cuajimalpa, 2011), esp. 40–41; Judit Bokser Liwerant, “Alteridad en la historia y en la memoria: México y los refugiados judíos,” in Encuentro y alteridad: Vida y cultura judía en América Latina, ed. Judit Bokser Liwerant and Alicia Gojman de Backal (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999), 342–61; Marcus G. Patka, Zu nahe der Sonne. Deutsche Schriftsteller im Exil in Mexiko (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999), 42; Pablo Yankelevich, ed., Nación y extranjería (Mexico City: UNAM, 2009); Pablo Yankelevich, ed., México, país refugio: La experiencia de los exilios en el siglo XX (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia; Plaza y Valdés, 2002); Katya Somohano and Pablo Yankelevich, eds., El refugio en México: Entre la historia y los desafíos contemporáneos (Mexico City: Comisión Mexicana de Ayuda a Refugiados and Secretaría de Gobernación, 2011).
58 On Chávez, see Leonora Saavedra, most recently Saavedra, ed., Carlos Chávez and His World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), as well as the work of Robert Parker and Alejandro L. Madrid, in particular In Search of Julián Carrillo and Sonido 13 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Also see Yolanda Tapia, “The Political Power of Carlos Chávez and His Influence upon Silvestre Revueltas and Blas Galindo” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Western Ontario, 2018).
59 Abel Eisenberg, Entre violas y violines: Crónica crítica de un músico mexicano (Mexico City: Edamex, 1990), 29.
60 AGN Mexico City, Carlos Chavez—Prensa Personal—Caja 3 Volumen II exp 40 Erich Kleiber, El Universal, March 1, 1942, and Excelsior, March 1, 1942.
61 The Ópera de México, 1938–1942, became the Ópera Nacional in 1943 and was part of the Chávez-run Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes soon thereafter. Its 1947 programs noted that the opera was by and for Mexicans. AGN Mexico City, Avila Camacho Caja 1126 703.4/96 Opera Nacional Subvencion 11-6-43; Avila Camacho Caja 0421 432.3/60 Filharmonicos DF Conflicto intergremial opera 2-4-43; Carlos Chavez collection, Correspondencia Caja 9, Vol I, exp 41 (1943 Opera Nacional), also Chavez collection, Correspondencia, Caja 9, Vol I, exp 42 (1947, Opera Nacional, undated draft mission statement beginning “Opera Nacional es una asociacion civil formada exclusivamente por mexicanos…”); 50 años de ópera en el Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City: Secretaria de Educación Pública, 1986), 37; Christian Kloyber and Marcus G. Patka, Österreicher im Exil. Mexiko 1938–1947, Eine Dokumentation (Vienna: Verlag Deuticke, 2002), 455.
62 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 77, 27, 230; Octavio Sosa, 70 años de ópera en el Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2004), 65ff; on Ponce and modernism, see Alejandro L. Madrid, Sounds of the Modern Nation: Music, Culture and Ideas in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), 92.
63 Rosaura Revueltas, Los Revueltas: biografía de una familia (Mexico City: Editorial Grijalbo, 1980), 204, 289. Antonia Teibler-Vondrak and Roberto Kolb-Neuhaus differ about the effect of Kleiber's edits on the modernist charge of Revueltas's score; see Antonia Teibler-Vondrak, “Auf den Spuren Erich Kleibers in Mexiko (1943–1944). Seine musikalischen und politischen Aktivitäten sowie seine Bearbeitungen von Redes und Música para charlar des mexikanischen Komponisten Silvestre Revueltas,” in Wiener Musikgeschichte. Annäherungen—Analysen—Ausblicke; Festschrift für Hartmut Krones, ed. Hartmut Krones, Julia Bungardt, Eike Rathgeber, Maria Helfgott, and Nikolaus Urbanek (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2009), 599, comment about the predominance of Kleiber's version is on 607–8; Roberto Kolb-Neuhaus, “Silvestre Revueltas's Redes: Composing for Film or Filming for Music?,” Journal of Film Music 2, no. 2–4 (March 2010): 127–44, and liner notes, Redes (DVD: Naxos, 2016) x n29 (English), xi n26 (Spanish).
64 Christian Kloyber, ed., Exilio y cultura: El exilio cultural austriaco en México (Mexico City: Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, 2002), 134–35; Patka, Zu nahe der Sonne, 125.
65 Ruth Aspöck, “Österreichische antifascistische Gruppen in Lateinamerika,” in Vertriebene Vernunft II: Emigration und Exil österreicher Wissenschaft, ed. Friedrich Stadler (Vienna: Jugend und Volk, 1988), 1000.
66 Kloyber and Patka, Österreicher im Exil, 342–43. Russell also describes this speech but dates it inaccurately to the last weeks of the war, when Kleiber was not in Mexico. See Russell, Erich Kleiber, 240.
67 Kloyber and Patka note, but do not describe the content of, this interview (on Por un mundo libre/Für eine freie Welt on Radio Nacional/IEFO): Kloyber and Patka, Österreicher im Exil, 340. On Freies Deutschland in Mexico, among others, see Renata von Hanffstengel, Cecilia Tercero Vasconcelos, and Silke Wehner Franco, eds., Mexiko. Das wohltempierte Exil (Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Interculturales Germano-Mexicanas, 1995); Patrik von zur Mühlen, Fluchtziel Lateinamerika. Die deutsche Emigration 1933–1945. Politische Aktivitäten und soziokulturelle Integration (Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1988); Fritz Pohle, Das mexikanische Exil. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der politisch-kulturellen Emigration aus Deutschland (1937–1946) (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1986).
68 Patka, Zu nahe der Sonne, 98–100.
69 Elisabeth Gronau, “Der Heinrich-Heine-Klub in Mexiko-Stadt, 1941–1946” (master's thesis, Neuere Deutsche Literatur, Humboldt University), 2005, 3.
70 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 198.
71 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 198–99, 202.
72 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 204.
73 Wooldridge, Conductor's World, 185; Patmore, A–Z of Conductors. Kleiber's postwar commitments in Latin America are mentioned, among others, in SAPMO-BArch DR 1/34 letter to Kleiber at the Hotel Bolivar in Lima, Peru, June 30, 1954, from Maria Rentmeister.
74 Montague Haltrecht, The Quiet Showman: Sir David Webster and the Royal Opera House (London: Collins, 1975), 142, 145–46, 173.
75 Haltrecht, The Quiet Showman, 175.
76 David Webster, “Kleiber: An Appreciation,” Tempo 39 (Spring 1956): 5–6.
77 Among the excellent work historicizing postwar German music, see Joy Calico's “Jüdische Chronik: The Third Space of Commemoration between East and West Germany,” Musical Quarterly 88, no. 1 (2005): 95–122; Joy Calico, “Schoenberg's Symbolic Remigration: A Survivor from Warsaw in Postwar West Germany,” The Journal of Musicology 26, no. 9 (Winter 2009): 17–43; Wolfgang Geiseler, “Zwischen Klassik und Moderne,” in So viel Anfang war nie. Deutsche Städte 1945–1949, ed. Hermann Glaser, Lutz von Pufendorf, and Michael Schöneich (Berlin: Siedler, 1989); Michael Haas, Forbidden Music (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013); Elizabeth Janik, Recomposing German Music: Politics and Musical Tradition in Cold War Berlin (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Maren Köster, Musik-Zeit-Geschehen. Zu den Musikverhältnissen in der SBZ/DDR 1945 bis 1952 (Saarbrücken: PFAU-Verlag, 2002); Marita Krauss, Heimkehr in ein fremdes Land. Geschichte der Remigration nach 1945 (Munich: Beck, 2001); David Monod, Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, and the Americans, 1945–1953 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Toby Thacker, Music After Hitler, 1945–1955 (London: Routledge, 2007); Matthias Tischler, “Musik in der Ära des Kalten Krieges,” in Andreas Meyer, Was bleibt?100 Jahre Neue Musik (Mainz: Schott, 2011), 135–61.
78 Applegate, The Necessity of Music, 301–2.
79 Thacker, Music After Hitler, 30, 34, 75; Applegate, The Necessity of Music, 301.
80 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Ministerium für Volksbildung to Kulturelle Beziehungen mit dem Ausland, March 8 1951; Kulturelle Beziehungen mit dem Ausland to Deutsche Volkspolizei, “Prof. Erich Kleiber—Frau Ruth Kleiber,” March 19, 1951.
81 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 212–15. The SED had been considering rebuilding the Staatsoper even before Kleiber's involvement: see Paul Stangl, Risen from Ruins: The Cultural Politics of Rebuilding East Berlin (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), 110–12.
82 Thacker, Music After Hitler, 202–3; SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, from the Intendant der Deutschen Staatsoper to the Staatliche Komission für Kunstangelegenheiten, HA Darstellende Kunst und Musik, May 12, 1952; Maria Rentmeister, “An den Vorsitzenden,” June 19, 1952; Stakuko became part of the Ministry of Culture in 1954.
83 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, no author, “Bericht Gastspielreise Dr. Kleiber,” undated.
84 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, unsigned document, “Bericht Gastspielsreise Dr. Kleiber,” December 11, 1952, 2, 4, 5, 6.
85 “KLEIBER CHOOSES REDS: Conductor Will Live in East Germany and Lead Its Opera,” New York Times, June 18, 1952, 30. The article quotes “Helmut Holtzhauer, chief of the East German government arts bureau” as stating that Kleiber had agreed to serve as music director of the East German state opera company for 1953.
86 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Kleiber to Herr Minister P. Wandel, September 12, 1952. Kleiber requested information about the Staatsoper's renovation and about the possibility of a contract. Also see Burghardt, Ich war nicht nur Schauspieler, 349–50.
87 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 214–15. Various documents echo this: for example, SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, document titled “Informationen,” undeated, includes the following: “Er erkundigte sich eingehend danach, ob der Aufbau der Staatsoper auf der völlige Restaurierung der alten Oper beruhe (Fridericus Rex).”
88 Thacker, Music After Hitler, 204: quotation is from SAPMO-BArch DR 1/34, Kleiber to Rentmeister, June 25, 1954.
89 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/34, “Angaben über einige Besprechungen mit Professor Kleiber,” November 16, 1954. Kleiber had been shown several houses near Heinrich-Mann-Platz, which he rejected as too noisy a location. Regarding Carlos Kleiber, see SAPMO-BArch DR 1/9797, Maria Rentmeister to Jlse Weintraudt [sic], October 15, 1954.
90 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, document titled “Wünsche von Herrn Prof. Kleiber,” undated.
91 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Erich Kleiber to “Sehr verehrter Herr Ministerpräsident,” Zürich, January 12, 1953 (the second page of this letter is missing); the response, by P. Wandel to Erich Kleiber, March 17, 1953, offers little concrete reassurance.
92 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, letter from Ruth Kleiber to “Herr Pötzsch,” undated, includes newspaper clipping dated January 25, 1953.
93 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Maria Rentmeister to Erich Kleiber, September 10, 1953.
94 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Erich Kleiber to “Sehr geehrte Herr Holtzhauer,” Zürich, December 1 1953.
95 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Erich Kleiber to Max Burghardt, June 21, 1954, Dolder Grand Hotel Zürich.
96 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Erich Kleiber to Max Burghardt, September 5, 1954, Lima, Peru.
97 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Erich Kleiber to Max Burghardt, “Sehr geehrter Herr Generalintendant,” Tarma, Peru, July 30, 1954; emphasis in original.
98 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Alexander Abusch to Dieck, Hauptverwaltung der Deutschen Volkspolizei, December 20 1954.
99 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 216.
100 “Der Berliner Sängerkrieg,” Musica 9 (March 8, 1955): 56–58, esp. 56; Thacker, Music After Hitler, 204.
101 Thacker, Music After Hitler, 204.
102 “Der Berliner Sängerkrieg,” 56.
103 Max Burghardt, Ich war nicht nur Schauspieler. Erinnerungen eines Theatermannes (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1973), 342–43.
104 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 217–21; Burghardt, Ich war nicht nur Schauspieler, 359–60.
105 “Der Berliner Sängerkrieg,” 56–57; Burghardt, Ich war nicht nur Schauspieler, 360.
106 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, document titled “Informationen,” undated, includes the following: “Er erkundigte sich eingehend danach, ob der Aufbau der Staatsoper auf der völlige Restaurierung der alten Oper beruhe (Fridericus Rex).”
107 Burghardt, Ich war nicht nur Schauspieler, 363.
108 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Maria Rentmeister to Herr Stoschek, Stadttheater in Plauen, March 12, 1955.
109 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Erich Kleiber to Max Burghardt, March 16, 1955, Köln. Russell (who along with Kleiber's son Carlos worked to spirit Kleiber's belongings out of Berlin), Erich Kleiber, 227–28.
110 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Erich Kleiber to Max Burghardt, April 3, 1955, Köln.
111 Thacker, Music After Hitler, 204; Burghardt, Ich war nicht nur Schauspieler, 346–66, his open letter to Kleiber on page 364.
112 Burghardt, Ich war nicht nur Schauspieler, 364.
113 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 228–29.
114 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 232–33, Barber, 21. Although Kleiber had promised his DDR interlocutors he would never work with Americans, Max Burghardt was convinced the North American tour was the reason Kleiber had left. See SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Max Burghardt to Maria Rentmeister, August 26, 1955.
115 For example, SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Maria Rentmeister to Erich Kleiber, May 13, 1954.
116 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, as described in Ruth Kleiber to Maria Rentmeister, May 14 [sic], 1954.
117 SAPMO-BArch DR 1/19797, Erich Kleiber to Herr Holzhauer, July 16, 1953.
118 Burghardt, Ich war nicht nur Schauspieler, 349.
119 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 243–45.
120 The polyvalent nature of Deutschtum is by now a vast literature. One of its most important statements can be found in James Sheehan, “What Is German History? Reflections on the Role of the Nation in German History and Historiography,” Journal of Modern History 53, no. 1 (March 1981): 1–23. A more recent iteration of the problems and opportunities can be found in Celia Applegate, “Senses of Place,” The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History, ed. Helmut Walser Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 49–70. Important recent contributions to this discourse have been made by Benjamin Bryce, Benjamin Goosen, Jennifer Jenkins, Pieter Judson, Kris Manjapra, Stefan Manz, H. Glenn Penny, Tara Zahra, and many others.
121 Geyer, Michael, “Die Bratus: Sketch for a Minor German History,” in Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective, ed. Meng, Michael and Seipp, Adam R. (Berghahn Books, 2020), 247Google Scholar.
122 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 31, 190, 212, 240.
123 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 215.
124 Malachi Ha-Cohen, “From Empire to Cosmopolitanism,” 118.
125 Russell, Erich Kleiber, 215.
126 Taruskin, Richard, “The Dark Side of the Moon,” in The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009)Google Scholar, 207ff.
127 Wooldridge, Conductor's World, 184. For a brief summary on Furtwängler, see Applegate, The Necessity of Music, 307–9, 312.
128 Zahra, Tara, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands 1900–1948 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.
129 Eva Lewitus interview, Lima, Peru, December 15, 2009.
130 Applegate, The Necessity of Music, 313.
131 Penny, H. Glenn, “Diversity, Inclusivity, and ‘Germanness’ in Latin America During the Interwar Period,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 61 (Fall 2017): 85–108Google Scholar, esp. 108.