The Journey Itself Is Home

A friend of mine sent me the following article:

“Adolf Hitler, the most notorious champion of Richard Wagner and “racially pure” German music, banished Jewish and Russian musicians from the concert halls of the Third Reich — but apparently listened secretly to their work.”

Read the entire article here.

I’m reminded of the fact that Hitler also banished music critics, or rather, forbid them to work. Here is an official announcement by Goebbels, quoted in Classical Music Criticsm by Robert Schick:

“As the year 1936 has passed without any satisfactory improvement in art criticism, I herewith forbid the practice of art criticism as it has been practiced to date. From today on, the art report will replace art criticism. During the period of Jewish domonation of art, art critics violated the concept of “criticism” and assumed the role of judges of art. The art critic will now be replaced by the art editor… In the future only those art editors will be allowed to report on art who approach the task with an undefiled heart and National Socialist convictions.”

This resulted in the following: “But of the… terrible events that occurred in Germany between 1933 and 1945, there is hardly a trace in the hundreds of illustrations that Mr. Hinz has mustered [a collection of German paintings in the Third Reich]. A perennial petit-bourgeois taste prevails throughout. Young love is always wholesome, family life is an earthly paradise, manual labour is pleasant and redemptive, all battles end happily, nature functions as a friend…”

The government should never be allowed to dominate art. Artists: Declare Your Independence!