Trumpeting down the walls of Jericho: The politics of art, music and emotion in German-American relations, 1870-1920

Journal of Social History, Spring, 2003 by Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht

The Germans' cultural nationalism did not need political infusion; quite the contrary, it thrived due to its apolitical appeal. (26) "For whatever reasons," Celia Applegate writes, "we have long accepted the romantics' vision of music as a direct expression of humanity or of divinity, in either case universal, and thus unsullied by the political world." None other than Wilhelm von Humboldt proclaimed that serious music had to be intellectually and emotionally challenging, even draining, in order to give a voice to the human free will. That ability to probe, suffer and demand was German and, according to Humboldt, hence universal. To be German meant to be open-minded, free-spirited, and unconstrained by the fetters of any geographically or intellectually restrained way of life or thought.

Musical nationalism did not confine itself to the territorial borders of the German Empire. Instead, it included minds and musicians in German-speaking areas, including Austria, Bohemia and even Switzerland. For nineteenth-century Germans music became a direct expression of their national identity. It provided them with a means to form an imagined community on the cultural level without being burdened by the conundrums of daily political life. Cutting across lines of class and education, it promised social inclusion and community, while, at the same time, remaining lukewarm to the idea of state-building. (27)

The universalism embedded in the music of the Romantics allowed their influence to spread far beyond German-speaking areas. Audiences outside of Imperial Germany found German music equally appealing, often for the very same reason. Because of its nonverbal, non-political and "serious" appearance, it even appealed to foreign audiences who otherwise would not have granted a grain of sympathy to other manifestations to German culture, let alone politics. Esteban Buch has argued that Beethoven became an important national symbol for the same reason that he appealed to other Europeans: because his music embedded a universalism that made it accessible to people of all creeds. Romantics saw the "Ode to Joy" as the climax of their art. German nationalists praised its heroic power and its "Germanness" while French republicans felt it expressed the essence of 1798, extolling it as the "Marseillaise de l'humanite." Communists believed the symphony heralded a world without class distinctions. For the Catholic Church, the Ninth was, quite simply, the gospel. Hitler loved to listen to the Ode (particularly at his birthdays) as did the inmates of Nazi concentration camps. At the height of apartheid the Ninth was the national anthem of Rhodesia, it has become a standard staple at the Olympic Games and it is, today, the hymn of the European Union. (28)

This is the socio-political background framing the impact of German musicians and their art in the United States. Once music became itinerant, accelerated by both the emigration of 1848 and subsequently the advent of the steamer, it traveled fast across the Atlantic, where it generated a deeply-rooted affinity for German music and musicians among people who did not speak German nor cared much about the Kaiser, an affinity that would last until today.