From Booklist
Wilhelm Furtw„ngler, director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, was one of the most notable artists to remain in Germany during the Nazi era. To his detractors, Furtw„ngler was a valuable dupe for the Nazis at best and a willful, enthusiastic Nazi sympathizer at worst. Prieberg, who has written extensively on cultural life under the Nazis, has written a convincing if one-sided account of Furtw„ngler's activities, which leads to a far different conclusion. Prieberg sees his subject as a classic nineteenth-century conservative; while uncomfortable with the values and corrosive effects of modern capitalism, he was also appalled by the brutality and pandering to base emotions implicit in National Socialism. As Prieberg indicates, Furtw„ngler made clear but limited efforts to protect Jewish musicians, and he apparently resisted blatant efforts to use him as a cheerleader for "Nazi culture." Prieberg's vigorous defense of Furtw„ngler may balance scales that have been unfairly tipped. However, he fails to confront the deeper dilemma that all decent men of influence must grapple with under a monstrous tyranny; that is, just how much can we reasonably expect or demand of an individual in opposing that tyranny? Jay Freeman
From Kirkus Reviews
A significant addition to the ongoing discussion of the extent to which Germany's most important musical figure was co-opted by the Nazis. Wilhelm Furtw„ngler (1886-1954) was among the most important re-creative artists of the century, supreme interpreter of the high German classics and an almost mystical believer in their spiritual power. He was also, as Prieberg (Music in the National Socialist State, not reviewed) convincingly demonstrates, dangerously na‹ve in believing that he could keep those masterpieces undefiled--and himself uncompromised--by the politicization of the arts in Nazi Germany. In a similar manner to the way that the physicist Werner Heisenberg believed that he could preserve the purity of German science despite what he saw as the vulgarity of the Nazi regime, Furtw„ngler saw himself as the guardian of German high culture and civilization. This is not an easy book to read; the style is effortful (it's unclear whether that is the fault of the writing or of the translation), and the subject--the degradation of an artist- -is chilling and painful. Prieberg fully explicates Furtw„ngler's acts of resistance: his arguments in the 1930s against the banning of music written by non-Aryan composers; his protests against the firing of Jewish members of the Berlin Philharmonic and their replacement by inferior musicians. Prieberg's thesis is that, having decided to stay in Germany, Furtw„ngler was ``broken'' by the regime (``blackmailed'' into conducting Hitler's birthday festivities in 1942, he avoided the task in subsequent years by pleading illness). The real strength of Prieberg's work is its reliance on contemporary documents, many quoted at considerable length, that allow the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. These conclusions are likely to be less charitable, and less favorable, to the maestro, than Prieberg's. A powerful primer on the futility of temporizing with evil. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
