![]() Erich Eisner (1897–1956 also known as Erich Erck), who was given refuge in Bolivia, founded several performance organizations there, the most prominent of which - Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional - remains a vital institution to this day. Polish-born Josef Rosenstock (1895–1985), for example, who found refuge in Japan in 1936, relished the opportunity to introduce Western music in Tokyo he and other foreigners in Japan, including the pianist Leo Sirota (1885–1965) and the violinist Leonid Kreutzer (1884–1953), were interned in the 1940s as enemy aliens, but Rosenstock was revered in the postwar period for having helped to make Japan's first professional orchestra, established in 1926 and today named the NHK Symphony Orchestra, an internationally recognized institution. Depending on an individual's viewpoint and attitude, this was either a burden or a challenge. After Nazi Germany's invasion of Austria - the so-called Anschluss, in March 1938 - and then again after the Kristallnacht pogroms of 9–10 November of that year, the angle of Jewish dispersion from Central Europe necessarily widened significantly, eventually encompassing not only the United Kingdom, North America and Palestine but also China, Japan, most of Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand and even some portions of Africa.Įxiles from the highly saturated (and competitive) cultural centers of Europe who came to localities with little or no receptivity for European culture could consider themselves fortunate if they found opportunities to practice their profession, and when they did, they usually had to start from scratch. Increasingly however, those fleeing Europe had no choice of destination. A conductor such as the Hungarian-born George Szell (1897–1970 originally György Széll), for example, who had toured internationally and made his debut in the United States in 1930, had no trouble relocating to that country in 1939, though at first he had to support himself partly by teaching. The greater a musician's previous international exposure, the greater the chance that s/he had some choice about country of refuge. Palestine, too, attracted a number of musician exiles, particularly after the energetic organizer Karel Salmon (1897–1974 originally Karel Salomon) arrived in Jerusalem in 1933 and the violinist Bronislaw Huberman (1882–1947) founded the Palestine Symphony Orchestra in Tel Aviv in 1936. Those who suspected that National Socialism might threaten the entire European continent set their sights further afield, above all on England and the United States. ![]() The rest of Europe, particularly Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Scandinavia, also experienced an immediate influx of Jewish and progressive refugees. Despite the possibility that Austria and Germany might eventually unify, Vienna offered the greatest equivalence of professional possibility. In the initial wave of forced expulsion from Germany after the Machtübernahme of 1933, the choice of safe haven for many was Vienna. Most easily identifiable as agents of transformation were those figures who had already achieved some degree of public stature, but regular folk - workers and professionals living private lives in circumscribed spheres - likewise had a significant, if more subtle, collective cultural impact, as can be seen in changes to national cuisines and fashions, and in the more intangible areas of international awareness and tolerance of the Other. Artists, writers, scientists and intellectuals who established vital spheres of activity in their new homelands seminally affected the arts, sciences, humanities and even national sensibilities. No less transformative was the influx of exiles into the countries willing to give them refuge. Germany and Austria were transformed by the forced expatriation of Jews during the 1930s and 1940s. ![]() ![]() The Dispersion of Hitler's Exiles: European Musicians as Agents of Cultural Transformation The Dispersion of Hitler’s Exiles: European Musicians as Agents of Cultural Transformation
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