Introduction
After World War 1 Germany suffered from hyperinflation,
political extremism and food shortages, with the economy having tanked.
However, there was a recovery of the German economy from
1924 to 1929, which became known as the “Golden Age”, and there was a flowering
of arts and culture in the German Republic, especially in the cities.
Why only the cities? Despite this recovery two thirds of the
German population was still rural and insular. The folk culture of the German
nation was still largely alive and kicking, and with it, innate conservatism.
Hence the mass dance movement that arose in Germany was
generally in urban areas, ities, where a newly wealthy middle class were
looking to find ways to find entertainment. There were also one and a half
million visitors to Berlin annually alone, which does not sound many but was in
the age before scheduled flights and package holidays, and only those with plenty
of money would visit, to spend large amounts of it on restaurants, hotels, concerts…..and
dancing.
….and in Hamburg, and Dusseldorf, and Cologne and Munich the
theme was repeated, but the golden cash
cow was Berlin, in competition with London and Paris and New York.
So there was a disparity. In the villages and countryside you
might well see “good old fashioned rotary Waltzes, as well as dances like the
Polka, Mazurka, Ländler (the hopping, stamping dance) , Zweifacher etc.”,
whereas in the cities there was what has been described as the Viennese café
culture or “Light Music”……and Jazz.
As a result the wave of new music that hit Germany in the
early twentieth century was generally limited to those urban areas, even with
the advent of the radio and the gramophone (interestingly, the modern form of
which was invented by Emil Berliner, of Jewish extraction).
A significant number of the dance band leaders and musicians
of that time were Jewish, maybe not to the same proportions as in the UK or
America, but they made their mark and this is the story of some of them.
Marek Weber
Marek Weber was born in Lvov (now Ukraine, then part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire) in 1888. He moved to Berlin aged 18 to study music,
but by age 20 he had formed his own orchestra. By 1914, aged 26 he had begun a
residency at the Hotel Adon, one of the very best, if not the best hotels in
Berlin.
To have such a residency must have been quite a prize, but Weber
did not sit back on his laurels, for he and his orchestra made a prodigious
amount of recordings with various labels.
His preferred style of music was the “Light Music”/Viennese
café music kind. It was not Jazz, although we are told that his band would play
Jazz tunes, at which point Weber who hated Jazz, would come down from the
rostrum and occupy the bar. Apocryphal maybe, but it would be up to others to develop
Jazz in Germany.
What was exceptional about Weber was that he employed some
of the finest musicians in the land, and many of them were Jewish. Here are
some of them, with their fates:
- Rolf Goldstein trumpet and piano (born May 17,
1912 in Berlin who left Germany in 1933 because he was Jewish, and afterwards who
mostly worked in Switzerland.
- Martin Roman piano (23 April 1910 – 12 May 1996)
was a German jazz pianist, who survived Auschwitz, He was a member of the
Ghetto swingers at Theresienstadt
- Henri Emile "Hans" Mossel (Amsterdam,
24 December 1905 – Auschwitz, Poland, 4 August 1944) was a Dutch clarinetist
and saxophonist. Died at Auschwitz
- Leo Monosson singer, Born 1897 Moscow. Fled
Germany 1933 to New York
Seeing what was coming he left Germany and lived in the United
States until, his death in 1964. His music was denounced as “degenerate “ by
the Reich Chamber of Music (German: Reichsmusikkammer) under Joseph Goebbels,
and banned in Nazi Germany
Efim Schachmeister
More in the Jazz idiom was Chaim "Efim"
Schachmeister, born 1894 in Kiev to Rumanian parents, who like Weber, was a
violinist. and like Weber moved to Berlin to study music at the Stern
Conservatory
He took a little longer than Weber to form his own band,
playing initially with the Popescu Gypsy Band, and only becoming a bandleader
at aged 27, and from there his short career took off. Unlike Weber he enjoyed
offering ragtime and Jazz, or as they would say elsewhere, “hot” music.
He appeared at some of the top dancehalls, such as the Barberina,
the Berlin Palais de Danse, and the Pavillon Mascotte, and began recording with
Deutsche Grammophon, which billed him as the "King of all
Dance-Violinists".
His biography states ”Efim Schachmeister's music cannot
simply be described as jazz, because he combined Jewish music from Eastern
Europe with black American jazz to create a new musical approach. His
combination of jazz and traditional Jewish and Roma music was also extremely
successful on records, he made recordings for Polydor and Pallas.”
Jazz or not, being a Jew, he was considered degenerate by
the Nazis, and regime, and left Germany in
1933, first travelling to Belgium, and then in 1939 settling permanently in
Argentina. He died aged 48, worn out by a life of hard work and constant
migration.
Paul Godwin
His real name was Pinchas Goldfein, and unlike the others he
came to Berlin having already studied his music in Budapest. Born in Sosnowitz
(now Sosnowiec in Poland) he played at t weddings, in cafés and cinemas from an
early age , and lived in Hungary where he studied music in Budapest.
He seems to have come to Berlin to form a dance band at aged
20 and I get the feeling that Godwin was good at the business and somewhat of a
shapeshifter, in a similar vein to Geraldo in the UK.
Not only did he anglicise (americanise) his name, but he saw
the advantage of a recording contract, recording a “countless” number of
records for differing Europeans labels with a variety of styles, even
classical. One of those styles was Jazz and for the track he recorded he called
his band “Paul Godwin's Jazz Symphoniker”. One source states that in 1933 more
than 1500 recordings were made in which Godwin cooperated. He was clearly one
of the best known bandleaders of the time, and highly successful – he was
everywhere – even to providing soundtracks for cinema.
Of course that all came to a shuddering stop in 1933. He
left the country in that year and ended up in the Netherlands with 8 marks and
his Stradivarius to his name, as well as his girlfriend who would become his
wife. There was plenty of work for him as a violinist, but his time as a
bandleader was over. Of course, the Nazis then invaded Holland, but he avoided
deportation because he had an ‘Aryan’ wife, although he was put into a forced
labour battalion that those of “mixed marriage” were sent to.
Post-war he focused on Classical music, and was moderately
successful. He died in 1982 in
Driebergen in the Rosa Spier house, an
old age home for elderly musicians. Apparently his post war years were quite
happy – he said “I conquered suffering and managed to keep the art to enjoy
life”, but when one considers that at his peak he was somewhat of a star, it
was a sad ending, alone in an old person’s home.
Dajos Béla
He was born Leon Golzmann in Kiev in 1897 and actually
served in the Russian Army in World War 1, from there studying music in Moscow
and Berlin. One can guess why he moved to study in Berlin, but to cut a long
story short he started playing in local bands, and, it is probable became a
session musician. It was just a short step to start his own orchestra, and in a
similar vein to Paul Godwin change his name to the more Hungarian-sounding Dajos Béla, Hungarian
or Romanian music then being popular in Germany.
Like Godwin he played a range of music, and when recording
jazz music recorded under different names, such as Mac’s Jazz Orchestra and the
Clive Williams Jazz band, but in any event had to leave Germany in 1933. He
moved Buenos Aires, where he lived for the rest of his life, returning once in
1970 we are told, to be honoured. He died age 80.
Stefan Weintraub
Was born in Breslau in 1897, which at the time was in Germany.
He learnt to play the piano at a young age, but never took it any further,
rather joining up in the Germany Army in World War 1 where he won an Iron Cross,
and then post war, working in the catering trade in some capacity. At age 27,
he seems to have moved back to music and begun a band with a friend. His first
love was Jazz and the band ultimately became known Weintraub’s Syncopators,
with most of the band Jewish.
The band had massive success, appearing in revues and with a
style all of its own, with Jazz just part of its repertoire. They were adept it
appears at doing comedy, Latin American dances, French cabaret chansons as well
as the music they preferred, swing and jazz.
In many ways the Syncopators behaved in a similar way to
many of their British counterparts, in that they would sprinkle the act with
theatrical elements. Just as Jack Hylton had a musician who could balance a
clarinet of his head, and Ambrose or Harry Roy had a set of comedy numbers, the
Syncopators would entertain the audience by unusual equipment such as kitchen
utensils as instruments, or by assuming unusual positions (e.g. lying on the
floor) to play.
They became one of the most sought after bands in Berlin; accompanying
the then famous Josephine Baker in revue, and making plenty of records. Their
main claim to fame was that they appeared in the film The Blue Angel, which
Joseph von Sternberg directed in 1930, playing their Jazz, and provided music
for a further 20 films, as well as accompanying Marlene Dietrich.
Then, it all ended. While they were touring abroad, the ban
on non-Aryans came in. They continued touring, from Poland to Russia, where
they landed slap bang in the middle of the “Red Hot Jazz Age”, and thus were
greeted enthusiastically by Jazz fans. In the obituary for one of the band
members it states that “the times were extraordinary - sometimes the band was
paid in heavily depreciating roubles, and sometimes in kilos of caviar and large
quantities of vodka. The Bolshevik government did not share the enthusiasm.” Their
visas were not renewed so once again the band began its wanderings, ending up
in China and then the Philippines
They finally washed up in Australia in 1937, where they met
an amount of animosity from the Australian musicians' union (“foreigners taking
our jobs etc’) , and Weintraub went back to catering, of all things (whether as
a waiter or a cook I have not been able to find out).
Amazingly Weintraub, like other members of the Syncopators,
was interned in June 1940 as an "enemy alien" because of his German
citizenship. He never got back to being a full-time band leader.
Yiddishkeit
How Jewish were these bandleaders?
We know that many married ‘out’ of their religion, but we
have little idea of how Jewish they felt and whether they had any trace of
observance.
We do have to remember that these weren’t the tired and
huddled masses that came to the rest of the world from Eastern Europe in 1881.
Some were completely assimilated, and were not escaping from pogroms, although
they may have known of family who had to.
Yet there are one or two clues.
Efim Schachmeister, perhaps because he had clearly
befriended people of Romany extraction had an open mind to other influences,
and one can hear klezmer influences in his music.
Perhaps the one statement of Yiddishkeit came from what at
first glance seemed a surprising source – Marek Weber, who had extremely
conservative music tastes. At second glance though, he employed a number of
Jews (and Arthur Briggs, of West Indian descent, so as elsewhere Jews made a
stance)
In 1933 he recorded one of those songs that are now
forgotten but summed up that era.
Its name is “Ich hab’ kein Heimatland” – otherwise known as
Yiddish Tango. It was written by Friedrich Schwarz
Bella Liebermann on YouTube wrote “Many Jewish composers
perished in the turmoil of the Second World War and the majority of their music
and their songs also perished along with their authors. From hundreds of songs,
only a few remain. One of such songs is “Jewish Tango” written by Friedrich
Schwarz. This song is his last composition. Schwarz named it “Jewish Tango”. He
wrote in Paris in 1933 during his escape from the Nazis. The very next day he
was found dead in the hotel. The circumstances of his death remain unknown.“
Here are the lyrics
”I lost my home country; I have no Motherland.
I do not have anything on this Earth and
I wander from place to place and stay where I desire.
I have no right to be happy –
Even golden shiny ray of the sun does not reach me.
I’m so lonely on this Earth. Tell me why?
When I think tranquillity and peace are finally found then
they are instantly lost –
Thus the show must go, thus and I.
I have no safe haven. I have no place to call ‘Home”….
Weber played this music. He must have understood its
meaning.
Jazz in Germany and the foreign influence
What was surprising about the Jewish bandleaders is that
none of this small posse came from Berlin. After all, there were 520,000 Jews
in Germany at the time, and 70% of the Jewish population resided in urban
locations, 160,000 in Berlin alone.
I looked for the same vibrancy that applied in the East End
of London or on the streets of Manhattan in New York that led to an explosion
in Jewish involvement in music in those two places, and I found none.
The answer lay in a very scholarly document from the
University of Oslo, called “Made in Europe: The Production of Popular Culture
in the Twentieth-Century” by Klaus Nathaus. Nathaus wrote about Tin Pan Alley
in New York without mentioning Jews once – a bit like the film Casablanca which
had numerous Jewish actors, and was partly about the Jewish experience but never
mentioned Jews.
This learned work argued that after the war ‘Jazz’ was
nothing more than a marketing ploy to make the new dances such as the
Charleston sound more exciting. That ‘damn near any group that could play fast
and frantically’ called themselves Jazz. “All kinds of ensembles from Tango
orchestras to Ragtime groups changed their names and became ‘Jazz bands’ to
profit from the latest craze.”
Nathaus said that in Germany, the label ‘Jazz’ was
unashamedly employed as a marketing gag. It promised something new and
exciting, while at the same time the ignorance about the ‘true’ musical
features of the new style provided cover for a lack of formal musical training.
In this way, ‘Jazz’ opened up opportunities for many semi-professional
musicians who sought engagement in cabarets, bars and similar venues”
With the massive degree of assimilation, and a large middle
class, Jazz, and bandleading, was not a profession for a good German Jewish boy
(females largely being restricted to singing). The vibrancy in the East End and
Manhattan just wasn’t there.
Was it Jazz?
It doesn’t really matter. Nathaus is way too simplistic.
There were those that had heard the strains of St Louis Blues, and were keen to
spread the word, whether Professional or semi-Professional.
Nathaus tries to argue that ‘Professionals Musicians’ were
slow to embrace Jazz, and left it up to the semi-professionals, which is not
true – bandleaders such as Marek Weber (even though he despised it) were
playing it from early days.
What is certainly true is that as in some countries there
was considerable resistance from the local Musicians Union to any musician
coming in from another country, especially when their talents outshone those of
the home grown crop. In Britain for example, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington
were banned for 20 years, and when Stephan Weintraub went to Australia,
pressure from Australian bands made sure that he was interned on the outbreak
of war (in such a way to keep him from the public).
The Deutscher Musikerverband, speaking for about 50,000
members, adopted at its conference in 1919 a resolution which stated that
Germany suffered from a ‘deluge’ of foreign musicians, ‘often disreputable
persons from other professions who band together in Germany to form so-called
Hungarian, Jazz or balalaika ensembles and undercut domestic musicians’
One feels that in Germany an influx of ‘foreigners’ was
needed to improve the musical gene pool, and freshen up things, and certainly
that seems to have been the case with our Jewish conductors who did not come
from Central Germany
A report from the ministry of the Ministry of Trade explained
why these ‘foreigners’: they were so popular. ‘often very quick to engage with
audiences and meet their taste and wishes with encores, while German musicians
were stolid and could not be moved to change or extend their fixed
programmes” Nathaus noted that “Domestic
professionals were faced with the challenge of ‘Jazz’, which first and foremost
stood for a more interactive relationship with audiences rather than a
particular musical style. As elsewhere, early ‘Jazz’ required showmanship, an
ability which was beyond the skills of most German musicians who had been
trained and saw themselves as craftsmen.”
It was not surprising then that such as Weintraub and Godwin
should gain such pre-eminence in the entertainment world of middle class
Germany. They brought a freshness to the whole genre, and following on from the
tours of such as Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, and Satchmo they were in the right
place at the right time.
Summary
Germany did not have its Lord Reith, and so for a while Jazz
prospered, and some of the bands that played Jazz had at their head Jewish
Bandleaders.
These people came from far and wide, a different generation
from their British and American counterparts, but became an integral part of
the café and dance culture within the large cities of Germany, as well as
selling great volumes of records.. It was also not surprising then at all that
those German musicians who felt side-lined as a result would welcome the Nazis
in 1933 to purge the country of the hated “Jazz”, and of the Jews who played
it.
Many escaped what was to come. Others did not. Of those that
escaped, one of them, Adolf “Eddie” Rosner went on a very interesting journey.
Who know how things might have developed in Germany given
time, but in 1933 everything came to a stop
Bibliography
·
https://www.stolpersteine-berlin.de/en/biografie/6366
·
http://www.operanostalgia.be/html/paul_godwin.html
·
https://www.smh.com.au/national/music-a-constant-among-turmoil-20060718-gdnzdq.htmlI
·
New England Review: That Weimar Jazz 1990 Vol 3
No 4
·
Klaus Nathaus, “Popular Music in Germany,
1900-1930: A Case of Americanisation? Uncovering a European Trajectory of Music
“European Review of History 20, no.5 (Oct. 2013):
·
https://www.jazz.ru/mag/78/reading.htm
·
https://www.evnreport.com/arts-and-culture/from-censorship-to-state-sponsorship-the-fate-of-jazz-in-the-soviet-union-and-armenia
·
http://www.walternelson.com/dr/weimar-dancing
·
https://freedmee.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/hitlers-inconsistent-jazz-policy-and-how-it-weakened-his-control/
·
These books are available from Amazon:
Kosher Foxtrot
Jews and the SeaThe Definitive Guide to Jewish Miscellany and Trivia
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