Arnold Schönberg in der DDR

Immediately after the founding of the GDR in 1949, Arnold Schoenberg’s work was branded by official party sources as a “late-bourgeois symptom of decline.” Its classification within the canon of “formalist” works had lasting effects. It influenced discussions regarding Arnold Schönberg’s significance for socialist musical culture and revealed the conflict between dogmatic ideas and demands on the one hand, and the interest and commitment of musicologists and composers on the other. It was not until the celebrations marking his centennial in 1974 that a new assessment of his work took place. From that point on, he was regarded as a “classic of modernism.” The present study examines the discussions about Arnold Schönberg in the GDR, which were shaped by political, cultural-political, and artistic-musical events and developments.

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