Der Fall Hindemith

In the course of eliminating "cultural Bolshevik tendencies" after 1933, Paul Hindemith's work was also pilloried. According to the National Socialist understanding, he had written "amoral" opera librettos in the early 1920s and denigrated the sacrosanct Richard Wagner. The fact that he, as an unquestionably German composer, was unwilling to renounce his "un-German" works, but on the other hand wrote unambiguously "German music" in the mid-1930s, resulted in the "Hindemith case." Furtwängler had publicly spoken out in support of Hindemith, and the "case" came to a head when Hindemith's works, whenever they were performed, elicited demonstrative applause from the audience, so that the Nazi regime quickly felt compelled to impose a general ban on their performance.

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