Operetta during the Third Reich may seem a rather barren art form – and not just at first sight.Footnote 1 Indeed, innovative production values in Reich-German operetta are difficult to discern, as both Hans-Dieter Roser and Wolfgang Jansen have recently shown. Following several decades of diverse and abundant blockbuster productions, the epigonic works of the late 1930s and 1940s – ‘disqualified artistically’, according to Jansen, ‘by dint of all too much closeness and submissiveness to the Nazi regime’ – understandably have not attracted sustained critical attention from scholars.Footnote 2
Yet, in spite of the lack of original new works, operetta did not lose its importance and attraction when Austria was ‘annexed’ to Germany. It remained an indispensable cultural product especially in Vienna,Footnote 3 but the rest of the Reich also did not want to miss out on entertaining musical theatre works. As State Councillor Hans Severus Ziegler (now best known for organising the infamous ‘degenerate music’ exhibition in Düsseldorf) pointed out in his preface to the 1938 edition of Reclam’s operetta guidebook:
No theatre director today will want to do without a decent number of operettas on his programme, and his attitude is fully justified both artistically and in terms of repertory politics. … Anyone who knows how to stage a German operetta with taste and musical discretion contributes, like every theatre that presents Komödien, to the entertainment and amusement of precisely those broad circles of the public who, in their own difficult daily lives, offer particularly heartfelt thanks to the happiest and least restrained of the muses.Footnote 4
Ziegler’s statement reflects the convictions of Propaganda Minister and President of the Reich Cultural Chamber Joseph Goebbels, who was convinced that, used in the right way, operetta could motivate and influence large parts of the population on an emotional level. While other Nazi ideologues such as Alfred Rosenberg were not fond of light musical theatre because, in its current state, it could neither display heroic German greatness nor morally improve the German people, Goebbels encouraged the favourite musical genres of the day.Footnote 5 As contemporary reviews confirm, operettas easily filled the theatres, they were turned into successful films, and their hit songs featured prominently on music request programmes broadcast at the time, providing – in manifold ways – the amusement, relaxation and entertainment Goebbels sought for Germans.Footnote 6
Yet, in their search for appropriately entertaining musical theatre, the Nazis faced a major problem: the growing objectionability of many foreign and Jewish works as well as of those set in hostile countries, combined with a steadily increasing number of theatres within the expanding ‘German’ territories, quickly resulted in great demand for a short supply of acceptable compositions.Footnote 7 With regard to ‘Aryan operetta’ the situation was particularly bleak, as Reichsdramaturg Rainer Schlösser reported to Goebbels as early as 1934:
At the time of takeover the situation on the operetta market was such that 80 per cent of the output – both musical and textual – was of Jewish origin. 10 per cent was Aryan with regard to the composer, but of those the librettists were likewise Jewish. The purely Aryan works could not have exceeded 10 per cent.Footnote 8
Goebbels instructed Schlösser to condone the existing operetta repertory for the moment;Footnote 9 but soon, the Reichsdramaturg reported, ‘pressure was put on all theatre managers to increase the Reich Script Department’s efforts to find operettas of purely Aryan origin, making use of local discoveries and experimental approaches’.Footnote 10 Theatre directors increasingly filled the gaps in their programmes with new, epigonic operettas by racially acceptable composers, who were often ‘of the second, third and fourth guard’, to use Christoph Dompke’s words. Particularly successful but unsupportable operettas were replaced by works with strikingly similar plots – Emmerich Kálmán’s Gräfin Mariza, for example, gave way to Nico Dostal’s Die ungarische Hochzeit (1939), Ralph Benatzky’s Im weißen Rössl to Fred Raymond’s Saison in Salzburg (1938), and Bruno Granichstaedten’s Auf Befehl der Kaiserin to August Pepöck’s Reiter der Kaiserin (1941).Footnote 11 In terms of musical style, such ‘prescribed surrogate pieces’, as Volker Klotz called them, tended to be rather more conservative, avoiding international influences as much as possible.Footnote 12 As Ziegler already observed in 1938:
It goes without saying that the Third Reich gradually had to eliminate typically Jewish and strongly ‘jazzed-up’ operettas with the very agreeable result that the operetta theatres of all large and medium-sized cities where Aryan operetta composers are cultivated still enjoy full houses. Of course, it would be desirable if we could find once again, as a supplement to today’s rich hoard of operettas, comic Spielopern [light operas] with the lightness and true humour of Lortzing’s Wildschütz – something that would serve to shape the taste of audiences, whose feeling for style and entertainment must not be allowed to degenerate any further.Footnote 13
But as the regime’s limitations to the repertory became stricter and its aesthetic ideals more defined, programme selection still proved difficult for venues in 1940.Footnote 14 Following an order from Hitler, Goebbels thus founded the Reichsstelle für Musikbearbeitungen (Reich Office for Music Arrangements) whose prime mission was to replenish the repertory of music theatre venues and concert halls by commissioning and supervising new works as well as revisions of older, no longer completely appropriate compositions. The institution was established as an adjunct to the music division of the propaganda ministry and was run mainly by the musicologist Hans Joachim Moser, although it was officially headed by the party member Heinz Drewes.Footnote 15
The Reichsstelle, a project that, according to Drewes, was ‘followed closely and with the greatest interest by the Führer himself’,Footnote 16 has been mentioned mostly in connection with its ‘serious’ music activities, and as a constituent of a broader movement to make classical repertory more suitable for Reich performances.Footnote 17 As official Reichsstelle lists show, however, Handel’s oratorios and various repertory operas by no means made up the majority of the works overseen by the institution: at least half of the office’s commissions were for operettas, revisions as well as new works.Footnote 18 So far, only a few accounts, notably those by Pamela Potter, point to this particular emphasis, and even those are limited to the same examples that Moser himself offered in his 1943 article ‘Von der Tätigkeit der Reichsstelle für Musikbearbeitungen’.Footnote 19 As Klotz rightly noted, a closer look at these Third Reich operetta commissions as well as their circumstances is necessary in order to construct a ‘more reliable overall picture’.Footnote 20 In this article, I will take a first step towards such an improved picture with a detailed investigation of the Reichsstelle revision of Franz Lehár’s popular operetta Der Rastelbinder, which was meant to be premiered at Vienna’s Raimund Theater in celebration of the composer’s 75th birthday in January 1945.Footnote 21
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Considering the Nazis’ urgent quest for economically viable, popular musical entertainment, the operetta I have chosen to examine seems a rather obvious candidate for a Reichsstelle revision. Der Rastelbinder, which premiered in Vienna’s Carl-Theater in 1902 to a libretto by Victor Léon, had been the ‘first real operetta’ venture of Hitler favourite Franz Lehár.Footnote 22 The work tells the story of the young Slovakian orphan Janku, whose foster family, in keeping with the local tradition, betroths him to their even younger daughter, Suza, before sending him out to make his living as a travelling handyman. Twelve years later – in Act I – Janku, now called Schani, is permanently employed as a plumber in Vienna and wants to marry his boss’s daughter, Mizzi. But he is confronted with his Slovakian past by the peddler Pfefferkorn, who had once given Suza a silver gulden intended to help Janku on his journey. Suza has accompanied Pfefferkorn to Vienna and pretends to look for a job as a maid there in order to reunite with her Slovakian sweetheart Milosch, Janku’s friend, who is stationed in Vienna as part of his military service. Both Janku/Schani and Suza had forgotten about their bond and are dumbfounded when Pfefferkorn reminds them of it. For Act II the story moves to Milosch’s military base, where he has returned to distract himself from his heartache after having learned of Suza’s previous engagement. Dressed up as soldiers, Mizzi and Suza, as well as Pfefferkorn and Janku/Schani, follow him in order to resolve the problem. Of course, the masquerade involves plenty of slapstick before leading to a happy end for both couples.
Starting with such a typical plot including elements of mistaken identity, Der Rastelbinder featured most of the ingredients that only three years later were to make Lehár’s Lustige Witwe such a triumphant and lasting hit: memorable waltz melodies, including ‘Wenn zwei sich lieben’ and ‘Das is a einfache Rechnung’; plenty of humour and comic stage action; some nostalgic melancholy; and a few scenes in a Slavic – but allied Slavic! – setting. Indeed, in spite of some dramaturgical weaknesses, the work had been extremely popular: at least 2,742 performances were documented up to the end of the First World War alone; furthermore, two film versions (from 1909 and 1926) appeared during the silent era.Footnote 23 In Vienna, Der Rastelbinder was Lehár’s biggest success.
In its original state, however, this propitious operetta – promising not only as a standard work for the Third Reich repertory but also as an economic success for theatres – could not be performed in Nazi Germany.Footnote 24 Its central character was an itinerant Jewish peddler, Wolf Bär Pfefferkorn, who was characterised on stage with the obligatory Yiddish accent and melismatic turns. As Lehár scholar Stefan Frey has pointed out, to include such a character had been a daring project even in 1902, when anti-Semitism in Vienna was already seething. Pfefferkorn was the first Jewish leading role in the history of operetta, and reviewers of the premiere had shown much dismay and scepticism towards him, despite Jewish tenor Louis Treumann’s compelling rendition.Footnote 25 Under the Nazis, a new version became desirable in order to ‘rescue’ the peddler and the work for German theatres. Such a revision also allowed for the omission of the work’s Jewish librettist, Victor Léon, in favour of a new ‘editor’. Negotiations with the composer started in 1942.
While Der Rastelbinder seems an all too obvious candidate for a Nazi revision, the man whom the Reichsstelle entrusted with this task does not easily fit the image of the typical Nazi Säuberer (cleanser) evoked in the accusatory accounts of historians such as Fred Prieberg or Eric Levi.Footnote 26 Indeed, Rudolf Weys (1898–1978) was a rather unlikely candidate for the job as his wife was Jewish – a fact that, especially after the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935, complicated the process of securing a professional licence from the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Cultural Chamber) and, as we shall see, created considerable further difficulties. What is more, Weys’s political inclinations seem to have been antagonistic to the regime: although through his professional affiliation he inevitably engaged in the regime’s entertainment programmes such as Kraft durch Freude,Footnote 27 his personal correspondence during this time shows reserve as well as hints of scepticism, and there is no reason to doubt that he was a convinced antifascist and pro-Austrian social democrat.Footnote 28
Scholars have taken most notice of Weys for his cabaret work, particularly that written for the Wiener Werkel, an institution now often mentioned as the prime example of Austrian resistance against its Nazi German rulers.Footnote 29 It was difficult to keep any kind of cabaret going during the Third Reich. Goebbels, of course, was aware of the powerful potential for political references in cabaret, and soon (and repeatedly) forbade such allusions as well as ‘any hint at political events or persons in performances, conferences and announcements’.Footnote 30 These measures quickly showed results: by the time the Second World War began, the Reich’s depoliticised cabaret had mostly regressed to non-critical vaudeville shows.Footnote 31 While before the war, ‘positive cabaret’ that fell into the official marching line and attacked seriously only those who questioned the National Socialist mindset was still somewhat encouraged, Goebbels did not appreciate jokes about food rationing and other wartime realities, and in 1941 forbade even favourable references to current events and public figures.Footnote 32
Having lost much of its appeal as a result of such measures and the precautionary self-censorship they prompted, Vienna’s renowned cabaret Literatur am Naschmarkt, the ‘Burgtheater of cabaret’ where Weys had worked since 1934, was forced to close down in November 1938 owing to lack of funds.Footnote 33 Soon thereafter, however, Weys’s former colleague Adolf Müller-Reitzner gained official permission to open the Wiener Werkel. While party membership gave Müller-Reitzner the necessary political legitimacy, he still took pains to regather members of the Literatur staff. As he apparently explained to Weys, despite his political inclinations he had no intention of recruiting his authors from the Völkischer Beobachter (one of the most radical Nazi papers); rather, he wanted to recreate the earlier cabaret’s liberal and critical tradition as far as possible.Footnote 34
For Viennese cabaret artists, performance conditions were rather better than in other parts of the Reich. Local censors by no means misunderstood what was happening on Vienna’s stages, but often condoned much more than did their counterparts in the ‘Altreich’, at least partly because they were aware of simmering tensions and discontent in the ‘Ostmark’ that could be relieved through some typically Viennese grousing.Footnote 35 Satirical critique could act as what cabaret scholar Peter Jelavich has called a ‘safety valve function’, allowing disgruntled Viennese to ‘laugh off steam’ before accumulating dissatisfaction could result in more forceful, disruptive outbursts. Furthermore, in Germany it was widely known since Wilhelmine times that strict censorship could inadvertently attract public curiosity and, as a result, even advertise recalcitrant venues or authors.Footnote 36
The Werkel’s censors in the Viennese propaganda ministry were known as rather lenient and even useful contacts for the staff.Footnote 37 One of those responsible, the intendant of the radio station Reichssender Wien, once told Weys that he was ‘impertinent, but I don’t have to understand it. If Goebbels were to come to Vienna, he would understand.’Footnote 38 Indeed, a Goebbels visit posed a real danger to the Werkel members, as Müller-Reitzner soon discovered. When the minister came to Vienna in December 1940, he witnessed a performance of the fifth Werkel programme, including Weys’s sketch ‘Der Wiener Januskopf’, which can serve here as a good example of the kind of critical work for which Weys has been repeatedly noted. The title refers to the Austrian double eagle, here portrayed as one optimistic and one pessimistic character who reflect on their situation – a combination of roles that Karl Krauss had already used in his tragedy Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (1922). The optimist starts:
This impersonation of opportunism appears to be an early forerunner of the famous Herr Karl, a character Carl Merz and Helmut Qualtinger created with similar sarcasm from their observations of Viennese behaviour two decades later.Footnote 39 The optimist’s ‘other half’, the Raunzer (grouser), counters:
Considering the regime’s explicit discouragement of criticism – even critical reviews of cultural events were abandoned officially, in favour of so-called Kunstbetrachtung (art appreciation), a concept that was never successfully implementedFootnote 40 – the assertion that a Viennese has to criticise, as well as the implication that there was so much apt material when one started to use one’s brain, was not without danger. The ‘grouser’ later specifies a few of the areas he has ‘thought about’, for example:
These lines criticise quite bluntly the state of the arts, the necessity of Third Reich culture to rely on a (Viennese) ‘golden past’ and its failure to break new creative ground.
The piece even directly confronts the demands of high-ranking state officials. Alluding to the statement that ‘Gemütlichkeit while working is laziness’, which Hermann Göring had expressed during a recent visit to Vienna,Footnote 41 the optimist voices:
Having seen the performance, Goebbels gave director Müller-Reitzner a long dressing-down, in which he reproached the director for the ‘hidden criticism and Viennese grousing’, prohibited any further performances of the programme, and ‘very plainly called the man’s attention to the riskiness of his conduct.’Footnote 43 This, however, was the only time Goebbels attended, and one of only two Werkel programmes that were censored after they had been publicly performed. Shortly before the end of the war, when many Viennese appeared to side with the invading Russians, Goebbels regretted his lenience with regard to local habits. In his diary he admitted his qualms about the ‘so-called Viennese humour that has been trivialised and exalted in our press and radio very much against my will. The Führer did assess the Viennese correctly’, he concluded; ‘one should have bridled them better.’Footnote 44 Indeed, the Werkel was able to stage ten programmes to great acclaim until the general closure of all theatres in autumn 1944, and all of them swayed between begrudging conformity and sly resistance – a phenomenon that has sparked lengthy scholarly debates over the last decades.
The Werkel’s slightly recalcitrant image is rather similar to that of the Wien Film company under Karl Hartl, which has been discussed even more frequently.Footnote 45 In the popular ‘Vienna films’, a similar kind of Austrian or specifically Viennese identity was evoked through dialect, locations and music and through nostalgic memories of the ‘good old days’, as well as the usual grumbling and grousing. While there is not necessarily any reason to doubt that Weys and others such as film producer Willi Forst really used this ‘pro-Viennese’ approach to offer at least a little resistance to the regime, one should always bear in mind that many at the time saw the portrayal of such local flair as a device to strengthen the image of German culture and thus as another way to further the fighting spirit.
While Weys’s work for, and impact on, Third Reich cabaret clearly has been a significant subject of scholarly investigation in the German-speaking world, his increasing involvement with operetta during this time is less well known. Even Weys himself hardly mentioned his operetta achievements in his published works. The reason is obvious: cabaret as a genre posed much more of a challenge, as it called for a more explicit critical perspective than operetta. As Weys observed:
If we … look for contemporary criticism, where in the realms of operetta can one find a reaction to current events, to say nothing of satire, irony and political significance? In day-to-day life operetta perhaps functioned as a lightning rod towards ‘high spirits’; however, it has never claimed to be a political outlet, and thus it did not provide Vienna with satirical Zeittheater at any time. However, from Hans Wurst [the German Merry Andrew] to Nestroy contemporary references and criticism have been vital elements of the mime and folk theatres.Footnote 46
But while the cabaret work was more interesting for Weys during the Third Reich as well as for any subsequent scholar searching for Austrian resistance, operetta’s lack of topical criticism – at other times a major shortcoming in Weys’s view – was exactly what made the art form appealing for him during Austria’s Anschluss. As he explained in a letter to a friend:
I adjusted my work to the Nazi era in that I confined myself to harmless fooling around. I wrote comedies and droll stories. Those were the least offensive and eluded the attention of the propaganda ministry. I wrote, for example, ‘Lisa, benimm dich’, a much-performed piece that generated most of our livelihood, I wrote ‘Ringstraßenmelodie’, a ‘revue comedy’, as I called it, but into that one I interspersed so many pro-Austrian sentiments again that it scandalised, needless to say. I wrote ‘Mädel im Frack’, a piece of harmless bullshit, ‘Höchste Eisenbahn’, cut from the same bad cloth, etc., etc. Relatively appealing was my cabaret work at the ‘Wiener Werkel’.Footnote 47
It was operetta that provided the author with the most innocuous and still comparatively lucrative work during the Third Reich. An account of Weys’s operetta work therefore will not provide spectacular insights into Austrian resistance and stories of heroic actions; yet it can show another important – and often neglected – side of the life of a writer under the Nazi regime, a side that a far larger group of people working during this era experienced. The purpose of the following account of Weys’s revision of Der Rastelbinder, then, by no means is to drag this man – so far with a comparatively ‘clean record’ – in the Nazi mud; on the contrary, my investigation will show that even a man whose resistant stance towards Hitler’s regime remains unrefuted had to make a large number of compromises, to weigh up the pros and cons of every decision in a bid to save both his life and his conscience.
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Weys first became involved in the Rastelbinder project in June 1944, when Moser advised the publisher Hans Sikorski that he ‘employ another dramatically gifted ostmärkisch author and suggest my old plan to him’.Footnote 48 Both Moser and Sikorski were unhappy with the editorial work carried out by Della Zampach and a certain ‘Herr Köller’, who in spite of having worked on the project for several months had not incorporated all the Reichsstelle’s suggestions and, moreover, had seen their work rejected by Lehár. Sikorski, who had worked with Weys previously, suggested the cabaret artist to Moser. Weys quickly accepted and offered to shelve all other work in order to finish this urgent task as soon as possible. He did this in spite of reservations from the outset, which he expressed to Moser:
As you know, the Rastelbinder question is very delicate in every respect. It is in any case an ungrateful task to edit a libretto that was once a world success, because even if the new work is successful, anybody who has once seen the original will compare – consciously or unconsciously – the new with the old.Footnote 49
While he couched his reservations in careful terms to Moser, he presented them much more openly in a letter to Lehár:
When – approximately two months ago – the ‘Reichsstelle für Musikbearbeitungen’ approached me and asked whether I would dare an already twice-failed attempt at a new version of the Rastelbinder, I have to admit that I shied away at first. How, I thought, can the figure of Pfefferkorn be saved and how (the most difficult issue!) the third act [Act II]!
First of all, I asked Dr Sikorski whether this was a matter of ‘Aryanisation’ (which I would have refused strictly!), but I was informed that the book adaptation would come about with the approval of Victor Léon’s heirs, indeed, even by their request. In addition, Dr Sikorski explicated in detail that the third act [Act II] in its old form – however matters stand! – could hardly be performed again, for the fooling around of a clumsy Jew and the laughing about just that would be no longer acceptable, and considered objectionable by all, not only in present-day Germany but also beyond that, so that not even (to give an example) a performance in Switzerland would be possible in this form.
This argument was plausible and banished my understandable basic concerns for the time being.Footnote 50
Sikorski’s argument may not seem coherent, if only because Pfefferkorn is by no means the most ‘clumsy’ Rastelbinder character – Suza or Mizzi’s father would easily win on that score – and he is definitely the most endearing figure. Nevertheless Sikorski’s prediction was correct: after the Second World War Der Rastelbinder did indeed vanish from the stage. It is unlikely, however, that, had it been completed, post-war theatre directors would have felt any more comfortable producing Weys’s version with a non-Jewish Pfefferkorn, regardless of the revision’s subtlety or moral quality.
Weys’s basic principle for his Rastelbinder revision was that ‘a bad physician operates more than necessary. I made changes only when there were compelling reasons, never more.’Footnote 51 It is sometimes difficult to reconstruct which changes were by Weys, since he based his work as much as possible on Zampach’s (so far untraceable) version. His correspondence shows, however, that Weys rejected many of the earlier alterations, thus suggesting that he must have approved the changes of the final version.
Most of Weys’s alterations reflect the Reichsstelle’s proclaimed intention of making the original material as accessible as possible.Footnote 52 Drewes and Moser agreed that, in order to achieve this, it would be necessary to ‘retrieve the same close relationship between artwork and listenership’ that the premiere audience enjoyed.Footnote 53 In operetta, they argued, ‘timeliness’ had always been much more important than in opera.Footnote 54 Of course, the zeitbedingte Verbrauch (age and wear) of operettas was a justification, behind which the Reichsstelle could hide any ‘Aryanisations’ by involving new, racially acceptable editors, and thus steadily mitigate the importance of Jewish contributions to the art form, at least on paper. One should note, however, that the more general practice of modernising operettas to suit contemporary conditions had been common long before the Nazi era and is still standard today. In their decisions about cuts and changes, producers are no longer so severely influenced by official state censorship – or by their fear of it, for during the Nazi era pre-emptive self-censorship often made any state action unnecessary. But, as the disappearance of Der Rastelbinder from post-war stages illustrates, even without Third Reich strictures theatre directors tend to evade certain topics that could be considered objectionable or simply uncomfortable. Since most operetta venues are not subsidised to the same degree as ‘serious’ opera and concert houses, they have always depended heavily on wide public approval, a fact that makes a work’s topical jokes and its relevance to the audience yet more crucial for operetta producers than its value as a historic document.
One change, of course, was imperative: the reworking of Pfefferkorn’s character. Although the Reichsstelle had approved Zampach’s ‘simple conversion of … Pfefferkorn into the “Black Peter”’, Weys preferred a locally typical ‘Szandor’.Footnote 55 The most obvious change for anyone who knew the original version was Szandor’s new dialect, more of a High German with an Austrian – ‘ostmärkisch’ – influence. Szandor is moulded into a fully integrated member of society: while Pfefferkorn had originally come from Vienna, Szandor – matching his new Eastern name – is a local tinker like Suza’s and Janku’s fathers and tells the audience about his childhood in that same Slovakian village, Trencsin. His comment on the children’s engagement, ‘that such a stupid custom exists? People are addlebrained!’ (No. 4, Finale), is no longer the criticism of an outsider.Footnote 56 Instead, he is a liberal progressive insider who wants to move away from an outmoded tradition because ‘that such a custom still exists, I really find too strange.’Footnote 57 Szandor does not have to make excuses when he is invited to dine in celebration of Mizzi’s and Janku/Schani’s engagement, as the Jewish Pfefferkorn had done in his hesitant, touchingly awkward reply:
GLÖPPLER: Aber bleiben’s da, essen’s mit!
PFEFFERKORN: Mitessen? Das is bei mir so ä Geschichte, ich kann nämlich nix überall essen – ich hab’ etwas ä Magenguitar – aber trinken werd’ ich mit euch a Tröppele!
(GLÖPPLER: Do stay, eat with us! / PFEFFERKORN: Eat with you? Well, that is a tricky one, because I cannot eat everything everywhere – I have something of a stomach catarrh – but I’ll drink a drop with you!)Footnote 58
Szandor, by contrast, simply digs in like everyone else.
Pfefferkorn’s character is not the only one whose identity had caused tensions in the original work: following his departure to Vienna in the prologue, Janku seems to undergo some kind of identity crisis, which is expressed most clearly in his song ‘Ich bin ein Wiener Kind’ (No. 9, see Fig. 1). Again, Weys removed the discordant elements in verse 1: instead of describing the negative aspects of being Slovakian, Janku/Schani now sings affirmative lines about being Viennese. The xenophobic parts are simply cut, which may seem at first surprising and unnecessary considering the Reich-prevalent stress on German supremacy. But by changing these lines, the identity conflict, which so many particularly in the original, multicultural Viennese audience must have experienced themselves, was toned down as much as possible. One may conclude that matters of multicultural origin were simply no longer deemed topical or endorsable, but it should also be noted that Slovakia was a kind of satellite state, a dependent ally of the Third Reich, with whom it was advisable to cultivate and demonstrate an amicable relationship.
‘Ich bin ein Wiener Kind’ (No. 9), old and new versions.Footnote 62
The trickiest part to rewrite was by all accounts the final act of Lehár’s operetta, because the original version had clear dramaturgical shortcomings.Footnote 59 As Stefan Frey has aptly described, it ‘degenerates – in a rather unmotivated way – into a costume orgy in the barrack yard, with the single racy pretext to stick the ladies into uniforms, for [as Mizzi and Suza establish in their gavotte (No. 14)] “soldiers’ pants provide a great attraction”’.Footnote 60 Moser, too, considered this act to be ‘entirely unworthy of discussion’ – perhaps not least because of its deplorable disrespect for the military as well as its erotic element, strengthened by the close harmony of the two female lines in their climactic duet.Footnote 61 Weys was at least able to appreciate the act’s original appeal, though initially he was unsure how to recreate it:
Now, although the final act (the reef of the new version!) may be antiquated in every respect and will surely, in its old form, never be found on stage again, it was still amazing and burlesquely funny, if not to everyone’s fancy. But that is a fact. To find an equivalent for this merry merriness will be enormously difficult.Footnote 63
Indeed, Zampach’s and Köller’s attempts had foundered on this ‘reef’, which had been the original reason to involve Weys.Footnote 64 The cabaret artist’s approach was sparked by the artistic director of the Raimund Theater, where the new version was to be premiered. Willy Seidl suggested moving Act II back to the Slovakian village of the prologue. After some hesitation, Weys was taken with this idea, as it allowed for the most ‘natural’ meeting place for all the characters as well as for an ‘uncontrived’ solution to the whole conflict.Footnote 65 Besides, by using this location Weys could incorporate all the Reichsstelle’s suggestions as well as plenty of the required humour. He proudly reported to the Reichsstelle that in this new version, Der Rastelbinder would become a ‘“folk operetta” that is rooted and remains within its local setting’.Footnote 66 Moser was thrilled.
One reason for the Reichsstelle’s approval was that Weys’s solution offered significant economic advantages. In fact, Seidl’s initial suggestion had been borne of circumstances dictated by the fifth year of war: a return to the Slovakian village allowed for some serious ‘savings on décor’.Footnote 67 Weys’s version also managed with a smaller cast: because the military base location was no longer included, the minor characters originally introduced there could be cut entirely.Footnote 68 Instead, the final act reused some of the Trencsin village characters – most importantly Suza’s mother Babuschka and Milosch’s father.
Economy was also Weys’s major concern when it came to the music. As Moser had observed, in the earlier versions ‘the already rather weak and sparse music numbers get lost in the extensive dialogue scenes, without being introduced compellingly’.Footnote 69 In order to improve the overall balance between text and music, Weys could not afford to cut many numbers. Furthermore, considering Lehár’s previous reluctance about the project, it seemed advisable to keep the composer’s involvement to a minimum. Weys cut only the climactic female duet and planned for two new musical items, the last finaletto and a duet for Mizzi and Janku, as ‘the buffo couple can hardly remain without a number’.Footnote 70 He wrote a first, rather generic sketch of this love duet (involving some rather random somersaults and handstands) but remained unsure how to approach the number: although worried about making Lehár feel pressured into writing a new piece, he still wanted to encourage the composer. From the start, Weys and Sikorski anticipated that they would have to adapt an existing Lehár melody in case the composer would not collaborate. Having read Weys’s libretto, Lehár’s reaction was propitiously positive – ‘You really have brought out the best in this old subject matter!’Footnote 71 – and he agreed to write the new pieces. But in the following months Lehár offered more and more excuses and confirmed his dilatoriness with regard to the project. Still, the editors never were to make use of their backup plan.
While the changes described thus far mostly show Weys’s effort to satisfy his employer’s demands, the comic role of tinsmith Glöppler, Mizzi’s father, provided him with some opportunity for less streamlined expression. Weys kept Zampach’s idea (commended by Moser) of transforming Glöppler, ‘whose tirades are today no longer directed at securing a seat in parliament, but at attaining an appointment as the president of a teetotallers’ association’.Footnote 72 In the original, Glöppler had used political terminology whenever he spoke because he was rehearsing for the time when he could leave his tiring plumbing business to his new son-in-law (Janku/Schani) and spend his time in politics. It is not surprising that the Reichsstelle was unhappy with his clumsy, intrinsically funny attempts at becoming a politician and the implication that such work was less strenuous; as already mentioned, politics and its agents were no laughing matter during the Third Reich. Yet the alternative they accepted hardly seems an improvement. Mizzi’s father makes his first, unannounced entrance as follows:
GLÖPPLER: (Hauskäppchen, grüne Schürze, kommt aus der Wohnung, spricht, gleichsam memorierend, aber mit großem Pathos vor sich hin ohne der Beiden zu achten) … und dieser Feind, dieser Feind, der sich eingerottet hat, man muß ihn ausrotten!! Ausrotten ohne Gnade, ohne Barmherzigkeit, ohne Mitleid, ohne –, ohne –, ohne was –?? Mizzerl, so sag’ schon –?!
MIZZI: (Staub abwischend) Was willst denn, Vaterl?
GLÖPPLER: Ich hab vergessen was das Vierte is’ –, ‘Gnade, Barmherzigkeit, Mitleid und’ – und –, na, jetzt weiß ich net weiter!
MIZZI: ah –, studierst schon wieder eine Red’ für den Antialkoholikerverein?
GLÖPPLER: Natürlich! Die woll’n mich doch zum Präsidenten machen!
(GLÖPPLER: (house cap, green apron, comes out of the apartment, rambles as if memorising, but with great pathos and without noticing the two) … and this enemy, this enemy, who has settled in [einrotten; made-up word]; one has to wipe him out [ausrotten]!! Wipe him out without mercy, without pity, without charity, without, without, without what?? Mizzerl, do say –?! / MIZZI: (dusting) What do you want, daddy? / GLÖPPLER: I have forgotten the fourth term, ‘mercy, pity, charity and’, and, well, now I am at loss! / MIZZI: Ah, are you preparing a speech for the teetotallers’ association again? / GLÖPPLER: Of course! Remember, they want to make me their president!)Footnote 73
The terminology Glöppler uses seems very much rooted in the contemporary war situation. Moreover, because ausrotten (eradicate) is even today strongly associated with the Holocaust, the tinsmith’s first statement, devoid of any context, sounds like a speech Hitler could have made about Jewish citizens. Mizzi’s interjection, however, establishes quite quickly that Glöppler is not a believable politician, but a harmless, petty-bourgeois Viennese eccentric, who picks up impressive words and applies them indiscriminately to his own small world. Although Glöppler’s character is no longer directly linked to politics, then, his (mis)use of contemporary political vocabulary can be read as a depiction of the way politics was practised in the Reich, or more specifically in Vienna: with conviction, but without concrete understanding or knowledge of the exact content. A later dialogue between Mizzi and Glöppler makes this interpretation even more plausible:
GLÖPPLER: Unser Leitsatz muß sein: ‘Nie wieder Delirium!’ Alkohol in jeder Form gehört vernichtet – !! (fegt in Rage Töpfe von der Budel herunter.)
MIZZI: Aber Vater, was willst’ denn – ? Du trinkst doch selber gern ein’ guten Tropfen?!
GLÖPPLER: Bring’ mich nicht aus’n Konzept! ‘s gute Tröpferl is’ meine Privatangelegenheit, im Verein gehöre ich der Allgemeinheit und die g’hört vernichtet – ! (ärgerlich) Ah –, was red I denn da z’samm! Der Alkohol gehört vernichtet! Ohne Gnade, ohne Barmherzigkeit, ohne Mitleid und ohne, ohne, glaubt’s Ihr, das tepperte Wort fallt mir ein – ?!
(GLÖPPLER: Our guiding principle should be: ‘No more delirium!’ Alcohol of any kind should be abolished!! (sweeps off pans from the counter in a rage.) / MIZZI: But father, what’s your point? You yourself enjoy drinking a good drop of wine?! / GLÖPPLER: Don’t distract me! The good drop is my private concern. Within the society I’m part of the general public and it should be abolished! (angrily) Ah, what am I talking about! Alcohol should be abolished! Without mercy, without pity, without charity and without, without, do you think I can come up with the stupid word?!)Footnote 74
Glöppler’s hypocritical stance, condemning something on principle that he himself enjoys in private, fits very well with Weys’s description of the grousing Viennese in his ‘Januskopf’: ‘My twin does not want to ponder’, but ‘a Viennese has to criticise’. The character trait of not thinking too closely about one’s surroundings but criticising them passionately nevertheless was clearly something Weys liked to exploit.
Other small changes might even be read as a hint of resistance. For example, advising Suza on her duties as his new housemaid, Glöppler makes another sally of the kind sampled above:
GLÖPPLER: … (laut) Weißt, vor allem mußt’ dich um die Aufräumung von mein’ Zimmer kümmern. Wenn’s d’nachher zu mir kommst –, dann –, dann –, dann werd’ ich dir eine Red’ halten, ohne Gnade, ohne Barmherzigkeit und ohne…
SUZA: Ja, pan.
GLÖPPLER: Ohne Japan – ? Das muß eine Chineserin sein, dass sie’s immer mit die Japanesern z’tun hat!
(GLÖPPLER: …. (loudly) You know, most importantly you have to tend to tidying my room. When you come to see me later –, then, then, then I will give you an address, without mercy, without pity and without… / SUZA: Yes [Ja], pan. / GLÖPPLER: Without Japan? She must be a Chinese – she is always on about the Japanese!]Footnote 75
Suza still uses the Slovak expression for ‘mister’ or ‘master’, pan, in order to appear polite to her new boss. Glöppler, however, does not know the expression and hears ‘Japan’ instead of ‘yes, master’. This little joke appears repeatedly, also in the original. However, Glöppler’s subsequent comment is only in the Weys version. He is hinting, of course, at the tensions between Japan and China, especially since the Japanese had invaded Manchuria in 1931. By itself this comment might appear innocuous but in 1939, after several intellectuals (among them the influential Marxist journalist and cabaret artist Jura Soyfer who by 1944 had already been killed in Buchenwald) had pointed out the parallels between Japan and Germany, the Werkel had produced a sketch entitled ‘Das chinesische Wunder’, which had used the Japanese-Chinese tensions as a barely concealed metaphor for the friction between the Austrians and the Germans.Footnote 76 The popular programme – criticised by Nazi officials – included a conversation of Chinese clerks and cleaners with Pif-keh (‘Pifke’ is an – often pejorative – Austrian expression for a German), a high officer of the Tokioten (a play with ‘Idioten’) from Japanland, who had invaded Wi-en, the capital of Chinareich.Footnote 77 While many in the Rastelbinder audience – and, probably, most non-local state officials – would not have picked up on such references in Glöppler’s statement, Weys could still expect a response, at least from Viennese audiences.
One musical moment in Weys’s revision is also rather puzzling and provokes speculation: the refrain of Szandor’s entrance (No. 3). For this number Weys used Zampach’s ‘successful’ text, which delineates the general duties and life of a tinker in the adjusted, no longer Yiddish dialect and without the specific references to his Jewishness.Footnote 78 Strangely, while Weys commented on these text changes, the music is never once touched on in all the accessible correspondence about the revision. Indeed, replying to Sikorski’s explicit request to make a list of all the necessary new music, Weys failed to mention this number.Footnote 79 Furthermore, the way in which Weys presented the new text in his manuscript, including the explanatory comment ‘(2 bars of music)’ in places matching the original composition, suggests that no melodic changes were carried out or planned. It is unlikely, however, that Weys or Moser or Sikorski should not have perceived these melismas – in a mostly harmonic minor, complete with augmented seconds and an underlying woodwind texture – as typically Jewish, especially as this particular melody was originally paired with the text ‘I am a poor Jew! I am not at all well’ (‘ich bin ä armer Jud! Es geht mir gor nix gut’).
the refrain of Szandor’s entrance (No. 3).
As Frey established, these melismas had been the focal point of heated discussions about the work’s Jewish aspect even after its premiere performance. Ludwig Karpath, for example, found this piece ‘disgusting’ because ‘his [Szandor’s] entrance number, an unedifying imitation of those lugubriously beautiful songs whose interval relation is different from that in occidental music, triggers sentiments in the listener that do not suitably prepare him for what is to come.’Footnote 80 Surely, the reaction to such a melody would have been at least equally strong during the Third Reich.
But what could have been done about it? To change the melody would have been awkward, it being the most memorable part of the song – the refrain. Working on other numbers, for example Szandor’s already mentioned ‘Das ist a einfache Rechnung’, Weys had objected to Zampach’s text changes to the refrain. The song’s popularity and memorability, he argued, required that at least the first few lines be adapted from the original.Footnote 81 In Szandor’s entrance number it was, of course, impossible to keep the original words, which most explicitly identified the main character as a Jew. It might therefore have seemed too big an intervention to change also the melody.
Or did the editors feel that, without the specifically Jewish text, the melody could simply pass as ‘Eastern?’ The fact that Weys never mentioned a potential problem with the music of this number and that Moser did not take issue with it either suggests that – as so often – musical language managed to escape from ‘political’ implications: there was no definite way of pinpointing the melody’s Jewishness – its markers were common elements of any ‘Othering’ or Orientalising music. Even Lehár’s woodwind texture, which might have seemed to point towards the typical Klezmer sound, was in fact missing the indispensible clarinet and featured instead a more generally ‘Oriental’ oboe.Footnote 82 In the end, it is even possible that Weys quite deliberately, and without calling attention to it, kept this residual Jewish aspect of the work intact – the only reminder to an attentive, knowing audience of the original, Jewish Pfefferkorn.
* * *
The Rastelbinder revision was not just any assignment for Weys. As an official Reichsauftrag (government commission) it offered a way to dodge many of the bullets the Third Reich had in store for him, his wife Gertrude (whom he called Gerda) and their son. While his early negotiations with Sikorski and the Reichsstelle suggest that at first Weys’s incentive for accepting the job was mainly financial, it soon became clear that ‘said employment also seems to protect me from unpleasant capture’.Footnote 83 In the early war years many actors and artists had enjoyed the privileges of so-called UK status (NB: this stood for ‘unabkömmlich’, indispensable), which entailed official NS-Truppenbetreuung (entertainment of the military) as well as cultural work for official party organisations but saved them from being drafted.Footnote 84 Weys had been UK throughout the war because of his participation through the Werkel in Wehrmacht programmes and the ‘Kraft durch Freude-Truppenbetreuung’. As more and more of his colleagues had to report for military service, it was the Rastelbinder commission that allowed him to retain that coveted exemption.
The prospect of such privileges must have been one reason why Weys fought for the viability of the project. It was uncertain whether, having refused two unsatisfactory attempts, Lehár would agree to any further work on a new Rastelbinder. In order to convince the composer, Moser, Sikorski and Weys planned a visit to Bad Ischl, where Lehár had moved in 1939 in order to protect his Jewish wife Sophie from Nazi assaults.Footnote 85 The three visitors discussed their plan of action at length: Weys was particularly worried that Lehár would consider their collective appearance as an ambush and react petulantly. In the end, they agreed that Weys should first meet ‘Maestro Lehár’ alone.Footnote 86 Their subsequent correspondence suggests that the visitors used Weys’s family situation as a tactic to persuade Lehár. On his return, Weys reported to Sikorski that ‘I got to Vienna okay (even with a seat). Gerda was very pleased about everything I had to tell her, she laughed a lot about her indirect “assistance” with the Lehár agreement regarding the Rastelbinder.’Footnote 87 It seems from this that Weys’s references to his wife’s Jewishness and the resulting difficult situation for the whole family had been a clinching argument in securing the composer’s assent. Indeed, it would make sense that Lehár was moved by such a situation: he himself was in a very similar position, even though his own wife was comparatively safe owing to Lehár’s exalted status as one of the Reich’s trophy composers. Lehár knew of his powers and in this case willingly exerted them to help Weys, as his rather blunt letter to the author, written two months later, shows. In this letter, the composer confirmed that ‘I have agreed to arrange the Rastelbinder. I have really only done that in order to help you. I know exactly your situation and I am anxious to accommodate you, as much as it is in my power to do so.’Footnote 88 And the Rastelbinder project did indeed help Weys to save his wife – even sooner than he or Lehár could have imagined. On arriving in Vienna after his trip to Bad Ischl, Weys was confronted with a first work deployment call for Gerda: their son Rupi had just turned six, the age limit for Jewish mothers to stay at home with their ‘mixed’ children. Weys immediately wrote to the employment office, stressing the indispensable professional services his wife was carrying out for him:
I am hit all the more gravely now, at a time when I am entrusted with a commission from the Reich minister, by the officially requested potential external labour assignment for my wife. If it becomes reality, I will face household and child without any help, but will also be without any transcribing assistance for the ongoing Wehrmacht and KdF programmes. In order to implement the Reich commission I would even have to call upon the help of a typist – at least by the hour. And apart from that, any intellectual concentration would necessarily be lacking if child and house were to be left unattended or if I had to attend to them.Footnote 89
His appeal was successful; for the time being Gerda was exempted from all duties outside her home.
Matters took a new turn, however, when Goebbels announced the general closure of all theatres across Greater Germany. On 1 September 1944, the Reich minister demanded the war deployment of all persons engaged in the cultural sector.Footnote 90 Weys had heard about the closure in advance and acted immediately by writing letters to Moser, Sikorski and Lehár, asking for confirmation that his commission would continue. He even drafted a possible reply for the composer.Footnote 91 Lehár’s response, using Weys’s suggested wording almost exactly, came only three days later and indeed helped the author to avoid deployment.
As a result of the theatre closure, however, Weys’s financial situation became increasingly bleak. In order to secure some future income, he tried to negotiate with Sikorski an official contract guaranteeing that his Rastelbinder version would be recognised as the work’s authoritative version – but in vain. He also repeatedly urged both Moser and Lehár to consider him for further editorial work on operettas, asking especially to be involved in any new official commissions. He even tried to initiate new projects such as a new version of Lehár’s Der Göttergatte (1904).Footnote 92 But the composer’s reaction was discouraging: ‘I don’t want to think about Göttergatte and the like. After ten years I want to write a new stage work.’Footnote 93
To make matters worse, in late August 1944 work on the Rastelbinder project came to a halt: Lehár’s assistance was now needed and the composer pleaded a trip to Switzerland as taking precedence. (After a Gestapo attempt to detain his wife in Bad Ischl, Lehár had started to spend significant amounts of time with her in Switzerland, where she could feel safer.Footnote 94) Weys, whose contract stated that he was to receive the final instalment of his stipend only on the completion of the project, repeatedly contacted Moser asking for an advance, as he had done his part and was now dependent on Lehár. With growing desperation, Weys even wrote to the composer, expressing his admiration and gratitude towards the ‘venerable master’ and entreating him to act soon.Footnote 95 These endeavours were in vain – Lehár’s reply was cool, no action followed.
However, Weys was soon to realise that these interruptions to the project – particularly as they were not caused by him – could in fact be highly beneficial to his family. When further evil tidings came, ‘that all men from the Volkssturm [People’s Militia], whose family situation is like mine (wife!) will in all likelihood be divided among “entrenchments” [at the front] (possibly O.T. [Organisation Todt])’,Footnote 96 Weys was able to give several new excuses for delays with the project, all of them through ‘unpredictable … reasons’:
a) Franz Lehár’s trip to Switzerland (end of September until mid-October),
b) a current kidney and bladder infection of the Maestro,
c) requests for essential changes to the textbook currently being edited, from both the Maestro and the publisher of the work.Footnote 97
With ‘requests for essential changes’ Weys was alluding to Lehár’s rejection of one particular plot detail introduced at the end of the new version – the turn that the silver gulden Szandor had once given Suza had been a fake. In other words, Weys was now turning the only problem still to be solved – a minor one, as he himself had repeatedly stated – into a major reason for the work’s delay. He even prompted Sikorski to provide him with a letter that would support his case officially. This letter is worth quoting at length, as Sikorski’s unusual wealth of information and his strangely long-winded style show how little about the Reich commission at this stage was to do with providing a good new version. Instead, the project had become mostly an alibi:
You know how enthusiastic and happy about everything Maestro Lehár has shown himself to be regarding your work for the Rastelbinder so far; you also know how satisfied we and the gentlemen from the ministry are.
But exactly because the new version promises to be so particularly excellent, I have to ask you about something else today: namely, the matter of the ‘silver gulden’! You remember that even at the time of our planning session in Ischl (in the presence of Director Drewes and Professor Moser from the ministry) the Maestro repeatedly spoke of this motive, which, in his opinion, was not handled entirely correctly from the psychological standpoint. He has just written me a letter about this matter, which I enclose as an attachment. You can see all the details from it. Lehár probably did not write to you about it directly, because he perhaps did not want to burden you with the extra work. However, I think that you will be able to clear that hurdle within 6–8 weeks at the most. A longer period of time will hardly be needed for these changes, which relate mainly to the first and third act.
Should you succeed with a good and new solution here, the work will surely be even more polished and you will have given Maestro Lehár the greatest pleasure for his 75th birthday! The gentlemen from the ministry also will be grateful for it. When all is said and done, however, you know yourself that the minister likewise has a great interest in the completion of the new version and the best possible solution.
You will also find in Lehár a much more ambitious collaborator for the still outstanding songs than he has been so far, if you fulfil his heart’s desire.Footnote 98
For his wife, the Rastelbinder commission provided further helpful excuses, too. Once more arguing for Gerda’s indispensability at home, Weys mentioned to the employment office his ‘work-related trips to Ischl to Maestro Lehár’, a matter he had stressed repeatedly since his letter to the same office in September 1944.Footnote 99 At that early point, Weys may still have seriously believed that he would have to travel to Bad Ischl. When he offered this possibility to Lehár, however, the composer wrote back dismissively that ‘you don’t have to come to Ischl, because I can only work alone’, so that a future visit became entirely needless.Footnote 100 Several of Weys’s statements support the assumption that he never saw Lehár again. And still, having received a call to report for duty at the Volkssturm in mid-December, the author excused himself at short notice by declaring that he had already bought tickets to visit Lehár. Weys described this bold act to both Sikorski and his friend Louis Barcata, expressing quite clearly to the latter his growing derision of the malfunctioning Nazi bureaucracy and their blind obedience at the mention of important names:
By now I have received an ‘economic allocation certificate’, which Kurz from the propaganda ministry could still fend off this time. Because of a ‘Reich commission’ (minister personally … etc.). Admittedly, his two letters (employment office and Gestapo) have not settled the matter for good, but I don’t think that they will ride roughshod over them. Interestingly, the Volkssturm also still came forward with a call to muster last Sunday. Regrettably, I was just visiting Lehár in Ischl, of which I informed them apologetically, adding also the request not to put me in the foremost units, because I still had to finish a ‘Reich commission’ from the ‘minister personally’, etc. Well, we’ll see…!Footnote 101
Letters to his friends show that Weys still had not been drafted in April, when Soviet forces launched the Vienna Offensive, the final battle for the city. It had been ‘a high-wire act from month to month, often from week to week’,Footnote 102 but as he wrote to Lehár in late March 1945:
Considering all that, I should be glad that for us personally things are not worse, that I can still be at home with my wife and child and protect both … I owe this, incidentally, largely to the ‘Rastelbinder Reich commission’, which I produce as an ‘alibi’ and ‘identification’ at all official offices.Footnote 103
Weys and his family all survived the war and, although post-war times were still hard, the author found new outlets for his creative work: he was asked to help with the preparations for the Viennese anti-fascist exhibition ‘Niemals vergessen’ in 1946, and provided radio stations and magazines with educational reports such as ‘Cabaret unter den Augen der Zensur’. While musical theatre works hardly feature in his post-war oeuvre, Weys successfully continued his cabaret career in Vienna until his death in 1978.
* * *
This discussion of the Reichsstelle commission to edit Lehár’s Der Rastelbinder provides several insights into the Third Reich operetta world. The simple, grey- (or, better, sepia-) shaded conclusion is that Weys’s changes show neither a fanatically fascist nor a consistently resistant stance. While the official commission called for (or at least prompted) a certain number of concessions to the regime’s ideals – the rewriting of Pfefferkorn’s character being the most obvious example – the sparingness and subtlety of Weys’s editorial changes, as well as the reservations he initially expressed, substantiate a rather moderate image of the Reichsstelle’s work,Footnote 104 and even support Fred Prieberg’s suggestion that Goebbels used this institution primarily as an administrative measure to keep extremist cultural outgrowths under control.Footnote 105
But Goebbels’s establishment of the Reichsstelle – on Hitler orders! – and his demand for a focus on lighter musical fare also suggest that operetta was still deemed important by the National Socialist regime when the war was in full swing. Even during the final stages of the war – when the Rastelbinder project had made no significant progress for months, when no performance possibility was in sight, and when all but a select few artists had already been drafted – Weys was still given official support to carry on with his work.
This development points to the many loopholes in the complex, decentralised National Socialist system, especially towards the end of the war: as those central figures who had once given their express orders to promote operetta attended to more pressing war matters, cultural administration was left freely in the hands of their underlings whose interpretation of what needed to be done varied widely. As the story of the Rastelbinder commission has shown, Weys’s happy end was the outcome of a collaborative effort, involving the good will and blind eyes not only of Lehár and publisher Sikorski but also of the Reichsstelle – which, at least by this time, was likely no more than a one-man operation. This case therefore also gives some credence to Moser’s largely disparaged post-war statements before denazification authorities and contributes to the recent, much-needed revaluation of this hapless musicologist. For, although Moser was without doubt a notorious Mitläufer (follower), desperate to keep himself – and his many dependents – afloat under different political regimes,Footnote 106 recent research shows that some of his work has been dismissed too easily, especially by colleagues who used him as a scapegoat for many of the era’s misdeeds in German musicology.Footnote 107 Defending himself as well as the Reichsstelle, Moser wrote that ‘[i]ncidentally, I am not ashamed of any of the opera and operetta revisions or new commissions – none of them was meant to replace a Jewish author’.Footnote 108 Elsewhere he noted that ‘I have only performed artistic-scholarly tasks … and have even continually defied the Nazi ideology by providing authors married to Jews with commissions, and Jews and otherwise politically persecuted people with professional licences.’Footnote 109
Weys’s example shows that operetta could indeed be a lifeline for authors during this difficult time, even for some who had not been operetta specialists previously. The genre’s lack of political explicitness became a welcome feature for artists who could not afford to attract attention. Weys’s situation as a locally significant and popular but internationally little-known author is representative of German and Austrian artists who, even if they wanted to emigrate, were not famous enough to dare a new start abroad (as, for example, the operetta composer Robert Stolz had done). Indeed, librettists and other writers whose success depended on the German language were limited in their options abroad, regardless of their fame.
To receive an official Reichsstelle commission for an operetta project produced a winning combination then: it did not require much political commitment, paid comparatively well, and could help to avoid dangerous military service as well as to keep the family together. Weys was not the only one to have benefited from these privileges. Indeed, trying to exculpate himself, Moser did not even mention Weys as an example. Instead he wrote of the commissions he had given to the judenversippten (miscegenetically Jewish) Eduard Künneke, Edmund Nick and Hans Ebert.Footnote 110 Future research will perhaps show how these authors used their operetta commissions, and to what extent they were supporters of the regime. It is, however, already clear that – at least to many artists working at the time – operetta during the Third Reich was by no means a barren art form.
