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Conductor Gergiev: He misuses music for propaganda
Photo: Danil Aikin / ITAR-TASS / IMAGO
Wilhelm Furtwängler was a great conductor, but politically a problematic figure – that is now part of the general knowledge of music history.
Exactly what his guilt was and how heavy it was is still a matter of debate today.
But there is no doubt that he was a blessing for the propaganda of the Nazi regime.
He provided the henchmen of the Third Reich with an effective soundtrack, ennobled it with the good reputation of German music and with every concert seemed to reaffirm the arrogant claim that one's own culture was far superior to all others.
Furtwangler's defense in his 1946 denazification trial was based primarily on the old idea of German Romanticism that art and politics were two separate worlds.
With his music he only wanted to offer the oppressed German people a space for retreat and hope.
But even if one were to believe Furtwängler, the naivety of a man who thought he could conduct the prelude to Wagner's Meistersinger in front of huge swastika flags in an apolitical way is dismaying.
The Russian conductor Valeri Gergiev has a function for the Putin regime that shows many parallels on the structural level of the dictatorship comparison to that of Furtwangler for the Nazi state, even if Putin's Russia is of course by no means to be equated with Hitler's Germany.
However, while there were isolated attempts by Furtwängler to resist the dictatorship – for example in March 1934 by defending the composer Paul Hindemith – Gergiev has for many years uninterruptedly provided, accompanied by pithy confessions to his ruler, the resounding staging of an aggressive Great Russian Ideology that openly proclaims dominance over Europe.
This fits in with the goal expressly stated on the website of his "Valery Gergiev Foundation" to "increase Russia's cultural influence in the world".
Even the shameful "Concert of the Winners" that he gave in the summer of 2008 in the Russian-occupied part of Georgia left no doubt as to how smoothly Putin's politics and Gergiev's cultural-imperialist propaganda meshed.
Dmitri Shostakovich's "Leningrad Symphony", composed in 1941 during the siege of the city as a desperate appeal for resistance against the Nazi troops, has been reinterpreted here in exactly the direction in which Putin is ranting today against the allegedly Nazi infiltrated Ukraine, to counter his attack against the Nazis to justify obvious facts.
Gergiev made this even clearer with a cynical speech in which he dedicated the concert to the victims of Georgian (!) aggression.
Other unspeakable actions followed, including the signing of an open letter back in March 2014, which not only endorsed the annexation of Crimea, but generally endorsed “the attitude of the President of the Russian Federation towards Ukraine”.
It is wrong to accuse the mayor of Munich of bigotry.
That's why Gergiev shouldn't have been chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic under any circumstances in 2015, and the city shouldn't have extended his contract even less in 2018.
But not to learn anything from these serious mistakes and to continue to cling to Gergiyev in a situation in which Putin is breaking with all principles of humanity would be an even bigger mistake.
In this respect, it is wrong to attest, like Peter Uehling in the »Berliner Zeitung«, that the mayor of Munich, Dieter Reiter, was bigoted because of the ultimatum to Gergiiyev, and to doubt, like Helmut Mauró in the »Süddeutsche Zeitung«, whether Gergiev’s silence really had to mean »that he sticks to Putin« or, like the conductor Christian Thielemann, to lament that »the human aspect« is neglected here.
Of course, riders can be accused of pulling the ripcord too late.
But there was no alternative to the fact that he pulled her and finally fired Gergiyev, if one didn't want to finance Putin's foreign propaganda with taxpayers' money and at the same time continue to dream of non-political music, which not only led to Furtwangler's downfall.
Imagine how the orchestra of Kiev's twin city would have played the »Leningrad Symphony« under Putin's paladin on May 12 as planned – Georgia reloaded.
Who can and wants to listen to this with a clear conscience?
It is also inappropriate to sue Gergiev for his right to freedom of opinion, as happened, for example, in »Welt«: »Do other artists also have to fear that, depending on the world situation, they will be forced to make political statements before they are allowed to perform in Munich?«
There is certainly a danger of overzealous cancellations and a lack of differentiation, for example with regard to Anna Netrebko, who at least condemned the war against Ukraine.
In our comfortable latitudes, one should also be much clearer about what it means to demand distancing statements from artists living in dictatorships - and ask oneself whether it makes sense in each case or only serves to calm one's own self.
He works for a despot
But Gergiev's case is different.
Because this conductor misuses music for propaganda without any compulsion, but rather demonstrably out of his own well-documented conviction, in the service of a deeply inhumane ideological madness that threatens the existence of the free world.
He works for a despot who, for his part, suppresses the right to free speech and who is just not interested in the "human aspect" of the bombing of the Ukrainian civilian population.
"Unrestricted tolerance", Karl Popper drew this lesson from history in 1945, "necessarily leads to the disappearance of tolerance".
This also applies to artists, and that is why democracy must defend itself against the intolerant among them, instead of paying them as well.
