These two Jewish orchestras celebrate the sound of the ostracized

When the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Hamburg gave its first concert of the year in mid-May, the police had to guard it. The Israeli army and Hamas were just firing at each other, and anti-Semitic riots were mounting in Germany. The program in the Hamburger Kammerspiele included works by Johannes Brahms and Viktor Ullmann – in each concert the ensemble presents at least one piece by a composer persecuted by the Nazis.

The orchestra was founded three years ago by cellist Pjotr ​​Meshvinski. Or rather, he “revived” it, as he puts it, based on the Jewish Chamber Orchestra in Hamburg during the Nazi era. It was there that the violinist, conductor and composer Edvard Moritz started it as an emergency community in autumn 1934. As early as August 1935, an occupational ban followed. After only four concerts, Edvard Moritz, who also conducted the Berlin Jewish Chamber Orchestra, had to disband the group.

The Hamburg orchestra was not the only Jewish ensemble in Germany. When the Nazi regime increasingly denied Jewish musicians the opportunity to perform and they gradually had to leave the orchestras, both state and private ensembles, many formed their own groups. In 1933 the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden (Kulturbund Deutscher Juden) was established in Berlin, which also organized theater performances, started with Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise” in the Berlin theater on Charlottenstrasse and maintained its own orchestra.

The Kulturbund could only pay the musicians little, in 1937/38 the 40 orchestra members earned around 195 Reichsmarks a month. Nevertheless, events took place almost every day, even if they had to be individually approved by the Propaganda Ministry. And the Gestapo was always in the audience.

At least in this way, Jews had the opportunity to organize and experience culture together for a while – even as an audience they were excluded from other cultural life. The Nazis created a cultural ghetto: conversely, non-Jews were not allowed to attend the Kulturbund evenings.

They even played anti-Semitic contemporaries

Similar associations soon sprang up in other cities. For 1935 there are more than 36 local cultural associations, with a total of around 70,000 members. Their lifespan only lasted a few years: in 1941 the cultural alliances were dissolved.

Today, several Jewish chamber orchestras, not only in Hamburg, but also in Munich, Dresden, Recklinghausen and Stuttgart are reminiscent of the tradition of the Jewish orchestras within the framework of the cultural associations. Such an ensemble existed in Berlin from 1998 onwards; it was named La’alot, which means something like “to climb up”, but also “to immigrate to the Land of Israel”.

The oboist and lecturer Ichil Golzmann gathered 25 Jewish musicians around him, Russians and an Israeli cellist. Like the chamber orchestras in the 1930s, it played works from the classical repertoire as well as Jewish composers, Tzvi Avni, Alfred Schnittke and Samuel Barber. However, the ensemble disbanded after a few years.

Today’s Jewish Chamber Orchestra in Hamburg is similar to its predecessor in the Nazi era with its current programs and mixes non-Jewish and Jewish composers. In the 1930s, the Nazis explicitly demanded that the Jewish orchestras play works by Jewish composers – elsewhere they were no longer allowed. The programs of the Hamburg ensemble at the time also listed the great names of the classical music. It even played contemporaries like Florent Schmitt, an anti-Semite and ardent Nazi supporter.

Bringing the musical legacy to life

The Jewish Chamber Orchestra has set itself the task of remembering the ostracized artists. “It is very difficult mentally to play this music,” says Pyotr Meshvinski. “You can’t do that quietly, not even every day. I cry almost every time I play this. But the music has to be heard. “

In the twelve-part series of events “Musical and literary stumbling blocks” as part of the nationwide festival program “1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany”, the ensemble brings this musical legacy to life all year round.

Texts on Jewish culture are read to the music by Ullmann, Hans Krása, Mieczyslaw Weinberg or Erwin Schulhoff, but also by Brahms and Shostakovich, including by Burghart Klaußner. At the opening event in May, Lea Rosh, the initiator of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, spoke about old and new anti-Semitism in Germany. Yesterday, Sunday, music by Gideon Klein was on the program, as well as texts by Mascha Kaléko, Imre Kertész and Scholem Alejchem.

The venue, the Hamburger Kammerspiele, was not chosen by chance. This is exactly where the ensemble of the Jewish Cultural Association performed until the Gestapo used the building as a supply and supply point for deportations. In July 1942 it became a collection point for one of the Hamburg transports to Auschwitz.

It is important to Pyotr Meshvinski that the orchestra perform in places of remembrance like this one. At the same time, the origin and religion of the musicians play no role. “We are a synagogue, anyone can come to us. Provided they are good musicians, ”he says with a dry sense of humor.

Change of scene. In Munich it is pouring down, it is the heaviest rainy day of the year so far. The Bavaria music studios are just a stone’s throw from the Gasteig. Inside, nothing of the patter of rain can be heard, but a swaying string phrase: the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich is recording its new CD.

Music by Fanny Hensel and the original version of the Hebridean overture by her brother Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – a heart project for the artistic director and conductor Daniel Grossmann. He is all the more pleased about the top-class cast: the Israeli opera singer Chen Reiss and the violinist Arabella Steinbacher are also part of the team.

Daniel Grossmann is a casual guy: jeans, sweater, gray hair. 16 years ago he founded the Munich Chamber Orchestra, initially under the name Orchester Jakobsplatz Munich. However, only the people of Munich knew, if at all, that the largest Jewish community center in Europe was built on Jakobsplatz after the Second World War. So the orchestra decided to show their colors and include the Jewish in their name. Very few orchestra members are Jews.

You don’t want to see the composer as just a victim

Grossmann is not primarily interested in reviving the tradition from the 1930s. The native of Munich misses Jewish culture in public spaces today. And that’s the program of the ensemble: Sometimes it’s about Jewish mourning rituals, sometimes synagogal music or the emigration of Jews to Shanghai during the Holocaust.

Of course, the chamber orchestra also plays the ostracized composers. However, it is important to Grossmann not to see her as a victim of National Socialism: “Erwin Schulhoff was brilliant, but he treated women badly. You have to talk about that too. “

Reducing it to the Nazi context would not do justice to the composer. That is why the people of Munich have not dedicated themselves to a culture of remembrance like their Hamburg colleagues, but want to present contemporary Jewish culture. This year, in addition to a gala concert as part of the “1700 Years of Jewish Life” program, a synagogue tour is on the calendar again: with extremely reduced cast, they play in small synagogues to bring Jewish music back to the Bavarian villages.

Present instead of past. The different orientations of the chamber orchestras in Munich and Hamburg represent the diversity of today’s Jewish culture and identity in Germany. And for the range of possibilities to make Jewish existence visible. Perhaps music, this individual and universal art, is one of the best ways to do this.