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About 9,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany settled in Australia between 1933 and 1945, a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands who fled. Although initially greeted with a mixed reception as "enemy aliens", some of these refugees remained and made a significant impact on multicultural Australia. This book traces the difficult journey of the orchestral performers, virtuoso soloists, singers, conductors and composers who sought refuge on a distant continent. A few were famous artists who toured Australia and stayed, most notably the piano virtuoso Jascha Spivakovsky and the members of the Weintraubs Syncopators, one of the most successful jazz bands of the Weimar Republic. Drawing on extensive primary sources - including correspondence, travel documents and interviews with the refugees themselves or their descendants - the author depicts in vivid detail the lives of nearly a hundred displaced musicians. Available for the first time in English, this volume brings to light a wealth of Jewish, exilic and musical history that was hitherto unknown.
List of contents
Contents: Australia: So Far, and Yet so Near - «Oh sacred Art»: On the Status of Music - Failed Integration: Getting out of Germany, 1933-1937 - On the Other Side of the World - Mixed Feelings: Australian Reactions to German Racial Politics - «Muss i denn, muss i denn zum Städtele hinaus?»: Persecution and Flight - After Kristallnacht - The Refugee Problem from an Australian Perspective - Under Union Scrutiny: The Weintraubs Syncopators - «Down with the fifth column!»: Britain during the War - Interned and Defamed in Australia - «In corrugated iron huts»: Deported to Hay and Tatura - Snow White in Uniform: The Music Revue Sergeant Snow White - The Year 1945: Lost and Found - «The cultivated enthusiasm of a handful of missionaries»: The Genesis of Musica Viva Australia - Between Adjustment and Self-Assertion: Refugee Contributions to Australian Musical Life - «Land of Mine»: New Compositions for a New Australia - «Happily ever after»: Hidden Contributions to Cultural Diversity.
About the author
Albrecht Dümling is a musicologist and music critic. After completing his doctorate on Arnold Schoenberg and Stefan George, he published the first comprehensive book on Bertolt Brecht’s collaboration with composers. For several years he was a music critic for Der Tagesspiegel and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. His exhibition on Nazi music policies, Degenerate Music: A Critical Reconstruction, travelled to venues all over the world, including London, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Seville and Tel Aviv. Dümling was also Project Consultant for the DECCA CD series Entartete Musik. He is the chair of the society musica reanimata, and was the first recipient of the European Cultural Prize KAIROS.
Diana K. Weekes is the translator of the volume.
Summary
About 9,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany settled in Australia between 1933 and 1945, a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands who fled. Although initially greeted with a mixed reception as «enemy aliens», some of these refugees remained and made a significant impact on multicultural Australia. This book traces the difficult journey of the orchestral performers, virtuoso soloists, singers, conductors and composers who sought refuge on a distant continent. A few were famous artists who toured Australia and stayed, most notably the piano virtuoso Jascha Spivakovsky and the members of the Weintraubs Syncopators, one of the most successful jazz bands of the Weimar Republic. Drawing on extensive primary sources – including correspondence, travel documents and interviews with the refugees themselves or their descendants – the author depicts in vivid detail the lives of nearly a hundred displaced musicians. Available for the first time in English, this volume brings to light a wealth of Jewish, exilic and musical history that was hitherto unknown.
Additional text
Praise for the German edition:
«Dümling has traced a web of connections between yesterday’s Germany and today’s Australia, a history of disgrace, culpability, neglect, unlikely twists of fate and even the occasional happy end.» (Shirley Apthorp, The Australian)
«Dümling is probably best known as the curator of Degenerate Music, an important exhibition about Nazi propaganda in music. In The Vanished Musicians his approach is like that of a curator who brings neglected historical exhibits to light.» (Glenn Nicholls, Inside Story)
«The liveliness Dümling manages to transmit in his stories [...] makes the book a compelling read.»(Andrea Bandhauer, Shofar)
Report
Praise for the German edition:
«Dümling has traced a web of connections between yesterday's Germany and today's Australia, a history of disgrace, culpability, neglect, unlikely twists of fate and even the occasional happy end.» (Shirley Apthorp, The Australian)
«Dümling is probably best known as the curator of Degenerate Music, an important exhibition about Nazi propaganda in music. In The Vanished Musicians his approach is like that of a curator who brings neglected historical exhibits to light.» (Glenn Nicholls, Inside Story)
«The liveliness Dümling manages to transmit in his stories [...] makes the book a compelling read.»(Andrea Bandhauer, Shofar)
