Richard Strauss on the day of Hitler's suicide.


On April 30, 1945, the day of Hitler’s suicide, a squad of American soldiers rolled up the driveway of a quaint, green-shuttered villa in the Alpine resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Bavaria, and found themselves face to face with the eighty-year-old composer and conductor Richard Strauss. “I am the composer of ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ and ‘Salome,’” Strauss said, in English. The G.I.s had intended to commandeer the house as a temporary headquarters. After listening to Strauss play excerpts from “Rosenkavalier” at the piano, they let him be, and moved on to another destination. ....


The events of April 30th also shed light on the personality of Strauss, a supremely wily character who maintained a lofty position in German music through the Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, and beyond. He was often accused of opportunism, and the claim is not unjust: Strauss did what he needed to do to protect the sacred circle of his art, and, not incidentally, the profits that accrued from it. When he saw the soldiers in his drive, he understood at once that a new Reich was at hand, and took care to present himself as a well-travelled cosmopolitan. (He liked to display a document declaring him an honorary citizen of Morgantown, West Virginia, which he acquired on an American tour in 1904.) Strauss may have had an easy time accommodating himself to power because, deep down, he never took power seriously. In his youth, he had read the anarchist writings of Max Stirner, who declared that each man should make his own laws. For better or worse, Strauss followed that philosophy to the end. ....

 Strauss wrote in his diary, “At 11 o’clock there came a Major Kramers, who, without waiting for a reply, told my son that we would have to vacate the house within fifteen minutes … Richard”—the composer’s older grandson—“did not want me to go out, so that I would not become upset, but I went to the car and identified myself to the young major as the composer of ‘Rosenkavalier’ and ‘Salome,’ whereupon he at once became polite and offered his hand and after two minutes everything was in order.” Who was this debonair officer, who saw to it that an “OFF LIMITS” ...

[Courtesy: The New Yorker /
[Excerpts from the article MONUMENT MAN by Alex Ross in The New Yorker, July 25, 2014]

[http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/richard-strauss-and-the-american-army 


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