The Weimar Triangle (4 page)

The ambassador had assigned Klaus to prepare the ground for Otto Ernst Sutter to discuss with Herriot the French contributions to the exhibition and to discover whether he might be persuaded to accept an invitation to speak at the opening ceremony. This would obviously be a
coup
for Frankfurt. Herriot had been a
lycée
teacher in Lyon before he entered politics and was known to have a special interest in the German classics. He was also one of the least vindictive of French politicians.

Klaus enjoyed performing and gave us a superb impression of Herriot’s old-fashioned oratorical style. The words sounded as though they were taken straight from a third-rate play at the Comédie-Française. To Sutter he said something like “Let me bid you welcome,
mon cher monsieur
and distinguished emissary from the beautiful city of Frankfurt,” and so on. It turned out that Herriot was well disposed toward Frankfurt because before the war, as mayor of Lyon, he had organized a cultural exhibition to which the curators of the Goethehaus contributed a number of invaluable
objets d’art
, paintings and furniture and “a walking stick of Papa Goethe.” All these things disappeared during the war. Perhaps they were stolen by
boches
haters. In 1919 Herriot made his excuses to the curators of the Goethehaus and offered compensation. The curators declined the offer. (This was confirmed in a letter a week or two ago.) So Herriot was happily prepared to do whatever he could to erase the dark stains on the honour of France.

This, Klaus said, was music to Sutter’s ears. Of course Sutter knew all about
l’affaire Goethehaus
. So, before issuing his invitation, he proceeded to give the minister a short survey of the exhibition leading up to the climax
—
he had done his homework
—
which was the section devoted to
Goethe und die Musik.
This, he said, would include autographs of musical settings of Goethe’s poems by a variety of composers, personal dedications from Schubert and a letter dated 1830 from the twenty-one-year-old Felix Mendelssohn, two years before Goethe’s death. They would also show some music albums, he said, that had belonged to Lotte Buff, the young Goethe’s
enamorata
who was the model of the Lotte who was the cause of Werther’s suicide.

Herriot was enchanted. He promised to do all he could. He said he had no doubt that the chamber of deputies would approve the modest expenditures involved in choosing and dispatching the treasures to compete with those Sutter had mentioned, as soon Herriot received a proper request from the German government in Berlin, preferably signed by his old friend, foreign minister Gustav Stresemann. Herriot considered him one of the truly great men in Europe today. The request should be addressed to the French government. He would be happy to receive it on its behalf. This, of course, was only a formality.

Sutter assured him the request would be in Herriot’s hands within forty-eight hours. Before taking his leave, he took a deep breath and asked whether the minister might perhaps be receptive to an invitation to speak at the opening ceremonies.

Without a moment’s hesitation Herriot replied it would be a great honour and he would be happy to consider it as soon as the request from Berlin arrived.

Three days later Klaus delivered by hand the invitation to the minister’s secretary, signed by Stresemann himself, together with a letter from Sutter thanking him for his kind reception and expressing the hope that, because time was of the essence, a list of the objects the French government intended to dispatch to Frankfurt would be ready within a few days. Four weeks went by. Nothing happened. Sutter grew frantic. He asked Klaus to contact the minister’s secretary to inquire. Another week went by without a word. Finally he asked Klaus to pay a personal visit to the minister himself. Klaus did so. That was the first time Herriot talked to him. He asked him a few questions about his education and family background. He wondered whether, in the repertoire of Klaus’s many obvious professional qualifications, he had acquired the ability to keep a secret. Klaus said that this happened to be one of his outstanding virtues.

So Herriot confessed that he had indeed received the invitation and the letter requesting a list of items to exhibit, but had put it away in the top drawer of his desk, planning to deal with the matter later. Then he promptly forgot about it. He had only now found it. Would Klaus promise not to tell a soul?

Klaus promised.

Well, he broke the promise. Let us hope he will never commit a greater crime.

Herriot told Klaus all he needed to say to Sutter was that Herriot had run into some political opposition. He would make sure that the list of the hundreds of objects selected would be in Sutter’s hands in two days’ time. And he would be delighted to speak at the opening ceremonies.

Everything proceeded without a hitch.

The list of objects included autographs of Berlioz’s
Damnation of Faust
and his
Symphonie fantastique
, four pieces by Chopin and Bizet’s
Carmen
.

A most enlightening
déjeuner.

E
NTRY 2:
S
ATURDAY
, M
AY 28, 1927

I had hoped that Kathy Meyer-Baer could come today, but as chief curator of the exhibition she was too busy (not surprisingly since it will open on Thursday), and so was Otto Ernst Sutter. But I did manage to snatch Lothar Kornfeld, an old friend of Sutter’s and a close collaborator of his, an excellent singer who when he was about four years old was taken to see the old Abbé Liszt, the year before he died. Liszt had attended a performance of his oratorio
Christus
in Frankfurt, in full vestments. When he heard about the prodigious musical gifts of the child, he gave him a kiss. His biographers claim that in 1823 Beethoven had given Liszt a similar kiss, when he was twelve, after listening to him play the piano
—
the
Weihekuss
, the kiss of consecration. Therefore, Lothar likes to boast that he had been indirectly kissed by Beethoven. Never mind, he usually adds with a chuckle, that by 1823 Beethoven was completely deaf. Lothar’s main interest now is in recordings, not only musical but also animal sounds, and he is making sure the exhibition will commemorate the fiftieth year of the invention of the phonograph. Thomas Alva Edison and the mayor of New York, Jimmy Walker, will be coming.

Our other guest was the rotund Alice Rebner, who runs a social welfare agency and is a great supporter of Hermann’s pacifist activities. She was full of praise for his speech at a lawyers’ dinner in Sachsenhausen last week in which he suggested that the inscription
Dulce est pro patria mori
[It is sweet to die for the fatherland] be removed from all war memorials. Alice loves to eat well, and in her honour we served her favourite dish, jugged hare with red cabbage.

Lothar told us that the people at the
Frankfurter Zeitung
and the
Generalanzeiger
were already writing editorials about Frankfurt being the seat of the League of Nations of Music, the Mecca of Music, music being the universal language of love, peace and understanding. Alice made an interesting point in that connection. She said that for the mayor, Ludwig Landmann, music was something else as well
—
for him it meant change as well as tradition, it meant being open to the modern world, it meant ways of expressing new ideas as well as celebrating the old Frankfurt. Lothar mentioned the great Electricity Exhibition in 1892, and the Aviation Exhibition of 1909 for which the Festhalle was built, and now we have the music exhibition. In his mind, it all followed logically.

Lothar said that until they built the Hoch’sche Konservatorium in 1878 Frankfurt was near the bottom of the list of musical cities in Germany. It only began to gain significance when Clara Schumann arrived here to teach. We were good at crowning emperors, he said, and at trade fairs
—
and of course at giving birth to Goethe
—
but Berlin, Leipzig, even Mannheim, were far ahead of us when it came to music.

This was news to me.

E
NTRY 3:
S
ATURDAY
, J
UNE 4, 1927

I have known for years that this day would come, so why was I so surprised on Thursday? Mainly because of the speeches all those officials made at the opening ceremonies in the Opernhaus, after the great stars had spoken. Of course they had every reason to be proud of the exhibition. Heaven knows Landmann deserves all the praise he got. It was his brainchild, not anybody else’s. But it was the emotional intensity of the praise that surprised me. Some of the speakers seem to have forgotten that they were bureaucrats. They were so excited because they had crushed the enemy, the opposition in the City Council. Time will tell whether this is really a colossal waste of money, as the opposition complained
—
a financial burden on future generations. There were occasions when even I was tempted to say that it was more important to spend money on shell-shocked war veterans than on importing double gongs from Kyoto. Even though the exhibits themselves are either private property, contributed by collectors, or provided by museums and foreign governments, a lot of public money was spent. However, without the private contributions it could not have been done. Thank God for our rich old families! At the
déjeuner
two Saturdays ago one of the guests reminded us once again that no other German city owed as much to its old established
Bürgertum
as Frankfurt does. Even the university was a gift, not from the state, but from rich old Frankfurters.

I was greatly moved by Herriot’s speech. Hermann was delighted he came: Herriot, too, is a pacifist. He has often said that he admired German culture, especially Kant and Beethoven.

Herriot was sitting next to our foreign minister, Gustav Stresemann. Nine years ago we were still at war, and we will be paying reparations to Herriot’s compatriots, among others, seemingly for ever. Still, Herriot came to Frankfurt, prepared to face the universal German indignation
—
including mine
—
about French vindictiveness and short-sightedness at Versailles and afterward. The French still keep troops in the Rhineland! And they occupied the Ruhr in 1923 in retaliation against us dragging our feet in paying those reparations. One hostile move following another
—
a continuation of the war by other means. Seen that way, the war began in 1914 and ended ten years later when the French finally withdrew from the Ruhr, after we had stabilized our currency and ended the near-lethal inflation.

Herriot came in his capacity as minister of education, he said, to honour Beethoven. I found this very moving. I don’t care whether it is true that some members of the former officers corps left when Herriot walked in. He was the first French minister since Versailles to cross the Rhine, without any political purpose, only in the interest of human civilization, of human brotherhood.
Alle Menschen werden Brüder
[All men become brothers], he said in his speech, spelling out, quite unnecessarily since everybody here knows it, that Beethoven set this line by Schiller to music. He said he had come to Frankfurt to serve the cause of peace. “If we want peace,” he declared, “we must first have peace within ourselves. May music help us achieve it.”

And then Stresemann made his speech
—
Stresemann, the great statesman whom I
—
I hate big words but this time I will use one
—
I
worship
. But on Thursday he said things of which I strongly disapprove. How could he have struck such a discordant note! On such an occasion! To call modern music a drumbeat on the nerves! After all, he must have known that this exhibition would make a special effort to create new audiences for contemporary music. Some people called his remarks a deliberate provocation but I think that is nonsense. What would have been his motive? No, he spoke from the heart. It is not a crime to be conservative. He said what he believes and he must be given credit for that. Most people, of course, agree with him
—
and for a politician to present a majority view is never a mistake.

But still I think there was no reason for him to give offence, for example, to the organizers of the festival of the International Society for New Music. If he felt an irrepressible need to say something unpleasant about these efforts, why did he not do so in private? From the way he chose his words I assume he was thinking primarily of jazz. Does he know that there are plans to start teaching jazz at the Hoch’sche Konservatorium this year?

Stresemann began his speech on an entirely proper note. He presented the good wishes of the Berlin government and welcomed all the distinguished representatives of foreign governments. He paid tribute to the genius of Beethoven, the composer of overwhelming music, he said, that came out of his innermost soul and appealed powerfully to the brotherhood of man. He spoke of music as a
Weltsprache
[a world language] that gives expression to a universal longing for peace, deeply rooted in the hearts of all people around the world.

But then he struck a different, admonitory note. He warned us of the dangers of radio and of the mechanical reproduction of music, which may lead to the victory of quantity over quality. Music, he said, is in danger of losing its humanity.

“At this point,” he went on, “I would like to express a personal view. When I hear contemporary music I sometimes have the impression of a certain cheapening brought about by restless rhythms that reflect the turmoil of the big city. When this happens I am afraid that we may lose the taste for what has been created in calmer days. When rhythm dominates harmony I ask myself whether we made the arduous climb up from the primitive to the greatest heights only to descend back to the primitive. To prevent that we must all reject the pretence that
Trommelfeuer auf die Nerven
is music.” To my dismay, this description of music as irksome drumbeats was received with enthusiastic applause.

No one has done more to make us respectable again in the eyes of the world than Gustav Stresemann, at great risk to his life. One must always remember that his predecessor as foreign minister, Walther Rathenau, was assassinated for attemping to do exactly what Stresemann is doing
—
trying to create good relations again with our former enemies. I must not be too hard on him. After all, his gratuitous attack on a cause I believe in
—
the liberating sounds of new music
—
belongs in an entirely different category of human activity from the life-and-death questions to which he has dedicated his life. In any case, we are a mere
avant-garde
, a tiny fraction of the musical public.