The Weimar Years

"Quaff, quaff, in joyous measure; breathe, breathe delirious pleasure" -- From Meyerbeer, The Prophet, Act V

(All images on this page, unless otherwise credited, are part of "A Voice Silenced," an exhibition of documents and photographs about the life of Leonore Schwarz Neumaier.)

The ever-present leather jacket and cigar were part of Bertolt Brecht's persona during the Weimar years. Photograph from National Archives.

In one form or another, music accompanied the ebb and flow of events in the Weimar Republic. The old masters remained the standard in conservative circles. "In music, Berlin was still the bastion of the traditional world," Yehudi Menuhin recalled to journalist Otto Friedrich while speaking of the Weimar years. "Beethoven and Brahms were gods. Furtwängler and Walter were their vicars on earth." Conservatives generally regarded the republic era's infatuation with American jazz to be an insult to German culture.

Equally suspect were the dramas of the Expressionist theatre. The early plays of Bertolt Brecht infuriated traditionalists, at least as much because of his radical politics as for his outrageous lyrics and innovative themes, many of them imported, like jazz, from America.

In the streets, the rival parties had their own music. Socialists and other supporters of the republic generally sang the "Internationale." Communists, devoted to bringing down the republic and replacing it with a "proletariat" dictatorship, sang their own songs of workers and revolution. The Nazis had their ideas and songs. Some of their songs were cleverly composed to project the image of German community. When they sang of the Jews, however, they did not bother with subtlety. In the anti-Semitic tunes the verses were crude, boasting of "wiping the Jew blood from the knife" and "cleansing the race."

Performers, playing the "Fanfare of the Hitler Youth", ca. 1930. Photograph from Euriskodata.com, World War II Photo Collection.

So it was that, even as the arts were flourishing in the Weimar era, and even as the era itself was gaining a reputation for the pursuit of pleasure and frivolity, the seeds of destruction were being sowed.

The Nazis promised that when (not if) they seized power, all "decadent" arts would be repressed. They promised further that the Jews would be dismissed from all government posts, that they would be denied any place in the German professions -- including any places in the public or fine arts. "Jewish" music would be banned, and Jewish musicians would lose their jobs and their places in society. So it was promised in the Nazi press, the speeches and pamphlets of the party members, even in the songs and chants of the storm troopers who roamed the streets at night, looking for political opponents to fight and Jews to assault.

Above -- Leonore Schwarz Neumaier's sister, Paula Schwarz Rubel with her daughters -- Gerda and Ruth, early 1930s. All three were later killed by the Nazis. The original photograph was taken by Hans (later John) Neumaier.

During most of the Weimar era, Leonore and her husband made their home in the Westend of Frankfurt. Leonore's son Hans (later John) remembers the house well -- "on Friedrichstrasse 27, not far from the Palmengarten, the big park where I used to play and watch the strutting peacocks." In 1927, the family moved a block over to an apartment on the corner of Freiherr von Steinstrasse. Hans by that time was well into his schooling: "How well I remember the revered man who was our teacher! Caring, warmhearted, inspiring, Ernst Kaiser [who] could make even German grammar interesting. He found time to play Fussball (soccer) with us when school was out. He led us through the forest trails of the Stadtwald on holidays, and sometimes he took us picnicking in the Taunus, a beautiful mountain range nearby." Leonore herself continued to enjoy concert performing and, when not singing, seeing friends and hosting visits from her sister Paula, who had her own family in Vienna.

It was a pleasant before 1933 -- impossible to imagine that within a few years teachers like Herr Kaiser would not be permitted to teach Jewish children is their classrooms, that Paula Schwarz and her children would one day be murdered by those who were indoctrinated to be "Hitler's children."