Viktor Ullmann

Abstract

The main aim of this research project is to investigate the power of theatrical storytelling and image over children’s everyday lives, examining theatrical performances by and for children in the Theresienstadt ghetto during World War II.
The historical research develops based on the unique case of the ‘model ghetto-town’ of Theresienstadt (Terezín) in former Czechoslovakia, which, being neither a ghetto neighbourhood within a city nor a concentration-extermination camp, is recognised today as a huge ‘workshop’ where all manner of art was developed under occupation. This study focuses on children’s theatrical creation and explores the dynamics of theatrical action, storytelling and scenography in children’s lives under these specific coercive conditions. The elements of theatrical performance produced by and for the young inmates in the ghetto are documented by original diary entries, notes, posters, drawings and archival testimony from survivors, as well as by a series of original interviews with Theresienstadt survivors conducted as part of this study. The research provides the first detailed documentation of children’s performances in Theresienstadt as well as an in-depth analysis of the staging of the two main children’s productions staged between 1941 and 1945: the opera Brundibár and the dance-musical performance Little Fireflies.
The researcher’s own artistic identity as a scenographer has been a key element defining the point of view of this study, which also explores how a theatrical/visual metaphor can express the ineffable. Furthermore, the interaction between reality and fantasy through theatre providing ways to experience and deal with reality with the support of our imagination is investigated. The effects of theatre on the children of Theresienstadt are examined from four points of view, i.e. from a cultural, educational, sociological and psychological perspective, arguing theatre as a means of enhancing freedom of spirit, as well as enriching children’s upbringing.
The thesis concludes with a contemporary evaluation of the research results pertaining to this part of European cultural and theatrical history, pointing to the important function of theatre as a motivating power providing spiritual support in life.

Diese Masterarbeit (Paris-Sorbonne, 2015) behandelt einen bisher verkannten Teil der Kleist-Rezeption: die Opernbearbeitungen dessen Dramentexte. Ein Gesamtüberblick dieser Opern-Rezeption wird einleitend skizziert. Die Arbeit behandelt drei exemplarische Opern : "Penthesilea" von Othmar Schoeck (1927), "Der zerbrochene Krug" von Viktor Ullmann (1942) und "Der Prinz von Homburg" (1960) von Hans Werner Henze. Diese drei Opern sind allesamt "Literaturopern": der Text von Kleist wird originalgetreu als Libretto übernommen und vertont. In dieser Arbeit werden diese Opern in einem komparatistischen Ansatz erfasst: neben der gründlichen Analyse der erforderlichen Transformationen, um die Texte "operntauglich" zu machen, die entweder vom Komponisten selber oder von einem Librettisten vorgenommen wurden (im Falle der "Homburg"-Oper die österreichische Dichterin Ingeborg Bachmann), erfolgt eine Verortung der jeweiligen Opern in ihren gesamtgeschichtlichen und rezeptionsgeschichtlichen Kontexten. Durch diese Analyse wird der etwas starr gewordene Begriff "Literaturoper" neu definiert: Literatur-Opern sind Opern, die eine eigene Deutung der literarischen Vorlage versuchen und zugleich eine Aktualisierung, wie es der Fall in den untersuchten Opern ist.

An essay on the role of music and art in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt, presented at the conference Music and Manipulation, Stockholm 1999.
"To barbarism, Theresienstadt was no paradox at all, only a means to murder and annihilation. Music and art as instruments of manipulation and deception. To the idea of æsthetic culture, however, Theresienstadt was the most cruel of deceits and the biggest of challenges."

La città fortezza di Theresienstadt (Terezín in ceco), a pochi chilometri da Praga, divenne un ghetto-lager nazista dal 1941 al 1945. Esistette con una doppia finalità: da un lato fu istituito per rinchiudervi gli ebrei del Protettorato di Boemia e Moravia e successivamente quelli del Reich, e dall’altro fu sfruttato come strumento di propaganda da mostrare alla comunità internazionale, rappresentando positivamente la vita e le condizioni degli ebrei deportati. Al suo interno si svilupparono attività artistiche e musicali, stimolate dalla presenza di numerosi artisti e musicisti tra i più geniali d’Europa.
Questo libro si incentra sul concetto di resistenza e opposizione culturale e politica al regime hitleriano attraverso l’analisi musicale di alcune composizioni create a Theresienstadt. I due compositori presi in considerazione sono Viktor Ullmann e Gideon Klein. Di queste due figure sono state analizzate la Sonata per pianoforte di Gideon Klein e le Sonate n. 5 e n. 6 per pianoforte e l’opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis oder die Tod-Verweigerung di Viktor Ullmann. Si è cercato così di indagare i significati delle scelte estetiche dei due compositori, in modo da cogliervi il pensiero filosofico e il messaggio di resistenza culturale e politica.

“This paper looks into the role of voices in a propaganda film made by inmates of a  concentration camp in the last year of the War. Commissioned by the SS the film intended  to show the good life of the Jewish inhabitants of Theresienstadt. The documentary film  records their speaking, shouting and singing in German and Czech. However, one voice  does not belong to an inmate—it was added to the soundtrack in the final cut of March  1945 and belongs to the German narrator. This voiceover suggests that Jews live well in  German camps.  Other German films shot in ghettos or camps have no original sound—they rely on the  ideological voiceovers. This makes the Theresienstadt film an exception. The camera be-  nevolently records the faces and voices of the inmates that later in the final cut will be  exploited. These images and sounds were provided by people, the majority of whom by that  time had been sent to the Auschwitz gas chambers. This filmmaking procedure is completely in line with the cynical Nazi concept of maximum utilisation of the Jewish prisoners, even after their death.  For Czech audiences the soundtrack of the film is ambiguous : The voiceover, discordant  with the independent meaning of the original recordings. In particular the voices of the  children singing a Czech song were an attempt at resisting the intentions of the final cut of  the film.”
Contents:
1. Memories and Histories of the Camp and Its Media
2. Messages from the Camp : Postcards and “Kassibers”
3. The Unique Case of Recorded Voices from a Concentration Camp
4. Strategies of Deception 1943 – 45 : Theresienstadt as the Friendly Camp in the Heart of Europe
5. About the Production of the Film and its Intended Audience
6. Authorship in the Film and Two Layers of Sound Recordings
The Chronologically Last Layer : Lampl, the Reticent Narrator
The Chronologically Earliest Layer
7. Music Recordings for the Film in 1944 and 1945
8. Diegetical Elements in the Sound-Mix
9. Messages of the Recorded Voices

To the idea the music might have a morally ennobling effect on human beings, as expressed by the composer Viktor Ullmann, the short but intense flourishing of musical creativity in the Nazi camp of Theresienstadt, offers a sobering perspective. ”It must be emphasized”, Ullmann wrote”, that Theresienstadt has served to enhance, not to impede, my musical activities.” What did Ullmann mean by that? In what way could a camp full of suffering and death, bent on degradation and destruction, serve to enhance his musical activities?

Few would have predicted the later ascendancy of the early-romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin as a source of inspiration for the post-war musical generation. Long considered a marginal figure in German literature, Hölderlin had already had a significant resurgence by 1943 when Viktor Ullmann set his poems. His reputation was buoyed by the work of Martin Heidegger, whose political writings on Hölderlin found a receptive audience during the Third Reich. His poems were distributed to soldiers on the front line in so-called Feldausgaben, to edify them with thoughts of the Fatherland in their time of sacrifice. He occupied a place in the German imagination of the time not unlike that of Beethoven—a symbol of German exceptionalism. But why would his works then prove so attractive to a generation that actively sought to distance itself from the excesses of romanticism and the recent past, and why would Ullmann set three of his poems while imprisoned in the concentration camp at Terezín. I argue that Ullmann’s settings form a kind of double protest against his oppressors. Many Jewish inmates considered themselves culturally German and believed German poetry to be part of their cultural inheritance, and seeing it turned against them was horrifying. The poem “Sonnenuntergang” remembers an imagined past beauty—a beauty that then seemed all but lost: “He plays his evening-song on the heavenly lyre…who still honor him in his absence.”  The setting uses free chromatic tonality, lilting triple meter, and long melodic lines to summon a nostalgia that belies the circumstance of its composition. The unassuming traditionality of the setting is precisely what marks it as protest. Ullmann’s Hölderlin settings stake a claim on the Germanic musical tradition and compellingly argue that Germany had betrayed not only its Jewish citizenry, but its own cultural heritage.