Tag German culture

Robert Walser and the Russian Ballet

Susan Bernofsky— In the spring of 1909, thirty-one-year-old novelist Robert Walser, then living in Berlin, saw a performance by one of the greatest ballet dancers of the twentieth century. Anna Pavlova wasn’t yet the international star she would later become, though she was already a lead dancer with the Maryinsky

Continue reading…

Michael Haas on Forbidden Music

Follow Forbidden Music on Facebook!  From the Yale Books Blog: Michael Haas‘s Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis, to be published in North America in June, explores the legacy of those musicians persecuted by the Third Reich. When National Socialism arrived in Germany in 1933, Jews were dominating music more

Continue reading…

Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist

“The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he.” – Karl Kraus If you’ve never heard of Karl Kraus, the Austrian satirist who inflicted withering and witty critiques on the mass media, the military-industrial complex,

Continue reading…