Everything so lovely here in summer sunshine. The dark green glowing Thuringian Forest, below the lovingly restored half-timbered, above the Wartburg. A German idyll. The sun shines on the large villa in the Eisenacher Bornstraße where Jesus was taken to Aryans.
An imposing house where from 1939 to 1945, the “Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life” resided – popular-nationalist short: “the Entjudungsinstitut” – on whose existence the Eisenacher until recently partout could not remember.
Just avoid surprises
This memory was refreshed only in the course of the pre-Reformation anniversary cleanup. In the festival season the Protestant Church wants to avoid surprises more. Besenrein should be the brown corners then.
Especially in Eisenach, the vanishing point of the great Reformation anniversary. Where Luther not only worked, but also Johann Sebastian Bach was born, the fifth evangelist. The undisputed greatest of all composers, which, as the philosopher Emil Cioran used to say, God owes everything: “When we hear Bach, we see God germinate, his work is deity giving birth.”
Here it owes Protestantism Bach also some most unpleasant places in the St John and the St. Matthew Passion. This has so far only insiders interested. Notably musicians who interpreted the works. The musicology looked almost closed and decided over it.
Bach took over flaws in Luther’s theology
On summer days like this slide 500, sometimes even 600 visitors by sleeping and living rooms, past the curious trumpet violin, the famous Bach glasses and the remains of Bach’s household, which were excavated in the garden. One or the other will soon leave the beautiful house somewhat upset because the director has ordered reconnaissance.
“Bach, Luther – and the Jews” is curated by Jörg Hansen exhibition which tells about Luther Judeophobia which were already no small black spots more on the vest of the reformer, “but he is a flaw in its theology.”
And the orthodox Lutheran Bach have the unenlightened Lutheranism Baroque the most powerful voice given by maintaining the Gospel text and the oldest Christian anti-Jewish polemic was transported in our heads.
The Lutheran cantor Bach was not a composer in the modern sense. He has let be its St. Thomas every Saturday, the God granted catechism. I mean, he knew what he was doing and what he was doing, was not accidental.
Bach saw himself as a promoter of the theological message, as preacher whose medium was just not the language but the music: “Where this is not taken into eight is, there it is no actual music, but a diabolical bawling and droning. “
He knew the doctrine of eternal damnation of the Jews well
in fact, the self-imprecation Israel in it has its most powerful amplifier: “His blood be on us and on our children” the reputation sounds in the St. Matthew Passion 70 times, and that is no coincidence, the number indicated on the devastation of Jerusalem in 70 AD. “Bach,” said Hansen, “knew Luther’s doctrine of the eternal damnation of the Jews well as registrations prove his Bible.”
So he had shared Luther’s theology of history which saw the evidence of his own faith in the 1500 year “Exilio and misery” of the Jews. “In his commentary on the Bible, in which the number was in 1500 already amended in 1600, Bach corrected her handwritten on 1700.”
synagogues were reviled as “Satan-schools”
Therefore, Hansen does not think much of the line of argument, one must Bach seen in a historical context. He presented further evidence. For example, the unpleasant books that were in Bach’s library. Luther “Of the Jews and Their Lies”.
Or Johannes Müller “. Judaism or Jüdenthum That is: Detailed report, of the Jewish multitudes unbelief, blindness and obduracy.” A nasty diatribe, with of the Hamburg pastor against the establishment of Jews and against the construction of synagogues in Hamburg polemic which he called “Satan-schools”.
This raises the interesting question of whether Johann Sebastian Bach ever a Jew knew. Probably not. In Eisenach, there was indeed a “Jewish street”, but since the pogrom of 1349 no more Jews. No different it looked in Arnstadt, where he was from 1703 to 1707 organist.
In Mulhouse, his station from 1707 to 1708, there was at least one, the cloth merchant Abraham Sussmann. In Weimar again: no. And in Leipzig Jews were permitted only during the fair time to enter the city and to do business there. But more recent we know again that xenophobia just as particularly thrives where there are no strangers.
Bach a Antijudaist – that hurts
Of course, there is a circumstantial process that leads Hansen. We hardly know how Bach looked – the only portrait that keep researchers for authentic, shows a formal 60-year-olds – and we have only a single private letter from him.
But the evidence, especially the musical, are just overwhelming. That Bach, incredible grouped around the Jewish choirs of St. Matthew Passion, called Turbae effectively to chant and aria, makes the targeted polarization between fides christiana and perfidia Iudaica ignored.
Bach – a Antijudaist (the coined until the 19th century term anti-Semite who is now applied so loosely on Martin Luther, we leave here to get away). It hurts. Johann Sebastian Bach is not just the beginning and end of the music, such as Max Reger was, but his music still bears anti-Jewish messages to the world.
From Germany. From the land of the Holocaust. With horror we read that even a man like Klaus Bonhoeffer did not work out this dimension. Sentenced to death said that Matthew Passion was his deep consolation. And not only the music, but “also the text”.
Mendelssohn discovered the Matthew Passion
Among the ironies of music history is that it was precisely the Jewish bourgeoisie, which continued the Bach revival in the 19th century in transition belongs. It was the only 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who in 1829 performed the St. Matthew Passion in led by Carl Friedrich Zelter Berlin Singakademie.
The “Berliner General Musicalische Zeitung”, the Company announced with the words: “The largest and most sacred work of the greatest composer’s thus occurs after a nearly centenarian concealment in life, a high celebration of religion and art “
. Mendelssohn – as” Jew boy “mobbed
What was a bang, you can judged by the fact that King Frederick William III. Zelter invitation followed and that Droysen, Hegel, Heine and Schleiermacher were sitting in the audience. The success was extraordinary, two additional performances were scheduled, the Passion subsequently listed on every Palm Sunday.
“What kind of a strange coincidence,” Mendelssohn said then self-deprecating about his friend and fellow Eduard Devrient, who sang to Jesus, “that there is a must be a comedian and a Jewish boy, the people bring back the largest Christian music. ” Before him one of the Prussian prince had publicly abused as Jewish boy .
the families Mendelssohn and Itzig – it was Bella Salomon born Itzig who had her grandson Felix gave a copy of the St. Matthew Passion at Christmas – is the second part of the Eisenach exhibition dedicated.
It’s about the first Bach memorial Mendelssohn Leipzig donated – “The many columns and pillars and flourishes, especially the bas-reliefs and the old magnificent wig face emblazoned freely in the sunlight and made me great joy! ” -, And the music on Sundays to which Felix’s sister Fanny invited from 1831 and form an integral part of Bach was music.
In this part of the exhibition, there is also the book of the Bach House, which set up the Leipzig New Bach Society in 1907 in Eisenach. The first earned him was the violinist Joseph Joachim, who had supported the project like no other. He also a Jew.
Must rewrite the set to music by Bach texts?
“artistry is also the never-ending attempt a to be good, a decent man. That speaks of the bach’s music, so they can donate as much consolation. ” Says the singer Thomas Quasthoff, who led a performance of the St. Matthew Passion two years ago.
Can a good person ignore the anti-Semitic tones? Performs a trail of blood from Matthew word “His blood be on us and on our children!” to Auschwitz? Do not rewrite the set to music by Bach text? (Such a test has indeed given the Johannespassion three years ago.)
Should the passions simply no longer churches, but only in concert halls list? Or distribute information sheets, as did the superintendent of Leipzig Thomas Church?
How easy are brown spots not remove
This Johannes Richter wrote: “Let us consider the overall context to the in the new Testament traditional Passion of Jesus, we recognize that where specifically referred to ‘the Jews’, other persons or groups would be used! from this perspective, the text is a testimony to the concern, from which the testimony of reconciliation and love with compelling logic arises. “
Well, if it were that simple. Is not it. So easily are not to remove brown spots. can explain away they now no longer. Bach is now edited. Just in time before the big Reformation anniversary.
“Luther, Bach – and the Jews”, Bach House Eisenach, until November 6, 2016
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