Revisited – The Little Elf of Christ in 1933 - Deutsche Oper Berlin
Revisited – The Little Elf of Christ in 1933
When we think of traditional operas staged around Advent, classics such as HANSEL AND GRETEL and LA BOHÈME are more likely to spring to mind than Hans Pfitzner’s light-hearted and rarely performed THE LITTLE ELF OF CHRIST. First aired in 1917, the work received its Berlin premiere on 30.11.1933 at the Städtische Oper. In the penultimate scene Knecht Ruprecht and a host of angels cluster round Trautchen, who has just been miraculously healed by the Baby Jesus. The last scene change reveals a backdrop in which »we see the gate to heaven with St Peter standing outside, holding the key. Knecht Ruprecht goes in with his empty sack followed by the Christ Child leading the little elf by the hand.«
1933 left its mark on the Städtische Oper, with a squad of SA storm troopers occupying the venue on 11th March and Carl Ebert, SPD member and champion of modern theatre, sacked as Artistic Director. Many other people were caught up in the wave of dismissals, among them dancers, stage hands, singers of many years standing, orchestra musicians, Rudolf Bing, head of Artistic Operations, Berthold Goldschmidt, a music assistant, kapellmeister Fritz Stiedry, repetiteur Kurt Sanderling and many others.
Ebert’s successor, Max von Schillings, who was not appointed Artistic Director until the end of March of that year, died on 24th July following an operation for bowel cancer. The vacant post caught the eye of no less a figure than Hans Pfitzner. Five years younger than Richard Strauss, widowed and in his mid 60s, the former Music Director of the Strasbourg opera house had been floated as a worthy success not only by Fritz Stege, an accomplished music journalist and National Socialist standard bearer, but also by opera observers far beyond the immediate Berlin locality.
On the one hand, Pfitzner had made a considerable name for himself, especially in southern Germany, since the world premiere in 1917 of his PALESTRINA in Munich, where Thomas Mann co-founded the “Hans Pfitzner Society for German Music” in 1918. He was, however, somewhat heavy-handed in his dealings with prospective conductors and directors of his works, not to say with the “little soapbox populist” Adolf Hitler, whom he met in 1923 and who would remember the ailing Pfitzner as a “Jew” and “old rabbi”.
Despite Hitler’s personal aversion to the idea, Pfitzner, conservative and nationalist in inclination and anti-Semitic in ideology, became a leading light in Alfred Rosenberg’s “League in Defence of German Culture”, founded in 1929, which railed against the “cultural crisis” of the Weimar Republic and avant-garde art. One curious spin-off from Pfitzner’s identification with ‘German culture’ was the selection of his song “All the Angels are Happy” from THE LITTLE ELF OF CHRIST as the Christmas anthem of the SS, as reported in the Süddeutsche Sonntagspost on 19th December 1926.
Follow us on youtube
A Christmas card around 1900, unknown painter
The seizure of power by the National Socialists seemed to present an opportunity to give Pfitzner an ideologically motivated leg-up in his career and lever him into a post that was his ‘by right’. In April 1933 Fritz Stege, writing in his Zeitschrift für Musik (ZfM), picks up on moves to organise a “Hans Pfitzner boycott in Berlin” (“A Spring Festival in Berlin without a Pfitzner opera is a transgression against the spirit of the German nation!” It is noteworthy that the next page carried the news that Bruno Walter, Pfitzner’s long-standing friend and companion and the first conductor of PALESTRINA, had emigrated.). In May he followed it up with an appeal to the general public and an item in the section entitled “ZfM proposals implemented and wishes fulfilled”:
It is a sobering thing to discern the undertone of resignation in Pfitzner’s words which could be felt throughout the conversation. This genius, to whom Germany owes a debt of thanks, deserves better than to have been sidelined with no outlet for his talent. Is there no one who is prepared to give the maestro a position in German music that makes proper use of him? No major venue that will make him Intendant and release him from his current unfulfilling existence (music teacher, radio assignments, etc)? Have people forgotten that Pfitzner once held simultaneously the posts of conservatory director, theatre manager and conductor in Strasbourg while also working on his “Palestrina”? Has Pfitzner really been superseded in emotional and intellectual freshness by his younger counterparts? Is it not a sin to let active, energetic, creative powers lie fallow, be responsible for the kind of bitterness that resonated in his answer to an enquiry after his other artistic pursuits: “Well, I occasionally get asked by newspaper editors to write an article on Brahms”?
Caption: Fritz Stege, “‘Musicians in Conversation’: Hans Pfitzner”, in: Zeitschrift für Musik, May 1933, p. 481f.
In the April edition of the journal we drew attention to the untenable situation in which the Staatsoper Berlin finds itself (p. 375, “Hans Pfitzner boycott in Berlin?”). Since then, the “League in Defence of German Culture” has seen to it that Pfitzner is appointed Guest Conductor at the Berliner Staatsoper during this spring’s Art Festival and that Pfitzner’s “Palestrina” features once again on the programme. General Music Director Otto Klemperer, on the other hand, has been dismissed from his post.
Caption: Fritz Stege, “ZfM proposals implemented and wishes fulfilled”, ibid., p. 487.
Klemperer‘s dismissal “for racial reasons” was promptly claimed as an achievement of the ZfM by Stege.
Follow us on youtube
Photo: Hans Pfitzner, Januar 1905 © Moritz Nähr
Come July, it was Pfitzner who conducted the memorial concert for Max von Schillings at the Städtische Oper, a commission that prompted Stege to present him once again as the ‘only possible’ successor to the late maestro:
In the run-up to Christmas that year Pfitzner’s THE LITTLE ELF OF CHRIST featured on the programme of the Städtische Oper.
The composer took charge of both the conducting and the directing – so it was no coincidence that the programme also featured a leading article entitled “Hans Pfitzner as maestro of the stage” penned by Pfitzner acolyte and biographer Walter Abendroth. In it Abendroth comments on this dual function as follows:
“So, here we have the Führer principle in the most literal, agile, intellectual and artistic senses of the word!” And he goes on – with more echoes of National Socialist jargon –: “More than ever before, German opera needs men of this stamp to imbue it with new strength and vigour and to convincingly embody its higher claim to exist. Hans Pfitzner, who has now returned to present the authentic version of his Christmas fairy tale ‘THE LITTLE ELF OF CHRIST’, can rival any of his younger colleagues in energy, elasticity and commitment! The theatre of the Third Reich is urgently advised to fully harness and exploit the inestimable power of this musical master.”
The opera was well received, as attested by two notices from diametrically opposed camps:
Because of his efforts on behalf of Jewish musicians and his penchant for innovative forms of music Stuckenschmidt was attacked and later denounced by Fritz Stege and was, in effect, prevented from working from 1934 onwards. Der Angriff, on the other hand, was the newspaper of the Berlin NSDAP.
Erna Berger as the Little Elf and Anton Baumann as Tannengreis (Baumann had been a member of the NSDAP since 4th March 1933 and was later Artistic Director of the Vienna Volksoper) made a particular impression on the audience.
On 29th March 1934 propaganda minister Goebbels appointed baritone and Kammersänger Wilhelm Rode as Artistic Director of the opera house, which had passed into Reich ownership two days before and been renamed the “Deutsches Opernhaus”. Once again, Pfitzner felt he had been belittled and passed over. In a letter to Head of Admin Paproth, he wrote: “So, the die is cast and I’m out in the cold after all. The Third Reich has no use for me for a change. I can only hope I don’t get slated to sing Hans Sachs at your opera house. I couldn’t bring myself to do that.”
