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Not "out of hand."

Here is the distinction.

An artist I greatly admire, K. F. Dahmen, served in the Wermacht. He was drafted, he had no choice, he suffered during his service. Having been in the army did his career no good. Indeed, Dahmen's generally dark and brooding works seem to suggest that he was haunted by that experience.

Von Karajan, Riefenstahl, Schwarzkopf and others all used their sucking up to Nazis to advance their personal career agendas, and then got bad cases of amnesia.

For the Good Lord's sake, von Karajan conducted an orchestral version of the Horst Wessel Lied, a song that contains the words "our knives will drip with Jewish blood."

So, that is the distinction I would draw. Someone who was very young, or passive, or under compulsion (such as the case with the young Benedict XVI's Hitler Youth membership) does not have in my book anything to apologize for, just things to regret.

I certainly never held it against Fischer-Dieskau that he was "discovered" when he was a Prisoner of War.

But someone who climbed over dead bodies to rise higher in their career, I think, has some public repenting to do. And until they do so, don't go to their concerts or tout their records.

Sincerely,

John Marks


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