AKADEMIE FORUM: NEIL GREGOR

The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany: An Oasis of Civility?
Lecture and Discussion

Neil Gregor, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Southampton
Moderator: Jacob Eder, Professor of History at the Barenboim-Said Akademie

Of all the stories the musical world told itself after 1945, the idea that the symphony concert hall had provided a space of retreat from the vicious politics of the Nazi regime was perhaps the most persistent. In one version of that story, the concert hall figured as a space of civility and decency in which the cultivated values of educated Germans could survive intact despite the barbaric violence perpetrated by the regime. In another variant, it figured as a refuge from the war, a site into which Germans could momentarily withdraw—forgetting their daily struggles as they immersed themselves in the timeless beauty of German high art. But was this the case? Drawing on hitherto unknown sources from orchestras across Germany, Neil Gregor shows how German orchestras instead became thoroughly incorporated into the political, ideological, and cultural universe of Nazi Germany, and at a terrible price.

Neil Gregor is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Southampton, where he has published widely on the economic, social, and cultural history of 20th-century Germany. His latest book, The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany, is published in May 2025 by the University of Chicago Press.

Presented in English
Featuring a musical performance by Barenboim-Said Akademie student Mahya Mohammadi