2020-08-012024-05-13https://scholars.lib.ntu.edu.tw/handle/123456789/651425My MOST grant application this year is for the following project: Albert Einstein wrote in 1927 that violist-composer Paul Hindemith “is simply a musician who produces music as a tree bears fruit.” A few years prior, Theodor Adorno remarked that Hindemith “has panache and unrestrainedness in his objectives…within this determination is a core of deep artistry.” Such characterizations of Hindemith as practically a force of nature, inspired by the art itself, highlight how misguided that Nazi censors were in trying to politicize the musician as they vacillated between censoring and supporting him over the course of WWII. 
This case study of the Nazi Music Bureau or Reichsmusikkammer’s inconsistent censorship of Paul Hindemith reveals the aesthetic and musical ignorance governing Nazi censorship. The bureau’s censorship of Hindemith illustrates how the censors were unable to clearly distinguish music as a medium from its message, elided artistic and political radicalism, and misused failed aesthetic critiques as pretexts for politically-motivated decisions. Meanwhile, the Reichsmusikkamer’s arbitrary and contradictory treatment and censorship stifled innovation in Paul Hindemith’s music, leading Adorno to dramatically change his evaluation of the composer’s work. 
This project is part of the PI’s broader research program, which centers around the discursive category of ‘pretext,’ defining pretext as a justification for a belief, action, or identity that does not reflect motivating reasons, but rather seeks to conceal motives or manipulate the audience. This project is particularly interested in how censors use aesthetic critiques as pretexts to conceal political motives. The PI has an article forthcoming in Oxford German Studies on the Nazi censorship of and critical response to the innovative film animator Lotte Reiniger. Framing the PI’s long-term research program is an interest in how power shapes discourses and discourses create power. Censorship is a key example of the former, and pretext a paradigmatic tool of the latter. The Reichsmusikkammer’s inconsistent censorship of Hindemith’s composition brings out both of these themes, with implications for how to understand censorship and pretext in future research and in our society.censorship; inconsistency; aesthetic critique; pretext; Reichsmusikkammer