Talk:Karl Böhm

Untitled
The list of operatic recordings is getting pretty long. Maybe it's time to break them off into a separate article? Grover cleveland 13:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

What's with "In 1965 Böhm conducted "Fidelio" in Tokyo."? It has nothing to do with Bayreuth or Wagner — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.231.123.98 (talk) 13:19, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Did he never study an instrument?
The article says nothing about this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 19:39, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

The German language Wikipedia article starts roughly where this one does, but doesn't rely on Norman Lebrecht for its evidence of Bohm's relations with Nazism, though as far as I can tell its sources would appear to be secondary. The post-Anschluss Nazi salute is mentioned in both. The article on Karlheinz Bohm indicates that he was sent (the term used is 'emigrated') to Switzerland on the basis of a forged medical certificate, for education, as early as 1939, and the German wikipedia also notes Bohm himself was exempted from military service in the Volksturm on the grounds of his Godgiven talent. Personally I'd have liked to have seen the son's role in Michael Powell's 'Peeping Tom' mentioned.Delahays (talk) 17:41, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Did he once say....
I read somewhere that he once said: "We didn't kill all the Jews, but at least we tried!" Does anyone know anything about this? Goblinshark17 (talk) 23:01, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * (First off - please put newer topics/sections in chronological order, rather than putting your post at the top of the Talk Page - I moved it down.) Never read anything like that.  As a proponent of Schoenberg, it would seem unlikely.  His sympathies with National Socialism seem to me to be more to the point of a pan-Germanism and revenge for Versailles rather than manic anti-Semitism, but that's just an opinion.  Your quote could also be a mis-tranlsation - for instance, he might have actually said "but we (aka Nazi Germany) tried" - a statement of fact rather than approval.  But until a Reliable Source turns up, it can't be used in the article. HammerFilmFan (talk) 10:53, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

comment from a review on SA-CD Net
Up to Hartmann's death at the age of 58, his music was gradually making some notice, despite powerful conductors with a Nazi past such as Karajan and Böhm who virtually eliminated his work from concert circulation. - John Miller, ç2014, in a review of K.A. Hartmann's symphonies. I don't know the basis of his claims - does anyone have a good secondary source that also promotes that statement? HammerFilmFan (talk) 11:00, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Nazi past
In this article of 1,768 words, 693 of them are devoted to Bohm's deplorable Nazi history. It must, of course, be adequately covered in the article, but at present the topic occupies 40% of the article, which seems to me excessive. Would anyone object to my boiling this down to two or three hundred words, retaining all the conclusions currently drawn?  Tim riley  talk   14:38, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Perhaps something like this? (278 words):
 * Although Böhm never joined the Nazi party, both in private and in public he expressed strong support for Hitler and his regime.(ref) The extent to which this was a matter of conviction rather than careerism is debated. His son maintained that Böhm was warned that if he defected from Nazi Germany, every member of his family would be sent to a concentration camp,(ref) but Böhm's support of the Nazis predated their rise to power.(ref) The historian Michael H. Kater records that while Böhm was music director in Dresden (1934–43) he "poured forth rhetoric glorifying the Nazi regime and its cultural aims".(ref) Kater ranks Böhm in that group of artists in whom "we also find conflicting elements of resistance, accommodation, and service to the regime, so that in the end they cannot be definitively painted as either Nazis or non-Nazis".(ref) Kater argues that Böhm's 1934 move to the Dresden Opera to replace Fritz Busch after the latter's "politically motivated" dismissal by Nazi authorities showed Böhm's "extreme careerist opportunism at the expense of personal morality" and was facilitated directly by Hitler.(ref) Kater contrasts this conduct with Böhm's "aesthetically faultless and sometimes politically daring" choice of repertory, and his collaborations with some anti-Nazi directors and designers, which "could have been interpreted by enemies of the Nazi regime as a brave attempt to preserve the principle of artistic freedom".(ref) In 2015 the Salzburg Festival announced that it would affix a plaque in its Karl Böhm refreshment lobby (Karl-Böhm-Saal) acknowledging the conductor's complicity with Nazi Germany: "Böhm was a beneficiary of the Third Reich and used its system to advance his career. His ascent was facilitated by the expulsion of Jewish and politically out-of-favor colleagues".(ref)
 * Is this OK?  Tim riley  talk   19:59, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Now done, nem con.  Tim riley  talk   19:43, 8 September 2018 (UTC)