Triumph of the wilful

When the great German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf died earlier this month, the obituarists glossed over her Nazi past. Michael H Kater says the case for the prosecution is strong
Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
Political conviction, ruthless ambition or self-preservation? ... Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf took her first professional steps in the early years of the Third Reich. The young soprano had moved to Berlin at the age of 17, from the provincial town of Cottbus on the Polish border, and entered the Hochschule für Musik. She was just at the right age to be genuinely impressed by the trappings of National Socialism; in the German capital, she would have got full exposure to flags, speeches and fanfares. She would eventually join three different Nazi organisations and, long after 1945, this may not have caused the stir it did had she herself acknowledged her actions as soon as those circumstances came to light. But very much like her frequent collaborator Herbert von Karajan, she kept denying these accusations when confronted with them, by American journalists as much as by historians. When she finally admitted them, she made light of the matter, claiming that joining these organisations had been routine, and that all her colleagues did it for the sake of a job. But she was prickly about it.

In the early 1990s, I asked her to explain herself more fully for the benefit of a book on musicians in the Third Reich I was writing. She kept me waiting for two years for an answer. Finally, she wrote saying that she was too busy to answer my questions. Later, I received a letter from her Swiss lawyer asking me to submit a catalogue of questions, but the underlying threat was that there could be litigation if I wrote anything negative about her. In the event, the answers to my questions never arrived.

I had already found archival documents to prove that when a student at the Hochschule für Musik, Schwarzkopf had joined the female ranks of the Nazi Student League (ANSt). In itself, this was not so unusual - before the second world war, about half of all female university students became members. What was unusual, however, was that she volunteered to become an ANSt leader, at least for one term. That demonstrated dedication to the cause of Nazism beyond the call of duty, and was an obvious sign that she wanted to get ahead quickly in her profession.

Schwarzkopf's career continued with political overtones. In May 1938, she joined the Deutsche Oper, a second-rate institution (compared with Hermann Goering's Berlin Staatsoper), which was under the control of Reich propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. She could have been assigned to the chorus, but was made a "singer (beginner)" right away. Taking private lessons from an experienced older diva, Maria Ivogün, who along with her husband, pianist Michael Raucheisen, was an avid Nazi, Schwarzkopf applied for Nazi party membership, which was formally granted her two years later (such delays were not unusual). This was far from a routine act. Women in the Nazi party were greatly under-represented, and only one in five musicians ever joined. Meanwhile, she behaved capriciously in her job, arriving late for performances or trying to skip rehearsals; she could afford this not only because she was good, but because she had political protection.

Schwarzkopf was perhaps displeased with being at the Deutsche Oper, and would have preferred to be at Goering's more highly regarded Staatsoper. How much she was able to withdraw from the influence of Goebbels, Goering's rival, was doubtful, however. The minister was in the habit of sleeping with the young starlets, and there have been those who claim he had an affair with Schwarzkopf as well, though this has never been proved.

In 1940, parallel to her Nazi party membership, Schwarzkopf also joined the National Socialist People's Welfare organisation (NSV), which did not entail more political exposure than she already had, but afforded her further protection. Two years later, she was finally ready to break away from the Deutsche Oper, after having noticeably improved her working conditions and pay. She signed up with conductor Karl Böhm, who was then about to head the Vienna State Opera. But Goebbels protested, and was able to order the young singer back to Berlin.

Schwarzkopf then served the Reich in various functions, which might suggest that she was genuinely enamoured of the regime's aggressive policies, particularly in the German-Polish realm that was her original home. Alternatively, she may once more have been attempting to escape from Goebbels's influence. As Reich propaganda minister, Goebbels controlled most of Nazi Germany's culture, but not all of it. If you moved around or changed your "function" in the Third Reich, you might have a chance to escape from him.

At a "music week" in Posen (Poznan) in 1942, she performed under the direction of Hans Pfitzner. Later that year, Schwarzkopf entertained SS troops with recitals, which may have been more of a routine operation, for German artists often travelled to the front, performing for the soldiers.

Did all this help her career? When Schwarzkopf fell ill with tuberculosis during the war and retired for about a year to a sanatorium in the Tatra Mountains, she was apparently shielded by her lover, a high-ranking SS officer, whose power was beyond Goebbels's jurisdiction. Exactly who this man was has never been established.

In 1944, she was finally able to join Böhm in Vienna, under the care of the city's gauleiter, Baldur von Schirach. Her presence in Vienna facilitated her transition to the postwar music scene, because Nazis in Austria were more easily "denazified" than those in Germany. As for the SS lover, the composer Gottfried von Einem told me in Vienna, shortly before his death, that this had been the gauleiter of Lower Austria, Dr Hugo Jury. Jury was an SS general, but by profession he was a doctor, specialising in tuberculosis.

The postwar rise to fame of Schwarzkopf is legendary. There is no question, however opportunistically Schwarzkopf may have acted on her way to fame in the Third Reich, that the quality of her art made political protection unnecessary. But Schwarzkopf may have seen this differently.

After May 1945, she still had difficulties to overcome and continued to need protection, now of another kind. For almost two decades she remained shut out from the New York Metropolitan Opera, making her debut there in October 1964. For this, general manager Rudolf Bing, who had earned his credentials in Glyndebourne and Edinburgh, was responsible. He had been born a Jew in Vienna. At one time he poignantly remarked that he could forgive Schwarzkopf for having worn a Nazi uniform and taken an American boyfriend right after the war, but what he could not forgive was that she later married British impresario Walter Legge, through whom she obtained British citizenship (and the title of Dame Commander). For Legge was a Jew.

· Michael H Kater is the author of The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford University Press).