'We should never forget this.' Holocausterinnerungen am Beispiel von Arnold Schoenbergs 'A Survivor from Warsaw' op. 46 im zeitgeschichtlichen Kontext

This thesis interprets Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, op. 46, as evincing the classic features of Holocaust memory described by the German historian Konrad Jarausch: “Survival Stories,” “Figures of Remembrance,” and “Public Memory Culture.” An analysis of composition’s libretto as a general “Figure of Remembrance” based on “Survival Stories” illuminates the musical and cultural meanings of its trilingual text concerned with identity and characterization. My scrutiny of the work’s contribution to a “Public Memory Culture” centers on the postwar, cultural policy of the Allies not only to initiate performances of Schoenberg’s work as part of a “re-education” of Europe but crucially to strengthen their own ideological agenda. Allied policies had particular influence on performances of Schoenberg’s work in East and West Germany, the reception of which is strongly emphasized; its history is here expanded through previously unknown sources. A study of the work’s reception in the late twentieth and twenty-first century, however, reveals a psychological awareness and culturally motivated remembrance wed to learning and continual questioning instead.