ASIN: B00I0YELZI
Publisher: unknown
Pages: 460
This book contains the correspondence of Leo Kestenberg, the so-called "Kultur-Pope" of the Weimar Republic, with Franz W. Beidler, Richard Wagner's first grandson (born 1901). During the 1920s both had worked together in Berlin but had to flee in 1933 to evade Hitler's persecution. Kestenberg fled to Prague where he started an international organization for musical education, the forerunner of the ISME. After the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, Kestenberg left for Israel (then Palestine) where he became Director of what later became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Beidler ended in Switzerland where he befriended Thomas Mann and became Executive Secretary of the Swiss Writers' Federation. The letters mirror the difficulties caused by the Third Reich. In Beidler's case, his opposition to the Nazis is contrasted with the rest of his family's intimate friendship with Hitler. His ...
