Abb. 34: George Antheil, »Speech Given by George Antheil on June 6, 1937 at Meeting of Hollywood Anti-Nazi League held at Jake Zeitlin Inc.«, Manuskript (maschinenschriftliche Kopie), Seite 1 von 7

1SPEECH GIVEN BY GEORGE ANTHEIL ON JUNE 6, 1937 at MEETING OF HOLLYWOOD ANTI-NAZI LEAGE HELD AT JAKE ZEITLIN INC.

2Ladies and Gentlemen:
These are desperate times, and we live in America which knows but | little of desperate times or despair.

3Tonight, away off here in clean Hollywood, we are looking at the | work of one of the greatest artists of her times. She illustrates | the agony of despair, the agony of Europe. Europe is far away. | We may not understand her at this distance.

4The agony of Europe is old. I sensed it as a child, when, at the | age of 11, my parents took me to Berlin to live; I was a nice little | American boy, fascinated by the thousands of bluecoated soldiers in | the streets. That was 1911. War was already in the air, inevitable. | Today it is 1937. War is again in the air, inevitable.

5Kathe Kollwitz shows us all of this perilous age by remaining ever | in Berlin. She is, like Kurt Weill, a Berlinese, and through being | such she shows us all of the world. She is showing us the most | tremendous emotions of the world by showing us the depths of one | of the world’s most central pivoting points, Berlin.

6Berlin, 1914:

7Berlin, 1917: Do you remember?

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8I remember Berlin in 1922. I arrived from England where conditions | in comparison to the United States of 1922, were very shabby indeed. | But the Berlin of 1922 apalled my young Americanboyism. The people, | it seemed to me, were terrible shabbily dressed. There were no | taxi cabs worth talking about, no new dresses, no new clothes, no | new overcoats, no brass dorrhandles (they had all been removed | or stolen) no carpets upon the floors of the great hotel, few | electric light bulbs. The city of Berlin--the great luminous | city of Berlin which I had known as a child--was more than | insufficiently lighted. Prostitution was everywhere--one had to | literally plow one’s way through the ranks of hungry girls at | night; there was nothing to live upon nor any jobs to earn the | wherewi thal to buy food. The factories and machine shops were quiet. | Only the steam elevated and the great railway stations continued | to bustle, bringing people in and out of Berlin, people from far | away German provinces, hungry people, desperate people, people who | came to Berlin, wandered about, and went back home--if they | ever lived long enough to go back--hungrier than when they came. It | was the time of wandering--all Berlin seemed to be rubbing shoulders | with all the rest of Germany upon the streets of Berlin.

9Berlin, city of desperation, of horror, of the incalculatable, the | incredible.

10Literally thousands upon thousands of queer cafes existed all over | the city, and under police protection.

11Nothing like it ever existed before.

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12This is the city, in one of the most desperate phases of its existence, | of Kathe Kollwitz.

13God knows where the money came from to pay for those few coffees, or | the tram fares; all of Berlin seemd to be walking upon the main | boulevards, or riding in the street cars, or sitting upon the side- | walks in the cafes. But this was not the real Berlin. The real | Berlin was in the side streets, in the enormous working sections of | the city. All this story is an old one. Everyone knows it; it’s | history is outlined in the fall of the mark--60 to the Dollar in | August, 1922, 1000 to the dollar in October 1922, and 100000 to the | dollar in December 1922. As good Americans this will probably not | mean a thing to you: just imagine, however, having to buy a package | of cigarettes with 1,000,000,000 dollars.

14Yes, and suppose that you had won the Nobel Prize of $40,000 and had | salted it away in a bank in 1913. You couldn’t even have bought one | match with it.

15Someday that may happen to you right here in America. For that | $150,000 property, you may not even be able to buy a single roll. | When that happens, if it ever does, you’ll feel a strange and new | sensation which has something to do with Kathe Kollwitz and with | no sensation ever known to America to date, not even with the | celebrated bank crashes of 1929, etc.

16I will not talk about the underfed children, the babies who died | for lack of milk. As I said before, this is an old story, and it | grows boring in the repetition.

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17I wanted to keep the word “I” out of this little paper. But | I’ve decided not to. I too am an artist, one of thousands, but | one of the thousands who sacrificed a great deal when he decided | to become an artist. An artist today excludes himself from a | great many of life<x>s’ most normal rewards when he decides to become | an artist. He does not get all the things, nor does he expect them, | that most other normal young men and <xxxxx> women desire, and get. |

18I understand Kathe Kollwitz because her message is the message of | the terrible agony of hopelessness. We do not know much about hope | or hopelessness in America.

19If Germany had never known hope, it would have been better for her. | Hope, ever growing up, and then bashed down again, is a terrible | thing; it is cruelty unparalleled.

20I left Berlin in 1925. I could not stand it. The city groaned. | A black pall hung over me. I sighed with relief as I passed over | the French border. Paris was a city of sunshine and smiles. I wrote | to my German friends and urged them to come to Paris. Many did.

21Years passed. I read about Berlin. Things were going better. Germany | was again raising its head. One heard reports of marvelous new operas, | marvelous new composers, of a cultural life that equalled, if not | surpassed, the cultural life of Paris, which, at that time, was very | high indeed.

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22I could not believe it. No Germany had once fallen too low, it could | never raise itself up again. These were rumors, mere rumors.

23Then, in 1928 I went to Germany again. A miracle. Germany had | rebuilt itself. It had lifted itself up by its bootstraps. Berlin | was the most brilliant city in the world. It had the finest young | writers, the finest young musicians. It had the best opera theaters | in the world and the best musical theater. Even today the performances | of musical Germany of 1929 have not been surpassed. There were, in | addition, 82 other first class opera houses in Germany. There were | music publishers who actually paid composers to write new works for | them. There were abundant symphony orchestras.

24I could scarcely believe it. But it was true. Not only was it | true, but there was an unbelievable spirit of comaradie among the | German artists. They all helped one another. The German composers | helped me, found for me a job, and wrote about me, as well as | about other foreign musicians.

25But not only was the world of art and ideas the very top of everything | in thos marvelous days. The people were better dressed. They seemed | happy. They were getting along, slowly, but surely. Berlin even | looked quite magnificent.

26But if the rest of Germany was satisfied, a certain group of gangsters | were not satisfied.

27It is a funny thought, but if these gangsters did not have a superb | clown among them, they would never have succeeded.

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28Poor Germany, ever a Strublepeter, has ever had a penchant for | horrible clowns. The Hohenzollerns, with their incredible Kaiser | and their idiot Crown Prince, were nothing more or less than clowns. | And now, in 1930, another clown, Adolf Hitler, was destined to | be heard in the far off provinces*******The Heads Shall Soon Roll.

29In 1933 came the catastrophe which was to plunge Germany into an | agony of despair infinitely more desperate, more gripping, than any | the German people had yet witnessed. Worse, the worst is still | to come.

30Gone were the operas. Gone were the writers. Gone were the | composers, gone was everything. They sat in Paris, or in Vienna, or | in Switzerland, spending the last few marks they could take with them.

31As I said before, the most cruel and desperate thing in the world | may be hope itself. Berlin, and Kathe Kollwitz, is the story of | hope ever revived and quashed by cruel ambition. In 1911 the Berlin | I knew, knew no hope, it was fierce, terrible. In 1922 the Berlin | I knew was absolutely hopeless. In 1929 the Berlin I knew was again | full of hope, but a hope that had been achieved by hoping against | hope, hoping again and again against hope, until <xxx> something-- | a magnificent something had been achieved.

32In 1933, Berlin revisited was hopeless again. It had given itself | over completely to its gangster conquerors.

33Last evening I talked with a wholevgroup of young composers. I have | talked thus with other artists in Paris, directly after the Hitler

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34catastrophe. They were, for the most part, German artists who had | flown from Germany.

35They were artists who had worked all their lives, achieving great | things, and doing the world’s great work.

36It made me think..…suppose sometime soon I should go back to | my own country America. Suppose I should work for many years to | achieve the place that some of these artists have achieved in their | own country. Suppose a dictator rises up in America, a dictator | like Hitler. Suppose our work, our opera houses, our symphonies, | our everything is wiped out or burnt up in one night.

37It couldn’t happen, you say. It DID happen. It has happened.

38I love music. I must have loved it to have spent most of my waking | time writing it, ever since I was six.

39But, if we, America, are ever to go through those many phases of | hope--terrible, horrible, desperate, and agaonizing hope that | Germany, and particularly Berlin, has gone--then, I promise all | of you--I shall lay down my pen, forever;

40So will a thousand of my fellow artists.

41<x> Yes, we shall lay down our pens. The human race shall either not | be worth writing music for, or it shall be worth much more than that. | That Kathe Kollwitz has been able to paint in the face of such despera- | tion and leave us this record wins my every respect. Only a woman could | have born the agony of the human race--the agony of these times--so | long, and so poignantly.