Hans Severus Ziegler. Entartete Musik: Eine Abrechnung

Hans Severus Ziegler (1893-1978) was a German publicist, NS-official and theater director. A strong supporter of the Nazi-ideology from the very beginning, he founded the journals Der Volkische already in 1924, later to become the daily journal Der Nationalsozialist. Upon his suggestion (while serving as Gauleiter for Thuringia), the Nazi youth movement was named the Hitlerjugend. In 1930 Ziegler formulated the Nazi policy of Wider die Negerkultur ("Against Negro Culture.") After the war, Ziegler continued to work as a theater director, actor and teacher. He kept on publishing, mostly in the Neo-Nazi scene. Zieger died unmarried and without children in Bayreuth in 1978. In 1936, Severus was appointed general director of the Nationaltheater of Weimar. Inspired by the Munich exhibition Entartete Kunst, and in the context of the Reichmusiktage in Dusseldorf (celebrating Richard Wagner's 125th birthday), Severus organized an exhibition entitled Entartere Musik, whereby he polemicized against music and musicians that were considered by the Nazis to be degenerate - mainly modern jazz music and anything composed Jewish musicians. Richard Strauss composed a Festliches Vorspiel specifically for the exhibition's opening, at which Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels spoke. The original exhibition in 1938 did not have a catalogue. What did exist, however, was an illustrated brochure, in which Ziegler's speech was reprinted. The cover of this brochure shows “Negenmusiker Johnny”, a character from the opera “Jonny Spleltauf” by the Czech-Austrian musician Ernst Krenek (1900-1991), a popular opera which the Nazis disdained. The cover features a black musician playing the saxophone, however, the buttonhole on the musician's tuxedo was replaced with a Star-of David. The artwork personifies what the Nazis defined as degenerate: A primitive "Jewish-Negro" polluting German high-culture