The German Dominance of Music in Norway 1930-45

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Michael Custodis
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: from 2017 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 326683797

As much German and Norwegian historians have found out about the political and economic dimensions of Norway's occupation by Nazi-Germany (1940-45), as little do we still know about the consequences on Norway's music life. For centuries both countries had shared strong cultural ties, before most of Norway's leading composers chose an alternative path during the 1920s and 1930s against central Europe's modern trends of atonality and neoclassicism, in favor of national folklorism and romantic aesthetics. With the rise of new ideological concepts the category "Nordic" was transformed from a geographical-cultural into a national-aesthetical quality, promoting mutual Germanic supremacy. The five years of German occupation intensified the aesthetic, political and cultural situation in Norway. But still very little is known about the actual structures, strategies, protagonists, and events of Josef Terboven's Reichskommissariat and Norwegian Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling's administration, about the resistance's musical policies or the persecution of Jewish and communist artists. After a few reports from the immediate post-war years only recently dimensions of resistance, collaboration, sentence for treason and reintegration of musical elites were outlined in a few critical studies. But Norwegian musicology in general still has not examined the balance of politics and music in Norway"s music history yet. On the contrary Norway has not been recognized by the international research community dealing with Music and Naszism, although their models (developed since the 1970s) are highly adaptable to study the functioning of German-Norwegian interrelations under circumstances of a dictatorship and their continuities under democratic conditions. On the basis of numerous source findings in German and Norwegian Archives, which have been inquired for this proposal, the project aims to initiate first systematical research about the German Dominance in Norway"s musical life 1930-45 to be published in books and articles. In January 2016 an Erasmus-Contract was signed by the musicological departments in Münster and Bergen (already in fall 2016 a student from Münster will be a visiting scholar in Bergen). As a project partner Ass. Prof. Dr. Arnulf Mattes will propose a corresponding, independent project to the Norwegian Research Council in synchronicity end of May 2016 to outline the artists' opinions towards politics in Norway. Mutual results will be a handbook, coordinated via a database, and annual workshops. Research Cooperations have been figured out with leading scholars, all major research institutions in Norway and the Goethe-Institute in Oslo. The project will be backed by an advisory board with Prof. Dr. Friedrich Geiger (Musicology, Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Rolf Hobson (History, Bergen), Prof. Dr. Christhard Hoffmann (History, Bergen), and Prof. Dr. Arvid Vollsnes (Musicology, Oslo).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants