'There is nothing here but dust!' - Music theater of the Jewish Intelligentsia in Tashkent Exile (1941-1943)

• Applicant: Dr. Verena Mogl
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 534247378

The proposed project is devoted to the work of the Jewish cultural elite who was evacuated to Tashkent after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. In Tashkent they were distributed among Uzbek institutions, where they were to create works of moral support for the civilian population and the fighting troops. It was not until the fall of 1943 that the evacuees began to return to their original places of residence. The project opens up a new field of research for musicology, in which the musicological perspective is enriched by the targeted inclusion of related disciplines. Starting from music, historical, art-historical and literary subjects are intertwined. The focus lies on the experiences of the Jewish cultural workers in the field of music theater, which will be examined from the perspective of the history of everyday life and mentalities, analyzed in the light of the works created in Tashkent. The first goal of the project is the prosopographic documentation of the relevant group of people, starting from Jewish artists whose stay in Taschkent at the time in question is secured. It also has to be examined whether the evacuation of these artists was used to displace 'inconvenient' persons from the center to the periphery, and if the latent-Antisemitism in the Soviet Union had to do with this. The second goal is to investigate the artistic activity on site. First of all, an overview of which works were created in which cooperations is to be compiled. This will be followed by an examination of exemplary works. On this basis, the context of their creation, performance and reception will be reconstructed. Attention must be paid to whether and in what form music theater was specifically used to implement an official narrative. Also it needs to be taken into account, whether and how official attitudes and the general mood towards the Jewish artists developed and changed. The third goal refers to the relevance of Jewish content in the works created. It is to be examined how the artistic examination of Jewish themes is presented musically and whether, in the course of the war and with the swelling of anti-Semitic sentiment, a change in the literary material treated and its musical realization becomes apparent.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants