Kultur for the Volk

Abstract

“We National Socialists can rightly claim that there is nothing of beauty and greatness in Germany in which the working man cannot have a part.”1 Robert Ley’s proud 1939 claim praised his leisure organization’s activities in bringing culture to all strata of the German population, and referred in particular to the organization’s involvement with the Bayreuth Wagner Festival, the annual performance of Richard Wagner’s works in his opera house in Bayreuth, Bavaria.2 Starting in 1937, KdF sent workers to attend the prestigious opera performances in Bayreuth.3 It was a modest enterprise in the first year, but in 1938 3500 KdF patrons visited Wagner’s “Green Hill,” attending special performances of Parsifal and Tannhauser.4 In the summer of 1939, KdF gave out 7000 tickets discounted to a third of the regular price,5 and now there were four performances for the leisure organization’s patrons: Der fliegende Hollander, Parsifal and two stagings of Tristan und Isolde.6 According to an article in the DAF newspaper Angriff, KdF brought an eclectic mix of people to Bayreuth, including plumbers, accountants, secretaries, farmers, pipe fitters, chemists, engineers, clerks, lathe operators, and bank assistants. Before seeing the opera performances, they were given an introductory lecture on Wagner’s works (in Bayreuth or, in some cases, previously in their hometowns).7 Making Wagner’s operas accessible in this way to this particular audience fitted two of KdF’s main goals. First, it corresponded with the organization’s agenda of bringing together Germans from different strata of society as a building block towards a unified Volksgemeinschaft. Secondly, and ultimately in the same vein, KdF’s involvement in Bayreuth was driven by its ambition to give members of the lower classes access to Germany’s cultural life, especially its “high-brow culture.” Here, KdF’s functionaries had identified a disconnection that they believed would have dire consequences for Germany: the estrangement of German workers from the world of German culture was supposed to lie at the core of Germany’s class conflicts during the nineteenth and especially the early-twentieth century.8 In other words, they did not consider material needs to have been the reason for workers’ discontent during previous decades, but rather the workers’ lack of proper access to the world of arts and culture.9