Jun 11 1932

Grafing, 11. Juni.(Tantiemenfreie

Musikstücke. — Ein wichtiges Ka­pitel für Vereinsleitungen.) Die „G e m a", eine Genossenschaft
zur Währung der Rechte der Tonsetzer, hat in den letzten Monaten verschiedentlich unseren
einheimi­schen Vereinen zu schaffen gemacht. Ta hatz. B. der Gesellenverein Grafing einen Ball

ten Zeiten und einer anderen erfolgreicheren Veranstaltung. Ta kommt geraume Zeit nach
dieser Veranstaltung ein vorgedruckter Schreibebrief vom Münchener Vertreter der "Gema", der
den Verein zur Zahlung von TP-Mark auffordert als Tantieme für anbewußtem Abend
aufgeführte,demmusikalischen Urheberschutz unterliegende Konzertstücke. Ter
Vereinsausschuß ist höchst überrascht, das Defizit nimmt nun ein unwahrschein­liches Ausmaß
an, wenn man diese Forde­rung begleichen wollte. Man weigert sich zunächst, wird von der
„Gema" (die die betr. Vereinsveranstaltung hat bespitzelnlas­sen, um zu erfahren, welche
Musikstücke gespielt wurden) über die Rechtmäßigkeit ihrer Forderung belehrt und zugleich
aufge­fordert, der „Gema" mit einem Pauschal abkommen beizutreten, um in Zukunft folchen
unangenehmen Tingen aus dem Weg zu gehen. Ter Verein gibt vielleicht nicht gleich klein bei,
man läßt es an das Gericht kommen und die Sache zieht sich hinaus und verursacht Kosten an
Geld und Zeit. Zum Schluß zieht man den kürzeren. Tiefe Er­fahrung haben schon einige
Vereine betrüblicherweise machen müssen. Aber auch die Herrschaft der „Gema" ist nicht von
ewigem estand. Es gibt nämlich genug Tonstücke, die jede Kapelle ohne Tantieme spie­len
kann. Ta hat der Berliner Monopolver­ag Gottschalk L Co. Berlin M 35 einen Katalog der
aufführungsfreien Musik zusammengestellt, den jeder Berufsmusi­ker, aber auch in Frage
kommende Vereineige Werke von der ernsten Konzertmusik wechslung ist also gesorgt. Wer
sich diesen Katalog kommen läßt, ist auf lange Zei hinaus mit wertvollem Material versehen.
Und bei irgendwelchen Rechtsstreitigkeiten erteilt der Monopolverlag auch sachgemäße
Auskunft.

Jun 11 1932

Grafing, June 11th. (Royalty-free

pieces of music. — An important chapter for club management.) The “G e m a”, a cooperative
for the currency of the rights of the tone setters, has caused problems for our local clubs on
various occasions in the last few months. For example, the Grafing journeymen's club is having
a ball

ten times and another more successful event. Some time after this event, a pre-printed letter
arrives from the Munich representative of "Gema", which asks the association to pay TP-Mark
as a royalty for concert pieces performed that evening that are subject to musical copyright
protection. The club committee is extremely surprised; the deficit is now reaching an unlikely
level if this demand were to be paid. You initially refuse, but are informed by the "Gema" (who
had the club event in question spied on in order to find out what pieces of music were played)
about the legality of their demand and at the same time asked to join the "Gema" with a flat-rate
agreement to avoid such unpleasant things in the future. The club may not give in straight away,
they will let the matter go to court and the matter will drag on and incur costs in terms of money
and time. In the end you draw the short straw. Unfortunately, some clubs have already had to go
through a lot of experience. But the rule of "Gema" is not permanent either. There are enough
pieces of music that any band can play without paying a royalty. The Berlin monopoly publisher
Gottschalk L Co. Berlin M 35 has put together a catalog of non-performable music that every
professional musician can use The monopoly publisher also provides appropriate information in
the event of any legal disputes, but also suitable works from serious concert music. Anyone who
receives this catalog will be provided with valuable material for a long time to come.

October 15th 1929

Richard Strauß und die österreichischeSteuerbehörde. Zwischen Mm Finanzministerium unö

Richard Strauß ist ein Konflikt ausgebrochen, d die Steuerbehörde vom Komponisten
Bezahlung einer großen Einkommensteuer verlangt. Die Ungelegenheit hat folgende
forgeschicht: for zwei Jahren wurde zwischen dem Komponisten und betn österreichischen
Staat ein Vertrag ab­geschlossen, demzufolge der Baugrund der Stranßschen villa in den Besitz
des Künstlers übergeht, dieser sich aber verpflichtet, die Origiualpartttur seiner „Aeghptischen
Helena" der National Bibliothek zu vermachen und außerdem fünf Jahre hindurch je 20 Abende
im Jahre in der Oper ohne Entgelt zu dirigieren. Beide Feile haben den Bertrag bisher pünftlich
erfüllt, sesst aber hat die Steuerbehönde die Ubficht fundgegeben Bertrag zu befteuern. Die
Steuerbehönde hat Bertrag den grossen Dollarbetrag zugrundegelegt, der Strauß für die
Partitur der „Helena" angeboten wurde und außerdem hundert Dirigentenhouorare in der Höhe
seines Dirigentengehaltes in Deutschland in Anrechnung gebracht. Strauss, der voraussetzen
mußte, daß der Vertragsabschluß mit dem­Staat ihm niemals eine Steuerverpflichtung
auferlegen würde, hat die Angelegenheit feinem Wiener Rechtsanwalt übergeben.

Kleine Mitteilungen

Richard Strauss dirigiert im I. Meisterkozert mit dem Orchester der Münchner Philharmoniker
am Donnerstag

Von dem jungen Münchner Komponisten Fritz Valentin ionvden in Nürnberg die
Solomusik...Silesius in einem Konzert der Nürnberger Madrigal-

Den offiziellen Leipziger Konzert-Auffakt bil­

und Otrbefter waren schon bei Konzertboginn Gegen­stand lebhafter Ovationen.

Richard Strauss and the Austrian tax authority. A conflict has broken out between the Ministry of
Finance and Richard Strauß because the tax authority is demanding that the composer pay a
large income tax. The inconvenience has the following history: for two years a contract was
concluded between the composer and the Austrian state, according to which the building site of
the Straßsche villa became the property of the artist, but the artist undertakes to give the
original score of his “Aegyptian Helena” to the National Library bequeath and also to conduct 20
evenings a year for five years at the opera without remuneration. Both files have so far fulfilled
the amount on time, but the tax authorities have to substantiate the amount on the balance
sheet. The tax authority has based the amount on the large dollar amount, which is the amount
Strauss was offered the score of "Helena" and also a hundred conductor's fees were taken into
account in the amount of his conductor's salary in Germany. Strauss, who had to assume that
concluding a contract with the state would never impose a tax obligation on him, referred the
matter to his Viennese lawyer.

Small messages

Richard Strauss conducts the first master concert with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra on
Thursday

The solo music of the young Munich composer Fritz Valentin ionvden in Nuremberg...Silesius in
a concert of the Nuremberg Madrigal-

The official Leipzig concert start bil

and Otrbefter were already receiving lively ovations at the beginning of the concert.

At the general meeting of the Cooperative of German Tonsetters in Berlin, after thorough
discussion, a complete agreement was reached in the spirit of the traditional aspirations of the
cooperative board, which included Dr. Richard Strauss, Max Butting, Hugo Rasch. Arnold Ebel,
Heinz T h i e f f c tu

The bed of the

The attempt to more precisely determine the relationship of musicology - including its two
sub-disciplines of biography and music criticism, which are primarily oriented towards public
music discourse - to Richard Strauss and his work is more difficult than with other great
composers such as Liszt, Wag - ner, Brahms, Mahler, Reger and Schönberg, who prepared or
shaped the breakthrough to musical modernity from the middle of the 19th century. They were
relatively quickly placed on the scale of values of historically important, if not necessarily
popular, music, and even Reger's unwieldy work underwent continuous, albeit ideologically
co-opted, musicological exegesis shortly after his death. With Strauss, however, the situation
was specifically different. Despite the overwhelming, almost unmanageable and international
journalistic response to his music, most of the contributions and statements had the tenor of an
ideological debate that either focused on the moment of progress or the problem of the stylistic
classification of Strauss' musical language was fixed. Unless it has hagiographic features from
the outset, much of the posthumous Strauss literature well into the second half of the century
leaves the impression that the authors either consciously avoided a more in-depth analytical
and hermeneutic preoccupation or wanted to prove that This isn't even worth it.
Two circumstances must be taken into account: Firstly, it must be borne in mind that the borders
There was a fluidity between musicology, which was only slowly establishing itself as a
university subject around 1900, and the literary-philosophical varieties of writing about music -
this is also what Alfred Döblin and Rudolf Kassner said about music. Academic musicology, on
the other hand, saw itself as a philology that dealt with the study of older music; When she
intervened in the aesthetic debates surrounding contemporary music (like Hugo Riemann or
Guido Adler), this was rather the exception. In 1898, Strauss counted critics such as Oskar Bie,
Wilhelm Klatte, Carl Krebs and Heinrich Welti among his “best friends” (Strauss 1954, 210). He
felt understood by them, but less so by the academically established musicologists, with whom
he largely avoided contact. Even in his old age, he distanced himself from the views of the
“music scholars” Friedrich von Hausegger and Eduard Hanslick on program music (Strauss
1981, 165 f.). Secondly, the intellectual climate after 1945, which was characterized by
repression, must be taken into account, which made it difficult to write about a composer who
was an important cultural representative of the fallen German Reich and the Nazi regime. (The
radical aesthetic paradigm shift that was initiated with the rise of the new avant-gardes of
serialism and indeterminism did its part by bringing with it the demand for a compositional 'zero
hour', against which Strauss' music was hopeless outdated and even seemed reactionary.) Only
two generations after Strauss's death did a fundamental and continuous revision of the Strauss
image begin.
Some of the prerequisites of a confusing overall picture are discussed below, in which the
intensity and contradictions are almost more impressive than the abundance and diversity of the
voices that spoke up. The history of his impact also includes the fact that Strauss met with a
lasting response beyond the boundaries of musicology and criticism, for example from his fellow
composers Béla Bartók (Hungary), Paul Dukas, Claude Debussy (France) and Daniel Gregory
Mason (USA). Decades later, interpreters were added, especially the British conductor Norman
Del Mar and the eccentric and astute Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who in 1962 said that
Strauss was “the greatest musical figure who has lived in this century” (Gould 1987, 84–92 ).
The provocation lay in the Janus-faced nature of the claim: on the one hand, Gould sounded the
horn of the older establishment, which had always considered Strauss to be the most important
composer after Wagner, and on the other hand, he opened a vacuum that the younger
musicologists refused to accept after the Second World War with regard to a critical debate with
Strauss.
II.
From the very beginning, Strauss' music captivated the professional public in a way that could
not be reconciled with the usual categories. As a result, biography and musical work became a
projection surface for prejudices and value judgments that can still be found in parts of Strauss
literature today. Relevance and consistency of arguments should therefore be approached with
caution; For a long time, Strauss research struggled with considerable historiographical and
philological desiderata (including a critical edition of his works and a list of sources that were in
the process of being created), which were long hampered by the unbroken presence of Strauss'
music-dramatic works in the world's great opera houses faded into the background and were
sometimes seen as annoying and sometimes negligible. The decades-long gap between the
nimbus of Strauss' unbroken music
among the general public, and the contempt that she – and thus also her personality – met (and
to some extent still faces) especially among German-speaking music scholars in the wake of
Adorno's criticism of Strauss, founded in the The factors already mentioned, but to which there
is also a constitutive dialectic of the relationship between music and the public, which can be
demonstrated paradigmatically in Strauss' artistic physiognomy. The question of musicology's
relationship to Strauss cannot be separated from these historical prerequisites or from the
choice of methods in order to do justice to the demands of the task. This also includes the
recognition and use of the methods of biographical research (both from an individual and social
psychological perspective) as an important instrument, a demand that is made in view of the
mutual fears of contact and reservations between biography and work-analytically oriented
musicology in the German-speaking world Space is still met with skepticism.
If one recapitulates the historical framework, one should first mention the polarization of
discourses about the aesthetic and social functions of music (or the art of music) that began in
France and Germany in the 1830s, which led to the so-called The familiar split led to the
factions of “progressives” and “conservatives”. Strauss's career in German-speaking musical
life, which he began at the end of the 1880s as an avowed Liszt admirer and thus as a
representative of progress, was accelerated by the increased tension in the relationship
between artistic action and critical reaction. It culminated in 1905 after the premiere of Salome
in the succés de scandale and thus in a reflex of calculated and ritualized indignation that was
advantageous for all sides - the artist, the critics and the big city audience conditioned for
sensationalism - and through which Strauss had a practical sense of indignation for some time
achieved an undisputed leading position within international musical life. When in 1911 he
thwarted the image of the “neutoner” with the Rosenkavalier and, after 1918, almost
demonstratively insisted on the musical language means of tonality, the provocative moment
remained with the opposite
Preserving the omens: Heavily criticized by representatives of new music, Strauss now offered
support to conservatives shocked by secession and revolution. Through all of this, the tried and
tested structural friend-enemy scheme remained intact until it became obsolete under the
circumstances of the National Socialist dictatorship.
The wealth of functions and offices that Strauss held as a composer, conductor and organizer
over the course of his life and which helped him achieve an unprecedented level of institutional
power in German musical life in the Third Reich is a fact familiar from Liszt and Wagner. But the
radius expanded enormously because Strauss received early recognition and journalistic
attention beyond Europe and in the USA; Together with his friend and competitor Mahler, he
became one of the first central figures in transatlantic music history. What distinguished Strauss
from Mahler and above all Wagner in demeanor and appearance was the absence and even
deliberate undermining of the romantic aura of the artistic genius. In the case of Wagner, it had
taken on almost cultic-hysterical characteristics after his death and could therefore be exploited
politically, while Mahler had and maintained the aura of an outsider and music saint who had
penetrated into the music metropolises (but was nevertheless one of the best-paid musicians in
the world). time belonged). Strauss' charisma was not defined by his mysterious personality, but
by the impact of his music. The attribute of “modernity,” which initially signaled the overcoming
of Romanticism in his music, would have been something he would later have gladly given up
again in order to replace it with a different aura, that of the complete concordance of intention
and realization – thus an apotheosis of the idea of a profession. to replace. However, this
idealization of objective perfection, which promised to overcome historical relativization, could
not be sustained in view of the social and political reality after 1918, even though the Third
Reich, through its combination of the political and aesthetic spheres, even represented the
unrealism of an art-dominated sphere Reality promised. Paul Bekker, one of the leading Strauss
exegetes, reacted
irritated and fascinated by Strauss's self-stylization, while Alfred Einstein said with
disappointment that Strauss only composed according to a "recipe" and had even become a
"Straussian" (Walter 2000, 250).
The answers to the question of how to interpret Strauss' music were controversial from the start.
As early as the end of the 1880s, the reactions to the performances of the first tone poems
ranged from astonished enthusiasm to sharp rejection and articulated an antinomy that would
soon establish itself as a consistent leitmotif. It is already negatively manifested in the old
Eduard Hanslick, for whom Don Juan (based on Friedrich Theodor Vischer) was the epitome of
"nervously heated and at the height of hot-brewed bliss already half [criminal] criminal
sensuality" and who was completely " “emancipated naturalism in instrumental music” (quoted in
Walter 2000, 119), which, as it were, dealt a death blow to absolute music. Hugo Riemann went
one step further with the view that, with his "skinning" as a program musician, Strauss had
betrayed the central task since Beethoven of the ethical deepening of musical language (in
Schopenhauer's sense, i.e. its metaphysical charge): "A composer renounces that If he has the
right to express his feelings through music and if he prefers to portray the feelings of others
instead, he is taking a disastrous step: he strips music of its very essence and continues to use
its means in a figurative, secondary sense: he gives up everything that is naive and
spontaneous for the sake of something that is reflected and intentional” (Riemann 1901, 758).
The authors of the popular work guides to the tone poems, on which Strauss had considerable
influence, precisely because he clearly recognized the changed function of the public (Werbeck
1996, 8): They emphasized that the “musical rationalist” Strauss had finally given music its own
Liszt's desired connection to the expressive richness of literature and fine art was made
possible (Walden 1912, IX). Hermann Kretzschmar was the first to adopt an objective attitude, in
his authoritative guide through the concert hall Strauss's Symphonic Fantasy

this letter of January 1, 1947 by Strauss

I ... would like ... to declare simply under oath that I have never been a
member of the National Socialist Party, and that I never sympathized with it
nor engaged in propaganda for it. My only relations to Mr. Goebbels’s
Department of Propaganda are the result of the following: having been a
leading German musician for forty years, and having worked, as founder
and long-time president of the Genossenschaft deutscher Tonsetzer [Guild
of German Composers], on a reorganization of STAGMA [Staatlich
genehmigte Gesellschaft zur Verwertung musikalischer Aufführungsrechte
(Corporation for the Utilization of Musical Performance Rights)], I was in
1933 appointed by Dr. Goebbels in Berlin, without being asked for my
agreement, to the post of President of the new Reichsmusikkammer; I did
not reject this honorific post immediately, since I did not know the new men
in power and believed that I could, perhaps, do some good for music and
musicians. When I realized after a year that my position was only a front
and that I had no influence whatsoever on the workings of the
Reichsmusikkammer, I was relieved from my post by Dr. Goebbels on the
basis of a letter to my friend and collaborator Stefan Zweig, intercepted and
used against me by the Gestapo; in the letter I had spoken critically about
the Reichsmusikkammer. For ten years, I have not had any dealings with
the Department and the Party, except for

plenty of harassments and hostilities. 1

“The anti-Semitic statements of Strauss, which can be found again and

again from the end of the 1870s to the years after World War II, are a
mixture of

opportunism and social convention. 13 Strauss was most definitely not a

racist anti-Semite along the lines of National Socialism; he was perhaps not
even a convinced anti-Judaist in a nineteenth-century sense. When in
conversation he had reason to assume that his partner expected an
anti-Semitic statement, Strauss provided it without much thought, and also
without taking it too seriously.”

● Scholarship masks the anti-semitism in a playful opportunism, or a

naive opportunism that was too much for Strauss’s own good

STAGMA did provide Strauss with a minor success in the improved

distribution of royalties for composers of serious music, but that privilege
was rescinded by Goebbels in 1941.

Strauss and the royalty movement

The royalty movement of composers and music publishers in the German Reich began at the end of the
1890s and achieved its most important goal in 1903 with the founding of the first collecting society. The
Cooperative of German Tonsetters (GDT) is a triumph of cultural and social thinking and action among
music creators, and the collective exercise of performance rights for non-dramatic works is a milestone in
the social history of music.
The royalty movement in Germany progressed more slowly than in other European countries. What was
particularly in need of reform was the Copyright Act of 1870, which did not provide for any performance
rights at all for published works unless the edition was printed with a performance reservation. Even
authors like Richard Strauss renounced this because, like most publishers, he saw this reservation as a
hindrance to the distribution of a work.
In France, the Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Éditeurs de Musique (SACEM), which is responsible
for the performance rights of non-dramatic musical works, had already started operations in 1851. The
French model was followed by Italy in 1883 with the Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori (SIAE) and in
1897 by Austria with the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers (AKM). The Berne
Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of 1886 obliged the accession countries,
including
the German Reich to grant foreign authors national treatment. This raised the issue of equal treatment
between countries with and those without royalty institutions. When the SACEM and the AKM threatened
to assert the rights of their authors in the German Reich, it was at the same time a national challenge and
an urgent call to the disunited authors and publishers to agree on a common approach to the royalty
issue.
The Association Litteraire et Artistique Internationale (ALAI), founded by Victor Hugo in 1878, was also
concerned with the rights of authors, and its congresses attracted the interest of representatives of the
arts as well as of users, legal scholars and politicians. After the demand for a royalty institution in the
German Reich based on the French model was first raised at the ALAI congress in Antwerp in 1894, the
German publishers Oskar von Hase (Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig) and Hugo Bock (Bote & Bock, Berlin)
take a controversial stance on this. Von Hase, as head of the Association of German Music Dealers,
rejected the introduction of concert royalties because of the unfavorable consequences for music
cultivation, while Bock defended such income and considered it justified in the interests of the authors
(Dümling 2003, 37 ). In his report on the Dresden debate in the Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung, Engelbert
Humperdinck, going beyond the goals outlined by Bock, got to the point of what the Composers ultimately
went: The publisher who buys a composer's work is entitled to the income from the sale of sheet music,
but not a share in the performance royalties (Dümling 2003, 38): a maximum demand that could never be
fully enforced, the Com- However, the ponists had a clear goal that was worth fighting for. At the end of
1898, Strauss confronted his publisher Eugen Spitzweg with the slogan “publishing rights to the publisher
– copyrights to the author” (Grasberger 1967, 119). Together with the managing GDT board, he signed it
again in 1903, when the statutory performance reservation had already been abolished and the
leadership role of the authors compared to the publishers, who only enjoyed extraordinary membership
status in the GDT, had been decided was.

The royalty institution as a solidarity community

Diverging ideas about the content of a royalty society and the awaited outcome of the copyright reform
hindered rapid and joint action in the German Reich. For the publishers who were already organized and
determined to act, economic considerations were paramount: they wanted an economic organization
based on the French model. The composers, on the other hand, aimed at an organization of authors
responsible for both economic and professional issues, filling management positions, a quota of 75 for
distributions and a fund to support needy and promote young colleagues. Everyone was supposed to
make 10 of their income available for this: a self-help arrangement with which the GDT took on a role
model function for later developments in Germany and other European countries. The social and cultural
idea lives on in GEMA to this day and was even reflected in the drafting of Sections 7 and 8 of the
Copyright Management Act in 1965.

When the GDT was founded in 1903, the composers were able to develop their concept and thus enforce
all important points. Strauss was later said to have had his own interests at play. The accusation is
completely unfounded in this context. The principle of the collective perception of copyrights is based
rather on the solidarity of individuals with very different artistic and social positions, both externally
towards the users and internally between those entitled. This consensus was the basis for joint action and
gave the community its inner support.

Strauss always defended the principle of solidarity, even though it also meant renunciation. Some people
had to move away from privileged positions on the market and accept collective debt collection rates. For
successful people like Strauss, internal solidarity was associated with further concessions. The
administrative side of attending concert performances is manageable and requires less effort than, for
example, B. those of dance and light music events. Ultimately, the economically profitable author uses his
10 deduction from the income to continually support a fund for social and cultural purposes, from which
he himself only benefits in the unlikely event of need.

Strauss had to deal with unfavorable criticism because of his economic successes early on. Additional
causes for controversy arose from his role as a champion of the professional interests and improvement
of the social situation of composers. The authority of his name gave the composers' arguments increased
attention among their professional colleagues as well as among music publishers and exploiters, who
have always done business and traded in the authors' intellectual achievements. In short: Strauss made
himself a target for the opponents of a royalty movement.

Before and after 1903, music promoters took a massive stand against the collection of royalties and
threatened boycott measures. They had no small success in warning that music could be harmed, and
they did not hold back in their attacks against Strauss, Rösch and other supporters. The composers were
not deterred and defended Goal by all means. Court disputes soon became part of everyday life and
caused a corresponding response from the public. The understanding of the protection of intellectual
property and the author's right to appropriate remuneration were limited then as now.

Summer, Rösch, Strauss

Although it is common to see Strauss as the founding father of the GDT and is based on a respectful
distance, it is not entirely accurate historically. Although he was at the head of the organization, he never
claimed this honor for himself alone and credited the great achievements of his friends and
comrades-in-arms Hans Sommer and Friedrich Rösch, whom he long outlived and whose names later
faded pointed out on many occasions.

Strauss had brought the triumvirate together. The constellation of the three different temperaments was
almost ideal: Sommer and Rösch, the cautious actors, with Strauss in between as primus inter pares.

Strauss had known Rösch since they were both young. Rösch studied law in Munich, but soon swapped
his career as a lawyer for that of a conductor (sometimes also a composer) and also made a name for
himself as an author of aesthetic writings. Strauss sought his friend's philosophical and artistic advice
several times and also learned to value him as an organizer who was not afraid of confrontations. Rösch
served as the first managing director of the GDT from 1903 until his death in 1925.
Strauss and Sommer met in Weimar in the mid-1890s. Sommer, in contrast to Rösch a sensitive diplomat,
had already had a career as a mathematician and founding rector of the Technical University in
Braunschweig before he decided to compose. His essay “On the Appreciation of Music”, the
Improvements, which appeared first in the magazine Der Kunstwart in the spring of 1898 and then also as
a private print

Many people agreed with the composers' poor social situation. Although the ideas were not entirely new
and German music publishers were making plans to establish a royalty society based on the model in
France and other countries, Sommer's empathy spoke to the composer's soul. They repeatedly referred
to Sommer when it came to the royalty issue. Strauss also felt addressed by the demand for a tax on free
works and suggested submitting a petition for a change in the law to the Reich Chancellor and supporting
it with the signatures of the most well-known colleagues.

Sommer and Rösch, always in coordination with Strauss, were primarily responsible for operational tasks.
While Sommer carefully prepared and prudently led the composers' meetings with his committee
experience, Rösch formulated the composers' positions and represented them in the Reich Justice Office,
where a new copyright and publishing law was discussed. The memorandum on the draft law regarding
copyright in literary and musical works presented to parliamentarians by the general board of the German
Composers' Association (see below) in 1899 bears Rösch's handwriting and summarizes the arguments
and demands of the composers on 52 printed pages Strauss had asked for consent in his circular of July
1898 (GEMA 1953, 14 ff.). Some passages in the memorandum come literally from Sommer's
appreciation.

A decisive event in the royalty movement occurred at the general meeting of the General German Music
Association (ADMV) convened in Mainz on June 27, 1898, which included music lovers and
representatives of all musical professions, but only a minority of composers. Von Hase had now changed
his mind and, with the support of the ADMV board, called for the establishment of a royalty institution,
which was to begin operations on October 1st of the same year.

The music publishers' bold approach had unexpected consequences. The composers saw themselves
taken by surprise and, especially with Rösch's voice, denied the ADMV the right to make decisions with
such far-reaching consequences. Nevertheless, a royalty institution (the so-called Leipziger Anstalt) was
founded, but the composers distanced themselves from it and had to cease operations after a short time.
Now the composers were determined to take matters into their own hands. In the same year they founded
the Cooperative of German Composers in Leipzig - the first composers' association worthy of the name
and the actual parent organization of the GDT - in order to represent their interests with one voice to
publishers and in the Reich Justice Office in the future (Schmidt 2005, 58ff., 89 ff., 186 ff.; Schmidt 2006,
73). Since then, the composers have determined the further course of the royalty movement.

The Copyright Act of 1901 disappointed expectations, but achieved the hoped-for success in one
important respect. It made it clear that the right to perform the work belonged solely to the author of the
work and was not, as was previously the case, dependent on a performance reservation. However, there
was neither an extension of the protection period from 30 to 50 years nor the fee demanded by the
composers for works free of copyright, a so-called “domaine public payment”, with which contemporary
music was promoted and the organizers switched to royalty-free works Music should be made
unattractive.

The Chairman
After the new copyright law came into force on January 1, 1902, with its unsatisfactory results for music
and music publishing, and in view of plans from Austria and France to expand the areas of responsibility
of the SACEM and AKM into Germany, rapid action was necessary. The drafts of the statutes of the
organization to be founded were quickly coordinated between composers and publishers. The founding
meeting on January 14, 1903 in Berlin, to which the Cooperative of German Composers had invited and
then immediately merged into the GDT, decided to adopt the GDT's statutes and rules of procedure

the basic regulations of the Institution for Musical Performance Law (AFMA).

In contrast to the German Composers' Cooperative, the GDT was a legal economic association that
concluded authorization contracts with composers, lyricists and music publishers and had them transfer
the responsibility for performing the performance rights for non-dramatic works. The AFMA, which was
organizationally subordinate to the GDT, was responsible for practical enforcement, collection and
distribution. In addition to Strauss and Rösch, the composers Humperdinck, Philipp Rüfer and Georg
Schumann were elected to the board. Strauss took over the chairmanship, but also remained primus inter
pares in this committee. He gave Rösch a largely free hand as managing director and director of AFMA.
Sommer retired and was only a member of the advisory board. The appearance of the GDT and its
politics were largely shaped by Rösch until his death in 1925.

Although the composers had asserted their ideas against the publishers, they had not convinced them; It
was only a matter of time before the company was split up and competing companies were founded. As
early as 1909, the publishers founded the Institute for Mechanical-Musical Rights (AMMRE), with which
they reacted to the triumph of the record and practically took over economic control over the mechanical
reproduction rights. After the GDT's defeat before the Reich Court in a lawsuit filed by Bote & Bock to
terminate rights contracts, in 1915 40 publishers (and eleven composers) formed the cooperative for the
exploitation of musical performance rights (the so-called "old" GEMA, in contrast to the today's GEMA,
which was reconstituted after the Second World War), from now on the AFMA's permanent competitor.
This date marks the end of a success story and the beginning of the end for GDT. The founding of GEMA,
which was primarily open to popular music and strengthened the rights of publishers, was directed
against the intransigent Rösch, but also against Strauss, who gave voice to his displeasure and the
GDT-GEMA dispute with the Krämerspiegel TrV 236 set a monument. The song cycle dedicated to Rösch
based on Alfred Kerr's mocking poems, the angry reaction of the publishers and the legal aftermath are
an extremely subtle record of the combative events (Dümling 2003, 112 ff.; Karbaum 2011, 231 f.).

The GDT did not recognize the growing importance of the popular genres on the music market and for the
collecting society in a timely manner and had the reputation of one-sidedly preferring serious music.
Strauss and Rösch, who were by no means alone in this regard, clearly had no connection to the genres
of light music. It was also thought that the discussion about art and values did not belong in a business
association. But everyone had to see that there were differences that lay in the matter itself. More
willingness to compromise among those responsible in the GDT could perhaps have prevented the split
and its consequences.

GDT-GEMA agreement negotiations

The representatives of GDT and GEMA had big plans when they began negotiations in 1924 with the aim
of overcoming the schism. The consequences of war, revolution and inflation had left their mark on both
organizations. In addition, there were internal crises that interrupted the negotiations. It wasn't until 1930
that a compromise was found. The companies continued to exist and, in association with the Austrian
AKM, transferred their rights to the newly established music protection association, which was now the
sole contact for the organizers and was able to conclude contracts for the use of the entire repertoire in
the German Reich.

After Rösch's death, Eduard Behm took over the management of the GDT in 1925 and Julius Kopsch in
1926. Kopsch, who apparently considered it his duty, like Rösch, to use all means possible against GEMA
(Bock 1930, 7), had only been in office for three years when he was accused of irregularities and had to
resign along with the board. He was followed by Max Butting as managing board member of the GDT.
Strauss stayed after the elections

In 1929, he initially served on the board, which now also included Arnold Ebel, Hugo Rasch and Heinz
Tiessen, until the financial extent of the mismanagement for which Kopsch was responsible became
known, and resigned from the GDT chairmanship in June 1930. He had not achieved the goal of a unified
collecting society. His successor Max von Schillings continued the efforts.

Epilogue: The Gray Eminence

From 1930 onwards, Strauss was honorary chairman of the GDT, which practically no longer existed from
1933 onwards. In September 1933, the Nazi state suddenly ended the years-long dispute between GDT,
GEMA and AKM by founding the State-Approved Society for the Exploitation of Musical Performance
Rights (STAGMA).

Authors and publishers, who could hardly have foreseen what measures were to follow, mostly welcomed
the clarification of the situation and saw a unified Imperial German society under the protection of the
government as the realization of a long-awaited situation. Only a few of those responsible, e.g. B. Tiessen
and Georg Schumann. Strauss failed with his restorative ideas about the structure of the new collecting
society, which should correspond to the model of the GDT, exercise supervision over the economic
organization and be responsible for professional questions of composers. Against his advice, those in
power separated the two areas. Leo Ritter became managing director of STAGMA, Paul Graener was
dismissed as president three months after his appointment, and the board consisting of composers,
lyricists and publishers was quickly abolished as a corporate body (Dümling 2003, 193 f.). When he
resigned from the presidency of the Reich Music Chamber in 1935, Strauss also ended his leadership
role in the professional student council.

About half of his life, from the beginning of the decisive founding phase in 1898 to the liquidation in 1936,
Strauss was associated with the GDT longer than with any other organization. Even after 1933, in
STAGMA, his advice remained in demand, both among those in power and among his professional
colleagues. During this time he no longer held any operational positions, but remained the éminence
grise.

None of his many functions was of more lasting importance for musical life than his voluntary work in the
GDT, whose success and failure he witnessed - not even the positions that Strauss temporarily held as
the first music director.

functionary of the country and willy-nilly also made him a homo politicus, such as the chairmanship of the
ADMV and the short period of presidency of the Reich Music Chamber of the Nazi state. Nowhere has he
implemented his social credo more sustainably and achieved more to improve the situation of music
creators than in and with the GDT. His participation in the royalty movement and the authors' society is
not the composer's 'other' life's work, but rather an inseparable part of his overall work (Karbaum 2011,
221 f.) and a stroke of luck in music history.
3.

Strauss and the General German Music Association

By Irina Lucke-Kaminiarz

The General German Music Association (ADMV) was founded in Weimar in 1861 during a meeting of
music artists attended by more than 700 musicians (among them Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Hans von
Bülow, Felix Draeseke, Franz Brendel and Louis Köhler). participated. Köhler had made the suggestion
two years earlier in Leipzig, supported by Liszt, who, like Brendel, had been working on establishing such
an association for some time. Köhler, Liszt and Brendel, as well as Carl Friedrich Weitzmann, Julius
Schäffer and August Wilhelm Ambros formed the commission that prepared the founding and drafted the
statutes.

The association's goals were “the cultivation of the art of music and the promotion of music artists”
(statutes 1869, 7); it developed into a network of the musical elite in Europe and beyond. The ADMV is
closely linked to the artistic and “second life’s work” of Richard Strauss. The name Strauss can be found
for the first time in 1886, in the files of the Ton Künstlertreffen in Sondershausen (the last one that Franz
Liszt took part in). The chairman, Carl Riedel, rejected the suggestion to perform his second symphony in
F minor TrV 126 because Strauss was not a member. Strauss joined the association in March 1887, and
in June one of his works, the Piano Quartet in C minor TrV 137, was presented by the ADMV for the first
time. The Liszt student and new ADMV chairman, Hans Bronsart von Schellendorf, who was also general
director of the Weimar Court Theater, hired the 25-year-old Strauss as bandmaster and won him as
festival conductor at the 26th Tonkunstlertreffen in Wiesba in 1889.

the. The latter was not only an artistic challenge, it also required enormous management skills in
organizing and carrying out rehearsals and performances with a large number of musicians from home
and abroad. The program change that Strauss implemented became legendary: he replaced Johannes
Brahms’ German Requiem (in memory of Riedel) with Liszt’s Heroïde funèbre (Kaminiarz 1995, 36–72). A
year later, from June 19th to 22nd, 1890, the 27th Tonkunstlersammlung took place in Eisenach, with
novelties such as Strauss' burlesque TrV 145 and his tone poem Death and Transfiguration TrV 158 (cf.
the list of works at the Ton - works by Strauss listed at the artist meetings at the end of this article). The
response to both works was great; In the case of tone poetry, works of this importance were required to
be given twice in a row.

Participation in the musical section and on the overall board of the ADMV

As early as 1890, Strauss took on a key role in the management of the ADMV. He became a member of
the musical section alongside Bronsart (Weimar), Eduard Lassen (Weimar), Felix Draeseke (Dresden)
and Gustav Rebling (Magdeburg). At the same time he was appointed a member of the entire board
(Kaminiarz 1995, 9 f.), which also included Brahms, Richard Pohl, Felix Mottl, Heinrich Porges and
others. belonged.

The musical section shaped the aesthetic direction of the club. She selected the works that were to be
presented at the Tonkunstler gatherings. As a rule, the composers had to submit their works by
December. After an initial viewing, they were then sent to the experts. They assessed the aesthetic and
musical qualities in pragmatic reports and decided on the performability. Many comments, especially
Strauss's, are written quite laconic but goal-oriented. Unfortunately, only a small part has survived
(Lucke-Kaminiarz 2011, 269 f.). There are several reports by Strauss from the 1890s (Kaminiarz 1995,
34f.). He cleverly used every opportunity to impose modernity. In the history of the ADMV, this can only be
compared with Liszt's commitment to Wagner, Berlioz, Schumann, Cornelius and others. Strauss’
positions occasionally provoked critical reactions. When he recommended the performance of Mahler's
1st Symphony at the Tonkunstlerassembly in Weimar in 1894, Adolf Stern, a member of the board of
directors, intervened. Like the treasurer, Oskar von Hase, he was of the opinion that Draeseke's Sinfonia
Tragica op. 40 was preferable to Mahler's symphony.

The relationship to modernity became a test for the association, exacerbated by the increasing copyright
debates. The question of reform or secession of the younger generation was already raised at the
Tonkunstler gathering in 1897. The decision was made to reform, but without fundamentally changing
anything. Bronsart resigned and the board of directors elected Fritz Steinbach as the new chairman. He
made a change to the statutes and set up five committees: one each for copyright, music, press,
publication of musical and musicological works, and finance. Above all, the first-mentioned committee
was a reaction to the unsatisfactory copyright situation and the conflicting interests of publishers,
organizers and composers that led to tensions in the ADMV.

During the Tonkunstler's meeting in Mainz in 1898, differences over the association's artistic profile and
questions of copyright came to a head (Schmidt 2005, 106–343). From

Hase, a member of the board of directors and, as head of Breitkopf & Härtel, also chairman of the music
dealers' association, presented the statutes of an institution for musical performance rights. The board of
directors had already decided to accept them for the ADMV and wanted the support of the general
meeting. Strauss, who was unable to attend Mainz, initially welcomed the approach (Kaminiarz 1995, 109
f.). However, when it became apparent that the interests of music dealers dominated the statutes, Strauss
(who had rejected his re-election to the music committee as well as to the overall board) together with his
friends Friedrich Rösch and Hans Sommer consistently opposed this (cf . Chapter 2). In a circular written
by them four weeks after the Mainz meeting and signed by Strauss, they protested against the resolutions
of the general meeting and called on their colleagues to express their interests independently in view of
the impending revision of the copyright law (Kaminiarz 1995 , 112 f.). Under the leadership of ADMV
members Strauss, Rösch and Sommer, the Cooperative of German Composers was founded in Leipzig
on September 30, 1898. Although each other's positions became more tense, both parties - the board
and the group around Strauss - took care not to damage the club.

Strauss as chairman of the ADMV (1901–1909)

Since the conflicts broke out over the role of musical modernism at the Tonkunstlerassemblies, Strauss
was favored by the younger generation as the new chairman. During the general meeting of the 38th
Music Artists' Meeting on June 3, 1901 in Heidelberg, which according to the minutes had to carry out the
"supplementary election" of the entire board, an event occurred that went down in the annals of the
association as the "Heidelberg Revolution": Strauss was re-elected as a member of the entire board,
together with Gustav Rassow, Max Schillings, Humperdinck, Rösch, Theodor Müller- Reuter and as
'substitutes' (as replacements) Felix Mottl and Hans Sommer. The new full board met on June 4th. Von
Hase and Weingartner resigned from the Executive Committee and were replaced by Strauss and
Rassow by acclamation. Schillings, Jean Louis Nicodé, Humperdinck, Steinbach and Siegfried Ochs were
appointed to the music committee. Otto Lessmann and Otto Neitzel were re-elected to the press
committee, and Rösch took the place of the late Heinrich Porges. The election of the committee for the
publication of musical and musicological works, whose members had included d’Albert, von Hase,
Bernhard Kellermann and Porges, was suspended. Instead, the Executive Committee was instructed to
request written information from Breitkopf & Härtel (i.e. from Hase) about the status of the complete
edition of Liszt's works and to move the ADMV's important library from Leipzig to the Liszt Museum in
Weimar. However, this only succeeded in 1930 (Lucke-Kaminiarz 2011, 273 f.).

There were opposing positions on how to deal with the library. Müller-Reuter suggested calling on
members to make their works available to the library in accordance with Section 15 of the statutes. The
founding fathers of the ADMV saw this as the basis for quick and inexpensive re-performances, which
soon led to objections from the publishers in the association, although without major consequences. Now,
in view of the debates about copyright and exploitation, Müller-Reuter's application was postponed: with
serious consequences for the library holdings. From Strauss are e.g. For example, only some of the
works performed up to 1901 are available (Piano Quartet TrV 137, Wandrers Sturmlied TrV 131, Don
Juan TrV 156, Two Greater Songs TrV 197; Austria TrV 259 was added later).

Since June 1901, the Executive Committee consisted of Strauss as chairman and Steinbach as deputy;
Lessmann remained secretary, Ochs his representative; Rassow replaced von Hase (who had
simultaneously resigned from the overall board) as treasurer. Schillings took over the chairmanship of the
music committee. This means that crucial positions were filled.

Chairman Strauss focused on the following areas of work:

– new artistic direction of the programs

the music artist meetings,

– better structuring of administration,

– Development of new statutes of the ADMV and

the Liszt Foundation,

– Clarification of the responsibilities of the ADMV

Board of Trustees of the Liszt Foundation, in particular the

further procedure for the Liszt complete edition, – the administration of the Liszt Foundation and the other
foundations of the association for more efficiency

Designing his social tasks,

– Ensuring the professional status of the musicians.

Strauss immediately addressed the problems surrounding the Liszt Foundation, which, according to its
statutes, was administered by the ADMV under the supervision of a seven-member board of trustees.
Since the ADMV and the Board of Trustees were no longer led in unison, as was the case under
Bronsart, there have been competence problems. The ADMV was responsible for management and
administration as well as for representing the Liszt Foundation externally (Kaminiarz 1995, 130 f.), which
also included concluding contracts. The disputes were primarily sparked by the contract with Breitkopf &
Härtel was closed to publish Liszt's works. The publisher had undertaken to get other original publishers
to collaborate on a critical Liszt complete edition, but had been unsuccessful. At the same time, he had
already received 7,500 marks for the project from 1897 to 1900 without anything in return. Strauss
thought the project could only be realized after 1911, when Liszt's works would become available.

The disputes over the statutes of the Liszt Foundation and the Liszt Complete Edition were vehement.
Strauss and Rösch offended the founder, Princess Marie zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, née
Sayn-Wittgenstein, as well as older members of the board of trustees by terminating Breitkopf's contract,
vehemently criticizing the foundation's statutes and Strauss' view that the Liszt The foundation is a gift
from the founder to the ADMV. The Weimar general manager and chairman were among those involved
in the dispute

the Liszt Foundation Board of Trustees, Hippolyt von Vignau, as well as Bronsart, Mottl, Alois Obrist and
even Cosima Wagner. Finally a solution was reached in 1907. Strauss and Rösch, with the consent of the
Princess and the ADMV protector Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, ensured a new statute for the
Liszt Foundation, which clearly regulated the tasks and responsibilities and subsidized the entire edition
of Franz Liszt's works independent purpose of the foundation (Kaminiarz 1995, 130 ff.). The foundation's
statutes were also adopted by the ADMV's general meeting at the Tonkunstlerfest in Dresden. The Grand
Duke Carl Alexander edition of Liszt's musical works was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig from
1907 to 1936. It was discontinued unfinished in 1937 after 33 volumes as a result of the forced dissolution
of the ADMV.

Strauss also took care of the use and administration of the other ADMV foundations for the promotion and
support of young musicians (Kaminiarz 1995, 149 ff.), as the distributions had previously been modest. As
his extensive correspondence shows, he tried to help quickly and with a sense of proportion. His
commitment to Arnold Schönberg has become well known. Here, as in general, when it came to
promoting young talent and enforcing the rights of composers, Strauss behaved no differently than Franz
Liszt with his credo “Génie oblige” (Liszt 2000, 388).

The 39th Music Artists' Meeting, the first under Strauss's aegis, took place in Krefeld from June 6th to
10th, 1902. Already in October of the previous year he sent Schillings, as chairman of the music
committee, his program outline (Schlötterer 1987, 66). It contained, among other things: Works by
Schillings, Baußnern, Blech, Pfitzner, Sommer, Reger, Juon, Thuille, Humperdinck, Jaques-Dalcroze and
Strauss. The highlight was to be the premiere of Mahler's 3rd Symphony. When Mahler wanted to
withdraw the work four weeks before the date because of the demands it placed on the performers and
audience, Strauss gave him extensive rehearsal time. The symphony was premiered with great success
in the 4th concert on June 9, 1902 under Mahler's direction and, in keeping with the spirit of the ADMV
and

Numerous follow-up performances were supported by an audience that included bandmasters,

performers, concert organizers and the national and international press.

A year later, the new statutes of the ADMV were adopted at the Tonkunstlerassembly in Basel on June
13, 1903. Now the annual events were called “Tonkunstlerfeste”, an indication of the outstanding
importance of the musical performances. The focus of the association's activities was:

"1. the maintenance and promotion of German musical life in the sense of progressive development;

2. the protection and promotion of the class and professional interests of recording artists;
3. the support of needy recording artists and their survivors" (HSA/ThLMA, ADMV-B I.II.06, 3).

The entire board was abolished, the association structure was simplified and the work program was
implemented quickly. The number of members of the ADMV, which had already risen to over 700 under
Steinbach, continued to increase, reaching more than 1,080 people in 1909. New additions included:
Mahler, Schönberg, Jaques-Dalcroze, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, Heinz and Klaus Pringsheim, Siegfried
Wagner, Ernest Bloch, Bruno Walter, Walter Braunfels, Hermann Abendroth, but also publishers and
bankers. Submissions of compositions to the music committee increased significantly. For example, in
1907, 417 works were submitted, 80 were shortlisted, and 20 of them were able to be performed in the six
concerts. There were also individual works that the board suggested for strategic reasons or that the host
cities suggested. Although Strauss spoke of his “association board soul sworn to objectivity” (Schlötterer
1987, 95), there were sometimes heated internal and public disputes over the selection of works.

At the general meetings, the focus was also on problems of modern program design, principles of music
education as well as aesthetic and social questions - at the Tonkunstlerfest 1905 in Graz, for example, the
situation of orchestral musicians - but also pan-Germanic tendencies (Kaminiarz 1999 , 383).

During the Tonkunstlerfest in Essen in 1906 - the artistic highlight was the premiere of Mahler's 6th
Symphony under the direction of the composer - a commission “To examine the situation of orchestral
musicians” was formed. In addition, the proposal was discussed to set up commissions to “establish a
placement agency for performing artists” and to “promote teaching,” as well as a “Richard Wagner
Foundation to promote music-drama works.” Strauss gradually managed to include two or three
contemporary operas in the program.

The Tonkunstlerfest in Munich in 1908 was temporarily in question because of the strike by Munich
musicians. At the general meeting, Strauss commented on this form of industrial action and the
underlying fundamental problems of the relationship between orchestra and conductor. In addition, the
commission reported on the situation of orchestra musicians and suggested the formation of an arbitration
tribunal to mediate disputes between orchestras and conductors.

At the general meeting of the 45th Tonkunstlerfest on June 4, 1909 in Stuttgart, the new ADMV board was
elected. Strauss was re-elected as first chairman by acclamation and without objection. However, he
declared that he could no longer accept the election due to overload of work and out of consideration for
his fragile health. In fact, he was probably extremely annoyed by the heated debate between the Munich
music journalists Edgar Istel (author of the anonymous satire The 144th Kakaphoniker Assembly in
Bierheim [Istel 1909, 225f.]) and Paul Marsop (the ridiculous “Reformkasperl” ), who felt attacked
personally and for the entire club. Strauss (in Istel's text "S. M. Richard II.") later said that the matter was
not "that bad" and that Marsop had exaggerated everything (GSA 70/113 n. p.). There was also a leaflet,
also anonymous and from Istel, as a counter-proposal to the election, in which Mahler, Kienzl, Steinitzer,
von Hase, among others, were intended to "liberate the association" from "certain circles" (Istel had
several Years of compositions submitted that were not performed [GSA 70/112,113 n.p.]). After

When Strauss rejected his re-election, Paul Marsop made the motion to appoint Strauss as honorary
chairman to enthusiastic applause from the 200 meeting participants, which was unanimously approved
(GSA 70/237.3). This marked Strauss' twenty-year commitment to the association, the efficiency of his
work as a committee and board member and as ADMV chairman, his impressive support of contemporary
music, but also young or needy musicians, together with his outstanding importance as leading musician
of his time was appropriately acknowledged. His successors as chairmen, Schillings (1909–1919), Rösch
(1919–1925) and Hausegger (1926–1935), tried to continue the Tonkunstlerfeste in Strauss’s spirit.
After 1909 there are only occasional documented contacts between Strauss and the ADMV. He kept an
eye on the work of the association, but without interfering in the decisions of a music committee in which,
for example, between 1919 and 1924, representatives of the musical avant-garde, Heinz Tiessen,
Hermann Scherchen and Paul Hindemith, determined the programs of the annual Tonkunstlerfest. His
own works played an important role until 1907, but after that they were heard rather sparingly. In 1919,
but especially on the birthdays of the honorary chairman in 1914, 1924 and 1934, there were
performances of his compositions. In 1926, in memory of Friedrich Rösch, the tone poem Death and
Transfiguration, which Strauss had dedicated to Rösch, was played.

Since 1933, the ADMV has been gradually brought into line. The last chairman, Peter Raabe
(1935–1937), played a crucial role. The term “Tonkunstlerfest” introduced by Strauss was abolished and
replaced by “Tonkunstlerassembly”. The 1934 Tonkunstler gathering in Wiesbaden was considered the
first in the 'new Reich'. At the general meeting it was decided to adapt the statutes to the guidelines of the
Reich Music Chamber, which was chaired by the ADMV honorary chairman Strauss as president. It was
also announced that a “Permanent Council for the International Cooperation of Composers” was founded,
which also included former ADMV members, such as: B. Jean Sibelius, Paul Dukas or Zoltan Kodaly. The
ADMV honorary chairman Richard Strauss was also president (see Chapter 4). Therefore, there were two
meetings of sound artists in 1935, the 65th in Hamburg in June, together with the “Standing Council,” and
the 66th in Berlin in September for the “contemporary German composers.” In the meantime, Strauss had
resigned from the office of President of the Reich Music Chamber (see Chapter 5) and his successor
Raabe had also taken over the management of the ADMV. In 1936, at the general meeting in Weimar,
Strauss was openly criticized. The ADMV, according to Leipzig members of the “Fighting League for
German Culture,” was in the hands of a “red-black coalition” (Strauss, Joseph Haas, Abendroth), and it
had to be dissolved and transferred to the Reich Music Chamber (Kaminiarz 1999, 389). Raabe joined
that

but under pressure from the Goebbels Ministry, the traditional club dissolved itself in 1937. The ADMV
Tonkunstlerfest was replaced by the “Reich Music Days” in 1938, during which the exhibition “Degenerate
Music” by the Weimar Nazi protagonists Hans Severus Ziegler and Paul Sixt was shown, which pilloried
the ADMV and its members. The ADMV foundations were continued as the “United Foundations of the
former ADMV”. In 1939, in correspondence with Heinz Drewes, Strauss intervened again. He suggested
using the remaining funds for the Liszt Museum and the completion of the Liszt Complete Edition (RSA).
But his initiative failed because of the statutes. The foundations that Strauss once managed with great
commitment can only be traced back to 1943.
Richard Strauss was one of the co-founders of the German Tonsetters' Cooperative (GDT) in 1903 and
thus one of the fathers of musical copyright in Germany. This arose from the legislator's responsibility for
so-called serious music. However, the resulting leadership role of electronic music composers as the
most important creators of intellectual property in the music sector did not go unchallenged. Therefore, in
December 1915, on the initiative of the publishers, another German copyright organization, the
“Cooperative for the Exploitation of Musical Performance Rights” (GEMA), was founded. The result was a
fruitless ongoing dispute between the rival companies. On behalf of the Prussian Ministry of Science, Art
and Public Education, the Academy of Arts in Berlin carried out unification negotiations from 1924
onwards. The economically more successful GEMA under its managing director Leo Ritter was opposed
to the smaller but more traditional GDT under its managing director Julius Kopsch. The GDT chairman
Richard Strauss had chosen Kopsch as the successor to his colleague Friedrich Rösch, who died in
1925. As a conductor, composer and doctor of law, Kopsch seemed particularly suitable for work in the
field of copyright law. He was self-confident and hard-working, but also argumentative, which Strauss
accepted. However, because his idiosyncratic management brought the cooperative to the brink of ruin,
so that more and more serious composers switched to GEMA, he had to resign at the end of 1929. As a
result of this crisis, Strauss and Hugo Rasch also left the board in June 1930. Strauss' resignation marked
the end of an era, as he had held the GDT chairmanship for no less than 27 years.1 His successor was
Max von Schillings, Max Butting his deputy and managing director. Richard Strauss was only left with the
honorary chairmanship.

The resignation of Kopsch, Rasch and Strauss cleared the way for a compromise between the previous
opponents GDT and GEMA, who founded a joint music protection association on July 22, 1930. From
Strauss's point of view, his own cooperative had capitulated to an association in which publishers and
composers of so-called popular music dominated.2 In no way did he follow Franz Lehár, who had
explained to GEMA members that there was a difference between serious and cheerful music There was
“no differentiation in their values.”3 In contrast, Strauss had warned Kopsch in 1929: “The top law in
negotiations is always: no premature pandering to the Gema and preservation of the dignity of the
cooperative, whereby special care must be taken to ensure that The interests of serious composers
should always be in the foreground.«4 Since this was not achieved in the agreement of July 1930,
Strauss and Kopsch set themselves the goal of restoring the primacy of serious composers in the long
term. The new government of Adolf Hitler, which came to power on January 30, 1933, seemed to offer
good chances of implementation. Hugo Rasch had joined the NSDAP in 1931, Kopsch followed him in
1932.

Hitler's aesthetics of genius5 and his reverence for the "holy" German musical art suited Strauss, as did
his preference for authoritarian measures. Ever since the composer first took part in a Reichstag session
in 1901 during the copyright debates at the time, he despised parliamentary democracy. He considered
universal suffrage, which gave all voters equal rights, to be a rape of the elites. Strauss admired assertive
men. He found Benito Mussolini, who dedicated a photo to him in Rome in 1924, to be an "interesting little
Napoleon"6 and praised his "dictator's precision."7 Four years later, Strauss called for a dictatorship to
the astonished Harry Graf Kessler.8 For the cultural cuts of the In 1931, he did not blame the global
economic crisis, but rather the Weimar democracy.9 However, he expected significant improvements from
Adolf Hitler.
"I brought great impressions with me from Berlin and good hope for the future of German art," Strauss
reported to his publisher Anton Kippenberg on March 29, 1933.10 Hitler had good intentions, he wrote to
Hugo Rasch at the time, but needed proper advice “from bodies that do not pursue private interests”.11

Copyright reform

The new government took up previous impulses in many areas, including copyright. In 1932, the Reich
Ministry of Justice presented a draft of a new copyright law. In December 1932, a “working group of the
disseminators of intellectual works” warned against the demands of the authors in view of the catastrophic
economic situation.12 The GDT responded to this memorandum in January 1933 with a brochure
“Business against the creators”. Under this title it referred to the “droit moral,” the legal protection of the
author against the distortion or mutilation of his works.13 This right was of great importance to Strauss, as
he emphasized to Max Butting in February.14 Immediately afterwards, the association magazines began
publishing GEMA and GDT made an appeal formulated accordingly by Strauss.15

However, at this point in time, Strauss was no longer the central figure in German musical life. Rather,
Hitler intended the role of “music pope” to be Max von Schillings,16 who, in addition to the GDT
chairmanship, also held the presidency of the overarching interest group of German composers’
associations. Schillings undertook and led initiatives for copyright reform

Conversations with Strauss,17 but in view of his extensive tasks as president of the Prussian Academy of
Arts and, from March 1933, also as director of the Berlin Municipal Opera, he rejected the leadership
position offered to him. Instead, a larger role in the transformation of German musical life was played by
the violinist Gustav Havemann, who became president of the Reich Cartel of German Musicians from
April, as well as Leo Ritter and Max Butting, the two managing directors of GEMA and GDT. On March 21,
Ritter informed Kampfbund leader Hans Hinkel about the current structure of performance rights societies
and suggested a single Imperial German society instead (Fig. 1):18

»Dear Mr. Hinkel,

As requested, I am providing you with a brief outline of the structure of the performance rights societies in
three copies.

With the utmost respect

Your very loyal knight"

This March 21, 1933 was the symbolic “Day of Potsdam,” which Ritter praised three days later at an
extraordinary general meeting of GEMA as the “dawn of a new era, certainly for Germany, perhaps for the
world.”19 Immediately afterwards, the GDT in anticipatory obedience their self-harmonisation. At this
meeting, at which Hugo Rasch called on the Jewish board members to resign and rejoined the board
himself, Strauss was strangely absent. The song composer, music critic and singing teacher Rasch joined
the cooperative in 1908 and thereby came into contact with Strauss, who brought him onto the GDT
board in 1929. In 1931 Rasch became a member of the NSDAP, a year later he became an SA leader
and in 1933 he became a music critic for the Völkischer Observer. According to Butting, he was one of the
few German composers who was one of the few convinced Nazis.20 Strauss chose this man, who was
loyal to him, usually in SA uniform, and who was also enthusiastic about Mussolini,21 as his vassal, as
his comrade-in-arms in his personal "seizure of power." in the Nazi state.
However, the competencies were by no means clear. The Berlin Schreker student and composition
teacher Paul Höffer wrote in his diary on May 9th: “We composers are responsible for: The G.D.T. with an
aligned board (which has everything to say), the operating cell within the G.D.T. (which has everything to
say), the Kampfbund (which has everything to say), the Music Chamber (which has everything to say),
the Ministry of Culture (which has everything to say) and the Propaganda Ministry (which has everything
to say)." 22 Two weeks later, on May 24th, Gustav Havemann, Höffer's father-in-law, received extensive
powers to prepare a musicians' and music chamber. On June 10th he concluded an agreement with the
German Labor Front and attached an organizational plan (Fig. 2) to it, which included, among the
affiliated associations, a profession of German composers (point 4) and a state-approved performance
rights society “Stagma”. (point 7).

On an extra sheet “Economic and Professional Organization of Composers” (Fig. 3), Richard Strauss was
listed as the president of the profession and Hugo Rasch as his deputy. It is surprising that Strauss, rather
than Schillings, should take the lead among composers. It remains uncertain to this day whether this was
just a personal suggestion from Havemann or whether Strauss and Rasch were already involved in the
planning at this early stage.23 As an economic organization for the composers, Havemann's concept was
called a "stagma" (abbreviation for "state-approved Society for the Exploitation of Musical Performance
Rights). In accordance with this plan, at a composers' meeting on the same day, the boards of GEMA and
GDT decided to create a professional and economic organization as well as the first part of a Stagma
statute.24

Havemann added handwritten party membership to almost all board members of the professional and
business organization. This addition was only missing for Strauss, Butting and the publisher Robert Ries.
The missing party register was responsible for the fact that, from the NSDAP's perspective, Strauss was
out of the question as president of the profession. Havemann had also offered this position to Butting,25
but then had to choose Rasch for pragmatic reasons. Paul Höffer was horrified by this:

»Hugo Rasch is to become the president of the Imperial German Tonsetters' Cooperative. This man,
whose thoughts or even works (he is said to have only composed 7 songs) have never played the
slightest role, actually a singing teacher without any significant success, will therefore be at the top of all
composers, lyricists and music publishers in the Third Reich. – When asked why? Unfortunately, the 1933
contemporary has to answer because unfortunately no suitable National Socialist was found among the
members; Because the highest condition is, of course, that this president is a National Socialist."26

Copyrights and stagma

When the 30th anniversary of the Cooperative of German Tonsetters was celebrated at the end of June,
GDT and GEMA once again expressly welcomed a planned uniform collecting society.27 In Havemann's
organizational plan, the then much-played composer Paul Graener, who belonged to the Kampfbund für
deutsche Kultur and, since April 1933, to the NSDAP, was designated as its president. Leo Ritter (Fig. 4),
who came from a family of booksellers in Leipzig and who had managed GEMA's business since 1928,
was to become Stagma's managing director. He received in advance the draft of the new copyright law,
which was passed by the cabinet on July 4th.28 Although Strauss was not involved in the preparation, the
Ministerial Councilor Otto von, who was transferred from the Prussian Interior Ministry to the Propaganda
Ministry and was responsible for music there, sent it to him Keudell read the text of the law just a few
days later. He was an admirer of Strauss, as Rasch remarked in a conversation with him on July 7th: “His
attitude towards you and your work was so magnificent, with such a subtlety of feeling, that I can only look
forward to it again and again can ensure that the interests of intellectual German musicians rest in his
hands.«29
But how could the GEMA representative Leo Ritter be won? At the beginning of July, Ritter – recognizing
the signs of the times – applied to join the NSDAP. On July 10th he also joined the SA and became a
member of, of all things, Stormtroop 3 / R7.30, which Rasch led. Rasch thus became Ritter's superior in
the SA. His skills grew even further when, as a GDT board member, he was given the task of leading the
negotiations on the merger of the existing companies in mid-July.31

Ritter's application for membership in the party was rejected due to a temporary ban on membership.
However, he had an important trump card, as he was on friendly terms with Otto von Keudell, who lived in
the same house with him.32 Strauss may have benefited from this personal connection between Rasch,
Ritter and Keudell.

In a letter from Bayreuth, written in the Villa Wahnfried, where he was conducting Parsifal in place of the
originally planned Arturo Toscanini, Strauss thanked Ministerial Councilor Keudell, who was loyal to him,
for sending the text of the law on July 12th. He added his own suggested changes and explicitly referred
to the new regime: “For the correct organization of the one new German society, so that the law also
works in the interests of the national government, we have to make certain demands, which I would like to
present to you Perhaps I would be allowed to specify it verbally."33 Richard Strauss, of all people,
lectured Goebbels' employee about the meaning and function of National Socialist laws. As the composer
explained to Rasch, he was not least referring to his demand for the inviolability of the work.34 Just a few
days later, Strauss received a promise from Keudell that his wishes regarding the law would be “fully
taken into account” by the responsible officer in the Ministry of Justice. 35

Despite this binding information, Strauss also raised the copyright issue higher up. When Winifred
Wagner took him to Hitler on July 22nd during a Parsifal break in Bayreuth, he immediately spoke to him
about Parsifal protection and other copyright issues.36 Copyright also seemed to be a suitable reason to
get in touch with Goebbels, who was also present whom he invited to Wahnfried the next day. “Strange
feeling to sit in front of this great musician,” the minister wrote in his diary

“He has a number of concerns about music legislation.” However, he liked the artist Richard Strauss
better than the person. “He doesn't make as much of an impression as he is tall. But very nice and
pleasant."37 Three days later, Strauss reminded the minister again in writing of his wishes regarding
copyright, which he himself considered to be "quite a test of strength."38 When an answer was not
received immediately , he tried to call the minister on Obersalzberg. Vain. He therefore asked Rasch: “Did
my conversation about copyright with Dr. Goebbels and 2 letters addressed to him from Mr. v. Keudell and
Ministerial Councilor Klauer have had any visible effect?"39 But the test of strength ended positively for
Strauss, because Goebbels confirmed to him on July 31 that his wishes had already been taken into
account in the draft for a new copyright law.40

But Strauss still had to overcome further resistance in his power struggle. With Max von Schillings, who
succumbed to cancer on July 24th, an important rival was no longer there.41 However, greater powers
were now given to fellow composer Paul Graener, who was organized in GEMA and was a party member
and also worked with the influential Kampfbund leader and state commissioner Hans Hinkel was friends.
In accordance with the above-mentioned organizational plan, Graener was appointed president of the
future performance rights society by the combined boards of GEMA and GDT on August 21st.

In Bayreuth, Strauss had also spoken to Rasch about the professional organization mentioned by
Havemann, the profession of German composers. At that meeting on August 21, Rasch was appointed
president of the profession. This corresponded to the party decision made in June, which had so horrified
Paul Höffer, but also to the tactical calculations of Rasch and Strauss. Because just one day after his
appointment as president of the profession, Hugo Rasch offered his revered master the honorary
presidency.42 As early as August 27, Strauss let him know that the honorary presidency offered to him
was worthless to him if it only consisted of honor:

»I don't have the slightest inclination to act as a figurehead and a pope of honor. Is the office designed in
such a way that, after consultation with you and the experts selected by me? and like-minded people, the
final, definitive and authoritative decision rests with me and will be confirmed by the government without a
murmur, va bene! Otherwise not!”43

However, in accordance with previous party deliberations, the presidency should be reserved for a
NSDAP member. On September 4th, a meeting of composers consisting mainly of party members
discussed this question in the rooms of the German Society (Schadowstrasse 6/7). After a commitment to
the leader principle, the president, who should be a representative personality, was mentioned next to the
chairman of the board. “In particular, the extensive life and professional experience of a master of
international importance should be usefully incorporated.”44 This was tailored directly to Richard Strauss,
who, however, did not have the required party membership. Since the president should only have an
advisory function in his now defined role, the urgent wish was formulated in a separate “expression of will”
“that the management of the profession of German composers be placed in the hands of a president and
an executive chairman. The executive chairman must be a party comrade. The president provides advice
to the executive chairman and the board.«45 It was implicit in this cleverly worded decision that the
president of the profession did not have to be a party member. This meant that another hurdle had been
overcome for Richard Strauss.

Immediately after September 4th, a three-person delegation, consisting of Gustav Havemann, the
President of the Reichskartell, Heinz Ihlert and a representative of the Bavarian Ministry of Culture,
traveled to Strauss in Bad Wiessee and offered him "the honorary presidency of the newly founded
professional organization of creative musicians." at. As the composer informed Minister Goebbels a
fortnight later, he accepted the position offered to him “with a feeling of full responsibility towards the
Reich government and towards my colleagues”. At the request of the gentlemen mentioned, he
immediately appointed the board of the professional organization,

"happy that, in accordance with the valuable words of the Reich Chancellor about the will to be a leader in
the German people, a leader should now also be placed in the field of music in which he will be
authoritative on the basis of the new state idea, would be called upon to serve German culture and the
well-being of German musicians in the same way."46

With this letter and the appointment of board members, the composer made it clear that he did not want
to be satisfied with a mere voluntary position or a purely advisory role. Despite not being a party member,
he saw himself as the highest authority not only for composers, but even for all musicians in Germany, in
the spirit of the “new state idea”.47

Although Richard Strauss's claims to power within the profession contradicted the original decisions,
Hugo Rasch accepted this change and with it his own disempowerment without resistance. At the time of
the vote on September 4th, Rasch had already known about Strauss's further demands, but without
telling his colleagues. Deviating from their decisions, they had to take note of the radical upgrading of the
presidency within a few days. Accordingly, it was reported on September 8th at the extraordinary general
meeting of GEMA: “The board of the professional organization of German composers will consist of Dr.
Richard Strauss as President, Hugo Rasch as 2nd Chairman, Dr. Siegfried Burgstaller as managing
board member, Dr. Paul Graener, Prof. Max Trapp, Max Butting, Eduard Künneke, Willy Geisler.«48
Strauss, however, declined the seat on the Stagma board that was offered to him. “It is not acceptable for
me, as president of the profession of creative musicians, to also be a member of the Stagma board.” He
therefore asked Leo Ritter to transfer this seat to Hugo Rasch, “who, my deputy, knows exactly my wishes
and demands is informed."49 Instead of a Stagma board position, Strauss took over the chairmanship of
a working group made up of the three professional organizations of composers, lyricists and music
publishers, which was also proposed to him. In this role, he did everything he could to subordinate the
Stagma to the profession of composers. In doing so, he ignored previous decisions according to which
the performance rights society was economically and legally independent of the professional organization

should be completely independent.50 Max Butting had just warned in a report51 against direct
dependence on the professional association. At the GEMA meeting on September 8th it was also
emphasized: “The professional organization and the economic organization will be economically and
legally independent of each other.” Nevertheless, Ritter agreed with Strauss's demands to the contrary.
This transformation of the former GEMA managing director from Saul to Paul would hardly have been
possible if Hugo Rasch had not exerted a decisive influence on Ritter through his party and SA functions.
From the perspective of the power struggle, it was undoubtedly right that Strauss had entrusted his fate to
the party comrade who was loyal to him.

Enforcement of the leader principle

Like Strauss, Hugo Rasch also sought to increase influence within the Nazi hierarchy by calling for a
specifically National Socialist music policy. On August 22nd, he complained in a letter to his master that
he had spoken “of the National Socialist, new and constructive [sic] ideas [...] both in the draft of the new
copyright law and in the negotiations surrounding the founding of the "We found very little in the new
performance rights society."52 At the GEMA meeting on September 8th, in which the future performance
rights society was presented, Ritter also described the current Stagma statutes as still in need of
correction. In particular, it had to be examined whether the "Führer principle was consistently expressed"
in it.53 On September 12, in a letter to Ritter (Fig. 5), Strauss promised to use his "modest powers" to
represent the interests of the Germans Dedicate to composers. Less modestly, he then called for the
“preservation of the sacred goods of German art also in the service of the new state idea in accordance
with the guidelines given by the Reich Chancellor to the Propaganda Minister.” Strauss had discussed the
present Stagma Statutes with Rasch on September 8th54 and discovered, as he informed Ritter, “that
they still gravitate too much towards pre-March democratic views and therefore urgently require
contemporary revision "need."55 What was "timely" for him was not least the renunciation of
co-determination in favor of the authoritarian leader principle, from which he expected dictatorial powers
for himself.

Ritter had offered the composer to visit him in Bad Wiessee with Butting to discuss the Stagma statutes.
Strauss resolutely rejected this and referred to his deputy in Berlin.56 He did not tolerate any say in the
question of the statutes, as he ultimately stated to Rasch on September 9th: “Either the guiding principles
of the profession and the statutes of the Stagma are in the The form set out yesterday or I won't take
part."57 At most he accepted expert advice from his two vassals Kopsch and Rasch.58 On September
12th, Strauss asked how Ritter could be circumvented. Should he perhaps present the new statutes
directly to Mr. von Keudell or the minister during his upcoming visit to Berlin?59 Two days later, the
composer turned again to his deputy about tactical questions. Ritter should be left in the dark and handed
over the new statutes as a fait accompli directly to Mr. von Keudell or, better yet, to the Minister plus State
Secretary Funk before a discussion with GEMA.60 On September 27th he would arrive in Berlin early in
the morning after a meeting with Rasch and Kopsch in the morning at the Hotel Adlon, to present the
drawn up Stagma statutes to the ministry in the afternoon.61 Rasch should arrange an appointment for
him at the ministry. Although Rasch completed the task immediately, Strauss then postponed his arrival in
Berlin until Monday, October 1.62

However, Strauss was still not entirely clear about the tactics to be adopted. On September 16, he told
Rasch that an overly obvious disregard of GEMA would seem like an open declaration of war. “How
strong is my position?” he asked.63 Rasch, his strategic advisor, replied: “You wrote completely correctly:
‘How strong is my position?’ That is just as important as the correctness of certain theories ." Strauss was
under no circumstances allowed to enter the fray himself; this was unbecoming of a commander. "The
general cannot possibly fight 'in the middle of mang.'" Hugo Rasch, who saw himself as an "old fighter,"
had attended an SA leadership school in 1932.

He now referred to what he had learned here when he wrote to Strauss: “But if there is to be fighting, then
the passage of our S.A. service regulations must be decisive: Where the S.A. When it is used, it emerges
victorious." Rasch also believed that in the dispute with GEMA he was in a revolutionary struggle in which
the principles of the SA applied. He confirmed to his commander his very strong position, which was
based primarily on personal contact with Goebbels: "There is simply no getting around the facts of your
conversation and your direct correspondence with the minister."64

Paul Graener, as designated Stagma president, also wanted to create a fait accompli, especially since
Havemann had commissioned him to “immediately set up” the new performance rights society.65
Founded before the dissolution of GEMA and GDT and before the revision of their statutes Graener
founded Stagma as a private company with a monopoly function in Germany on September 20th.66 This
happened on the premises of the German company in the presence of board members from GEMA and
GDT and was confirmed by the ministry three days later. Rasch was worried about this rush, as he let
Strauss know: “The others, as the founding of Stagma proves, act quickly and brutally, and as long as
these discussions [in the ministry] have not taken place, we can only do so half-way “We are driving too
hard, which puts us on the defensive and at a disadvantage.” At least he was able to persuade Graener
not to publish the decisions he had made. Given the rapid establishment of Stagma, it is now even more
important to influence the statutes. "Whether it will be possible to implement the change to the Stagma
statutes exactly as you demand in your letter to Havemann[67] will also depend on our discussions with
the minister."68 Since Strauss urgently needed support from Goebbels, he wrote On September 18th, he
sent the letter quoted in which, after mentioning the Reich Chancellor and his "leader's will," he described
himself - and not Havemann - as a leader "in the field of music."69 The new statutes of the Stagma, As he
also emphasized to the minister, it must be “cleansed of all excesses of past parliamentary practices and
built according to the guidelines of the Führer principle.”

As announced, Strauss arrived in Berlin on October 1st and, together with Rasch, but without Ritter and
Graener, revised the statutes, which had recently provided for an eight-member board and an advisory
board consisting of 21 people.70 It happened the following day to the long-awaited meeting with
Goebbels, who considered the composer's copyright ideas to be "pretty intransigent" but was prepared to
make concessions. »I'll come to an agreement with him. He must remain with us. Tall men are always
difficult to deal with. You have to have some patience."71 A few days later, Dr. Julius Kopsch and
ministerial councilors Otto von Keudell and Hans Schmidt-Leonhardt again discussed copyright and
music chamber issues with the minister. Although Goebbels “still noted sharp differences, especially from
R. Strauss” and recommended further negotiations (“we have to sit down together”72), Strauss presented
the statutes he had revised to the Stagma representatives on October 15th without further discussions.
They agreed and elected the following eight people to the board: Paul Graener (President), Leo Ritter
(Managing Director) as well as Max Trapp, Max Donisch, Marc Roland (composers), Heinz
Bolten-Baeckers (lyricist), Horst Sander and Robert Ries (publishers). Since six of the people mentioned
(Bolten-Baeckers, Donisch, Graener, Roland, Sander, Trapp) belonged to the NSDAP and two (Ries,
Ritter) were previously German nationalists, the Propaganda Ministry approved the board and the revised
statutes on October 28th. Shortly afterwards, the first issue of the Stagma News appeared (Fig. 6), which
announced the composition of the board after a foreword by President Graener.73

Strauss was proud of what he had achieved and also raved to Viennese government representatives
about the “great cultural plans of the German government.”74 However, Hugo Rasch, his tactical advisor,
warned him of the power vacuum created by the impending dissolution of the GDT. The development of
the profession was "only possible with ruthless, absolute implementation of the Führer principle."75 Until
then, there had been no mention of a Reich Music Chamber in the correspondence with Rasch. The most
important preparatory work for this was carried out by Gustav Havemann as President of the Reich Cartel
of German Musicians, as it was the intellectual and organizational preparation of the music chamber was
the main purpose of this cartel.76 As its president, Havemann had the most far-reaching powers in
German musical life at the time.

Continuation of the power struggle

Although Strauss had maintained and enhanced the presidency of the composers' profession with the
active support of Rasch, he did not want to be content with that. He also tried to gain increased influence
in the Stagma. The severity with which he led the power struggle at the time can be seen in a letter that
he addressed to Stagma President Paul Graener at the beginning of November. He presented the
Stagma statute, which had been agreed just a few weeks earlier, as already outdated. "I don't want to
hide my surprise," he added reproachfully, "that all matters relating to the Stagma were finalized with such
haste , before the actual foundation, the Reich Music Chamber, was constituted."77 He himself ensured
that the founding of the profession, which was actually scheduled for September 28th,78 was postponed
until after the chamber was founded. Strauss strictly referred his addressees to the implementing
ordinance for the Reich Chamber of Culture Act announced on November 1st and threatened to take full
advantage of "the severity of these provisions." In fact, paragraphs 28 and 29 of this regulation gave the
presidents of the individual chambers the right to impose administrative penalties and enforce orders with
police and court measures.79 Strauss must have liked this passage. In his letter to Graener he mentioned
the minister to whom he was obliged several times. »The assignment given to me by Dr. Goebbels,
makes it my duty to intervene wherever I consider the reputation of German music to be at risk." This
letter seems so compliant with the state that in 1987 Gerhard Splitt assumed that a Goebbels employee
had written it, in order to put Strauss in his place.80 But it was none other than the composer himself who
used this document to warn his colleague, Stagma President Paul Graener, against returning to GEMA
principles. The “great cultural educational work” that will be carried out by the future cultural chamber was
intended to give the profession of composers and thus to him as its president a leadership role. Since it is
now necessary to “finally realize the high cultural National Socialist goals,” a further thorough revision of
the Stagma statutes is necessary. The revised statutes should be presented to him, Strauss, for approval.
He had thus clearly defined the balance of power with Graener.

Such clear words of power appealed to Rasch. On November 7th, he encouraged Strauss to approach
the Stagma managing director not with friendly persuasion, "but because of the outstanding position" of a
president of the Reich Music Chamber.81 Accordingly, Strauss knew about the impending appointment
days before Goebbels told him on November 10th. officially offered this position in November. It is
possible that this office was also referred to the ominous “big affair known to you” that Rasch had
mentioned on October 23rd.82 When the Reich Chamber of Culture was opened in a state ceremony in
the Philharmonie on November 15th, it was conducted by the composer himself Festive prelude by
Richard Strauss precedes the keynote speech by the Minister of Propaganda. Goebbels, who was thrilled
by this rushing orchestral work,83 appointed the composer President of the Reich Music Chamber on the
same day. Strauss had the large-format certificate of appointment he signed (Fig. 7) framed and hung
next to his desk in Garmisch. Also on this day he founded the profession of German composers, which he
temporarily housed in the previous GDT office on Wilhelmstrasse.84 The new "Reichsführer" of the
profession appointed as his deputy the man who had supported him so significantly in his power struggle:
Hugo Rasch. Also on that November day, Strauss, as President of the Chamber of Music, sent an
apparently pre-formulated letter to Rasch and Stagma, in which he asked both sides to negotiate with the
aim of placing the new copyright organization under the supervision of the professional organization.85
He returned this back to the GDT positions, which had so far been decisively rejected by GEMA.

In contrast to the Reich Cartel, the Reich Music Chamber was not an association under private law, but
rather a corporation under public law, which therefore also received the authority to issue orders. When
the ministry announced at the end of November that no chamber president was allowed to also be
chairman of a professional association,86 Strauss protested in a letter to the minister. He reported to
Rasch: “I wrote to Dr Goebbels personally and insisted on a personal union in order to asked for a
personal interview, I am determined to draw all the consequences! After me then - in God's name, the
flood!"87 With this decisive approach, Strauss was successful, because Goebbels immediately replied: "I
hasten to inform you that, on the one hand, I am of course happy to serve you in the position of a leader
of the profession of German composers, both as well as in the position of President of the Music
Chamber, on the other hand, Dr. Kärenbach [recte: Kärnbach] to be appointed to the Presidential
Committee of the Chamber of Music.«88 The minister added that he was ready for a meeting in Berlin at
the beginning of December.

Even before this Goebbels letter had arrived, Strauss informed Graener and Ritter that he must
“absolutely insist on further precision in the Stagma statutes.” He gave this harsh message additional
weight by referring to his upcoming “personal lecture” with Dr. Goebbels.89 In memory of November 15th,
probably also as a thank you for the minister's approval of his dual role as chamber president and Reich
leader of the profession, Strauss completed the piano song Das Bächlein, dedicated to Goebbels, in
Garmisch on December 3rd ends with the exclamation: "He, I think, will be my leader, my leader, my
leader!"90 The following day, December 4th, he arrived in the imperial capital and had the agreed
conversation with him on December 5th Minister.91 He noted: “Yesterday: long conversation between
Strauss and Furtwängler. Strauss is dedicating a new song to me. I am very pleased about this. For two
hours we talk about all the questions about music.«92 During his stay in Berlin, the composer also visited
the Reich Chancellor, who also devoted a lot of time to his guest. Alice Strauss's diary reads: “Dad an
hour with Hitler; Plans for Bayreuth, project for theater, festival. Prelude should only be played for festive
government occasions, all powers, greatest trust."93 The composer thanked Hitler by giving him the
World History of the Theater by Joseph Gregor for Christmas with this dedication: "To the noble friend and
sponsor / of Thea - ters / Mr. Reich Chancellor / Adolf Hitler / respectfully presented by / Dr Richard
Strauss«.94

At the pinnacle of power

Fully aware of his power supported by Hitler and Goebbels, Strauss no longer viewed Leo Ritter, his
former opponent, as a threat. As recently as November, Rasch had warned that an emphatic relationship
of trust with this man could compromise him.95 Accordingly, Strauss soon informed his deputy that he
wanted to "wear down" Ritter and adopt the "strongest tone" towards him.96 Such a tone He informed
Rasch of the worded letter to Ritter, who immediately praised him: "It leaves nothing to be desired in
terms of clarity."97 Strauss also put pressure on the Stagma managing director at higher levels, as he let
Rasch know: " I have just written a detailed letter to State Secretary Funk and asked him to demand that
Ritter unconditionally accept my statutes (particularly with the elimination of the Curias).98 The reference
to the planned elimination of the Curias meant a further waiver of co-determination.

But it didn't stop at this tough pace. According to the “carrot and stick” principle, Strauss invited the
Stagma managing director to Garmisch over the Christmas period. On December 25th he was able to
report to Rasch that Ritter had "changed to complete loyalty." He even enthusiastically agreed to his idea
of completely abolishing the eight-member Stagma board and replacing it with three delegates from the
professional associations of composers, publishers and lyricists. This would also mean the disappearance
of Stagma President Graener, who could be sent to the Charlottenburg Opera as director. “It would be
harmless there.”99

Paul Graener was outraged that, as Stagma president, he was overlooked for important discussions. He
wrote accordingly to Strauss100 and also complained to Rasch that he found “the whole negotiations
about the Stagma statutes without his person involved to be extremely disloyal.” Strauss quickly
announced this on January 8th and pointed out whether the Stagma President should not have been
included in the deliberations.101 The waiver requested by Strauss He considered the office of president,
board of directors and advisory board to be legally inadmissible "since every association must have a
board of directors."102 He therefore suggested the establishment of a supervisory board. “I would then
also consider it tactically correct to make Mr. Graener chairman of this supervisory board.”103 But
Strauss refused to take any consideration for Graener. On that day, he once again confirmed in writing to
Ritter, who stayed in Garmisch until January 10th, the Stagma statutes, which had been changed,
especially in Section 17, and made it clear: “The proposed supervisory board is nothing more than the old
Stagma board in green. The top must only be the leader of the profession."104 It was incomprehensible
to him that Rasch did not want to see this: "Are you completely abandoned by God and struck with
blindness that you still do not see What am I trying to get at?" He therefore explained the meaning of the
change in the statutes once again to his deputy in the profession: "I don't want a supervisory board that
always sits together and unnecessarily delays the managing director. [...] I have to read the booklet.
always keep our profession completely in our own hands. It is our institution in which the others are more
or less tolerated."105 Strauss added with deep satisfaction: "I have been waiting for this day for 20 years:
now revenge should be enjoyed coldly in memory of poor Rösch! «

Otto von Keudell106, who was viewed extremely suspiciously by Rasch, forwarded the revised Stagma
statutes to Goebbels ten days later. In an official note, the Ministerial Council recalled that the minister
and Hitler had already expressed their confidence in Strauss “in the spirit of the Führer principle.” The
present statutes, which only provide for three club members instead of the committees - namely one
representative each from the professional organizations of composers, lyricists and publishers - are partly
the result of negotiations, "partly a dictate from Mr Ostrich". It could be approved without hesitation,
especially since “Mr. Strauss will then refrain from any further intervention in the administration of the
Stagma,” “so that the Stagma can finally achieve the peace that is essential for its expansion in the
interests of the German authors.”107

At the same time, State Secretary Funk sent the new statutes to the incumbent Stagma President with a
request for acceptance. He added: "To make it easier for you to make your decision, I hereby release you
and the other gentlemen on the Stagma board from your position as president or as board members."108
With With this brief sentence, Graener was dismissed from the presidential office he had just assumed. In
the false expectation that Strauss would no longer interfere in the affairs of Stagma, the Reich
government approved the new Stagma statutes on January 25th, which only provided for three members
for this copyright organization.109 As Strauss had wished, In this way, in a “contemporary” authoritarian
manner, all “pre-Märzlich-democratic” elements were erased from it. In his dual function as President of
the Reich Music Chamber and Reich Leader of Composers, he was given supreme control over the
Stagma.

With his desire for absolute authority and the power to give instructions, the almost 70-year-old composer
even irritated veteran National Socialists. At the beginning of September he had received the “Draft Rules
of Procedure of the German Chamber of Musicians, issued by the President” from Siegmund von
Hausegger.110 Strauss disliked the participation provided for in these rules of procedure by Havemann.
In the many meetings we will only “chatter away!” Not much will come of it!"111 He therefore developed
and issued new rules of procedure.112 Havemann was horrified by the changes implemented there and
wrote to Strauss in January 1934: "This is a dictator with a managing director, but not the leadership
system as we National Socialists understand it ."113 A dictator with a managing director – but that was
just the way Strauss imagined the exercise of power. Gustav Havemann, whom he valued (“He is
purposeful and full of the best intentions”114), who had always stood up for him, reminded the composer
that even Hitler did not make his decisions on his own, but with his staff would discuss.115

Goebbels also tried to be considerate of his employees and artists. On January 30, 1934, when Pauline
Strauss and presumably also her husband heard Hitler's speech on the radio on the anniversary of the
"seizure of power,"116 the minister wrote a letter to the presidents of the individual chambers, including
Richard Strauss. He mentioned complaints and complaints that he received in increasing numbers every
day.

There are errors in the implementation of the Reich Chamber of Culture Act that need to be corrected.
Goebbels called on those responsible to be more sensitive when dealing with members: “I would most
urgently ask the Presidents, when setting up the chambers, to take into account the aspects of the
psychological impact on those involved and all employees of the chambers as well "To make this
consideration obligatory for the heads of the professional associations in every letter and every word
spoken."117 Such questions were to be discussed at a meeting on February 7th, to which he invited the
gentlemen to his ministry.

Strauss, who had already planned a Berlin Composers' Day for February, then asked his advisors Rasch
and Kopsch to meet in Garmisch. This took place on February 4th, a Sunday, in the upper tower room of
his house with coffee and cake.118 On February 6th, the composer left for Berlin early in the morning,
followed by his son Franz, to attend the meeting in the propa- ganda Ministry.119 The negotiations went
as desired, as Strauss reported to his wife on February 10th: “I am doing a thousand things verbally here
with the best success and absolute authority [...]. In any case, I am now in the best of hands here and can
achieve what I want.«120 Joseph Goebbels was also completely in agreement with the plans for music
education that Strauss (Fig. 8) presented to him on February 12th.121

When Strauss opened the first working conference of the Reich Music Chamber on February 13th, he
pointed out the old dream of German musicians, which would finally be realized. For the first time in
German history, “all of the popular groups that are generally related to musical life are being organized
from a uniform point of view.”122 On this basis, which is thanks to Hitler and Goebbels, it is now possible
“from the partly desolate ruins of the last few years “New life is finally blooming again.” His opening
speech was followed by presentations from Friedrich Mahling, Gustav Havemann and Fritz Stein, among
others, on this and the next few days. Julius Kopsch devoted two lectures to legal issues and the new
copyright law.123
On the evening of this working day, Strauss took part in an intimate party with State Secretary Walther
Funk, who had invited people to his villa124 in Zehlendorf. Especially for this occasion, the composer
studied his song Das Bächlein with the singer Viorica Ursuleac, which he wanted to present to the
dedicatee, Joseph Goebbels. Instead of the minister, who was in bed with a feverish cold, his wife came.
When Magda Goebbels said that her husband wanted to relax on the Zugspitze soon, Strauss strongly
advised against it. Instead, the minister should rather stay in his villa in Garmisch. “I offered to send her
husband and his servant to us where he would have a bedroom and study, but I don't think he will accept
it. He just wants to finish a new book undisturbed for 3-4 days."125 Although the composer, who was
trying hard to win the favor of the state leadership at the time, wanted to repeat this offer again, the
minister never visited his house .126

Because of urgent official business, Hitler arrived late to the invitation and, as the composer reported to
his wife, kissed "like a senior in the class." Dance lesson” every lady’s hand. After the vegetarian meal,
music was played. Hitler reacted enthusiastically and even moved to the Strauss songs Befreit and
Cäcilie performed by Ms. Ursuleac and the composer. "He actually had tears in his eyes and then went
into a side room until he had completely composed himself." After further songs (his own accompaniment
with the final line "Habe Dank" that refers to the "Führer" and Schubert's Du bist die Ruh '), presented by
Heinrich Schlusnus, Strauss and Ursuleac initially sat alone with Hitler. He thought about the bloody civil
war in Austria, which Pauline Strauss had watched fearfully on the radio.127 The composer reported:

»His statements demonstrated great statesmanlike tact and a sense of responsibility as well as
truthfulness and the greatest decency. He said that if the matter was not over by this evening, he would
be very worried, because the military would not be able to hold out in the grueling street fight for longer
than 2-3 days, especially since in this case they would not know what they were doing actually have to
enter. He said civil war could never be fought with military force, which is very true; Because whoever
emerged victorious would always be guilty of blood, and anyone who could not fight civil war without a
military should resign.128

These thoughts, which were unusually clairvoyant for Hitler, impressed Strauss.

Commitments to the Reich government

The composer experienced further performances of his own works in Berlin, as he reported to his wife in
the letter quoted: “This evening 'Elektra' with Rose Pauly, which Göring personally approved for me,
Friday is 'Arabella' and Sunday is 'Rosenkavalier.' ’.” Strauss had found good contact with Hermann
Göring. The Prussian Prime Minister, who granted him a personal audience on February 15th, had
ensured that Rose Pauly, a “non-Aryan,” exceptionally took part in Elektra. In these February days,
Strauss took an active part in the social life of the imperial capital, including in an artists' society in
Goebbels' house,

at which Hitler spoke.129 On February 17, as President of the Reich Music Chamber, he opened a public
meeting of musicians called by this chamber in the Berlin Philharmonic. In his welcoming speech, Strauss
recalled the festive opening of the Reich Chamber of Culture three months earlier at the same location
and repeatedly invoked the “community of fate” between the musicians and the other “national
comrades.”130 While he only mentioned copyright in passing here, tags The authors then took center
stage at the first German Composers' Day. Framed by two uniformed SS men and next to a large
swastika flag131, in the new auditorium of Berlin University, Strauss spoke of the Cultural Chamber Act
and its implementing ordinance of November 1st, which gave the professional organization of German
composers “an internal and external authority like ours never knew before." State-guaranteed authority
and order are necessary to prevent anarchic conditions “that allow destructive elements free rein and
bring about the downfall of an artistic culture that has been built up over centuries.”132 Strauss recalled
the founding of the GDT in 1903 and mentioned gratefully Friedrich Rösch, in order to then distance
himself from the state and legal system of the Weimar Republic, which had destroyed the professional
unity of the composers. “We will clear the way for healthy creation and thereby push back and make the
sick and harmful work disappear.” With this promise, Strauss was primarily thinking of the “droit moral” of
copyright, which restricts commercial adaptations of classical music such as the Schubert should prevent
adaptations in the Dreimäderlhaus. Although he did not agree with the regime's racial policy,133 his
distinction between sick and healthy also opened up prospects for later actions against "degenerate
music."134

Strauss thanked Minister Goebbels and his State Secretary Funk on behalf of them the German
composers' community for their commitment "to giving 'Stagma' the final form it has now found, in which
the professional idea is completely organically linked to the economic purpose of the collecting
institution."135

This organic connection between profession and stagma crowns the work of Friedrich Rösch. "I consider
it a fortunate coincidence that, thanks to the trust placed in me, I was able to play a decisive role in this."
The composer thus gave the impression that the leadership of the profession and the music chamber had
been given to him from outside.136 As has been proven, this is true This version, which is still being
rumored to this day, is not true. Rather, it took a lot of tactical maneuvers and the elimination of rivals on
Strauss's part to achieve such a position of power. As the most important lever, Strauss had used the
leader principle derived from Adolf Hitler, "the patron of artists in Germany," to which he now referred
again.137 He followed this with the expectation "that my employees will provide me with loyal loyalty." In a
democracy he would never have been able to achieve such a rapid rise to absolute power. Strauss owed
not least to the trust that Goebbels and Hitler had placed in him the opportunity to provide such
preferential support to serious composers against the dominance of the market.

After this Philharmonic evening, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary: “Composer’s Day. Lots of old
masters. The youth are almost unrepresented.«138 Strauss, who performed at the following concert
alongside works by Schillings, Graener and Hindemith Till Eulenspiegel, was very celebrated. Other
music lovers also criticized the lack of young people and were surprised about the Chamber President's
advisors. Paul Höffer therefore even saw this day as

»probably the saddest thing I experienced at such conferences. Richard Strauss, who has been chosen
as leader, takes advice from the most miserable creatures we have have among us. The people in his
closest environment include Mr. Hugo Rasch, Julius Kopsch, Kärnbach. Kopsch, seriously defective, only
recently convicted by the court of honor, Rasch, whose thoughts are filled with badges and plaques of
honor, Kärnbach, a decent but flat non-entity, all composers far below average. [...] You have to be
ashamed to belong to this society.«139

Gustav Havemann, Höffer's father-in-law, who had put a lot of effort into preparing the founding of the
Reich Music Chamber, was also not satisfied with these February days. Although Strauss was not lacking
in his commitment to the Reich government, he had forgone the required Hitler salute when singing the
Horst Wessel song. Older Nazis were outraged by this and even called for concentration camps,
Havemann reported to the Reich leadership of the NSDAP.140 Strauss's thanks to Hitler and Goebbels
were not just "phrases of gratitude that were necessary for the time."141 Nevertheless, it is doubtful
whether the composer formulated three cultural policy speeches this month all by himself. In January he
refused to speak at the Composers' Day. "Give a lecture? Never! Once and for all!” he told Hugo Rasch.
At most he could read a finished speech, which is why he asked: “Can I get a speech from Kopsch to
read out?”142 Thus, the three pro-regime speeches that Strauss gave in February 1934 could at least
partly be traced back to Kopsch and Rasch. However, if he reported to his wife about a “read speech” on
February 13th, that does not necessarily indicate distancing. Strauss may have preferred speaking freely,
as he did at another conference two months later.143

Intensive commitment to the profession and copyright

Richard Strauss has dedicated himself remarkably persistently and intensively to questions of the
profession and copyright law, especially in these months. As he did in 1903 when he founded the
Cooperative of German Tonsetters, he wanted to help the creators of serious music play a leading role in
musical life. You should first ultimately benefit from the performance rights that were once enforced for
them. Although the “Regulation for the Implementation of the Law on the Mediation of Music Performance
Rights,”144 which established Stagma’s authority, was passed in those same February days, Strauss had
promised a further “new regulation of the completely outdated copyright law” at the Music Chamber’s first
working meeting , which Julius Kopsch explained further.145 A few days later, Strauss recommended that
Ritter also try to manage the mechanical rights.146 There was no need to take the publishers into
account: “If the gentlemen have the statutes as they are now and the authorization agreement If it doesn't
fit, they can leave or don't have to enter at all."147 Strauss also wrote to Kopsch at the time that one
could happily do without publishers and lyricists: "Then the stagma is left to us composers alone! Can you
wish for anything better?"148

The copyright reform carried out by Strauss in conjunction with Julius Kopsch aimed to secure the power
of the President of the Chamber of Music, to extend the protection period from 30 to 50 years and to
protect the original work from unwanted adaptations and adaptations.149 Strauss was confident that this
could be enforced, especially since Reich Minister Hans Frank had expressly promised him: “The new
copyright law should only come into effect with my final approval, the publishers have now been 'heard
enough', the author should be the deciding factor ."150 Strauss gave a speech with this in mind on April
23rd at the Academy of German Law.151 However, the help of his legal advisor Julius Kopsch, whom he
repeatedly mentioned, proved to be of little use. Kopsch was controversial in legal circles. The copyright
expert Prof. Dr. O. de Boor rejected the draft law presented by Kopsch as "not suitable."152 The further
conversation with Hitler that Strauss had in Bayreuth in the summer of 1934153 could do little to change
this, especially since Kopsch was with Rasch and Kärnbach fell out and how they rapidly lost
influence.154 However, in December 1934 it was decided to extend the copyright protection period from
30 to 50 years.

In the spring of 1934, Richard Strauss was still at the zenith of his power. His personal income had tripled
within two years.155 He had given not only himself, but his entire profession, and within it the minority of
serious composers, an authority that they had never before possessed. In fact, the priority of serious
composers against the economic dominance of popular music and publishers could only be enforced with
the help of a state that otherwise disenfranchised individuals. Strauss' commitment to electronic music,
which was associated with speeches that were astonishingly loyal to the regime and further concessions
to those in power, did not result in a real reform of copyright law, but it did result in the extension of the
protection period, the establishment of a pension foundation for composers156 and the introduction the
so-called Serious Third, additional funding for serious composers.157 This effort was by no means
unsuccessful, as was occasionally claimed.158 However, Strauss was soon to lose this position of power
again.
Goebbels was already considering replacing him in October 1934. After meeting Wilhelm Furtwängler, he
wrote in his diary: “A lot of things are wrong in the music chamber. Strauss doesn't care enough about it.
Needs to be replaced. Should compose, so he serves art more. Furtwängler suggests Peter Raabe in his
place."159 The minister stuck to this idea and a few days later spoke directly to the Music Chamber
President about it: "Discussed his resignation with R. Strauss. He is now ready."160 Despite this
unmistakable recommendation, Strauss remained in his post and even briefly regained the minister's
favor when, in December, he consciously contradicted Furtwängler by praising Goebbels' infamous
Sportpalast speech.161 If the composer was Pre-Although he occasionally ironized the office of assistant
professor162 - not least towards Stefan Zweig - he took it very seriously and was proud of it.163 Because
he knew that only this office, in personal union with the leadership of the profession, had enabled him to
have such significant privileges for the serious ones Composers to win. With this in mind he had written to
Ritter in January 1934: “In the event that there is an agreement between the President of the R.M.K. and
leader of the B.V. [Professional association] does not have a personal union as there is now, the final
higher authority over the management of the Stagma must also belong to the chairman of the
profession.«164

His interest in a leading role for serious composers in musical life as well as in copyright law was perhaps
the real reason why Strauss conquered these two leading positions with such energy. He thought he
could exploit the Hitler state in his own interests, while Hitler used him as his cultural figurehead.
Goebbels, who had met the prominent composer regularly,165 probably believed that he had won him
over as a long-term ally. His horror was all the greater at Strauss' letter to Stefan Zweig, which the
Gestapo had intercepted.166 This not only led to the removal of Richard Strauss from the most important
offices, but also to Goebbels fundamentally doubting the reliability of the artists: "This art - people are all
politically characterless. From Goethe to Strauss. Get rid of it!”167

Strauss, on the other hand, tried to secure what had been achieved for serious composers despite his
dismissal. As early as October 1935 he was thinking about how he could win Goebbels back. That's why
he asked Hugo Rasch, who remained loyal to him, to make medals that he wanted to award as former
honorary president of the GDT. »I would like, should I, Dr. Meet Goebbels again in this life and present
him with a medal in recognition of his services to Stagma and the term of protection."168 The "Strauss
System" assumed that the President of the Reich Music Chamber was a composer. It fell apart after 1935
with Peter Raabe, a subsequent artist, took over this position. Paul Graener, the new president of the
composers' profession, lobbied Hans Hinkel with all his might for a correction in the spirit demanded by
Strauss,169 but in vain. The bastions that Strauss had conquered for serious music collapsed not only in
the profession, at its second composers' day in November 1935, works of upscale light music were
performed,170 but also in the stagma.171