Zoltán Kékesi, cultural historian at the Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at University College London, is in conversation with Neil Gregor, Professor of Modern European History at Southampton University. They talk about the centrality of music in Nazi ideology and its “affective legacies”. How do the ways change in which different generations of listeners hear certain pieces of music that were composed and performed during the war? Have they changed at all and if so, what does it tell us?

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Zoltán Kékesi's research evolves around “Final Account: Third Reich Testimonies”, a collection of interviews by British documentary filmmaker Luke Holland. Between 2008 and 2017, Holland interviewed German and Austrian, non-Jewish men and women who as children and adolescents had joined the Hitler Youth or League of German Girls. To trigger memories, he asked interviewees to sing songs of their childhood. Even when they refused to sing, songs took interviewees back in time and with the songs resurfaced experiences and personal stories of past times. His essay “A Pandora’s Box: The Horst Wessel Song in the Collection ‘Final Account: Third Reich Testimonies’” is available to read here: Musical memories – Compromised Identities? (compromised-identities.org).

Neil Gregor has worked extensively on the cultural history of music in twentieth century Germany. His book, The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany, is forthcoming with The University of Chicago Press.

The episode was produced by Marthe Lisson, editor of Think Pieces, and supported by the Pears Foundation.

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