Munich and Hamburg Launch Long Study of Nazi-Era Musical Loss

Researchers at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich and the University of Hamburg are joining a long-term project on Nazi persecution and music history. Backed through the Hamburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, it is planned for 18 years with funding of €7.9 million. The purpose is to trace musicians, works and networks obscured or destroyed by the Nazi regime and its consequences.

The Munich institution gives the subject an unusually direct setting. Its Arcisstrasse building was once part of the Nazi regime’s representative complex. Students now study and rehearse there, while the institution has developed work on the building’s history. Its Ben-Haim Research Centre, founded in 2020, already examines Jewish musical life in southern Germany, including the story of Paul Frankenburger, who left Germany in 1933 and became known in Israel as composer Paul Ben-Haim.

Project leader Friedrich Geiger argues that the missing history is European and ultimately global. Persecution displaced people across borders; music composed, performed or taught in exile cannot be understood solely from one country’s archives. An 18-year span allows for the slow work of identifying sources, checking biographies and making material usable for future scholars and performers.

Recovery is not simply a matter of adding forgotten names to a list. It may change how institutions describe the repertory that survived and the careers that were interrupted. The project’s value will lie in reliable documentation and public access, especially where evidence is fragmentary. Its long horizon acknowledges that the losses it studies cannot be repaired by a single exhibition or concert.