The Jazz Republic. Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany by Jonathan O. Wipplinger (2017)

Germany’s capital Berlin in the 1920s was a very special place due to a number of radical and energetic developments. A very high number and range of political parties from the extreme right to the extreme left and socialist forces tried to gain power in this rather chaotic period of German history after a lost war.

Those times were unique and full of new developments and trends in politics, German society, the arts, cultural events and especially music. Present everywhere was a spirit of newness and excitement. At the center of it: jazz music from the US, argues author Wipplinger. It was the soundtrack that accompanied the various revolutionary developments such as the movies of Fritz Lang and F. W. Murnau, Dadaism, Modernism, spectacular exhibitions and endless parties in night clubs and cabarets. This era stood for a general departure from German conservative traditions, for women’s struggle for liberation and their new economic power, while later the Weimar Republic was synonymous with a severe recession, followed by massive unemployment and chaos.

“[J]azz and the German interest in it were more than mere passing fantasies of a decadent society slipping into the abyss of totalitarianism, more than acoustical accouterments to avant-garde or reaction.”

A good example of how much jazz music symbolized the new and exciting air is the author’s reference to Berlin citizen Alfred Lion (who after his immigration to New York would found the famous jazz label Blue Note Records) and how this very young German encountered the style for the first time.

Wipplinger argues throughout the study that “…encounters between Germans and jazz such as Lion‘s [who in 1925 attended a jazz concert of Sam Wooding in Berlin] are emblematic of a broad and unpredictable exchange and dialogue between Germany and America around jazz.“

In a way, this is why this book at times has to start from various points of view, i.e. the very nature of the book’s theme actually is rather complicated. Since most books on jazz, in fact, the majority of jazz research books, have a focus on a particular musician, a special period (of mostly US) jazz history or the effects of a certain jazz style on other art forms (in the US). That means that many facts, historical events and names as well as consequences on society or a group of people are well-known and correctly documented. In this case, however, work must start at the very beginning, or rather with the first encounters of jazz and Germany, which in this case means Germany during the years of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933).

Which asks for an entirely different approach to representations of jazz, if compared to any analysis of early jazz in the US. As clearly many original conditions (or rather, basics) of the art form were simply not present in the Weimar Republic. There were hardly any African-American authors or resident jazz or blues musicians, no former slaves, black folklore or forms of entertainment and song, or black activists around. Neither was there a history of slavery, centuries of white ambiguity and guilt connected with it, segregated schools, open violence and sanctioned discrimination against blacks and so forth. There were no more that probably altogether 2000 or 3000 people of color living in Germany, and this estimate had to do with the African “colonies” that were established in the 1890s. (Nevertheless, there already was a history of racism and degrading black people, this also had to do with French black troops – with soldiers from African regions – that were part of an allied occupation force that after the German defeat were “protecting” the Rhine region. In the popular press and according to furious German pamphlets the black soldiers were despised and feared as they – according to historical comments and not properly researched accusations – often attacked and raped German women, resulting in several hundred unwanted mixed-race children. Hence it was experienced as yet another agony the German people had to endure after WWI, according to a contemporary belief, and it may well be the origin of prejudice against blacks in Germany.)

Another aspect the author introduces and explains in detail is the meaning and nature of “jazz music” in Germany at that time. What exactly was called jazz? As this was not a music that had grown or originated in Germany, audiences had to rely upon the statements of concert agencies that labeled almost any new musical act as a jazz act, be it orchestrated light dance music, or ballads of any sort. Some “experts” – either just badly informed or building their belief on what little information there was available in Germany at this time – even described jazz as European concert music with no relation to African American inventors.

These are some of the many topics Wipplinger has to enlarge on in order to get his study on the way, like retracing the extraordinary situation when a new musical style enters the consciousness of a country where it had not originated but was experienced and analyzed with the means and tools of European classical music and music appreciation. Thereby jazz often enough earned corresponding disgusted comments by music “critics” who would use vocabulary and strange arguments very similar to those employed by their American counterparts.

In the last parts of the book, the author discusses the concept of jazz in German fiction of the Weimar Republic, the many translations of author Langston Hughes that were available, the numerous appearances of the (American) “Jonny” figure in new songs of the time, the important and groundbreaking writings of Walter Benjamin and Theodore W. Adorno, and the theoretical approaches of Europe’s first post-secondary academic training facility for jazz, the Hochsche Koservatorium in Frankfurt. This leads to the question what kind of jazz actually was produced and recorded in Germany, both by German, European and visiting African American musicians. (Musicians like Sam Wooding and Paul Whiteman already toured Europe back then). Furthermore, this led the author to analyze how the Americanization of performance acts also took place in the entertainment industry of the Weimar Republic, with regard to the profession of the “show girl,” an expression and line of work unheard of before.

To understand the significance of this book, it is important to realize that only a few (and actually not any recent) titles deal with jazz in Weimar Germany in detail, which was also a very prominent time for the development of European jazz. Although there are many references to jazz in Berlin in the late 1920s, the title gives a very good impression of how it all started. And how a country that for decades was held in high esteem for its respectful treatment of (classical) musicians and composers, theater and the opera, for a certain time extended its musical appreciation to a very different and new musical idea from abroad.

Review by Dr. A. Ebert © 2018

Jonathan O. Wipplinger. The Jazz Republic. Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany. University of Michigan Press, 2017, 324 p.