Page 65 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2021. Opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama ▪︎ Operetta between the Two World Wars. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 5
P. 65
operetta as safe space
culture that the Nazis accused Charell of is substituted here by the ‘safe’
ideological heroism of Spadolini; the entire Rössl itself was re-rewritten by
Fred Raymond as Saison in Salzburg as a ‘safe’ Tyrolean yodel romp with-
out any ‘triggers’ and with no problematic gender bending, no roll-in-the-
hay between Leopold and Piccolo. Raymond’s operetta characters are as
straight as they can be, and his Tyrolean dancers were to be admired, not to
be taken home after the show like Charell’s hand-picked ‘Tiroler Gruppe.’
The interactive side of operetta was now restricted; the genre had be-
come passive and dumbed down entertainment for the tired masses, not an
active elitist playground with carnal and intellectual stimulation.
Operetta and Existentialism: Erasing the Triggers
All of this went on until 1945. But what happened then? What happened
when the horrors of the Holocaust became known and Germans had to jus-
tify their prior carefree and often sexually liberated behaviour? The Chris-
tian churches in Western Germany claimed that in order to rebuild the
country there was a need for ‘cleanliness’ and ‘family values.’ The result was
a conservative sexual culture that stylized itself as a counter movement to
the Third Reich.34 The newspaper Christ und Welt voiced its disgust in 1951
at the thought that sexual autonomy could be part of the new constitution’s
guarantee of ‘free development of one’s personality’, because that would be
in opposition to ‘the divine commandments’.35 Dagmar Herzog writes that
the cleaning-up after the mass murders was ultimately handled
by shifting the German moral discourse to a narrow sexual-moral
track; and again coping with the past (Vergangenheitsbewälti-
gung) was achieved via sex.36
As a consequence there were harsh homophobic laws and an oppres-
sive moral climate. How did operetta fit into this? It offered a safe space for
traumatized citizens who wanted to escape the realities of life in ruins with
shows such as Schwarzwaldmädel, Försterchristl, or Im weißen Rössl, and
that did not want to be confronted in any way with double entendres re-
minding them of the rape of thousands of women by Russian soldiers as
they had fled from Silesia or elsewhere.
34 Ibid., 35.
35 Quoted in Herzog, Paradoxien der sexuellen Liberalisierung, 36.
36 Ibid., 33.
63
culture that the Nazis accused Charell of is substituted here by the ‘safe’
ideological heroism of Spadolini; the entire Rössl itself was re-rewritten by
Fred Raymond as Saison in Salzburg as a ‘safe’ Tyrolean yodel romp with-
out any ‘triggers’ and with no problematic gender bending, no roll-in-the-
hay between Leopold and Piccolo. Raymond’s operetta characters are as
straight as they can be, and his Tyrolean dancers were to be admired, not to
be taken home after the show like Charell’s hand-picked ‘Tiroler Gruppe.’
The interactive side of operetta was now restricted; the genre had be-
come passive and dumbed down entertainment for the tired masses, not an
active elitist playground with carnal and intellectual stimulation.
Operetta and Existentialism: Erasing the Triggers
All of this went on until 1945. But what happened then? What happened
when the horrors of the Holocaust became known and Germans had to jus-
tify their prior carefree and often sexually liberated behaviour? The Chris-
tian churches in Western Germany claimed that in order to rebuild the
country there was a need for ‘cleanliness’ and ‘family values.’ The result was
a conservative sexual culture that stylized itself as a counter movement to
the Third Reich.34 The newspaper Christ und Welt voiced its disgust in 1951
at the thought that sexual autonomy could be part of the new constitution’s
guarantee of ‘free development of one’s personality’, because that would be
in opposition to ‘the divine commandments’.35 Dagmar Herzog writes that
the cleaning-up after the mass murders was ultimately handled
by shifting the German moral discourse to a narrow sexual-moral
track; and again coping with the past (Vergangenheitsbewälti-
gung) was achieved via sex.36
As a consequence there were harsh homophobic laws and an oppres-
sive moral climate. How did operetta fit into this? It offered a safe space for
traumatized citizens who wanted to escape the realities of life in ruins with
shows such as Schwarzwaldmädel, Försterchristl, or Im weißen Rössl, and
that did not want to be confronted in any way with double entendres re-
minding them of the rape of thousands of women by Russian soldiers as
they had fled from Silesia or elsewhere.
34 Ibid., 35.
35 Quoted in Herzog, Paradoxien der sexuellen Liberalisierung, 36.
36 Ibid., 33.
63
