Concerning Carl Moll, please allow me to vent

[Toblacher]

http://www.gustav-mahler.eu/index.php/familie/115-generation-5b/338-carl-julius-rudolf-moll-1861-1945

The above website seems to give Carl Moll a 'pass' on his Nazism.  I have never encountered such a view in all my readings of Mahler.  The excerpt is below:

1945: Carl Moll had a daughter (Alma Mahler (1879-1964)'s much younger half-sister): Maria Eberstaller-Moll (1899-1945). She was married to a Nazi (Richard Eberstaller (1887-1945) who was the vice president of the Nazi Court in Vienna from 1938 to 1945. He made Carl Julius Rudolf Moll (1861-1945) support the Nazis after Hitler seized power in Germany. In a letter to Carl Julius Rudolf Moll (1861-1945), Alma Mahler (1879-1964) praised Hitler as the "great organizer". Carl Julius Rudolf Moll (1861-1945) was never a party member, nor his daughter or his son in law. Their Nazi faith was the reason for suicide when the Russian troops invaded Vienna. When the Red Army won the Battle of Vienna in April 1945, Carl Moll wrote a farewell letter dated 10-04-1945  saying "I fall asleep unrepentant, I have had all beautiful things, life had to offer". Three days later invaded Soviet soldiers his house, raped his daughter and injured Moll. Thereupon Carl Moll, his daughter and his son in law ended there lives.

IMO, no one could have "made" someone support the Nazis, let alone being "made" by your son-in-law.  I remember touring the Belvedere several years ago and seeing many paintings by Moll being hung prominently.  I almost felt steam coming out of my ears, wanting to shout NAZI BASTARD!!!  To think this scum was a close "friend" of Mahler. 

Thanks for hearing me out.

[barry guerrero]

Toblacher, don't hold back - please tell us how you REALLY feel. In all seriousness, I don't blame you in the slightest. I think Moll was rather second rate as an artist, and obviously instilled a lot of 'highfalutin' artistic ideals into Alma. Alma herself was known to make MANY antisemitic comments, especially to Franz Werfel (go figure!). These were strange people living through strange times, and no one should think that it couldn't possibly ever happen here. 

As for Mahler, he had only himself to blame for rejecting the older Natalie Bauer-Lechner. She certainly would have been far more 'simpatico' to Mahler's aesthetic sense (which was almost alien to Alma).

[waderice]

As for Mahler, he had only himself to blame for rejecting the older Natalie Bauer-Lechner. She certainly would have been far more 'simpatico' to Mahler's aesthetic sense (which was almost alien to Alma).

Agree 100%.  We are more successful in some areas of our lives than in others.

Wade

P.S. - Keep in mind that Mahler also had Anna von Mildenburg available as a potential life mate.  She certainly would have been a worse choice than Bauer-Lechner, and wasn't all that more ill-suited for Mahler than Alma.

[ChrisH]

Perhaps I'm not remembering something correctly, but didn't Mahler himself make anti-Semitic remarks? Pointed at practicing Jews in Warsaw?

[James Meckley]

...didn't Mahler himself make anti-Semitic remarks? Pointed at practicing Jews in Warsaw?

Perhaps you're thinking of this passage from Alma Mahler's Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters. During a 1903 visit to Lemberg (Lviv, now in Ukraine), Mahler wrote to Alma:

"Life here has a very odd look all its own. But the oddest of all are the Polish Jews who run around as dogs do elsewhere. My God, are these my relations? I can't tell you how idiotic theories of race appear in the light of such examples!"

Aside from his unfortunate reference to dogs, Mahler seems to be arguing against racial generalizations rather than intending an anti-Semitic slur.

James

[barry guerrero]

One has to keep in mind that middle class and upper-middle class Jews in Vienna did not feel much kinship towards the poorer Silesian Jews who were flooding into the city at the turn of the century. Karl Kraus himself was known to get off a few 'zingers' towards Jews in his "Die Fackel" feuilleton. Then again, Krauss pretty much lampooned everyone .   .    .   except Schoenberg; go figure.

http://www.theabsolute.net/minefield/kraus.html

I love this line from Kraus: "I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear"

[mike bosworth]

I think that the issue for Mahler was that he found the lifestyles of the Galician/Polish Jews that he encountered in Lemberg (Lv'iv) and Warsaw a bit disconcerting, and perhaps felt a sense of dismay at what he saw as well. 

There is no question that he saw himself among the elite of those with Jewish heritage who at the same time wished to integrate themselves fully into the wider mainstream Austro-German culture that they had been brought up in and, indeed, were now becoming an integral part of.  But Mahler never denied his Jewish heritage.

In 1902, on the way back from their honeymoon in St. Petersburg, Gustav and Alma spent a few hours in Warsaw.  They donated their last roubles to a poor, elderly Jew that they encountered at the Warsaw train station.  According to Alma, "Mahler was very happy about this small gesture of identification".

Mike Bosworth

[barry guerrero]

"But Mahler never denied his Jewish heritage"   .     .     . 

Couldn't his conversion to Catholicism be considered a denial at some level?    .    .    .   I realize he wouldn't have 'gotten the gig' w/o his conversion (all of which is handled most sardonically in Ken Russell's "Mahler").