Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer/Autumn 2018 | Page 21

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Röhreke expresses a great appreciation of musical education within German cultural
diplomacy. This musical education, however, is not valuable in and of itself. Nor is its
purpose to offer ways in which classical music education can contribute to an equal share
of musical knowledge. The educative work of conductors rather matters to the extent
to which its results become widely visible. It counts as long as it enables the production
of cultural prestige associated with West Germany. The conductor thus becomes an
embodiment of Western musical and cultural superiority. In Röhreke’s description, the
power of a baton is more than musical. In the hands of a West German conductor, it can
become an emblem of the mastery and communication of musical prestige. As such, it
has the power to win over new allies who crave this prestige in cities the West German
government considers significant. It is this function of the conductor that preponderated
in West German cultural diplomacy during the 1960s and beyond, despite the fact that
West German cultural diplomacy was beginning to be more variegated.
The particular example of Söllner demonstrates the extent to which musicians could be
disregarded as soon as they lost a significant function within the larger framework of
West German cultural diplomacy. Söllner’s reduced payments ended after May 1968.
Born on 26 July 1903 in Munich, Söllner was almost 65 years old by the time his work
for the Foreign Office ended in Vietnam. He had not been able to provide for his retirement
in South Vietnam. Nor was he able to find another employment afterwards. Söllner
withdrew to Freilassing in the Bavarian countryside after returning from Vietnam.
He died on 10 May 1983 (Zander 2007:106).
As the Goethe-Institute primarily celebrates the history of West German cultural diplomacy
as a story of intercultural dialogue, plurality, and understanding (see Niemeyer
2011), examples such as Söllner’s, where national power interests rather than humanitarian
considerations or the support of democracy are dominant features, complicate the
history of West German cultural diplomacy. Conservative notions of the value of cultural
diplomacy persisted in the West German Foreign Office. So did ethnocentric views
of German cultural superiority that would have contradicted the guidelines for cultural
diplomacy that Willy Brandt’s social–liberal government published in 1970.
In its 1971 Yearbook, the Goethe-Institute supported the thesis that cultural exchange
was merely a “benevolent fiction” (schonende Fiktion) that needed to be maintained in
order to flatter inferior cultures in the developing world by giving them the impression
that their culture was equally valuable (Goethe-Institut München 1972) While not everyone
involved in West German cultural diplomacy would have agreed with this notion,
the fact that this was printed in the official yearbook of the main institute for West
Deutschland sofort an den deutschen Musiker denken, der ihnen das Orchester geschult hat, dann
wirkt diese Gedankenassoziation auch in anderen Bereichen weiter und widerlegt die Mär von dem
wiedererstandenen deutschen Militarismus, der kommunistischen Lieblingsschalmei. [ ... ] Die
Bachsolisten kommen und gehen und sind nach einigen Wochen vergessen. Aber die Tätigkeit [Otto]
Söllners bleibt bestehen und noch nach Jahren vielleicht Jahrzehnten wird es heißen: Dieses Orchester
hat ein Deutscher herangebildet.”
18