For many Jewish composers, the rise of Nazism in Germany
and Austria resulted in a stark choice: to stay in an
increasingly hostile environment or to leave for foreign lands,
cut off from their cultural heritage. Many composers made the
difficult decision to leave.
Some, like Arnold Schoenberg, who emigrated to the United States,
found it difficult to adjust to life outside Europe, struggling at first to
achieve creative confidence and recognition.
Others, like Kurt Weill (who also emigrated to the United States),
positively embraced the new opportunities afforded him by his exile,
and he subsequently made a major contribution to American musical
theatre.
Many composers who stayed in Germany took risks by writing
satirical cabaret or embedding secret meanings in songs and
plays, as for example Victor Ullman and Franz Peter Kien’s The
Emperor of Atlantis.
