Muck, Karl b. November 22, 1859; Darmstadt, Hesse-Darmstadt d. March 3, 1940; Stuttgart, Wurttemberg
One of history’s greatest Wagnerians, Muck dominated the conducting podium in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Germany and the United States. Born into a musical family, Muck demonstrated his musical talent at an early age, training as a pianist.
By 1880 he had earned a PhD in classical philology fromthe University of Heidelberg, but the musical world called him. After holding conducting posts in Salzburg, Brunn, Graz, and Prague, he was appointed Kapellmeister to the Royal Opera House in Berlin in 1892, becoming the music director in 1908. This post, which brought him great fame, was by appointment from Wilhelm II, with whom Muck was on friendly terms. Engaged as the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1912, Muck became an international celebrity, supremely admired and respected as one of the great interpreters of German opera. Although a strict disciplinarian and taskmaster, Muck’s popularity reached great heights in Boston and throughout the United States. He was applauded for his ability to maintain a rigid interpretation of the score while engendering passionate performances from his musicians.
When World War I began, Muck did not hesitate to support Germany, but was determined not to allow his political views to interfere with the performance of his duties. Because he appeared to be a German citizen, America’s entry into the war jeopardized his position with the Boston Symphony and in the United States. As a witch hunt against Germans and German music began, Muck became the foremost target. Fortunately for the conductor, Henry Higginson, the famous Civil War veteran and owner of the Boston Symphony, stood by his maestro, defending him at every turn. In a concert on October 30, 1917, held in Providence, Rhode Island, Muck was accused of refusing to perform “The Star-Spangled Banner” prior to the concert.
The conductor was unaware that such a request had been made by a small number of Providence’s citizens. The information had been kept from him by the Boston Symphony’s management, who had determined that playing the national anthem conflicted with the musical tone of the performance. Outrage followed with a series of vicious attacks from the Providence Journal and other outlets denouncing Muck as a German nationalist, and as being insulting to the United States. These attacks condemned all things German, especially the performance of German music during wartime. Even when Muck played the national anthem at later concerts, he was unable to steer the criticism away from himself. Some critics even condemned the style in which he conducted the tune.Federal authorities became very interested in the conductor and began a lengthy investigation of him. Filtering through letters, diaries, and the like, they discovered numerous comments from Muck that praised the German war effort and insulted American audiences. Muck’s famous sarcasm and bluntness were working against him. Fueling suspicion against Muck was the discovery by federal agents of his affair with a young Boston socialite. All of this information combined sufficed to convince authorities that he was a threat to national security.
With suspicion of Muck at its peak, a controversy over his citizenship quickly emerged in late 1917. The conductor held a Swiss passport granted to him in 1881 when his father had temporarily relocated to Switzerland. A second Swiss passport was issued to him in 1914, although he possessed a German passport from 1906 when he entered the United States. The United States Department of Justice maintained that Muck was an enemy alien as defined by federal statute and executive decrees. These stated that any person born in Germany who was not yet a naturalized American was potentially an enemy alien.
The crisis over Muck reached a fever pitch in late 1917 and early 1918.
The Boston Symphony’s travel schedule was limited and Muck was viciously attacked in the press. Calls for his dismissal based on national security concerns escalated. Accusations against Muck reached the absurd. Some argued that he was a German agent and could often be found signaling German submarines from his houses in Boston and in Maine. Others claimed that he was the illegitimate son of Richard Wagner!Karl Muck was arrested on March 25, 1918, in Boston. Soon afterward, he was interned as an enemy alien at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. To a man unaccustomed to the heat of Georgia, the internment was nothing short of cruelty. Muck and his wife sailed for Europe on August 21, 1919, the day of his release from American custody, never to return to the United States.
Like many German and Austrian musicians who spent the war in the United States, Muck was not quickly embraced by his native land. It took time for him to reclaim his post among his musical peers and fans, but he did. He enjoyed a successful tenure with the Hamburg Symphony from 1922 to 1933, when he retired from professional work. In his later years, Muck lived a secluded life, away from the limelight and his admirers, to his last days deeply hurt by the way the American press had treated him.
Robert B. McCormick
See also Hammerstein, Oscar, I; Kunwald, Ernst; Music (American), German Influence on; World War I and German Americans; World War I, German Prisoners and Civilian Internees in
References and Further Reading
Badal, J. J. “The Strange Case of Dr. Karl Muck, Who Was Torpedoed by the Star- Spangled Banner during World War I.” High Fidelity 20, no. 10 (1970): 55—60.
Ewen, David. The Man with the Baton. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1936.
Schonberg, Harold C. The Great Conductors. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967.