Music and politics in Germany 1933-1955: approaches and challenges

Until very recently, music has often been considered as an art form which stands outside and above politics. This article explores the new approaches taken by historians and musicologists in the last twenty years to the analysis of music in political context in Germany between 1933 and 1955, a period in which musicians worked under Nazi and Communist forms of dictatorship, under Allied military government, and under a liberal democracy. It outlines the ways in which this literature has been fragmented by self-imposed chronological, geographical and thematic boundaries, and suggests ways in which these might be challenged