HERMANN HESSE AND THE DIALECTICS OF TIME Salvatore C. P. ...

Hitherto compositions serving purposes of entertainment had not been
different qualitatively from the rest; there had been, of course, a great
difference in quality between individual works, but this difference in no way
corresponded to the difference in their respective purposes. As we know, the
generation immediately following that of Bach and Handel had already made
a distinction between composing for one's own amusement and producing for
the public; but now distinctions are made between the different categories of
the public itself. (Ibid.)
At the time the idiom of 'jazz', which for Haller in Steppenwolf epitomizes and
encompasses the whole spectrum of light music, was introduced to Germany
through recordings in 1920, this was not just received as 'Unterhaltungsmusik' but as
an aggregate of foreign cultural elements that could destabilize the status quo:
From the 1920s to the 1950s, jazz had many outspoken enemies in Germany.
Since [its introduction] during the Weimar years, its critics linked the music to
feminized men and lascivious women, to racial degeneration, and to
commercialism. 77 (Poiger, 218)
Fairly popular by the late 1920s, jazz was regarded as an expression of forces which
were potential menaces to Germany's cultural ascendancy. As noted by Weiner:
German superiority [at that time seemed] threatened by two morally suspect
aesthetic camps atonality and American jazz, each representing a foreign
socio-political order, bolshevism and (by implication) democracy. 78 (1993,136)
Although Hesse might have been exposed to the more sophisticated jazz
imported through Whiteman, 'jazz' in Der Steppenwolf essentially refers to dancehall
music (e.g. fox-trots, one-steps, and shimmying) which were being introduced into
Europe from the U.S.A. after World War I.79 This music, associated with an idea of
superficial glitter, promiscuity, libido, and bad taste, was purely intended for the
moment, and it was accompanied by a new consumerist attitude towards art.
As we noted above, extra-musical (social and political) associations were
layered on music in Germany between 1900 and 1930, as witnessed not only by the
77 Poiger's statement echoes that of Vaget:'In their eyes [National Socialists'], the Weimar Republic promoted
the bastardization of German culture through modernism and jazz' (162).
78 By the time Sam Wooding and his big band were performing in the Admirals Palast in 1925, 'jazz dance bands
could be found in virtually all large hotels, cafe"s, and bars in Berlin' (Weiner 1993, 122). However, 'the first
jazz not intended as dance music' (ibid.) allegedly filtered through to Germany through Paul Whiteman.
79 In the context of the dancehall tunes mentioned in Der Steppenwolf, see the next section (3.5) and note 107.
93