ASIDE from the fame, adulation and frequent opportunities to print rude things about Duncan Bannatyne, the best thing about this job is being surprised and delighted by programmes you might have avoided. I, for instance, have next to no interest in
classical music, so had my job not demanded that I watch it, I probably would have given Mendelssohn, the Nazis and Me a wide berth. You're not fooling me with that crafty insertion of "Nazis" in the title, I know a dreary documentary about a dead composer when I see one! Naturally, that would have been short-sighted of me, as it was one of most fascinating programmes I've seen in some time.
Its unique twist was that it was directed and presented by filmmaker Sheila Hayman, a direct descendant of Felix Mendelssohn. Celebrating the bicentenary of his birth, her film combined the story of her great, great, great, great uncle's life and work with the subsequent Nazi persecution endured by his descendents. Using interviews with her elderly Jewish father and aunts, as well as testimonies from contemporary classical musicians and scholars, she presented a vivid case for music's ability to endure against the odds and transcend religious and ideological divides.
Although he was born a Jew, the German composer converted to Christianity at a young age. The influence of both faiths would find its way into his music, and bolster his desire to create great art with universal appeal. His grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, was a significant philosopher known as the German Socrates, who wrote revolutionary tracts on how Christians and Jews should – and could –– live peacefully side by side. Tragically and unwittingly, the miscegenation he fostered would eventually incense the Nazis towards the final solution, thus directly affecting Mendelssohn's own descendants.
Despite being hugely popular throughout Germany, Mendelssohn's music was eventually banned by the Nazis, who decreed that – despite his Christian faith – the one-time national treasure was purely Jewish and therefore bereft of artistic worth. This backlash was instigated shortly after Mendelssohn's death by the notoriously antisemitic Richard Wagner, and not until after the war could Mendelssohn's music be performed in public again. Previously, it was feared that exposure to it would pollute the pure German bloodstream. The insanity of Nazi ideology hardly needs restating, yet it never ceases to stagger and appal. Their ludicrously convoluted genetic guidelines to who should and shouldn't be considered Jewish, as well as their scientifically bogus tests to diagnose same (Jewishness can be detected by examining earlobes, apparently), would be worthy of laughter were they not so vile.
After being "diagnosed" as Jewish, Hayman's father was exiled to England as a young boy. In the intervening years, his hope of finding a sense of spiritual identity and belonging has led him through the Anglican, Muslim and Quaker faiths. This theme of personal metamorphosis was neatly echoed by Hayman's framing device of passages from Mendelssohn's beloved A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was first translated into German by his uncles, and for which he famously scored an overture.
This entrancing film succeeded as a personal and justifiably proud celebration of not only the endurance of Hayman's forebears, but also that of Mendelssohn's unconquerable music and the human spirit generally. And that's not what I expected.
