The "Culture of Swing" as a "Double-Bottom" of Youthful Feeling of Life Under the Nazi Dictatorship

Reinecke, H.P. (2003). The "culture of swing" as a "double-bottom" of youthful feeling of life under the Nazi dictatorship. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music. 34(1): 3-15.

How was it possible during the Nazi dictatorship for a self-confident individual to avoid the cultural "Gleichschaltung" without turning completely towards one's own inside? Based on some reflections, certain psychological backgrounds will be shown of the protective behavior as a "double-bottom". This double-bottom depends both on a phenomenon of "double-bind", known in psychology, and the old notion of persona, masque, known for thousands of years, by which the invisible can be achieved and an excuse is offered, within an established "people's community" of quasi "innate subjects" by shrinking thought akin to petrified subordinate mentality. In music this duality is especially effective: command and interdiction lie close to one another. The supreme institution became the Reichsmusikkammer with its first President, Dr. Richard Strauss. He took this job because music was not considered in public to have high political worth. Thus swing and jazz were not perceived publicly as music categories. It was only with the propaganda battle during the war that a new situation was established: swing became a highly successful emotional vehicle for all that was considered as "enemy propaganda". Contents transmitted by music and motion, which opposed official intentions of imposing discipline, were identified as an ongoing threat, precisely because they were addressing the sphere of the subconscious. Nothing much could be done here by the Reichsmusikprufsstelle, which was established for these purposes. Within the power apparatus the "double-bottom" in music mentality was recognized as existing and--it frightened them.