Synopsis

On today’s date in 1947, the German composer Hans Eisler, who had been living in the United States since 1938, was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

This was some years before Joseph McCarthy headed the investigations, but one member of the committee was a first-term Californian congressman by the name of Richard M. Nixon, who, like other committee members, was eager to expose Communist agents, who they feared were undermining American values by infiltrating and influencing the film industry.

Hans Eisler, who had been working in Hollywood since 1942, was a prime suspect. While Eisler did have leftist sympathies, there was no evidence of his being a Soviet agent, and as a film music composer, he had no ideological influence on the scripts or even the topics of the films on which he worked.

Celebrities like Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Mann, Igor Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland all rallied to his defense, but to no avail. The mood of the country in the early days of the Red Scare was such that Eisler was banned from working in Hollywood, and eventually, like his old friend Bertold Brecht, settled in Communist East Germany, where he died in 1962.

Music Played in Today's Program

Hanns Eisler (1898 – 1962) — Deutsche Sinfonie, Op. 50 (Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Lothar Zagrosek, cond.) London 448 389