In September 1943, a thirteen-year-old German boy named Christoph von Dohnanyi wrote a seemingly innocuous letter to his uncle Dietrich:
The letter becomes heartbreaking when you know the context. The recipient was dissident theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had been jailed several months earlier for his opposition to the Nazi regime. Dohnanyi's father, Hans, was also in prison for his role in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Both men would be executed before the end of World War II. Young Christophe wrote knowing that Bonhoeffer's correspondence was being monitored and a careless word could have fatal consequences. Therefore, he spoke in a veiled manner, creating a mysterious parable about gnawing wasps.
Bonhoeffer, with his great capacity for empathy, was concerned about how his nephew, who was also his godson, was faring under these circumstances. Bonhoeffer later wrote to his parents: “What image of the world should be formed in the mind of a fourteen-year-old teenager when he has to write to his father and godfather in prison for months? In a mind like his there will not be too many illusions about the world.” But Christophe showed signs of inner strength. “I think that he will still develop greatly in spirit,” Bonhoeffer wrote to his colleague Eberhard Bethge. Perhaps, he thought, his nephew would study theology. In his last will and testament, Bonhoeffer saw the future more clearly: “Christophe [should have] clavichord if he likes it.”
Christoph von Dohnanyi died last month, just shy of his ninety-sixth birthday, and was being hailed as one of the greatest conductors of his time. What he took with him from his tragic childhood cannot be appreciated by the casual observer. I interview Dohnanyi in 2011, and although he mentioned the fate of his family, he did not attach much importance to it. We were talking about the eternal problem of Wagner's politics, and Dohnanyi, almost as an aside, said, “My father was in a concentration camp, and they played Wagner.” He was more interested in talking about the music itself, in all its corrupted glory. Yet I couldn't help but sense Dohnanyi's experience in what he said and, by extension, in the talks he gave. He had an almost tangible aura of moral authority: he was an aristocrat of spirit. He made you believe what history denies: that a life of music bestows wisdom and virtue.
Dohnanyi came from a Hungarian noble family with roots going back centuries. The Bonhoeffers were a long line of pastors, doctors, scientists and lawyers. Music sounded from both sides. Dohnanyi's great-grandmother Clara von Hase studied piano with Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt. His grandfather Ernst von Dohnanyi was a world-famous composer and pianist who earned the approval of none other than Brahms at an early age. Cultured, cosmopolitan, generally liberal, Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer represented the best of the German-speaking bourgeois tradition. Dohnanyi told me that Wagner was looked down upon in the family, not so much for political reasons as for aesthetic reasons: the music was vulgar. His mother said of one of his performances at Wagner: “I only come because You do it.”
In early adulthood, Dohnanyi and his older brother Klaus studied law. Their father was a leading lawyer, and Christophe initially wanted to follow his example. Klaus had a distinguished career in law and politics while serving as mayor of Hamburg. Now ninety-seven, Klaus is still weighs on current affairs. Christophe was drawn to music. After studying conducting, piano and composition in Munich, he sought further guidance from his grandfather Ernst, who taught at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Dohnanyi also attended Leonard Bernstein's conducting seminar at Tanglewood. Once, when another conductor dared to correct Dohnanyi in a conversation with Haydn, Bernstein interrupted the conversation by saying: “You can do whatever you want!”
