![]() In 1948, after perfunctory German denazification, Strauss was classified ''not incriminated.'' Strauss and his wife were then allowed recuperation in Switzerland. Instead, officers arrived a few days later for dinner. ![]() I am the composer.'' He held up pages from ''Der Rosenkavalier'': ''Here, you may look at them if you want.'' Then, tall and imposing, he planted himself at the front of his house and announced to the soldiers in halting English: ''My name is Richard Strauss. ![]() He fetched a number of papers, including certificates of honorary citizenship from cities in the United States, and some scores. ''Easy, easy,'' the composer said, slowly opening a drawer. Richard Jr., then 17, ran into the composer's study, shouting, ''Grandpa, we are being evacuated within 20 minutes.'' tells it, American jeeps pulled up to Strauss's villa in Garmisch at the end of April. His friend Werner Egk, who had been an official in the cultural bureaucracy but who lacked Orff's opportune connections, took much longer to whitewash himself. Carl Orff, who had composed an ''Aryan'' version of incidental music to ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' to replace Mendelssohn's original, among other follies, lied to American denazification officers about having helped found the anti-Nazi resistance group White Rose. Hans Pfitzner, who had strived unsuccessfully to be the Führer's court composer, was lying low in shabby south German quarters. MOST German composers were in for a hard time when the Allies descended on Hitler's Reich in 1945.
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