Exit: Music

How Music Was Controlled by the Third Reich

Before the arrival of Adolf Hitler in 1933, Germany was the center of the musical world. Within five years, thousands of musicians had fled the country as the Nazi regime tightened its race laws and attempted to fashion its own cultural image.

EXIT: MUSIC examines how anti-Semitism manifested itself in the music industry, how Jewish composers were depicted as incapable of originality by virtue of race, and how the Third Reich hijacked German music for propaganda purposes. The film explores the contrasting lives and exile of five composers, the stories of their escape, how their identities and careers were changed by exile, and how their music all but disappeared after the war.