Michael Wolffsohn on Herbert von Karajan: “Should he have become a chef instead of general music director?”

MIchael Wolffsohn was born in Tel Aviv in 1947 as the son of German refugees and came to Germany with his returning parents in 1954. He taught as a professor of modern history from 1981 to 2012 at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich. He became known through numerous publications such as “Burden and Opportunity of the German Past” – about the Cold War, Israel’s politics and many other topics. Now, on behalf of the Karajan Institute, Wolffsohn has looked into the conductor’s past during the Nazi era: his exciting-to-read Karajan book “Genie and Conscience” is currently being published by the Freiburg Herder publishing house. In the living room of his single-family home in a suburb of Munich there is a black grand piano, not far from it the dining table. Wolffsohn cheerfully serves tea, coffee, stollen, fresh figs and small Persian fruits that taste like lemon peel. He recommends butter on the stollen. But it remains on hold for now, because the questions about Karajan’s past cannot be postponed.