The above has made clear that the Völkischer Beobachter worked strenuously to establish that German composers of the Baroque and Classical ages had expressed in music Germanic, volkish, patriotic, and anti-Semitic ideals that came to full realization under National Socialism. Given the general attitude that music was the “most German of the arts” – and its command integral to any worthwhile definition of Bildung – it was a priority for Nazi publicists to continue establishing close associations with the great composers of the nineteenth century. Consistent with their proclivity toward romantic culture as a whole, music of that period – which, from their perspective, reached its zenith in Wagner’s operatic body of work – was presented as the greatest jewel in the cultural legacy of the Third Reich and as the aesthetic wellspring for any music that would henceforth emerge from the Nazi experience.

Goebbels put these ideas forth in a speech opening the Reich Music Days in Düsseldorf in 1938. Pleading that “the fame of Germany as the nation of music be once again revealed and substantiated,” he spoke on the development of a Nazi music tradition as a whole, to the point of specifying the fundamentally romantic features it would have to maintain: “may the principles that have since time immemorial been the source and the driving force behind our German music again be set forth and recognized.” By such “principles,” Goebbels clearly meant romantic notions of music as the deepest expression of spirit and emotion: