ABSTRACT
The political tensions that led to the collapse of the Allied Control Council, the Berlin blockade, and the emergence of two German states in 1949 have been frequently charted. Most commentators have identified 1947 as the year of division, when landmark events like the Writers’ Congress in Berlin in October made it clear that artists had to choose which side they were on. In all parts of Germany, the memory of the Nazi years was still potent, and attempts to control culture, or to impose censorship of any kind, invited comparison with Nazism. Both East and West used this as the ultimate insult against their opponents, and conversely used the phrase ‘cultural freedom’ to characterise their own policies. The Americans, particularly, faced considerable prejudice. Evarts reported from Munich that one concert of American chamber music was ‘rather a dismal failure’.
