For what it’s worth HVK seemed to have shed any Nazi beliefs he had held. He worked with Jewish musicians all the time.
Sure. And he also prevaricated to cover up the depth of his commitment, saying he was merely an ambitious young musician, trying to get ahead. And maybe he was not for all the genocide and stuff, just primarily a pan-Germanist, just like Pound only wanted the banks nationalized. My problem isn’t with Von Karajan as a person, but as an artist.
One would think that a creator of profound, undeniable beauty is expressing his own internal beauty. But there was nothing beautiful about his soul. The ugliness was somehow compartmentalized, and kept out of the music. After the Third Reich fell, perhaps genuinely contrite, and perhaps faked because he was an ambitious young musician trying to get ahead, he renounced Nazism and made nice with some Jews. But which motivation prompted this? I can’t know his soul. It wasn’t expressed in his music.