The Karl Muck affair

For the New Yorker website, I've written a Cultural Comment on two recent books that describe the absurd and frightening Karl Muck hysteria of 1917-18. Above is a cartoon from the period. One rumor pegged Muck as Wagner's illegitimate son, prompting a poem from Lincoln Kirstein: "Karl Muck conducts the symphony; a steel svelte villain, he— / Ma says he's Wagner's bastard son ('Daddy, what's bostordy?')" Other eminent German- and Austrian-born musicians suffered consequences during the First World War, including Ernst Kunwald, who was interned; Frederick Stock, who temporarily stepped down from the Chicago Symphony; and Fritz Kreisler, who stopped performing for the duration of the war.