I'm An American -- Kurt Weill

On March 9, 1941 Kurt Weill talked with William H. Marshall, Assistant District Director of Immigration at Ellis Island about his expression of American ideals through music. Kurt Weill reveals he wanted to become a citizen as soon as he arrived to America. He adopted English as his first language and encouraged other schoolchildren to do the same. Weill shares his thoughts on the national songs and American folk songs. He believes America is strengthened by music because it is a universal language. He adds music provides passion to overused words like “liberty” and “democracy.” The German American composer reveals how a play he created was destroyed by a dictator, but he was able to debut the performance in America. He closes the episode by saying, if Americans felt democracy was in danger then they would have the same passion for freedom. Kurt Weill (b. Kurt Julian Weill) was born on March 2, 1900 in Dessau, Germany to a Jewish family. The son of a cantor, Weill began taking piano lessons at the age of 12. The aspiring musician quickly became a fixture in Berlin’s cultural scene of Weimar Germany. Weill had some early successes, but it was his partnership with Bertoldt Brecht that transformed Weill into an international sensation. The Jewish Weill and the Marxist Brecht represented everything that the Nazi regime declared its enemy. Nevertheless, The Threepenny Opera was a hit. His powerful music, combined with the cynicism and social criticism of Brecht’s libretto, was one of the most important cultural creations of interwar Europe. Nazi protests frequently interfered with his performances, and Weill fled to France in 1933 after he learned that he and his wife were on the Nazi blacklist and due to be arrested. He continued on to the United States where his hit musical "Knickerbocker Holiday" written with playwright Maxwell Anderson debuted in 1938. Not one to shy away from his heritage, the Jewish composer was an early figure in memorializing the Holocaust and raising public awareness about the plight of Europe’s Jews. Weill produced important works critiquing American optimism and ‘way of life’; as well as tackled issues such as the unequal distribution of wealth, segregation, and the effect of industrialization on families.