As mentioned before, collecting is a great discovery tool.
Beethoven drew me to this book, but it’s much more interesting than that. Beautiful typesetting; Germany in the 1920s; two German politicians, one who who fled Nazis, the other who rebuked them (thread).

The book’s subject is German press coverage of the New York Beethoven Male Choir’s 1925 visit to Germany. Here they are in Berlin.

It was the 1920s so travel was via the Hamburg America Line passenger ship, S.S. Cleveland. A picture of the Damenzimmer.

For those who struggle with German like me, two English synopsis of their trip from “The Only American Newspaper Printed in Central Europe - Hamburg.” Stil in the same fantastic typeset.

In case it was missed, note the concern of the Hamburg government officials on possible impressions resulting from impacts of the Great War on German society. This was of course a great time of political unrest.

A few reports in German. There are pages and pages of these reports from all over Germany. Apparently this visit was important to the Germans.

Some nice little, stamped engravings are scattered throughout the book, some in a period, Art Deco style.

The book then segues into ‘extensive speeches during the stay in Berlin’ by members of Berlin musical dignitaries and German officials.

Here is Erich Koch, a German lawyer & one of the 1918 founders, & later Chairman, of the liberal Deutsche Demokratische Partei (DDP.) In 1927 he changed his name to Koch-Weser to differ himself from another Erich Koch, a die hard Nazi & the notorious Reichskommissar of Ukraine.

Koch-Weser’s mother was Jewish and in 1933 after the Nazi Party seized power he emigrated to Brazil. He is the grandfather of former World Bank executive & economist Caio Koch-Weser who co-wrote this article, ‘A Climate-Friendly Financial System’ https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/finance-climate-change-katowice-unfccc-cop24-by-ma-jun-and-caio-koch-weser-2018-12?barrier=accesspaylog

This is Paul Löbe, a member of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) and President of the Reichstag (1920-32). He was briefly imprisoned by the Nazis in 1933 and again in 1944 after the 20 July 1944 plot to kill Hitler because of his ties to the resistance.

After his arrest, Löbe was interned in the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. He survived the War and played an improve in post-war German politics. This is the Paul-Löbe-Haus in Berlin, which contains offices for the Bundestag’s parliamentary committees

That’s it, a close with a page dedicated to the 50th birthday celebration of the Beethoven Male Choir’s President, which apparently occurred on the trip. My usual caveat that this is amateur research and thus done with broad strokes and subject to error.