Black or brown? Heinrich Sutermeister in apartheid's web

Abstract

The article discusses the controversy surrounding the visit of Swiss composer Heinrich Sutermeister to South Africa during the apartheid era. Journalist Antje Müller scrutinized the first major success of the composer in Nazi Germany in the Swiss musicological journal "Dissonanz." He visited African schools with a missionary and the African prison Leeuwkop in northern Johannesburg. It asserts that the composer was not aware of the racial implications of his opera in a South African context.