[Turning to the defendant.] Dr. Funk, I have just said that perhaps you could—quite briefly—give us some more examples of cases where you used your official position to protect intellectuals and artists, whose views had got them into difficulties.
FUNK: Richard Strauss is a special case. That most remarkable living composer found himself in great difficulties on account of a libretto written by the Jew, Stefan Zweig.
I succeeded in having Richard Strauss again received by the Führer, and the whole affair was dismissed.
Dr. Wilhelm Furtwängler found himself in similar difficulties because he wrote an article praising the composer Hindemith; and composers with Jewish wives, such as Lehar, Künnecke, and others who were always in difficulties because of their efforts to evade the ban placed on the performance of their works. I always succeeded in getting permission for these composers to have their works performed.
THE PRESIDENT: The defendant can say that he helped hundreds of Jews, but that does not really destroy the fact that he may have acted hostilely by signing decrees against the Jewish race—his helping a few Jewish friends. Anyhow, I do not think that it need be gone into any detail.
DR. SAUTER: We are of the opinion, Mr. President, that in order to judge the character and personality of the defendant, it may be important to know whether he signed decrees which were in any way anti-Semitic because as an official he considered himself bound by his oath to carry out the law of the land, or whether he signed them because he himself was an anti-Semite who wished to persecute Jewish citizens and to deprive them of their rights, and for this reason only...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Sauter, the Tribunal thinks that you have made the point quite clearly that he helped Jewish friends, but it isn’t a question which need be gone into in detail.
DR. SAUTER: I come now, in any case, Mr. President, to another point. I want to ask the defendant how his activities in the Propaganda Ministry developed in later years.
FUNK: In exactly the same direction that I have described here. By degrees I came to be in charge of a large cultural economic concern—film companies, broadcasting corporations, theaters. I was director and chairman of the supervisory board of the Philharmonic Orchestra and on the Council of German Economy, which dealt collectively with the economic activities in the entire economic field at home and abroad with the active participation of the economy itself. Those were the main parts of my work.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, the Prosecution has submitted under Document Number 3501-PS an affidavit by the former Reich chief of the press—I believe—Max Amann, in regard to your activities in the Propaganda Ministry. I want to refer to this now. In that affidavit, we find the statement that Dr. Funk—and I quote literally: