Why did the Nazis label the music of the New Vienna school as degenerate art?

The Nazi regime labeled the music of the New Vienna school—which included composers such as Anton Webern, Arnold Schoenberg, and Alban Berg—as "degenerate art" and "cultural Bolshevism" as part of their broader campaign to suppress modernism and eliminate Jewish influence from German cultural life.12

The Nazis viewed the experimental, atonal nature of this music as a threat to their ideological standards of art, which favored traditional tonality and nationalist aesthetics. By branding these works as degenerate, the regime sought to enforce cultural conformity and justify the banning of performances by these composers. This policy was a direct manifestation of the regime's intolerance toward intellectual and artistic freedom, reflecting a moral failure to respect the diversity of human expression.1