Variations on the Beast is indeed a variation. The book affords the reader a believable perspective on a historical period by means of a psychologically sophisticated account of the life-course of this novel’s protagonist.

Uncountable times I have heard a discussion of the question “How was it possible for a cultivated, cultured people to sink to the depth of supporting Nazism and participating in their heinous crimes?” The standard answers refer to the nation’s anguish over having lost the First World War, their humiliation over the Treaty of Versailles, their despair over the subsequent economic depression and monetary inflation. It is said that, traditionally raised in an authoritarian manner and taught to obey, the people welcomed a strong leader to guide them out of their morass. Moreover, they sought a scapegoat to blame for their misfortunes. Buttressed by centuries of both Lutheran and Roman Catholic teachings about the perfidy of the Jews, reinforced by propaganda and caricatures, the citizens easily found their target.

But that is not the entire story. The literature abounds with accounts of how, despite the prevailing conditions, the religiously committed who recognized the Hebrew origins of Christianity and Jesus as a Jew became rescuers. Humanists found strength to resist the Nazis. In some instances, enduring personal, sometimes intimate, relationships between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans assured mutual loyalty despite great risks: paying with one’s very life; or a mother, protecting a “love-child” sired by a Jewish father, prostituting herself to a Nazi officer.

The focus of Variations on the Beast is neither sociopolitical nor economic, nor theological. Rather, the unfolding of one individual’s character becomes the paradigm that begins to answer the question “How was it possible…?” The psychological factors that emerge from the protagonist’s behavior, his conscious and unconscious motivations, show how a person can be propelled into the maelstrom of sadism.

Variations on the Beast is flanked by an introduction, “Theme: Vienna 1960,” and an epilogue, “Finale: Vienna 1960.” It begins as the Generalmusikdirektor of the Austrian symphony and opera, Hermann Kapp-Dortmunder, raises his baton to conduct the inaugural concert of the new Wiener Festspielhaus (Vienna Festival Hall) in 1960. The talented maestro himself describes the scene—the new concert hall, the dignitaries, the program, and his own performance. His tone is critical, supercilious, self-laudatory, and grandiose. He introduces himself, describing his attractive appearance boastfully.

In contrast—no doubt having been influenced in his younger years by the ambient German culture—the Generalmusikdirektor leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind about his devaluing attitude toward Jews. Objecting to the sound of the newly built concert hall, he opines, “So bright, so naked, so lacking in mystery!… It’s all typical American hyperexposure. Who but they could have seized with such indecent haste upon Freud and his Jewish friends to make a public pastime of licking each other’s psychic sores?”

For the evening’s program, the Direktor reports, “The Society for Austrian Culture…had dredged up from God-knows-where a certain spindly, hook-nosed gentleman, Nussbaum by name…one of those professional survivors who seem to manage well while many a brave soldier who has bled for the Fatherland must do things that would make his mother blush in order to live.” Kapp-Dortmunder describes the “diplomatic” way in which he managed to avoid playing Nussbaum’s cantata at the inaugural concert.

Kapp-Dortmunder introduces the reader to his elegant, cryptic second wife, Margot, whose smile “has the capacity to depress” him for days. He doesn’t know why that is, although he states that he takes “great pride in knowing myself extremely well, but I do not care to have others know me. Not even Margot. Particularly not Margot.”

At the end of the book, the events during the hours following the spectacularly successful inaugural concert point to the nature of the relationship between the Generalmusikdirektor and his inscrutable Margot. It is cold, mutually exploitative, and frustratingly unsatisfactory to Hermann Kapp-Dortmunder, so needy of admiration and attention.

Eleven Variations lead the reader through the life and personal development of the bastard son of Wilhelm Kapp, a “minor official in the tax office at Szombathely, Hungary,” and his orphaned mother, Lukäcs Maria Terézia, who did housework for a shopkeeper. The 17-year-old Maria Terézia took refuge in a convent during her pregnancy and remained there with her son until Wilhelm married her four years later. At the convent the young boy’s musical talent was recognized, and his mother began to teach him to play the piano.

Kapp’s career and his admission to the musical conservatory in Vienna owed much to the charitable interest, sponsorship, and connections of several influential individuals. Were they Jewish? Probably. Did Kapp acknowledge that? No. Later, did he remember to visit or support his poor mother, who had grown “pale and thin” during the boy’s youth while his “plate was kept full”? No.

Father Kapp had been sent to do his military service in 1915 and was not heard from thereafter. Thus Hermann—or Ferenc as his Hungarian mother preferred to call him—had her all to himself. He was her hope and her pride. As well, he became the center of attention of his teacher, Madame Polkovsa, the retired concert pianist. So grew the expectation that his welfare and career remain his mother’s, his teacher’s, the world’s concern. As if arrested in psychological infancy, Hermann finds that other people’s importance oscillates with their ability to fulfill his needs and promote his career.

The novel’s plot includes a love story with a tragic ending. It describes a competition with a fellow student who, to Hermann’s satisfaction, takes a leave of absence due to illness. Upon the competitor’s return Hermann looks on as he is beaten to death because, it turns out, he is Jewish. (Even in 1960 Kapp confesses to his competitive spirit: “Don’t think I haven’t got my eye on my old rival, von Karajan, in Berlin.”) In a state of jealousy during his student days, an impulsive act with potentially harmful effects on other people incurs the opprobrium of a nightclub whore. The teachers at the conservatory turn away from him; he is dismissed.

Subsequently, when he becomes assistant conductor in Düsseldorf, Kapp changes his name to something he considers more dignified, more fitting to his sense of grandness. There, in Düsseldorf, he threatens the homosexual son of the orchestra’s benefactor, and slyly he induces a woman with status and money—so he imagines—to marry him to advance his career. When two orchestra members appeal to him to intervene on their behalf because, as Jews, they would be dismissed from their jobs, he declines.

Increasingly, the immensely talented musician, Hermann Kapp-Dortmunder, reveals himself to the people around him, and to the reader, as ambitious, self-centered, scheming, and unempathic.

The climax of the story involves the fate of the relationship with a woman with whom Kapp has been carrying on an affair. Toward the end of the war, she confesses she is a Jewess surviving underground. Kapp is injured during an air raid. After the war, he is interrogated at a Nürnberg-style trial. The judgment, how it was arrived at, and Kapp’s almost unbelievably callous arrangement for the aftermath form the stunning conclusion of the “Eleventh Variation: Munich 1946.”

Hermann Kapp-Dortmunder was not an active perpetrator—he did not beat up his competitor at the conservatory. He was not a rescuer—he did not help his orchestra players. He was not a helpless, innocent bystander—as the end of the book reveals.

Hermann Kapp-Dortmunder was not of an age to vote for Hitler, nor was he born in Germany, where he would have joined the Hitler Youth. He was not anti-Semitic as a result of religious upbringing, nor, on the other hand, was he influenced by religious morality. His devaluation of Jews served his grandiosity. Diminishing others protected him from his personal shame: the out-of-wedlock birth, his poverty-stricken home, and perhaps also the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

When Hermann Kapp-Dortmunder was not exploiting the Jews who crossed his path, he participated passively with their persecution to protect or to advance his career. His only concern was his own well-being. He is narcissistic, unfeeling, ambitious. His considerable musical talents and accomplishments feed his grandiosity and sense of entitlement.

Variations on the Beast demonstrates how one individual’s character—and, one can surmise in smaller measure, the personality of many others—abetted the Holocaust.

In this work, Henry Grinberg manifests erudition in music and psychoanalysis, and a comfortable acquaintance with several languages. He has given us a fascinating, gripping, easy-to-read novel."

— Charlotte Kahn, The Psychoanalytic Review, December 2008 (Vol. 95, No. 6)