In 1930, Schulhoff, together with Otto Rombach (1904-1984), a dramatic author,
writer, and journalist with the Frankfurter Zeitung, wrote the Jazz Oratorio “H.M.S.
Royal Oak.” In Rombach’s words, it was intended to be “an attempt at finding a
form for a radio play which not be limited to the radio.”
Rombach introduced his work in the radio magazine FUNK (May 1931) in the following words: “The unpredictable history of the world has provided us with the grotesque material which needed to be put into literary form: the sailors aboard an English battleship, the H.M.S. Royal Oak, were informed by their admiral that jazz music would be forbidden from that day forward. An open mutiny followed; but it was the admiral and not the mutinous crew who was indicted, a judgment which was in no small part due to the pressure of public opinion, typical of the English people.”
The inspiration for this piece was an actual event dating from 1928. On the H.M.S
Royal Oak, an enormous ship of 189 meters, which had been sailing the ocean
since 1915, a violent quarrel had arisen among three officers about the music
played by a small band in the officers’ mess. The dispute grew completely out
of control and the men involved ended up in a court-martial. The entire affair was
widely publicized in the world press.
The work received its premiere on the Frankfurter Rundfunk on May 9, 1931. The
first staged performance was a year later at the “Junge Bühne” in Breslau. After
the broadcast, the Frankfurt radio station offered the recording to other radio
stations, but without success: apparently people were afraid that glorification of
jazz, even in a tragi-comic setting, would upset the listening audience.
Ten years later, on October 14, 1939, the ship was sunk off the coast of Scotland by German torpedos; 833 men lost their lives.
Syncopated discipline recital on the 'Royal Oak' Cartoon in 'The Evening Standard', March 20, 1928
