Founded in 1856 as the Frankfurter Geschäftsbericht but
known as the Frankfurter Zeitung for most of its existence,
1866–1943, the newspaper became a major liberal forum for cultural and political
opinion, and its contributors included a great many of Germany's leading 20th-century
philosophers and novelists; many of its columnists were forced to resign when the National
Socialists came to power in 1933, and the newspaper's influence declined sharply during
the last decade of its existence. (The Frankfurter allgemeine
Zeitung is generally considered to be its successor.)
Prominent writers on music included Karl Holl, a Verdi scholar, and Paul Bekker, who was
the chief music critic from 1911 to 1923. Bekker's book Beethoven
(1911) provoked severe critical reactions from Schenker in the secondary literature
sections of his analytical essays, and his articles on music criticism for the Frankfurter Zeitung were the subject of an essay planned for Der Tonwille, issue 2 (1922) but withdrawn shortly before publication.
(For an English translation of this, see Der Tonwille, vol. 2,
ed. William Drabkin [New York: Oxford University Press, 2005], pp. 161–65.
Clippings from the Frankfurter Zeitung ranging from 1912 to 1931
are preserved in Schenker's scrapbook and file of clippings (OC 2; OC C), with articles on
music written by Hermann Wetzel, Hugo Ganz, Paul Bekker, Karl Holl, Leo Kestenberg, Artur
Bogen, B. Sekles, Bernhard Diebold, Luigi Russolo, Erich Steinhard, Eugen d'Albert, Ludwig
Rottenberg, and numerous articles on literary and other topics.
Schenker himself submitted a political diatribe entitled "German Genius in Battle and
Victory (Reflections sup specie aeternitatis)" (OJ 21/2) to the Frankfurter Zeitung on September 7,1914, and received a rejection on September
26 from the paper's editor, Rudolf Geck (OJ 11/18).