A discussion of Arnold Schoenberg’s so-called 12-tone compositional system in the context of late Romanticism and the ‘breakdown’ of tonality and traditional values in Europe around the time of the First World War. A new departure was here created for musical composition which remained crucial even after the Second World War. The musical developments were contextualised with literary and philosophical discussions by Thomas Mann and Theodor W. Adorno. Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw (1947) for narrator, male chorus and orchestra was used as a main musical example. Toward the end of this composition, the shema’ yisrael (Deut VI: 4–9) – regularly sung in Jewish liturgy – slowly emerges (sung in Hebrew) as a marker of Jewish identity, courage, and survival. In what way – taking up a question from Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus – can Schoenberg’s 12-tone music be understood to relate to the religious and political message in the piece?