Vienna Philharmonic will admit dark Nazi past

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception


The world-famous Vienna Philharmonic orchestra will lift the lid on its Nazi-era past following years of accusations of a cover-up. Details will be published on 13 musicians who were driven out because of their Jewish origin or relations after Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 – five of whom died in concentration camps. It will also be admitted that ostracism of Jewish musicians had begun even before 1938.

‘It was known whether somebody had Jewish roots or a Jewish wife,’ said historian Bernadette Mayrhofer.

The orchestra has further promised to give more details about a ring of honour it presented in 1942 to Baldur von Schirach, a Nazi governor of Vienna who oversaw the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews.

A replacement for the ring, which Schirach lost, may have been delivered to him in the 1960s, after his release from prison for crimes against humanity, according to Harald Walser, a Green member of Austria’s parliament. Austria took several decades after World War II to acknowledge and voice regret for its central role in Hitler’s Third Reich and Holocaust.

Dark origins: The New Year's Concert originated as a propaganda instrument in 1939 to promote Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels' desired image of Vienna

The country will solemnly mark the 75th anniversary tomorrow of its annexation by Nazi Germany. The Vienna Philharmonic is best known for its annual New Year Concert, a Strauss waltz extravaganza broadcast to an audience of more than 50million in 80 countries.
F
ew realise that the concert originated as a propaganda instrument under Nazi rule in 1939.
The orchestra rarely played the music of the Strauss family, known for the Blue Danube and numerous other waltzes, before this period.The New Year Concert helped promote Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’s desired image of Vienna.
He wrote in his diaries that the Austrian capital should be seen as a city of ‘culture, music, optimism and conviviality’. Fritz Truempi, one of three historians commissioned by the orchestra to produce articles on its Nazi era which will be published on its website, said: ‘The New Year Concert was invented under the Nazis.’

■ Nearly half the population of Austria – the birthplace of Adolf Hitler– think that there were ‘positive aspects’ to Nazi rule, according to a poll.
And 54 per cent think if there were no law forbidding Nazis they would be ‘successful’ in elections. The results of the survey have shocked academics who say they are proof that Austria still has not come to terms with its Nazi past.
German troops marched into Austria on March 12, 1938 and the terror which befell the Jews in Vienna was far worse than anything which had taken place up until that time in Germany.  Austria housed one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps – Mauthausen – where 200,000 people were murdered, worked to death or subjected to terrible medical experiments.

Solemn: Austria is preparing to mark the 75th anniversary of its annexation by Nazi Germany in March 1938 when Hitler took the salute in a victory parade in Vienna