How Nazis misused Mozart’s legacy
The research work has not yet been completed with the material now presented. The origin of many objects owned by the foundation is still unclear, it is said. At the same time, today’s foundation committees identify a lot of “need for action in honoring people” who were involved with the NS regime or stuck in NS thinking.
Many downplayed their participation
After 1945, many of those involved in the Mozarteum Foundation benefited from the general trend towards trivialization and oblivion. They successfully managed to downplay their role in the Nazi regime and its devastating cultural policy.
“In previous historical accounts, the period of National Socialism appeared as a mere episode that hardly changed anything in the ongoing history of the foundation and its merits for the care of Mozart,” says the foreword. After the war, Mozart was de facto reversed from being a “German genius” to being an Austrian again.
New book about the Mozarteum Foundation
On the other hand, the anthology created under the academic guidance of the contemporary historians Alexander Pinwinkler and Oliver Rathkolb attempts to show that the politicization of the leading figures and their interdependence with state institutions and those in power were stronger in the “Third Reich” than they were before and probably also afterwards.
Mozart as an “Aryan” hero
Various institutions of the foundation come into view as well as the then “showpiece project” of a planned complete edition of the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sponsored by Adolf Hitler. All in all, the Mozarteum Foundation gained importance in the “Third Reich”, the authors find themselves – which essentially went hand in hand with a political propagation of Mozart and his music as allegedly genuinely “German” and “Aryan”.
The term “International” has been removed
This becomes clear, for example, in the person of Albert Reitter, governor of Salzburg, who was appointed president of the foundation after the Anschluss and who assigned it a special role in Nazi cultural policy that went far beyond Salzburg. The adjective “International” was removed from the name, the “Aryan paragraph” was included in the statutes and the foundation was organized in an authoritarian manner according to the Führer principle. “The foundation is trying to benefit from the new conditions in terms of cultural policy,” said co-publisher Pinwinkler.
Art theft from the Jewish population
During the Nazi period there were also intensive efforts to requisition Mozart memorabilia for the foundation and to expand the collection – also under duress. “The target was Jewish collectors or antiquarians who were denied the right to own valuable objects such as Mozart autographs,” explained Armin Brinzing, director of the aforementioned Bibliotheca Mozartiana: “The question was which objects were in the belongings of the foundation, where they came from and whether previous owners were subjected to repression by the Nazi state.”
The research has not yet brought to light a case of looted art. However, the origin of the objects needs to be researched more closely – also because there is often hardly any satisfactory information about the previous owners.
What needs to be returned?
However, the investigations into provenance research have not yet been completed. However, the investigations of the past few years have shown a need for restitution for a number of objects that came from the monastery library of the Salzburg monastery of St. Peter, but were never returned – a step that is now to be officially taken in the coming weeks.
book reference
Alexander Pinwinkler and Oiver Rathkolb (eds.): The International Mozarteum Foundation and National Socialism. Pustet Verlag, 456 pages, 49 euros
“Solutions were found here with the institutions most affected,” said Erich Marx, a member of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees. There is also a need for action when honoring people who held important positions during the Nazi era. The foundation will therefore develop a catalog of criteria that will serve as a benchmark for the recognition of awards and honors.
Austrofascism is also under scrutiny
The catalog should not only be limited to the years 1938 to 1945, but should generally examine the authoritarian attitudes of individual actors – for example in the Austrofascist era. “However, this process will take time,” stressed Marx.