VIENNA — To mark the 75th anniversary of Austria’s annexation in the German Third Reich, the Vienna Philharmonic has released the first results of a high profile, independent commission’s research into the philharmonic’s own entanglement with Nazi politics.
The commission, led by Oliver Rathkolb, released a report that stated, “Politics were forced upon the Philharmonic in the most brutal manner: The Nazis dismissed all Jewish members of the Vienna State Opera and broke up the Vienna Philharmonic altogether,” as the latter is a subsidiary of the opera’s orchestra. Through the intervention of Wilhelm Furtwänger — the Phil’s renowned conductor who had earned the admiration of Hitler himself — at least two members of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra were spared from dismissal and deportation to concentration camps.
However, five members of the orchestra and philharmonic did die in camps. Two of their colleagues were killed in Vienna during attempts to deport them, and nine were exiled from the Reich. Through their research the commission was able to provide a brief history of each one of these individuals, chronicling their time in the Philharmonic.
Most of this information has already been published. Some of the more detailed findings, however, include the histories of 11 members who were of mixed racial background or had Jewish spouses, including the pair, Hugo Burghauser and Leopold Förderl, who Furtwänger was able to spare. Though they were allowed to continue to play after the annexation, these 11 lived in something of an in-between status.
They had been granted special permits to remain both in Vienna and as members of the orchestra, but at any moment those permits could be revoked, in which case they would be sent to exile or to their deaths. Certainly not helping their mental state was the increase in allegiance to the Nazi party within the orchestra. At the time of annexation in 1938, only around 20 percent of the musicians were party members. By 1942, that number had risen to nearly half, 60 of the then 123-member Phil.
English translations of the reports and member-biographies are still in process but will be published here in the coming weeks.