Geächtet, verboten, vertrieben: Österreichische Musiker 1934–1938–1945 ed. by Hartmut Krones (review)

Krones has assembled a wide-ranging set of essays on composers, performing musicians, managers, and publishers who were, as the title says, ostracized, barred from professional activity, or driven out during the two consecutive periods of Austrian fascism, the years of the Ständestaat and those of National Socialism. He hastens to discourage direct comparison between the “mere” stringency of the first period and the monstrosity of the second, but parallels are depressingly consistent through similar techniques of defamation, denial of funding or confiscation of existing resources, and blockage of access to publication and performance. The essays, most of them addresses from various conferences in Vienna, Linz, New York, Mexico City, and Jalapa—all under the auspices of the “Wissenschaft szentrum Arnold Schönberg” and other institutions—are arranged roughly chronologically from the Austrian civil war of February 1934 to the defeat of Nazism in April 1945.

The first division addresses the politics of the corporative state, its activities given prominence because it moved so aggressively to stifle the music of the Second Vienna School, as it is known, by ensuring that its composers could not make a living (10) and by emptying the treasuries of the organizations that sustained them. Krones establishes the point in a long and minutely detailed essay (39–116). Anita Mayer-Hirzberger documents further how many musicians were forced to emigrate well before March 1938 in “. . . tausende Emigranten in allen benachbarten Ländern . . . : Zur Auswanderung ‘linker’ Musiker in der Zeit des österreichischen Ständestaates” (117–28). The essay by Matt hias Schmidt, “Freiheit und Legitimität: Ernst Krenek und die Kulturpolitik des Ständestaates” (129–41), may be of special interest to scholars of literature, because Krenek’s simultaneous drive toward experiments like dodecaphonism, which aroused official distrust, and self-definition through Austrian tradition, such as his requisitioning Schubert in his song cycle Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen, proved untenable in a regime that dictated the form, theme, and content of works of art. Identifying with Schubert’s need to depict das Unwiederbringliche, laboring under anxiety about clearly imminent massive changes, Krenek developed the same kind of conservative, anti-progressive attitude that came to characterize Franz Werfel and Karl Kraus during the same era; Krenek subscribed to authoritarian rule and to the österreichische Idee of the former monarchy’s civilizing mission at the very moment when he was being defamed as a “Kulturbolschewik” (133). Indicatively, his opera Karl V., which dates from those years, was first performed only decades later, and against widespread passive opposition, at the Vienna State Opera.

The essays on music under National Socialism (143–284) do not require as much specification here, since they scarcely cover new ground, though Hugo Schanovsky’s work on Linz during that era (197–201) adds considerable detail. Before taking up the topic of emigration itself, two methodological essays provide a kind of interlude; these are Claudia Maurer Zenck’s “Einige Überlegungen zur musikwissenschaftlichen Exilforschung” (251–58) and Horst Weber’s “Exilforschung und Musikgeschichtsschreibung” (259–84). Three places of exile are examined: Great Britain (373–433) and the United States (435–502), as one would expect, but also a section on Austrian musicians in Latin America (503–62). Finally, two essays about life in the concentration camps, one general and one specifically about the vocal works Viktor Ullmann composed in Theresianstadt, end the main contributions. In addition to his foreword, Krones precedes the main contributions with a helpful overview, “12. Februar 1934 bis 27. April 1945: 4092 Tage Ächtung, Verbot, Vertreibung und Ermordung österreichischer Musik(er)” (13–27) and concludes them with a Podiumsdiskussion held at a conference in Vienna (593–608).

Despite its merits, this book is a strange compendium. We learn, for example, that none other than the seemingly model Nazi married couple, Kle-mens Krauss and Viorica Ursuleac, were instrumental in protecting and helping Jewish colleagues, but this relatively new information is offered in an essay that mainly...