4. Clemens Krauss’ having conducted a Goldmark piece in 1934 was presented as (questionable) evidence of his denazification

[Detailed catalog text in german]

In December 1934, Clemens Krauss (1893–1954) conducted the Vienna Philharmonic as one of two conductors at the “Anniversary Concert” of the State Academy of Music and Performing Arts at the Vienna Musikverein. The concert concluded with Carl Goldmark’s “Overture to ‘Sakuntala’”. This act of conducting would be invoked nearly 20 years later to provide political exoneration for Clemens Krauss.

Photo of Clemens Krauss, 1.1.1943, Source: OeNB / Image Archive
Clemens Krauss, 1.1.1943. Source: OeNB /  Image archive.

Krauss, graduate and teacher at the mdw*, was the director of the Vienna State Opera from 1929 to 1934 At the end of 1934, he departed for Nazi Germany. He worked there until 1937 as an opera director in Berlin and then until 1944 as the general manager and music director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. From 1942, he also held the position of director of the Salzburg Festival and the Mozarteum. Krauss was thus entangled with the National Socialist regime from the very beginning, more so than most other conductors. In June 1945, following American intervention, Krauss was banned from conducting in all Allied zones for almost two years.

Krauss thus required witnesses to vouch for his political integrity. One such witness was Rudolf Hanzl (1912–1997), the director of the Vienna Philharmonic from 1946 to 1953. Hanzl (also a graduate of mdw*) selected the aforementioned “anniversary concert” as a point of exoneration for Krauss during the “denazification” process. Hanzl noted in November 1952 for the Austrian Minister of Education: “He [Krauss, F.T.] bid farewell to the Viennese audience in the concert hall in 1934, after his appointment in Berlin, with a piece by Goldmark (!) [sic]. This was hardly an indication of Nazi sympathies.”

Carl Goldmark was, in Austria in the 1930s, still a popular composer. His Jewish heritage was not discussed at the time, neither in Austria nor in Germany, which was already under National Socialist rule. This only changed in 1940 when Goldmark was listed in the “Lexicon of Jews in Music,” an anti-Semitic work. Implicitly, Hanzl thus alluded to this vitriolic National Socialist reception around 1940 and revived the stigmatisation of Goldmark as a Jewish composer solely to portray one of the most successful protegés of the National Socialist regime in the arts and culture sector as an opponent of National Socialism.