An Austrofascist Bruckner

Just over thirty years ago, in the pages of The Musical Quarterly, there appeared a shocking image from Regensburg in 1937: a marble bust of Anton Bruckner, drawn in far sharper lines than in real life, on a pedestal decked with Nazi insignia. Standing to one side is a humbled Adolf Hitler in full uniform, hands clasped, gazing on contemplatively. Many, I speculate, had no idea that Bruckner was of such great interest to National Socialism and its culture industry. It was Wagner who was supposed to be Hitler’s favorite composer, not the bumbling, long-winded symphonist from somewhere in provincial Austria, the confused Wagner wannabe. The article that accompanied this image, Bryan Gilliam’s “The Annexation of Anton Bruckner,” set about demonstrating the appropriation of Bruckner in the political context of the Third Reich in 1936–38, Bruckner’s place in plans for mobilization, domestic propaganda, and secularization. Gilliam’s claims were reinforced by an accompanying translation of Goebbels’s speech on the installing of the Bruckner bust; they were further broadcast by their appearance, again with the same Hitler image, in the US national press.1 Certainly this was compelling musicological scholarship, offering insights into Bruckner’s entanglement in politics, and, more broadly, the links between art music and extreme ideologies. Its implication, however, was of a specific power relationship. On the one side stood Hitler’s Germany as aggressor and annexor, rattling its sabre around Bruckner as a “launching point” for territorial expansion and annexation. On the other was little Austria, the soon-to-be annexed, first sovereign “victim” of German fascism. Beyond Bruckner himself it was Austria and Austrians in Gilliam’s account, and indeed many others who had suffered appropriation. The rurality of Bruckner’s Austrian background fed Nazi theories of racial purity, while prominent Austrian Bruckner scholars—like Max Auer, president of the International Bruckner Society—saw their work adulterated by Goebbels’s speechwriters. Infamously, Vienna became a playground for Nazi concert practices like the “darkness concerts,” and it was Bruckner the Austrian who required “resurrection from the ashes of Nazi propaganda” after the war’s end.2 In Gilliam’s subsequent debates with the Austrian musicologist Manfred Wagner, both scholars drew corrective attention to the fact that this history was hardly so neat.3 Austrians, not least Auer, had been deeply implicated in curating this Nazi Bruckner, and moreover, the 1937 appropriation was in some ways unremarkable, one only in a long series of seizures of Bruckner by German nationalists, extending back into the composer’s lifetime and possibly with his assent—and thus raising the question of how meaningful the term “appropriation” actually is. Yet, in establishing this historiography as normative, Gilliam and Wagner inevitably also de-emphasized the simultaneous period of Bruckner reception in Austria: namely, from the suspension of its national parliament in March 1933 up until the Nazi annexation five years later, under the successive chancellorships of Engelbert Dollfuss (1933–34) and Kurt Schuschnigg (1934–38). To understand this so-called Austrofascist period is to shed a different light on the power relationship between Germany and Austria. It is also to broach a subject that remains both contentious and underexplored. Scholars of music and interwar fascism have typically focused on Italy and Germany, for which cases the term “fascism” seems more immediately apt. Indeed, one sometimes senses a dismissive attitude toward the Dollfuss and Schuschnigg regimes: Roger Griffin’s preferred label “para-fascist,” for example, questions both their political identity and their effectiveness—or, for want of a better word, their “success.”4 This is nowhere more the case than in the cultural field, where Austrofascist transformations hardly had time to get going across a fraught five-year expanse, a short time compared to the ventennio of Italian Fascism or the twelve years of German National Socialism. There was never, for example, an Austrian federal cultural chamber to rival Goebbels’s infamous institution in Germany. The danger here is that we risk allowing ends to conceal means. The lack of tangible results should not obscure processes that were intended to energize and mobilize a populist consensus about Austrian national culture, or that reinforced Austria’s cultural hegemony as Hitler and Mussolini bore down on its political importance. The culture chamber never came to be, yet that fact should not overshadow the discussions about it at Austrian parliamentary level from about 1930 onward, nor the rapid formation around 1933 of small regulative bodies with names like Kunststelle (artistic agency) and Kulturamt (cultural office). Nor should we overlook the alignment—forced or willing—of major Viennese musical institutions immediately after Dollfuss’s seizure of power, or the close attention of Schuschnigg’s regime to the honoring of Gustav Mahler through patronage of Schuschnigg’s close personal friend Bruno Walter, two artists vilified in Nazi Germany for their Jewish heritage.5 This article seeks, then, to highlight the reception—or better, “projection”—of Bruckner within the five years of Austrofascism, insofar as it can be distinguished from Nazi German sources or their direct affiliates in Austria. Again, this is a subject that has been only lightly studied, possibly because of a lack of sources, but also possibly because the Nazi Bruckner looms threateningly in the foreground. All the same, an “Austrofascist Bruckner” is a cogent line of inquiry. As Anita Mayer-Hirzberger has remarked, the myriad nineteenth-century anecdotes about the credulous, intuitive, yet resolute Bruckner in some ways outlined the stereotypical Austrian character they had helped to shape.6 Thus Bruckner was a far more obvious and ideological target for Austrofascism, one might say, than Mahler, whose afterlife in Austria depended on Schuschnigg’s personal affections that held ingrained antisemitism at bay. The storied devotion of Bruckner’s Catholic faith, meanwhile, accorded well with the clerical emphases of Austrofascism and the intertwining of the political elite with the Catholic Church, and made him more viable for politics than his distant forebears Schubert, Mozart, and Haydn. The challenge for Austrofascist ideologues was to make Bruckner a meaningful symbol for contemporary Austrians on a mass scale, a “poster-boy” (to use an anachronistic, though not entirely inappropriate term) as much in performative and commemorative acts as on the printed page. Ernst Bloch’s theory of “non-synchronism” (Ungleichzeitigkeit) provides useful insight here. According to Bloch, interwar fascists were adept, far more so than their adversaries, at exploiting the crisis-clamor around “incomplete pasts [unerledigte Vergangenheit]” and fraudulently promising their realization; this effort was key to fascism’s popular appeal.7 Perhaps there was no greater figurehead of Ungleichzeitigkeit than Bruckner, and no one whose music better expressed its emotional tenor: the Austrian peasant schoolteacher whose career collided with the modern Viennese critical establishment; the composer of Baroque Catholic splendor whose symphonies somehow embraced the ultramodern harmonies of the urban concert hall. Undoubtedly, as Gilliam demonstrated, these competing facets played into the imaginary of Nazi German fascism. But simultaneously they made their appeal to, and helped to sound out, the Austrofascist worldview. The Bruckner-Festtage took place in the Upper Austrian capital of Linz and in the nearby town of St. Florian in late July of 1935. This was a festival week combining concerts and other events, the first large-scale instance of what has proven to be an almost continuous tradition of public Bruckner commemoration in Upper Austria to the present day. Figure 1 gives a reconstructed outline program.8 Reconstructed program for Bruckner-Festtage (Linz and St. Florian), July 1935. Perhaps the most conspicuous feature of this program is the attempt to establish a brand: “Kunst und Kultur im Bruckner-Land” (Art and Culture in Bruckner-Land), a phrase that appeared throughout the national press. Bruckner’s birth and presence in Upper Austria, including living in Linz and St. Florian for long stretches, meant that his name could serve as a credible synecdoche for the entire Bundesland (federal region). The program also makes clear that the Festtage were not dedicated to Bruckner alone, but were instead intended to place him as an advertisement for his cultural environs. The exhibition at the Linz Landesmuseum allowed visitors to view images of the local landscape alongside composer paraphernalia, while the Heimatabend at the end of the week presented regional folk culture, incorporating dance, song, costume, and the performance of an orchestral fantasy by the living Upper Austrian composer Wilhelm Kienzl.9 The question is, to whom was this package being promoted? One obvious answer is the eyes and ears of the world, already trained on the comparable honoring of Mozart at the highly successful Salzburg Festival, now established for some fifteen years as the artistic-ideological home of “Austrianness.”10 As in Salzburg, an army of international journalists was invited to Linz, including a special contingent from Mussolini’s Italy and a correspondent from the Vatican: they were received by the city’s mayor at the scenic Pöstlingberg hill on its outskirts, and given a tour of the nearby abbey of Kremsmünster and other sites of Brucknerian biographical significance.11 Moreover, Bruno Walter’s Friday night concert, as the Austrian radio authority boasted, was broadcast to some thirty-five stations around Europe, including stations in Norway, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, and Hungary.12 Note that this was meager compared to the transmission of the Salzburg Festival, which reached many hundreds of stations worldwide. Even so, the “International Bruckner Celebration,” as one report dubbed it, participated in a critical belief: “Die Welt hört Österreich” (The world is listening to Austria).13 Brand Bruckner drew alongside Mozart in outwardly demonstrating Austria’s continuing cultural significance and leadership; Linz joined Salzburg and Vienna as bastions of Austrian cultural supremacy—as a true “ventricle [Herzkammer] of culture,” in the Upper Austria state governor’s phrase.14 Yet the Bruckner-Festtage were undoubtedly intended to be just as significant in an inward-facing direction, as both a regional and federal symbol for Austrians themselves to observe. This is clear from the nationwide radio broadcasts of many of the festival’s musical performances, and the tantalizing sense of presence these evoked; one reporter describes the pregnant pause as the national radio connection was established at St. Florian. It is also evident in the literal presence of Austrofascist federal dignitaries who arrived to patronize these events (and, reports hint, used their influence in bringing them into existence in the first place). The list of these is long: it includes the federal president Wilhelm Miklas, greeted in Linz with much fanfare; the education minister Hans Pernter and other members of the federal cabinet; Fanny Starhemberg, the mother of Ernst, leader of the Vaterländische Front (Patriotic Front, the only political organization permitted in Austria); and Cardinal Innitzer, head of the Austrian Catholic Church.15 Amid excited reports of these visitors, the press indulges in the imagery of national community, especially for the program’s landmark symphonic event. The Linz Festhalle was allegedly packed to the rafters with some 3,000 people, exceeding all expectations for the summer recess, who had come to hear Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic, the former said to be cultivating a reputation in Austria as a Bruckner conductor.16 One report speaks vividly of the long line of automobiles—from humble hire cars and regional buses to swank limousines—that swept up the streets toward the venue, and the “zealous public” that swarmed out of them, “primed for experience [aufnahmsbereit] and to give their adulation.”17 On account of reports like this, it might seem that this regional Bruckner concert became a key site for the experience of Austrian nationalism. To emphasize this would be entirely in keeping with the regionalism of the Heimwehr, the paramilitary “home guard,” established across Austria’s provinces to protect its revised borders at the end of World War I, and gradually becoming a political force intertwined with the dominant Christian Social party and the Austrofascist regime that emerged from it in the early 1930s.18 According to the Heimwehr ethos, one does not find out what Austria is, or consists of, by sitting in metropolitan Vienna, the state’s political heart. Rather, one begins at Austria’s fringes—in, for example, Bruckner-Land—and takes that experience to its center. Indeed, this was a project in which Bruckner’s music could assist. Romantic visions of Bruckner’s symphonies as the music of the Austrian landscape had been rife since he composed them and have remained so ever since. But it is in certain texts from the post-1933 period that these visions become acutely politicized around the building of a German-Austrian community in Austria. It is not difficult, for example, in the Bruckner writings of Alfred Orel and Max Auer to find characterizations of his music as lacking in “Slavic ecstasy” or the sounds of the urban metropolis.19 An Austrofascist propaganda volume, meanwhile, titled Helden der Ostmark (Heroes of Austria, literally “of the Eastern Marches,” a medieval term for Austria also adopted by National Socialism), incorporates an essay on Bruckner as “der Musikant by the Viennese music of the great of Austrian and in to his of other he could hardly Bruckner’s symphonies as by in were full of sometimes the is not about and its is by Jewish Rather, the is one of place and of his in Bruckner not in Vienna, but as he through the the from to the the and the his on his and the of an peasant begins in public in Austrian It out to be a to a so well understand all that I about to The was not an obvious of commemoration for Bruckner, not a of years since his birth or It seems certain that the Upper Austria Bruckner-Festtage were to with the of one since the of the first Austrofascist Engelbert at the hands of Austrian National on July Thus national commemoration takes on a more and It Bruckner and to from the provincial in his case the small town of in Austria. this over such as in the state governor’s to the press at the Pöstlingberg for the Austrian especially the one who was great in and became the in it is Hans of the Upper Austrian the at his he to Dollfuss in of a bust of As up this at St. to Bruckner, and the Austrian in Bruckner as a a leader for Austria Just like Bruckner, Austria suffered of birth at of by and by just to the But the of this Austria, a great the of Austria and to the this and all is This great had to the of a But into his place a took up the from the of the held it and drew all to his in the and of Austria. Bruckner just as Austria had Bruckner, all in his but he was so Austria be it for its in the same place as Anton it does not that its is not to or but to it does not the was not to but to Austria’s is to give of its to its and cultural and the of its in Certainly the is there is no account of Bruckner’s the is years later, would the of the of within the of Vienna and German culture on the other the around the sovereign of a more and the Nazi was to the Bruckner, to him from and the Austrofascist is to mobilize him as a national and of the of whose presence gives the its emotional and to the Austrian and its place contemporary politics, with an on cultural than Bruckner’s nineteenth-century an toward the present under the Austrofascist and what they into the of Austrofascist with Bruckner on the commemoration of his in Vienna in As the program outline in makes this was one boasted, all of Bruckner’s work be In Vienna, what was in regional was in to musical and cultural the same as had in the of Bruckner’s Moreover, the of the Austrian was in the and national and public were to to to not least at the and that the in Linz the outline for the Bruckner lightly in Linz in in Vienna, these events as the in its series of major Bruckner place across Austria and, Germany. This is significant by late it a National presence in both and what was the public and the Austrian Schuschnigg’s political with Hitler in the The for example, Hans and both artists in in Nazi Germany. a party since 1933 and subsequent of a account of in the at the the Perhaps this for the first lines of the given by the Hans Pernter at the an of the festival with obvious political the of and a composed Bruckner Pernter by no than Bruckner Austria’s Austrian in all its the and of the Austrian in his the again the for Austrian and for the Austrian to this great Austrian in and and to his name and his work on entire people, not least its This sounds and of the term which is in fact not at Its to Austrian is given that Schuschnigg had just the of in Germany and subsequent of Bruckner’s meanwhile, is not a of as in some German including Goebbels’s Bruckner speech of a Rather, it is one of and in early up in the world of the within the of the at St. which up for him the world of Catholic and Catholic culture in all its and of his were for his entire Indeed, Pernter this personal toward Bruckner’s musical and, as in the at Linz, by a toward the Austrofascist national held to the in his This him he was by his in which and stood in to the and for power of Bruckner’s time in which a for the of the through the has of Bruckner’s work and his The of his symphonies the of time in an that to Mayer-Hirzberger has the of here as an on urban culture, as to the of Bruckner’s early It would be no great to it as an on and as a It is, in that a of Austrofascism by its under the of Yet in the context of this it one further Schuschnigg’s Austria Hitler’s Germany. The might be the and the political and the its of like But it is the the and the and where with Bruckner at all other and in all other it is only in the Austria, not in Nazi Germany, that can be There significant of between the Austrofascist Bruckner and his German National as by Goebbels’s 1937 speech at It is not to find that the speech with in some of Austria, not least to its of the composer as the who from all Even so, we might the of in these propaganda In both Austria and Germany, Bruckner was through a to the state project of The Bruckner and their honoring of the Bruckner for example, in which a Catholic of the idea of Linz into in by Hitler and his was already in in Austria, as one on the Linz commemoration Indeed, it be that the term “appropriation” can be to label the seizure of the Austrofascist Bruckner for the of the 1937 Nazi German Yet, since “appropriation” inevitably a party it would be better to more of the by which and from one state to in interwar and the the of in such is from the Italy, Hitler’s the such as the of Dollfuss and But in the specific case of Bruckner as a state it seems the other the were to on the propaganda of a musical they as their national on of and commemoration in the To use a phrase from Ernst Bloch’s of the of the Bruckner was thus one of of an cultural that these Austrofascist to on a mass popular and to to as of the national As such it an for the more infamous Bruckner propaganda of National which the composer as a of demonstrating Austria’s within German national