- •Vienna Philharmonic
- •Precursors and formation
- •The era of subscription conductors: 1860–1933
- •Postwar era to present
- •Instruments: At least a part of the characteristic sound of the Vienna Philharmonic has been attributed to the use of instruments that differ from those used by other major orchestras:
- •Orchestral membership of women and non-European ethnicities
- •Period under National Socialism
Period under National Socialism
The Vienna Philharmonic was for decades accused of withholding or suppressing information about its connections in the mid-20th-century to the Nazi Party. The first orchestral representative to discuss the issue was Clemens Hellsberg (also trained as a musicologist), when he wrote the orchestra’s official sesquicentennial history, Demokratie der Könige(Democracy of Kings),. In it he determined that at the end of World War II 47% of orchestra members belong to the Nazi Party or affiliates (the total number is now known to be 49%), that upon the Anschluss thirteen Jewish players were fired, that six of them were murdered (the number is now known to be seven), and "that the VPO once gave a concert in an SS barracks." But more remained to be investigated and made public, and access to relevant material in the orchestra's archives was highly restricted. Hellsberg, who became the orchestra’s president in 1997, did not have full access to the archives until 2000/2001, and the historian Fritz Trümpi reports that when he began researching the orchestra's Third Reich activities in 2003 and requested access, he "was rebuffed by the management of the orchestra with a firm 'no' ... the idea that external researchers could come and root around in their archive was long considered taboo." Trümpi was granted access in 2007, but other researchers reported continued exclusion, such as Bernadette Mayrhoffer in 2008; the Austrian newspaper Die Presse reported in 2008 (in Sebastian Huebel's summary) that "scholars have had difficulties investigating the Vienna Philharmonic as they were not allowed access to the archives, or sources were delivered reluctantly and with timely delays."
The 2013 New Year's Day concert evoked critical discussion of the issue in the Austrian press and from Austrian parliamentarian Harald Walser. Shortly thereafter, Hellsberg commissioned an independent panel of three historians – Trümpi, his dissertation adviser Oliver Rathkolb (a professor at the University of Vienna), and Bernadette Mayrhofer – to fully investigate the orchestra's Third Reich activities and (to quote the orchestra’s Facebook feed), "in the spirit of transparency," publish the results on the orchestra's website. The panel was given unrestricted access to the archives. Rathkolb told an interviewer, "We were able to find new documents in a cellar, which normally contained archived music. It was an orchestra member who directed us to it."
On March 10, 2013—a date chosen to precede March 12, the 75th anniversary of the Third Reich's union with Austria, the Anschluss—the panel published its findings in a set of reports posted on the orchestra's website at. Among the panel's findings are:
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Before the Anschluss in the mid-1930s Rathkolb writes in the introduction to the main webpage, "20% of the members of the orchestra belonged to the Nazi party." Former Vienna State Opera Secretary-General Ioan Holender notes that these members joined out of conviction, rather than for professional advancement, as party membership was illegal in Austria at the time.
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By the orchestra's centennial in 1942, Rathkolb writes, "60 of the 123 active [Vienna Philharmonic] orchestral musicians had become members of the [Nazi Party]" –that is, 48.8%. Two were members of the SS. By contrast, in the other major German-speaking orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, Trümpi found that "barely 20%" were party members. For further comparison, party membership in Austria as a whole was 10%.
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The thirteen Jewish members of the orchestra were expelled upon the Anschluss. Six of them escaped into exile; the other seven were killed – five in concentration camps, and two while still in Vienna, writes Rathkolb, "as a direct result of attempted deportation and persecution."
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Rathkolb writes, "A total of nine orchestra members were driven into exile [including the six Jewish members noted above] ... The eleven remaining orchestra members who were married to Jewish women or stigmatized as 'half-Jewish' lived under the constant threat of revocation of their 'special permission.' ... It was only the intervention of Wilhelm Furtwängler and other individuals which ... with two exceptions, saved [these 11 remaining] 'half-Jews' and 'closely-related' from dismissal from the Vienna State Opera Orchestra."
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Of the musicians hired to replace the 13 dismissed Jewish members, about half were Nazi Party members, Rathkolb says.
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The panel revealed in new detail how the New Year's concerts began during the Nazi era. The first concert, given on New Year's Eve in 1939, was proposed by conductor Clemens Krauss and enthusiastically approved by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, because it served the Reich's purposes of "propaganda through entertainment." (The concert was moved to New Year's Day for the concerts held from 1941–45; it was revived in 1947 when it was conducted by Josef Krips, who had not been able to conduct during the war years because he was half-Jewish.) Further, the profits from the 1939 concert were "donated entirely to the national-socialistic fund-raising campaign 'Kriegswinterhilfswerk' The reports also note that Goebbels privately decided to ignore information about the partial Jewish ancestry of the Strauss family (Johann Strauss I's grandfather was Jewish by birth) partly because "it was not proven" and partly because he did "not want to undermine the entire German cultural heritage."
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At the war's end in 1945, the orchestra expelled ten of its members for Nazi activity; two were re-hired in ensuing years. One of them, trumpeter Helmut Wobisch, had joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and the SS in 1934, and during the war served as a spy for the Gestapo. He was rehired to the orchestra in 1950, and appointed executive director of the orchestra in 1953, remaining in the position until 1967.
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The panel determined that it was Wobisch who in 1966 privately gave a replacement copy of the orchestra's "Ring of Honor" to Baldur von Schirach after the latter's release from Spandau Prison. As a result of the panel's reports, the Carinthian Summer Festival in Klagenfurt, Austria, cancelled its annual concert in honor of Wobisch (who was co-founder of the festival).
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The panel details how the orchestra gave "a great number of honorific awards… to Nazi potentates, including Arthur Seyss-Inquart [who was sentenced to death for his crimes against humanity in 1946] and Baldur von Schirach [who was sentenced to 20 years in Spandau Prison for his]." The orchestra also planned internally to give its highest award (the Nicolai Gold Medal) to Adolf Hitler in 1942, but there is no evidence that this award was ever given. (Rathkolb has told the press that Hellsberg "has asked [the orchestra] to revoke the rings of honour to these people.")
At its annual meeting on 23 October 2013, the orchestra voted to revoke all the honors bestowed to Nazi officials; it took the vote after hearing a presentation by Rathkolb of the panel's findings. Clemens Helmsberg is quoted in the New York Times as saying that after Rathkolb's presentation, the orchestra needed no further discussion before revoking the honors, since "it was such an obvious thing."
Subscription conductors (1842–1933)
The Vienna Philharmonic has never had principal conductors. Each year they chose an artist to conduct all concerts of the respective season at Vienna's Musikverein. These conductors were called Abonnementdirigenten (subscription conductors) as they were to conduct all the concerts included in the Philharmonic's subscription at the Musikverein. Some of these annual hirings were renewed for many years, others lasted only for a few years. At the same time the Vienna Philharmonic also worked with other conductors, e. g. at the Salzburg Festival, for recordings or special occasions. With the widening of the Philharmonic's activities the orchestra decided to abandon this system in 1933. From then on there were only guest conductors hired for each concert, both in Vienna and elsewhere.
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