Art, Exhibition and Erasure in Nazi Vienna [1 ed.] 9781003353782, 9781032405872, 9781032405889

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Art, Exhibition and Erasure in Nazi Vienna

This book examines three exhibitions of contemporary art held at the Vienna Künstlerhaus during the period of National Socialist rule and shows how each attempted to culturally erase elements anathema to Nazi ideology: the City, the Jewess and fin-de-siècle Vienna. Each of the exhibits was large scale and ambitious, part of a broader attempt to situate Vienna as the cultural capital of the Reich, and each aimed to reshape cultural memory and rewrite history. Applying illuminating theories on memory studies, collective and public memory and notions of “memoricide,” this is the first book in English to focus on visual culture in the period when Austria was erased as a nation and incorporated into the Third Reich as “Ostmark.” The organization, content and publications surrounding these three exhibits are explored in depth and set against the larger political changes and dangerous ideologies they reflect. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, museum studies, cultural history, memory studies, art and politics and Holocaust studies. Laura Morowitz is a professor of art history in the Department of Visual Arts at Wagner College, New York.

Routledge Research in Art and Politics

Routledge Research in Art and Politics is a new series focusing on politics and government as examined by scholars working in the fields of art history and visual studies. Proposals for monographs and edited collections on this topic are welcomed. The Political Portrait Leadership, Image and Power Edited by Luciano Cheles and Alessandro Giacone Art and Activism in the Age of Systemic Crisis Aesthetic Resilience Edited by Eliza Steinbock, Bram Ieven, and Marijke de Valck Terrorism and the Arts Practices and Critiques in Contemporary Cultural Production Edited by Jonathan Harris Art and Gentrification in the Changing Neoliberal Landscape Edited by Tijen Tunali Politics and Heidegger’s Concept of Thinking in Contemporary Art Louise Carrie Wales Street Art and Activism in the Greater Caribbean Impossible States, Virtual Publics Jana Evans Braziel Visual Redress in Africa from Indigenous and New Materialist Perspectives Elmarie Costandius, Gera de Villiers, and Leslie van Rooi Art, Exhibition and Erasure in Nazi Vienna Laura Morowitz

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-in-Art-and-Politics/ book-series/RRAP

Art, Exhibition and Erasure in Nazi Vienna Laura Morowitz

Cover image: Photograph of the Vienna Künstlerhaus on April 10 1938. Courtesy of Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Laura Morowitz The right of Laura Morowitz to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Morowitz, Laura, author. Title: Art, exhibition and erasure in Nazi Vienna / Laura Morowitz. Description: First. | New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023010189 (print) | LCCN 2023010190 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032405872 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032405889 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003353782 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Art—Exhibitions—Political aspects—Austria—Vienna. | National socialism and art—Austria—Vienna. | Künstlerhaus Wien—Political activity. | Collective memory—Austria—History—20th century. Classification: LCC N72.P6 M67 2024 (print) | LCC N72.P6 (ebook) | DDC 708.36/13—dc23/eng/20230522 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023010189 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023010190 ISBN: 978-1-032-40587-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-40588-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-35378-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003353782 Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book is dedicated to my grandparents, Eva Yutkowitz Morowitz and Julius Morowitz, and to their siblings who remained in Stopnika and Chmielnik and perished in the Holocaust.

Contents

Acknowledgments List of Figures 1 Introduction: Repression, Revision and the History of Art in Nazi Vienna

viii x

1

2 Austrian Identity, the Anschluss and the Creation of Ostmark

11

3 Ushering in the Ostmark: Vienna and the Künstlerhaus, Spring 1938 to Spring 1939

31

4 Erasing the City: Mountains and People of Ostmark, March 3 to April 23, 1939

41

5 Cultural Politics, Separatism and Baldur von Schirach: Summer 1939 to Spring 1942

80

6 Erasing the Jewess: The Beautiful Viennese Female Portrait, June 13 to July 12, 1942

88

7 The Pearl Loses Its Luster: Summer 1942 to Defeat at Stalingrad

141

8 Erasing the Fin de Siècle: The Gustav Klimt Exhibit, February 7 to March 7 1943

146

9 The Fall of Vienna and the Fate of the Künstlerhaus

186

10 Conclusion Bibliography Index

192 199 211

Acknowledgments

If writing a book is like going on a road trip, I was little more than a hitchhiker on these highways a decade ago. That I found my way and arrived at my destination is thanks to so many people along the road who steered me in the right direction, ofered me maps, helped me fill my tank or kept me company on lonely stretches of highway. This book is framed by two sabbaticals from Wagner College, in 2011 and 2019, which allowed me to focus exclusively on the road in front of me. I am honored and grateful for the two grants I received while undertaking this project, a 2011 Hadassah Brandeis Research Award and a 2016 Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It has been a pleasure to work with editor Isabella Vitti, whose responsiveness, dedication and good advice made everything so much easier. I thank Loredana Zeddita and Grace Kennedy for their gracious help. Libraries and archives are some of the most crucial stops along the way for a scholar. This book would not have been possible without the generous access I was provided at the Künstlerhaus Archives in the Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. Mag. Paul Rachler was both a deeply knowledgeable and a down-to-earth guide to those archives. This book is deeply indebted to the many scholars and archivists who have explored the history of the Künstlerhaus and made it public in a series of excellent publications, above all Wladimir Aichelburg, Rosemaire Bergstaller, Peter Bogner, Richard Kurdiovsky, Sophie Lillie, Monika Mayer, Oliver Rathkolb and Peter Stachel. To all the unsung heroes of the New York Public Library, from the research librarians to the countless staf members who journey deep below the ground to retrieve all those of-site and rare books: thank you. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to teach in New York City and be a train ride away from the Frick Art Library and the Watson Library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose rich stacks are a treasure for any art historian. I am also very lucky to be able to avail myself of New York institutions including the Neue Galerie, the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Center for Jewish History, whose exhibitions, speakers and programs have enriched my thinking and these pages a great deal. Dennis Schaub and his fine staf at the Horrmann Library of Wagner College were incredibly gracious in securing innumerable books and articles and always going out of their way to be of help. Scholars in the field of Austrian studies and Holocaust studies have served as the headlights and road lights of this project. They have provided my inspiration and, in many cases, have become good friends along the way. I am not sure this book would have been completed with the steady guidance, invaluable feedback and constant cheerleading of Megan Brandow-Faller. From the start, Megan provided a role model for excellent and fascinating scholarship in the field of Austrian cultural studies, generously shared from her rich storehouse of both knowledge and materials and provided detailed

Acknowledgments

ix

criticism and suggestions on many pages of this manuscript. Christian Kartner’s scholarship on Austrian identity, nationalism and memory have taught me a great deal, and I feel privileged to have benefitted from his personal feedback as well as his kind support. My understanding of 20th century Austria has been shaped by the pioneering scholarship of Guenter Bischof, and it has been a true pleasure to get to work with him and learn from him. I have learned much about the lost Jewish community of Vienna from the penetrating studies of Tim Corbett on destroyed cemeteries and from hearing many of his fascinating conference papers. I am so happy I got to meet Julius Radzinsky, whose work on artists under Nazism continues to shape my own thinking. I am grateful to so many scholars who ofered insights, opportunities or just a few laughs over cofee: Catherine Giustano, Daniel Unowsky, Jonathan Skolnick, Lisa Rafanelli, Matt Berger, Frances Tanner, Julia Secklehrner, Stephen Beller, Nathan Timpano, Elke Weesjes Sabella, Jason Dawsey, Mikkel Dack, William Gillespie, Nikolaus Domes and Béla Rasky. As it has for the past 25 years, my thinking and writing has been sharpened and nuanced by the feedback of my dear friends, the insightful Elizabeth Emery and Françoise Lucbert. My work is deeply indebted to so many brilliant scholars in the fields of art history, Austrian studies, memory studies and Holocaust studies, who provided the foundation upon which this book is built. They include Jonathan Petropoulos, Sophie Lillie, Alys George, Heidemarie Uhl, Oliver Rathkolb, Monica Mayer, Aleida Assmann, Jefrey Olick, Dirk Rupnow and James Young. Marek Kaźmierczak and Mikołaj Jazdon at the Institute of Film, Media and Audiovisual Arts at Adam Mickiewicz University have taught me about many aspects of the Holocaust and are models for scholarly and personal integrity. My fascination for Jewish Vienna was re-sparked by working with my dear friend Laurie Lico Albanese, novelist extraordinaire, and our trips together to that city continue to nourish my thinking. Monica Taylor’s fierce sense of justice and fierce friendship are crucial to my life. At Wagner College, my colleagues in the department of Visual Arts, my friendleague and my lunch crew make me smile no matter what the circumstance. I will always be grateful to Katica Urbanc for introducing me to the beauty of Stephan Zweig and Lou Andreas Salomé and walking the streets of Vienna in imagination with me every other spring. Lori Weintrob’s dedication to the difcult task of teaching the Holocaust and her tireless determination to inspire courage will make a diference in this world. Steve Snow taught me much about political ideology and about keeping a sense of humor. Bernadette Ludwig answered too many questions on small points of translation. Fern Zagor is a model of inspiration and integrity. I have learned much and gotten hope from the many students who have taken my course on Art and Aesthetics in the Third Reich. As fascinating as the journey of scholarship is, so is the joy and peace of returning home. I love pulling into the driveway and opening the door to find my husband Eric Schechter—and, on really great days, all three of my daughters—there to watch Jeopardy and eat a good meal. Their love is the fuel that keeps everything going.

Figures

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5

4.1 4.2

4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13

Map of post-WWI Europe, 1923. Hitler at the Heldenplatz, March 15, 1938. Stimmzettel vom, April 10, 1938. Voting ballot from April 10, 1938. “Das deutsche Quadrat—einst und jetzt” from Friedrich Lange, Unsere alte Ostmark Österreich, Berlin: Nibelungen-Verlag, 1941. Rudolf Eisenmenger, detail from Heimkehr der Ostmark II (Austria Returning to Its German Homeland), 1940. Mural. Length: 7 m. Vienna Town Hall. Robert Angerhofer, Almabtrieb, oil on canvas, 1938. “Ein Jude in der Alpentracht wirkt ebenso lächerlich und stilwidrig wie eine maurische Synagoge in einem gotischen Gotteshaus”. From Körber, Rassesieg in Wien der Grenzfeste des Reiches. Postcard of Wiener Cafe from Ausstellung, Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark, Berlin, 1939. Cernitz, Eisenwerk, Blick auf dem Schneeberg (Ironworks, View on the Schneeberg). From Die Deutsche Ostmark. Cernitz, Bauer aus Hohentauern (Peasant from the Hohentauern). From Die Deutsche Ostmark. Ferdinand Andri, Mutter und Kind (Mother and Child), 1927. Oil on cardboard, 70 × 60.5. Installation photo from Berge und Menschen der Ostmark, Künstlerhaus, Vienna, 1939. Hans Frank, “Großglockner I,” 1935. Color woodcut on Japon, signed and dated Hans Frank, 38.8 × 32 cm, matted 42.5 × 38.2 cm. Marta Elisabet Fossel, Bauersfrau von Murboden (Peasant Woman from Murboden), 1938. Cover of exhibition catalogue Berge und Menschen der Ostmark. Künstlerhaus Wien. Herbert von Greifenthal Reyl-Hanisch, Der Holzfäller (Woodcutter), 1937, oil on canvas. Josef Dobrowsky, Goldbergwerk im Naßfeld bei Gastein (Gold Mine in Nassfeld bei Gastein), 1938, oil on canvas, 116 × 144 cm. Alfred Cossmann, Bauern aus dem Pinzgau (Peasants from Pinzgau), c. 1938. Etching. 18.5 × 27 cm (7.3 × 10.6 in).

13 15 17 22

24 42

42 43 44 44 46 47 48 48 50 52 54 55

Figures 4.14 Alfred Cossmann, Ex Libris Leo Lippmann. 4.15 Tourism brochure, “Neustift, Ostmark, Tirol,” LFV Tirol, 1939. 4.16 Hans Figura, Alberg, St. Anton. Etching, vintage aquatint on satin, 1940s. 4.17 Oscar Laske, Dachstein, oil on canvas. 4.18 Der König Dachstein, photograph from Richard Suchenwirth, Das Buch von der Deutschen Ostmark. 4.19 “Berge und Menschen der Ostmark.” Das interessante Blatt. 4.20 Postcard with view of Ehrenhalle, Ausstellung. Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark, Berlin, 1939. 4.21 Postcard, Volkstum und Brauchtum (Folklore and Customs), Ausstellung, Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark, Berlin, 1939. 4.22 Postcard “Land u. Forstwirtschaft,” (“Land and Forestry”). Ausstellung, Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark, Berlin, 1939. 6.1 Cover of catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger. June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt. 6.2 Photo from opening of Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild. Visitors viewing sculpture by Edmund Moiret, Höhere Verlangen (Lofty Desires). 6.3 Siegfried Stoitzner, Bildnis einer Wienerin (Portrait of a Woman), 1942, O/C, 64 × 74 cm. Whereabouts unknown. 6.4 Willy Jaeckel, Stehende Mädchen (Standing Girl), 1928, O/C, 160 × 120 cm. First prize, Elida contest, 1928. Destroyed in studio fire, 1943. 6.5 Max Frey, Frau Portrait, oil on canvas, c. 1928. 6.6 Max Frey, Portrait of Frau G.F., oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. 6.7 Sergius Pauser, Frau (Dr. Becker), 1928. Oil on canvas. Elida Contest, France. 6.8 Sergius Pauser, Bildnis meine Frau Anny (Portrait of My Wife Anny), 1928, oil on canvas. 6.9 Sergius Pauser, Im schwarzen Kostum (Anny) (In Black Costume (Anny)), oil on canvas, 86 × 64 cm, Kunsthandel Schütz, Wien. 6.10 Erich Albert Lamm, Portrait. Whereabouts unknown. 6.11 Siegmund W. Hampel, Portrait. Whereabouts unknown. 6.12 Mother’s day postcard with poem, “Mein Kind,” and woodcut, Mutterschutzwerk der Vaterländischen Front Salzburg, Landestelle Salzburg, 1936 (8018). 6.13 Hans Makart, Hannah Klinkosch, 1875, 200 × 112 cm (78 3/4 × 44 1/8 in.). 6.14 Josef Dobrowsky, Dame in Violetten Kleid, oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. 6.15 Andreas Patzelt, Bildnis einer jungen Wienerin (Image of a Young Viennese Woman). Whereabouts unknown. 6.16 Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller. Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, 1850, Belvedere Museum, Vienna.

xi 55 58 58 61 62 65 66 67 67

89

91 94 97 98 98 99 100 100 101 102

103 105 106 106 108

xii Figures 6.17 Franz Eybl, Wiener Aristokratin (Aristocratic Viennese Woman) and Carl V. Saar, Dame mit Rosen im Haar (Woman with Rose in Her Hair). 6.18 Albert Janesch, Bildnis meine Nichte Walli (Motherhood Defense Action of the Salzburg Fatherland Front) (Portrait of My Niece, Walli), 1934. 6.19 Albert Janesch, Bildnis meine Frau (Portrait of my Wife), 1934, oil on canvas, 90 × 100. 6.20 Hans Frank, Mädchen mit Gitarre (Girl with Guitar). Whereabout unknown. 6.21 Frans van Mieris, La Joueuse de théorbe (Woman Playing a Lute), oil on panel, 1663, height: 33.7 cm (13.2 in) width: 29.2 cm (11.4 in), National Galleries of Scotland, Alte Pinakothek. 6.22 Karl Maria May, Bildnis Frau M.B, oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. 6.23 Robert Streit, Bildnis Frau Amsler, oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. 6.24 Jan Boleslaw Czedekowski, Im Fenster (At the Window), oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. 6.25 Hans Schweiger, Bildnis der Schauspielerin Winnie Markus (Portrait of the actress Winnie Markus). Whereabouts unknown. 6.26 Robert Streit, Bildnis Paula Wessely (study). Whereabouts unknown. 6.27 Robert Streit, Portrait of Paula Wessely. Oil on canvas. 6.28 Das Kleine Blatt, June 14, 1942, p. 9. 6.29 Harold Reitterer, Kleo Freifrau Hammer-Purgstall. Oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. 6.30 “Spieglein, Spieglein” (Mirror, Mirror). Advertisement. Wiener Illustrierte. July 29, 1942, p. 10. 6.31 Max Neuböck, Bildnis L.R. Whereabouts unknown. 6.32 Postcard of “Kaufhaus der Wiener,” fashion display from Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark, Berlin, 1939. 6.33 Wiener Modenzeitung 15 (1941), p. 2. 6.34 Theodor Klotz-Dürrenbach, Bildnis Trude Klotz-Dürrenbach. Whereabouts unknown. 6.35 Perfekt Mode, p. 99 (1940). 6.36 Gabriel Joseph Marie Augustin Ferrier, Judith, 1875, oil on canvas, 114.3 × 81.3 cm (45 × 32 in). 6.37 Anonymous, “Jeune fille juive” (Young Jewess). Morocco, postcard, c. 1910. 6.38 Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, 1907, oil, silver and gold leaf on canvas. 54 × 54 in. 6.39 Alfred Gerstenbrand, Dame im gelben Abendkleid (Woman in Yellow Evening Dress). Image destroyed (overpainted). 7.1 C.O. Müller, In der Loge, oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. 8.1 Hebräische Aufschriften für Wiener Judengeschäfte vor der Machtergreifung. (Hebrew Letters on Viennese Jewish Businesses after the Power Grab). Rassensieg in Wien, der Grenzfeste des Reiches (Vienna, 1940), p. 301, fig. 292B.

108

111 111 112

112 113 113 114 115 116 117 117 119 121 122 124 125 126 126 127 127 128 130 143

152

Figures 8.2

8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10

8.11 8.12 8.13

10.1

Der jüdischer Universitätsprofessor Dr. Sigmund Freud and Der Jude Albert Einstein (The Jewish University Professor Dr. Sigmund Freud and The Jew Albert Einstein). Rassensieg in Wien, der Grenzfeste des Reiches (Vienna, 1940), p. 301, fig. 292B. Poster for Wien 1910, directed by E.W. Emo, Wien-Film, 1940–41, p. 224, figs. 210 and 210A. Gustav Klimt, Nuda Veritas, 1899, oil on canvas, 252 × 55.2 cm, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna. Gustav Klimt, detail from Beethoven Frieze, 1902, gold, casein, graphite and paint, 7′1″ × 112′, Secession building. Gustav Klimt, Philosophy, 1900–1907, oil on canvas. Destroyed. Gustav Klimt, Pallas Athena, 1898, oil and canvas on inlay, 75 × 75 cm, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien. Invitation to opening of Gustav Klimt Ausstellung, February 7, 1943, Künstlerhaus, Friedrichstraße. Photo of installation, Gustav Klimt Ausstellung, 1943. Künstlerhaus, Friedrichstrasse. Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Margaret Stonborough Wittgenstein, 1905, oil on canvas, 179.8 × 90.5 cm, Neue Pinakothek/Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlungen, Munich, Germany. Cover of exhibition catalogue, Gustav Klimt Ausstellung, Künstlerhaus, February 7 to March 7, 1943. Gustav Klimt, Hope I, 1903, oil on canvas, 189 × 67 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Carl Moll, “Meine Erinnerungen an Gustav Klimt” (My Reminiscences of Gustav Klimt), Neues Wiener Tagblatt, January 24, 1943, p. 3. Franz Blaha, installation photograph, Niemals Vergessen! exhibit, Künstlerhaus, Vienna, September 14, 1946.

xiii

153 156 159 160 160 161 163 164

165 166 169

173 193

1

Introduction Repression, Revision and the History of Art in Nazi Vienna

To erase something completely—not only its future but also its present and its past—is to “wipe it of the map.” While such a scenario seems the stuf of fiction, this book engages with a moment in history when the country of Austria ceased to exist. In March 1938, Hitler’s armies strode into Austria, transforming it into Ostmark, a group of regions or Gaue that marked the eastern-most parts of the German Reich. Culture and the visual arts were called into service in transfiguring a once-sovereign nation, with a distinct culture, into an extension of southeastern Germany.1 For 40 years after the Second World War, the events and history of the Anschluss—the Nazi annexation of Austria into the German Reich—lay buried under an impenetrable layer of myths, lies and distortions.2 These myths originated during the period of Allied occupation of Austria from 1945 to 1955 and persisted for half a century, resulting in historical amnesia. Foremost among these myths was the notion of Austria as an Opfernation, a nation of victims, which had been the first to sufer under Nazi invasion. The jubilation with which Austrian crowds greeted Hitler, the mad rush to join the party (600,000 Austrians became Nazi members, and far more hoped to) and the murderous crimes committed by Austrians at every level were both privately and publicly suppressed, repressed and silenced.3 A second myth, that of the Stunde Null, the fresh start or ground zero of Austrian history after the fall of the Nazis, had equal appeal.4 This myth continued despite the large-scale integration and often valorization of former Nazis at every level of the Austrian government, economy and intellectual communities. Well into the 1980s, those who attempted to question or bring to light some of the darker truths of the Anschluss—such as Elfriede Jelinek and Thomas Bernhard—were subject to vilification.5 The repression and denial of the Anschluss manifested itself in the art world and in art history. Research lagged far behind that of other nations in exploring the collaboration and role of artists and artworks in perpetuating Nazi myths.6 On a concrete economic and legal level, Austria’s record of restitution was abhorrent, with labyrinthian laws that served to make it exceedingly difcult for families to reclaim stolen art works and, in the early years after the war, to obtain necessary export licenses. Austrian museums and organizations continued to profit from the theft committed under the Nazis and, often, to pretend they had never occurred.7 About 30 years ago this situation began to change, and a true Vergangenheitsbewältigung, a reckoning with the past, began to unfold in Austria. The infamous Kurt Waldheim afair caused a fissure in Austrian society, a fissure whose cracks grew and twisted until they had spread throughout all areas of the nation.8 During the course of Waldheim’s presidential campaign—Waldheim had served as UN Secretary General from 1972 DOI: 10.4324/9781003353782-1

2

Introduction

to 1981—it become apparent that he had lied about the extent of his activities during the Nazi period. When journalists dug up evidence of Waldheim’s knowledge of mass murders in the Balkans while serving in Army Group E, Waldheim’s response was that he had “only done exactly what hundreds of thousands of Austrians had done, namely fulfilled my duty as a soldier.”9 Other Western nations were shocked when Waldheim was nevertheless elected president in 1986, and many leaders were determined to shun him; a new generation of Austrian historians and journalists vowed to tear down the veil of deception and myth that had so long obscured the truth of the past.10 Among the first of these Nestbeschmutzer (nest foulers) was the pioneering journalist Hubertus Czernin (1956–2006), whose archival digging also helped expose the cover-ups within the art world of Austria.11 These journalists, historians, intellectuals and artists were the children and grandchildren of the Anschluss generation, and during the Gedenkjahr, or 50-year anniversary of the Anschluss, they broke the silence and instigated a new questioning of the past that continues to have repercussions today in an ongoing flurry of publications, symposia and public controversies. By the mid-90s surveys reported between half and three-quarters of the Austrian population accepted collective responsibility for the events of the Holocaust and WWII, although that number has since declined.12 While problems persist, during the last three decades, art historians and scholars— most of them Austrian—have begun their work of reconstructing the past as well, documenting and critically analyzing all aspects of art production and artistic theft after the Anschluss. In a moving catalogue essay written for an exhibition held both in the US and in Vienna in 1996, John Czaplicka laid out many of the issues and problems of an Austrian art history written largely by those unwilling to acknowledge the past or to illuminate its continuing impact on the present.13 He noted how cultural history had been warped by the larger political issues: “For if one owed up thoroughly to the restitution and reinstatement the exiles deserved and actively pursued this as a policy, it would have been tantamount to admitting the co-responsibility for the persecution and aggressive war perpetuated by the Nazis.”14 He dated the first fledging attempts at a “reconsideration” and “cultural reclamation” to 1980, a phenomenon accelerating after the Waldheim afair. (A notable earlier exception is Peter Weibel’s essay for a 1976 exhibition entitled “Österreichs Avantgarde 1900–1938: ein unbekannter Aspekt,” in which he referred to the Vergessen, Verschollen und Verdrängt (forgotten, lost and repressed).15 Focusing on artists who went into exile, Czaplicka’s essay raises fascinating question in terms of stylistic diferences and similarities among artists who remained in Nazi Vienna, including many Künstlerhaus artists included in this study. In an accompanying essay in the catalogue, scholar Jonathan Petropoulos provided a very rare English-language analysis of the institutions and cultural politics of Nazi Vienna.16 The famous “Wally case,” in which the Museum of Modern Art refused to return to the Leopold Museum a 1912 Egon Schiele painting they learned had been stolen from a Jewish family during the war, helped lead to Austria’s 1998 restitution laws.17 For the first time, researchers gained access to closed archives; perhaps the most well-known result of this was restitution to Maria Altmann of five Gustav Klimt paintings that had been stolen from her Viennese family in 1939. Sophie Lillie, a student of the late Czernin, has done a heroic task in tracing the looted collections of so many Viennese Jewish families exiled or murdered during the Nazi period in books such as Was einmal war: Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wien (2003).18 Birgit Schwarz’s Hitlers Sonderauftrag Ostmark: Kunstraub und Museumspolitik im Nationalsozialismus outlines the systematic plans and multitude of agencies established in Ostmark to enrich its museums at every level through

Introduction

3

the confiscation of Jewish art collections. As the numerous works of historian Oliver Rathkolb have shown, in many domains, these agencies and the individuals who ran them competed intensely, both for Hitler’s favor and for the most prized of the collections.19 From the start, plans for distributing looted works were highly contested, with fierce competition between Viennese institutions bent on holding on to their objects, rather than seeing them sent to local collections throughout the Ostmark or to furnish museums in the Altreich with Old Masters.20 Texts that analyze the role of Austrian artists, art historians and institutions under Nazi rule now comprise a large and ever-growing list.21 Conferences and symposia such as Das Künstlerhaus im Nationalsozialismus, held at the Künstlerhaus in 2001, continue to give us a richer and more complex picture of the period.22 In her dissertation of 2010 about the luxury art journal Kunst dem Volk, published in Vienna from 1938 to 1944, Christina Schedlmayer attempted to characterize some of the larger trends and themes in Ostmärkische art. However, there is still much to be done, as she noted: “In contrast to the situation in Germany, research into the visual art and propaganda arts in Austria during National Socialism is still in its infancy.”23 This book, the first of its kind in English, serves to contribute to this largely Germanlanguage documentation and critical analysis of artistic and art historical activity in Nazi Austria by examining the creation, content and reception of three exhibits held in Vienna between 1939 and 1943. For reasons we shall examine, cultural life in Vienna was intimately tied to political and social life and never more so than under the Nazis. Vienna had always been an art city, and after the Anschluss, it continued to be so. Even during the later years of hardship, rations and crises, concerts and plays were performed, films were shown, exhibitions continued to be mounted, and high-end art history publications were turned out. While 21st century scholars have often modified or rejected Carl Schorske’s paradigmatic argument that Austria’s “abdication” and relative powerlessness in the political sphere was compensated for by her culture,24 historians have noted Austria’s use of culture to circumvent politics and referred to it as a “country in an almost permanent state of celebration of its cultural identity.”25 In May 1935, future ousted Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg referred to Austria as a “Superpower of Culture.”26 For this reason, studying the art of Austria is central to the political and social history of the National Socialist regime and not just to its art. The motivations and functions of the exhibits under study, as well as the art historical interpretations and texts connected with them, reveal a great deal about the fate of Austrian identity and Nazi ideologies. All the exhibits under study here took place at the Künstlerhaus, the most significant contemporary artistic space operating in Vienna during the war. Two central themes emerge and resurface throughout the various chapters. The first is the conflicted and contested role of Vienna in relation both to other regions and to the notion of Ostmark. Vienna was by far the most important city in Austria, and its history was distinct and deeply problematic to the Nazi hierarchy. Many of the exhibits walked a thin line of celebrating Viennese culture while attempting to downplay or diminish its threat to the notion of a unified Aryan Reich.27 The second repeated theme of this book, woven through the various exhibits, concerns the concepts of collective memory, cultural memory and cultural erasure. This book therefore owes a debt to the theorists of collective and cultural memory such as Aleida Assmann28 and to scholars such as Jefrey Olick, who have ofered nuanced readings of its social and political uses and manifestations.29 Following the pioneering work of Maurice

4

Introduction

Halbwachs and Assmann, most scholars of memory studies distinguish between a living, experiential memory and a cultural memory constructed through institutions, historical texts, sites and the like. Cultural memory may be embodied in events, places, monuments and always in institutions and thus often becomes public memory (or, in Duncan Bell’s terms, “governing myths”).30 Throughout this book, memory is conceived of and understood as a process of continual negotiation and ongoing discourse; the “ofcial” memory imposed by the institutions of the Nazi state was often in conflict with the living memories of individuals and with earlier elements of collective memory. Alongside the field of memory studies, there is emerging one we might call “forgetfulness studies,” focused on both the dangers and the benefits of social forgetting. (David Rief, for example, points out the use of forgetting past conflicts in the name of social cohesion.)31 The types of forgetting examined in this study were often encouraged and promoted, serving nefarious ends. They are not, in Bradford Vivian’s terms, “forgetting without oblivion.”32 As he notes: “Forgetting, in academic as well as popular usage, continues to signify a loss, absence, or lack—not simply of memory but of live connections with a tangible past.”33 My study therefore attends to the loss or the absence that permeates the Holocaust by also attending to forgetting. The works of Christian Karner have closely examined Austrian national identity in relation to national myths and collective memory.34 Peter Stachl has explored the multilayered symbolism and role in public memory of the Heldenplatz and its shift from an evocation of imperial grandeur to one of the most significant reminders of the Anschluss.35 In this respect, the Heldenplatz is emblematic of the “pluralization of memory” in the public realm and the concept that memory is a dynamic process that undergoes shifts in narrative.36 Dirk Rupnow and Heidemarie Uhl have repeatedly explored the way in which memory and history have shaped both discourse and museums in Austria.37 Katya Krylova has explored these issues outside academia, in the works of contemporary Austrian writers, artists and filmmakers, whose works take up the themes of nostalgia, guilt, repression and memory in relation to the legacy of National Socialism.38 For Tim Corbett, the destroyed Jewish cemeteries of Vienna serve as “powerful metonyms for the ‘cemetery’ of destroyed Jewish culture in the European mental and cultural landscapes.”39 The voluminous scholarship of Günter Bischof continues to explore every realm of post-war Austria, from the economic and political to the cultural and popular, illuminating issues of identity that continue to shape the 21st century.40 The Nazis had a steadfast interest in constructing a narrative of nation and history for future generations, woven of myth and falsified history.41 The relationship between Nazi ideology42 and memory is profoundly complex: at times, they wished to destroy history, at times to alter it and, at times, to serve their ends, to “preserve” it. (Ideologue Alfred Rosenberg’s creation of the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question, dedicated to “documenting” Jewish history for future generations, is a case in point.)43 This book argues that many Nazi art historians and scholars used culture to transform collective (or, in Aleida Assmann’s term, communicative) memory into a constructed cultural memory and, in the process, to erase the past. Rudy Koshar looks at one aspect of culture—Germany’s built environment—in relation to issues of memorialization and erasure and the complex interplay between them. Both the creation and the destruction of monuments and buildings altered the German “memory landscape” and participated in the Erinnerungsarbeit as well as the work of intentionally forgetting. Of particular interest is Koshar’s understanding of how layers of memory might accrue to one monument and how its refitting in successive historical

Introduction

5

periods expresses deeper cultural desires to commemorate or repress. The physical altering, building and destroying of successive structures under the Nazis parallels their revisionist history, their obliteration of certain narratives in favor of others. But unlike monuments, acts of history cannot simply be “undone” or removed forever, their outlines demolished. Koshar’s study becomes a metonymic history of Holocaust memory and its various phases from burial to retrieval, in toto. The Nazis promoted the idea that the years of Habsburg rule, the fin de siècle and the First Austrian Republic were aberrations or interruptions in the “real” German Ostmark.44 The state-sponsored exhibitions helped reshape cultural memory and banish a past that no longer served; art-historical writing celebrated a past that had never really existed. In this issue of historical amnesia, a structural parallel exists between pre- and post-war Austria: the cultural erasure of memory during the period of the Anschluss is echoed in the cultural erasure of the Anschluss.45 While the latter has been widely studied, there is still much to do in the former. As Peter Burke has noted: “Amnesia is related to ‘amnesty,’ to what used to be called ‘acts of oblivion,’ ofcial erasure of memories in conflict in the interests of social cohesion.”46 (A cogent example here is the renaming of streets during the Third Reich to “obliterate the memory” of any Jewish person to whom the name might refer.)47 Burke distinguishes here between individual forgetting and social forgetting: we might say in the case of the Third Reich that social forgetting allowed and covertly encouraged individual forgetting both during and after the Holocaust, albeit for very diferent reasons and to very diferent ends.48 In the Nazi scheme, history would be rewritten, and those whose memories conflicted with this new version would not be alive to contest it. Throughout this book, the notion of Jewish diference, as well as Jewish absence, is ever present. This concept animates the title and much of the analysis of Hillary Hope Herzog’s study of 20th- and 21st-century Viennese writers, Vienna is Diferent: Jewish Writers in Austria from the Fin de Siècle to the Present.49 Following cultural scholars such as Sander Gilman, “Jewishness” here is less a lived practice, attached to specific individuals, than a mythic construction of Otherness.50 Cultural historian Lisa Silverman has shown how this construction operated specifically within the modern Viennese milieu while historian Scott Spector takes up the thorny issue of a nebulous “Jewish Modernism.”51 It is both the acknowledged and the often-unspoken foil against which the “good” and “pure,” as defined by Nazi ideology, had to struggle. The very visibility of Nazi definitions of beauty, health, purity, rootedness and community within the exhibitions under study depends on an imagined Jewish threat. The Alpine landscape, the beautiful Wienerin and the “real” history of Habsburg Vienna can only take shape against the perceived opposition, embodied in the Jew and Jewish culture. James Young has written eloquently of the difculties in memorializing an absence, whether it be of a single individual or of an entire people and their culture.52 Following scholars like Pamela Potter, Jonathan Petropoulos and James Van Dyke, I do not attempt to divide works into those that hew to a specific “Nazi” aesthetic; the stylistic diversity of the works under study here are broad and form points of comparison with the art of the First Republic, Neue Sachlichkeit and Magical Realism but also includes artists whose works are often more stylized or abstract than we might expect.53 In these large group exhibits at the Künstlerhaus there was a surprising degree of stylistic plurality. While the calls for submissions requested specific themes and imagery, I have yet to find a document specifying a particular formal requirement or visual language. All the works were figurative but, beyond that, had little in common formally. Alongside

6

Introduction

artists working in the bloodless, cold style associated with painters like Adolf Ziegler were those working in styles far closer to Expressionism, Impressionism and Modernist modes. The phenomenon of a memorial exhibit dedicated to Gustav Klimt—whose associations and frank sexual treatment have led many to assume he would have been labelled a “degenerate”—further proves the point. The extent to which this stylistic pluralism is a function of the exhibits’ display in Vienna rather than in the Altreich is taken up in the various chapters. The book opens with an introductory chapter that provides important background to understanding the cultural fortunes of Vienna during the Anschluss and the period of Nazi rule. In chapter two we begin with questions about Austrian identity that pre-date the Nazi period but came into play during the transformation of Austria into Ostmark. Hostility toward Vienna as a locus of Jewish identity, stemming from Adolf Hitler and his profound hatred for Modernism, was embraced by other high-ranking Nazi ofcials. The manner in which both scholarly and popular literature—including art historical publications—“created” Ostmark helps lay the groundwork for the other chapters. The unfolding of events in Vienna and at the Künstlerhaus in the period immediately following the Anschluss are explored in chapter 3. In the fourth chapter, we look at the enormous 1939 art/propaganda exhibit Berge und Menschen der Ostmark (Mountains and People of the Ostmark) in relation to concerns about peasant support of the Anschluss and the tourist economy, the National Socialist conception of the Heimat—the Nazi interpretation of the regional homeland—and the Volksgemeinschaft. All served to “erase” the city of Vienna. The following chapter, five, introduces Baldur von Schirach, former head of the Hitler Jugend and Reichsstatthalter (governor) of Vienna from 1940 to 1943, a man bent on elevating Vienna’s cultural stature despite rigid opposition from the Altreich. Under his authority, the exhibit Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild (The Beautiful Viennese Portrait) was held, replacing the cosmopolitan Viennese Jewess—embodied by figures like Adele Bloch-Bauer—with a new Nazi ideal. This show, the subject of the sixth chapter, not only referred to a long history of “beautiful Viennese woman” but also contested some of the more common Altreich tropes of Nazi womanhood. Von Schirach was also the sponsor of the 1943 Gustav Klimt retrospective held at the former Secession building, which forms the focus of the eighth chapter. After a brief look at Viennese cultural politics in the later years of the war (Chapter 7), we focus on this exhibit and its accompanying literature to reveal how the ur-Modern and turn-of-the-century Klimt was erased in favor of an artist both völkisch and strongly tied to the German tradition. The entire period in which the Secession was formed was portrayed as an aberration in the true history of Ostmark culture. After a look at the Künstlerhaus in the immediate postwar period (chapter nine), the book ends with a brief glimpse at the 1946 anti-fascist exhibit, Niemals Vergessen! (Never Forget!), a title stunning in its irony, for by that year, the terrible and tragic history of the Anschluss had already begun to be “forgotten” and Austria’s recent past intentionally suppressed, but for the memories of those lucky enough to have escaped it. Notes 1. The best account to date in English of the events of the Anschluss is Thomas Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl: Vienna Under Hitler (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). The most detailed account of the impact on daily life and social identity is Hermann Hagspiel, Die Ostmark: Österreich im Großdeutschen Reich 1938 bis 1945 (Wien: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1995). 2. For an excellent English introduction to these myths and historical taboos in post-war Austria, see Günter Bischof’s “Introduction” and Heidemarie Uhl’s “The Politics of Memory: Austria’s Perception of the Second World War and the National Socialist Period” in Austrian

Introduction

3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

7

Historical Memory and National Identity, eds. Günter Bischof and Anton Pelinka (London/ New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1997); Oliver Rathkolb, “The ‘Anschluss’ in the Rearview Mirror, 1938–2008: Historical Memories between Debate and Transformation,” Contemporary Austrian Studies 17 (2009): 5–28; Simon Blount, “The Victim Myth: The Reinvention of Austria in the Post-War Years,” Journal of Austrian Studies 55, no. 3 (Fall 2022): 61–75. For the ways in which these myths afected post-war legal dealing with Jews, see Brigitte Bailer, “They Were All Victims: The Selective Treatment of the Consequences of National Socialism,” in Bischof and Pelinka, 103–116. On Austria’s “governing myths,” see Christian Karner, “Multiple Dimensions and Discursive Contests in Austria’s Mythscape,” in The Use and Abuse of Memory: Interpreting World War II in Contemporary European Politics, eds. Christian Karner and Bram Mertens (Piscataway: Transaction Publishers, 2013), 193–210. Evan Burr Bukey, Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era 1938–1945 (Chapel Hill/London: North Carolina University Press, 2000); Waltraud Kannonier-Finster and Meinrad Ziegler, Österreichisches Gedächtnis: Über Erinnern und Vergessen der NS-Vergangenheit (Wien: Böhlau, 1993); Erika Weinzierl, “Österreichische Nation und österreichisches Nationalbewusstsein,” Zeitgeschichte 17 (1989): 44–62; Gerhard Botz, “Österreich und die NS-Vergangenheit: Verdrängung, Pflichterfüllung, Geschichtsklitterung,” in 1. der Nationalsozialismus Geschichte? Zu Historisierung und Historikerstreit, ed. Dan Diner (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1987). Margarete Lamb-Fafelberger, “Beyond the Sound of Music: The Quest for Cultural Identity in Modern Austria,” German Quarterly 76, no. 3 (2003): 289–299. For the persistence of these myths, see Anton Pelinka, “Austria’s Darker Side,” in Austria: Out of the Shadow of the Past (Boulder, CO: West View Press, 1988); Matthias Konzett, The Rhetoric of National Dissent in Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, and Elfriede Jelinek (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000). Indeed, an exhibit and accompanying catalogue on the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste was only published in 2021. As its authors state: “Die Geschichte der NS-Kunstpolitik in Wien wurde noch nicht umfassend erforscht.” Ingrid Holzschuh and Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie: NS-Kunstpolitik in Wien. Die Reichskammer der bildenden Künste (Vienna: Wien Museum/Birkhäuser, 2021). For a complete introduction to the issue of art plunder and restitution in Austria during the Anschluss, see “Art Restitution,” Artdatabase: National Fund for the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, https://www.kunstdatenbank.at/art-restitution.html. One of the earliest works examining the issue in Austria is Theodor Brückler, Kurt Haslinger, Herbert Haupt and Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, Kunstraub, Kunstbergung und Restitution in Österreich 1938 bis heute: mit Quellendokumentation, Bildteil, Gesetzestexten und Archivindex (Vienna: Böhlau, 1999). See also NS-Kunstraub in Österreich und die Folgen, eds. Gabriele Anderl and Alexandra Caruso (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2005). Richard Mitten, The Politics of Prejudice: The Waldheim Phenomenon in Austria (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992). For the fallout from the Waldheim afair and the changing political fortunes of Austria since that time, see Katya Krylova, “Introduction: Confrontations with the Past,” in The Long Shadow of the Past: Contemporary Austrian Literature, Film and Culture (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2017), 1–25. Waldheim, quoted in Uhl, “The Politics of Memory,” 80. Publications in the immediate aftermath of the afair include Fünfzig Jahre danach: Der “Anschluss” von innen und außen gesehen, ed. Felix Kreissler (Vienna: Europaverlag, 1989); NS-Herrschaft in Österreich 1938–1945, eds. Emmerich Talos, Ernst Hanisch and Wolfgang Neugebauer (Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1988); Weinzierl, “Österreichische Nation.” See Hubertus Czernin, Die Fälschung: Der Fall Bloch-Bauer und das Werk Gustav Klimts (Vienna: Czernin Verlag, 2006); “The Austrian Evasion,” Artnews 97, no. 6 (June 1998): 112–119. Uhl, “The Politics of Memory,” 83, reported that in 1993, 81 percent of the Austrian populace agreed that their nation bore collective responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi regime. Yet Rathkolb (“Anschluss in the Rearview Mirror”) cited a 2007 poll putting the number at slightly over 50 percent. If accurate, such decline might reflect both a distance from the Waldheim afair and a general shift to the right in European politics. I am grateful to Christian Karner for bringing my attention to this matter. On the shift in collective memory and perception, see Heidemarie Uhl, “From Victim Myth to Co-Responsibility Thesis: Nazi Rule, WWII

8

13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

Introduction and the Holocaust in Austrian Memory,” in The Politics of Memory in Post-War Europe, eds. Richard Ned Leow, Wulf Kansteriner, and Claudio Fogu (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 40–72. John Czaplicka, “Emigrants and Exiles: An Introduction to the Topic,” in Emigrants and Exiles: A Lost Generation of Austrian Artists in America 1920–1950/Emigranten und Verbannte: Eine verlorene Generation österreichischer Künstler in Amerika 1920–1950 (Evanston, IL: Northwest University Press, 1996), 1–31. The exhibition, curated by Czaplicka and David Mickenberg, was held at the Österreichische Galerie, Vienna from January 25 to March 19, 1996 and the Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, Northwestern University from April 19 to June 16, 1996. Czaplicka’s use of memory theories, like that of Halbwachs, was truly prescient for the time. Czaplicka, “Emigrants and Exiles,” 12. Oswald Oberhuber and Peter Weibel, Österreichs Avantgarde 1900–1938. Ein unbekannter Aspekt (Wien: Galerie nächst St. Stephan, 1976). The citation is mentioned in Czaplicka, 12. For a discussion of the exhibits and books focused on Viennese art between the wars that emerged in the 1980s, see Czaplicka, “Emigrants and Exiles.” Jonathan Petropoulos, “The Primacy of Kulturpolitik: Tolerance, Hegemony and Subsumption in Interwar Austria as a Background for the Artist in Exile,” in Emigrants and Exiles, 71–99. Raphael Contel, Giulia Soldan and Alessandro Chechi, “Case Portrait of Wally—United States and Estate of Lea Bondi and Leopold Museum,” Platform ArThemis, Art-Law Centre, University of Geneva, https://plone.unige.ch/art-adr/cases-afaires/case-portrait-of-wally2013-united-states-and-estate-of-lea-bondi-and-leopold-museum. The most important of the original laws is the Art Restitution Law, or Federal Law on the Restitution of Art Objects and Other Movable Cultural Objects from Austrian Federal Museum and Collections and Other Federal Property (Art Restitution Law-KRG, Federal Law Gazette I No 181/1998 as amended by Federal Law Gazette I 117/2009). Sophie Lillie, Was einmal war: Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlung Wien (Vienna: Czernin Verlag, 2003). See, for example, Oliver Rathkolb, Führertreu und gottbegnadet: Künstlereliten im Dritten Reich (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag Gesellschaft, 1991). Birgit Schwarz, Hitlers Sonderauftrag Ostmark: Kunstraub und Museumspolitik im Nationalsozialismus (Wien: Böhlau, 2017). These agencies include the Sofortprogramm für Investitionen und Verbesserungen and Das Institut für Denkmalpflege. For a full bibliography on Kunstraub in the Ostmark, see 219–231. For a thorough discussion of the issues surrounding art expropriation in Nazi Austria, see ArtDatabase: National Fund for the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism. https://www.kunstdatenbank.at/art-restitution.html. For example, Hans Seiger, Michael Lunardi and Peter Josef Populorum, Im Reich der Kunst: Die Wiener Akademie der bildenden Künste und die faschistische Kunstpolitik (Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1990); Meike Hopp, Kunsthandel im Nationalsozialismus (Cologne: Böhlau, 2012); Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie. “Das Künstlerhaus im Nationalsozialismus” Künstlerhaus, Vienna. October 20 and 21, 2011. Organized by Richard Kurdiovsky. “Im Gegensatz zur Situation in Deutschland steckt die Forschung über Kunstverständnis und Propagandakunst im Nationalsozialismus in Österreich noch in den Kinderschuhen.” Christina Schedlmayer, “Die Zeitschrift ‘Kunst dem Volk.’ Populärwissenschaftliche Kunstliteratur im Nationalsozialismus und ihre Parallelen in der akademischen Kunstgeschichtsschreibung,” (PhD. diss., University of Vienna, 2010), 10. Carl Schorske, Fin de Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage, 1980); As Steven Beller notes, by the mid-1980s many scholars—including Beller himself—had begun to challenge Schorske’s construction by focusing instead on the central issues of the Jewish contribution to Viennese Modernism. Steven Beller, “Fin de Fin-de-Siècle Vienna? A Letter of Remembrance,” Contemporary Austrian Studies: Global Austria: Austria’s Place in Europe and the World Book, eds., Günter Bischof, Fritz Plasser, Anton Pelinka and Alexander Smith, 20 (New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2011): 46–80. For several essays contesting Schorske, see Rethinking Vienna 1900, ed. Steven Beller (Oxford/New York: Berghahn Books, 2001). Anthony Bushell, Polemical Austria: The Rhetorics of National Identity from Empire to Second Republic (Cardif: University of Wales Press, 2013), 188.

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26. Elisabeth Klamper, “Die böse Geistlosigkeit: Die Kulturpolitik des Ständestaat,” in Kunst und Diktatur: Architektur, Bildhauer und Malerei in Österreich, Deutschland, Italien und Sowjetunion 1922–1956, ed. Jan Tabor (Vienna: Verlag Grasl/Künstlerhaus Wien, 1994), 125. Petropoulos, “The Primacy of Kulturpolitik,” 71, makes a similar point. 27. This dynamic was paralleled in the sphere of music. See Fritz Trümpi, The Political Orchestra: The Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics during the Third Reich (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), especially Chapter 4. 28. Aleida Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media and Archives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (München: C.H. Beck, 1999); Aleida Assmann, Cultural Memory and Historical Consciousness in the German Speaking World, eds. Christian Emden and David Midgley (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004). For a good overview of the field of memory studies, see the introduction to Jan Werner Müller, Memory and Power in Post War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), esp. 13 f. For memory studies in the humanities, see Russel J.A. Kilbourn and Eleanor Ty, The Memory Efect: The Remediation of Memory in Literature and Film (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013), 3–35. 29. For the political instrumentalization of collective memory and the German past, see Jefrey Olick, The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility (London/ New York: Routledge, 2007). For an excellent overview of the historiography and potential pitfalls of the conception of collective memory, see his introduction and Chapter 2, “Collective Memory: The Two Cultures.” For further reflection on these issues and pitfalls, see Alon Confino, “Memory as Historical Narrative and Method,” and “Collective Memory and Cultural History,” in Germany as a Culture of Remembrance: Promises and Limits of Writing History, ed. Alon Confino (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 30. Duncan S.A. Bell, “Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology and National Identity,” British Journal of Sociology 54, no. 1 (2003): 63–81. 31. David Rief, In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2016). 32. Bradford Vivian, Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), ebook, 13. 33. Vivian, Public Forgetting, 5. 34. Christian Karner, “Paradigms of Identity,” and “National Symbols and Histories in Crises,” in Negotiating National Identities: Between Globalization, the Past and the Other (London: Routledge, 2016); Christian Karner, “Multiple Dimensions and Discursive Contests in Austria’s Mythscape,” in The Use and Abuse of Memory, 193–210. 35. Peter Stachel, Mythos Heldenplatz: Hauptplatz und Schauplatz der Republik (Vienna: Verlagsgruppe Styria GmbH & Co., 2018). 36. Andrea Langenohl, “Memory in Post-Authoritarian Societies,” in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, eds. Astrid Eril and Asgard Nünning (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 163–172. 37. Dirk Rupnow and Heidemarie Uhl, Zeitgeschichte ausstellen in Österreich: Museen, Gedenkstätten, Ausstellungen (Wien: Böhlau, 2011). See the cited works of these authors throughout the various chapters of this study. 38. Katya Krylova, The Long Shadow of the Past: Contemporary Austrian Literature, Film and Culture (Woodbridge, Boydell and Brewer, 2017). In her excellent study, Krylova looks at the works of filmmakers Ruth Beckermann and Margareta Heinrich; writers Robert Schindel, Anna Mitgutsch and Elfriede Jelinek, among others, and many recent memorial projects, both permanent and temporary. 39. Tim Corbett, “Like an Overgrown Garden . . .? Austrian Historical Memory and the Aftermath of Cultural Genocide at a Jewish Cemetery in Vienna,” Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 32, no. 3 (2018): 174. 40. This includes not only Bischof’s many excellent studies (see the bibliography) but also his role as editor of varied and wide-ranging volumes of Contemporary Austrian Studies. 41. See, for example, Alan E. Steinweis, Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). Guy Miron has shown how, in the early years of Nazi rule, the entire spectrum of Jewish groups attempted to call upon history to show

10

42. 43.

44. 45.

46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53.

Introduction the long Jewish commitment to Germany, as well as to convince themselves that Jews had faced such difculties in the past. But such attempts could not survive in a culture and society devoted to re-envisioning the past. Guy Miron, The Waning of Emancipation: Jewish History, Memory and the Rise of Fascism in Germany (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 2011). Throughout, I define ideology as the doctrine, myth and beliefs that guide individuals, social movements, institutions or large groups, with reference to political or social plans and beliefs. See Dirk Rupnow, “‘Ihr müsst sein, auch wenn ihr nicht mehr seid’: The Jewish Central Museum in Prague and Historical Memory in the Third Reich,” in Jewish Dimensions in Modern Visual Culture. Antisemitism, Assimilation, Afrmation, eds. Rose-Carol Washton Long, Matthew Baigell and Milly Heyd. The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2010), 116–141. See Laura Morowitz, “Reviled, Repressed, Resurrected: Vienna 1900 in the Nazi Imaginary,” Austrian History Yearbook 53 (May 2022): 169–189. Rathkolb points out that cultural erasure began on the very day of the Anschluss as photos of violence and acts of cruelty were far less likely to see publication than those of victorious crowds gathered to celebrate Hitler. Rathkolb, “The Anschluss in the Rear View Mirror”; Kannonier-Finster and Meinrad Ziegler, Österreichisches Gedächtnis. For a good bibliography on remembering and forgetting in Austrian post–WWII history, see Günter Bischof, “Founding Myths and Compartmentalized Pasts: New Literature and the Construction, Hibernation and Deconstruction of World War II Memory in Post War Austria,” in Bischof and Pelinka, Austrian Historical Memory and National Identity, 303–341. For attempts to theorize how such erasure might work, see Elena Esposito, “Social Forgetting: A Systems Theory Approach,” in Cultural Memory Studies. Peter Burke, “History as Social Memory,” in Memory, History, Culture and the Mind, ed. Thomas Butler (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 108. See Rudy Koshar, From Monument to Traces (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 123. For the way in which post-Holocaust Europe is haunted by absence, erasure and forgetting, see the works of James Young: e.g., The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994); Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, The Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010); Kannonier-Finster and Ziegler, Österreichisches Gedächtnis. Hillary Hope Herzog, Vienna is Diferent: Jewish Writers in Austria from the Fin de Siècle to the Present (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011). See, for example, Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (London: Routledge Press, 1991). Lisa Silverman, Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture Between the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Elana Schapira, Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture and Design in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2016); Scott Spector, “Modernism without Jews: A Counter-Historical Argument,” Modernism/Modernity 13, no. 4 (November 2006). Indeed, this has been one of the ongoing themes in Young’s extraordinary works. See, for example, James Young, “Memory and Counter-Memory: The End of the Monument in Germany,” Harvard Design 9 (Fall 1999): 1–10. Potter argues that art historiography has clung to an overly simplified distinction between “good,” stylistically diverse modern art and a morally suspect, aesthetically “bad” Nazi aesthetic. This notion that Modernist artists, such as those in the Bauhaus, must be aligned with anti-Nazi sentiments has been overturned by Petropoulos. Van Dyke shows how an artist like Franz Radziwill, working in a form of magic realism, could be embraced by some in the Nazi establishment and declared “degenerate” by others. Reasons for the persistent distortion include the desire to equate the artistically and politically progressive, Cold War conflation of Modernist art with the notion of political freedom and democracy, etc. Pamela Potter, Art of Suppression: Confronting the Nazi Past in Histories of the Visual and Performing Arts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016); Jonathan Petropoulos, Artists Under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany (London/New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014); James A. Van Dyke, Franz Radziwill and the Contradictions of German Art History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010). For a concise overview of the continuing debates and difculties in the field of German art history, see Julius Redzinski, “Bad Art. Propaganda. No Art at All. The Struggle of German Art History to Come to Terms with the Art (Politics) of National Socialism,” Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis 94 (2019): 16–36.

2

Austrian Identity, the Anschluss and the Creation of Ostmark

What people and societies choose not to remember is just as crucial to identity as what they choose to recall. Harry Ritter1

Austrian identity—it’s forgetting and rewriting—was a problem long before the Nazis marched in and remained so long after. Despite claims that Austria had a “thousand-year history” (based on reference in medieval documents to the Eastern marches, or Ostarrîchi), her status and her borders had been continually called into question.2 Was Austria a nation? A state? An enlightened “better Germany”? To what extent could Austria claim a history separate from the Habsburg Empire and a culture separate from Germany? A century and a half after the Institut für österreichische Geschichtsforschung was founded to establish a solid history for Austria, the question of its identity continues to vex scholars and to remain a tinderbox of political discourse.3 Recent debates over the Haus der Geschichte Österreich (Austrian House of History) provide a microcosm of unresolved issues.4 Despite attempts to claim Austrian autonomy dating back to the Middle Ages, it was only in 1867—one year after the Austro-Prussian War, in which Prussia emerged dominant— that Austria was recognized as a nation. In that year, the Austro-Hungarian empire was formed and Austria expelled from the Deutsche Bund (German Confederation). The provinces of upper and lower Austria—the former “eastern marches”—and some other German-speaking regions, were united into a culturally German Austria, with some 10 million German speakers. (The other 55 million people who made up the empire were spread over 12 nationalities.)5 While Austria took pride in its German inheritance, Vienna was a polyglot city, a microcosm of the diferent ethnic and national groups spread over the empire. In 1910 the Austrian empire held 28.5 million people: 1,313,698, or 4.69 percent of them, were Jews.6 As scholars such as Carl Schorske long ago noted, as Austria’s real political power faded, her cultural dominance rose.7 The force that she lacked in political afairs was turned instead to music, theater, the arts and intellectual life. After its defeat by Prussia, Bushell writes, Austria “becomes an intellectual and cultural construction.”8 This construction was centered on the vibrant, multi-ethnic Vienna of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This culture of “Sissi und Schlag,” Die Neue Freie Presse and the Ringstrasse, of Freud and Schnitzler and of Strauss’s ubiquitous waltzes was thoroughly urban and decidedly un-Prussian.9 Nevertheless, such pride in its imperial history was not yet seen as antithetical to Austria’s German character. Not only did many 19th-century political and historical figures DOI: 10.4324/9781003353782-2

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insist that Austria was indeed German; some claimed that she was more German or, indeed, a kind of “better Germany.”10 This was based on the arguments of the Großdeutschum school that the Catholic and imperial history of Austria was, in fact, her most noble and Germanic feature. Thus, Austrian nationalism and German culture and inheritance were reconcilable. To promote Austrian distinction was to strengthen at the same time her German character. (As we shall see in the course of this book, some figures after the Anschluss would also attempt to promote a distinctive Ostmark culture while struggling to reconcile it with the Reich policy of cultural unity; oftentimes, their strategy was not successful.) To put it another way, the mythscapes of Austria and of Germany could easily be reconciled, even if they did not overlap.11 For many of those writing between the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the rise of the Nazis, what distinguished Austria was the fact that her identity did not rest on nationalism, but rather on a more noble idea of culture, enlightenment and transnational harmony. Yet given the tensions and problems that existed, this notion of an “Austrian idea” was always only a fantasy.12 Vienna: An Austrian City? If the identity of Austria was made more difcult by her close relationship with Germany, so was it split by the gulf between Viennese and regional character. Was Vienna—by far the largest and most populated of Austrian cities—the “real” Austria, or was she an anomaly? While the Länder (regions) were rural, traditional and inward looking, Vienna was urban, cosmopolitan and often radical. Moreover, in a predominantly Catholic country, Vienna was 10 percent Jewish and heavily dominated by Jews in the areas of culture and journalism, earning her special hatred from many in the Nazi hierarchy.13 How could the city be assimilated into a vision of Ostmark? Indeed, Vienna had a history sharply distinct from the Tyrol, Salzburg and the other Alpine/Danube regions that constituted the rest of Austria.14 By the turn of the century, the cultural, economic and social rift between the urban capital and the rural regions had reached a “full blown rift.”15 For decades she had been the center and jewel in the crown of the multinational Habsburg Empire. It was this Vienna that Hitler first visited as a young man and that would earn his lifelong hatred. Alongside the lingering “twilight” of imperial Vienna, Hitler arrived at the height of the city’s Modernist transformation, into the city of Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt, Arthur Schnitzler and Gustav Mahler. As we will return to many times in this book, he also arrived in a Vienna that would never again reach such a high percentage of Jewish residents, nearly all of them first- or secondgeneration immigrants from other parts of the Empire. It would remain suspect to Hitler, as a Rassenkonglomerat.16 If the cosmopolitan and polyglot nature of Vienna hardly endeared the city to the young Hitler, its transformation into Red Vienna under the first Republic certainly sealed its fate and threatened to replace the storehouse of collective memory with an entirely diferent one. First Republic of Austria Austria’s place as the centerpiece of a multinational empire collapsed with the end of the First World War. The Austro-Hungarian Empire splintered into seven autonomous nations. Three million German speakers found themselves outside the borders of what was now Austria in places like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. In November of 1918, the Republic of

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Figure 2.1 Map of post-WWI Europe, 1923. Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Europe_1923-fr.svg.

German-Austria (Deutschösterreich) was proclaimed, but the Entente forbade use of the name, and it became known as the Republic of Austria, led by State Chancellor Karl Renner and legally committed to democracy. From the start, the First Republic was plagued by conflict and instability. Rather than consensus, power was split between the two leading parties, the Christian Socialists (who had been founded in the 1890s by the antisemitic mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger) and the Social Democrats. Pitted against both were the Communists (Kommunistische Partei Österreichs, or KPÖ) and the factions of pan-Germans who hoped for a reunification with Germany. Alongside the government and army, various paramilitary groups flourished, dominated on the right by groups like the Heimwehr and Freiheitsbund and on the left by the Schutzbund.17 Not surprisingly, the Social Democrats held sway in Red Vienna while the regions were largely conservative. The government existed in a perpetual state of chaos, with 16 chancellors ruling between 1919 and 1938. Austrian independence had been politically assured by Wilson’s Fourteen Points: “The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity for autonomous development.”18 Nevertheless, the nation was acknowledged as a “second German state.”19 As part of a larger pan-German entity, Austria’s distinction as a “better Germany” was repeatedly and widely stressed: What the pan-German conception of history was all about was thus a rehabilitation of Austria of the Habsburg Empire. Its representatives focused on Austria’s role in German history, on the German achievements and tasks of Austria and the House of Habsburg, the German mission of German-Austria, Austrians, and Austrian historians. The values of Austria’s German achievements had to be brought home to Germandom.20

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As before the war, its imperial and Habsburg history was highlighted not in opposition to its Germanic heritage but as evidence of it.21 This legacy was one of cosmopolitan, enlightened rule, characterized by stability, multi-ethnic co-existence and courtly culture. Institutions such as universities, law courts and theaters were believed to flourish under the benevolent imperial control. This distinct Habsburg heritage would continue to be denied by right-wing extremists throughout the second half of the 20th century— for example, by the Freedom Party’s Jorg Haider in 1993: “Austria’s history is more deeply and complexly rooted in that of Germany, and indeed the whole of Europe than the usual emphasis today on the Habsburgs and the nostalgia for Empire would permit.”22 The Republic sputtered along until the early 30s, when three events challenged her survival: the Depression, the Civil War and the Nazi takeover of Germany. The fledgling democratic Austria became a federal state in 1933, ruled for the next five years by an Austro-Fascist government. Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss dissolved the National Council and disbanded parliament, ruling as a dictator and embracing elements of fascism but not the racial ideology of German or Italian fascism. Only a single party—the Fatherland Front (Vaterländische Front)—was recognized as legitimate. When the Social Democrats were outlawed in February 1934, a civil war broke out among the Fatherland Front, the Social Democrats and the Austrian Nazi party, sundering the fragile nation even further. By then the largest threat to Austria came not from leftist groups such as the Social Democrats or KPÖ but from the growing Nazi party. From the start, the Austrian Nazi party was divided between those who wanted to follow Germany and those who wanted to remain separate from German control.23 By 1933, there were 43,000 Nazi party members in Austria.24 Many of them wished to keep the Nazi party, and Austria, entirely independent of the Reich in all matters.25 Fearing that Hitler’s victories in 1933 would lead to Nazi gains in Austria, on June 19, 1933, Dollfuss outlawed the Nazi party, driving them underground. After Dollfuss’s government cracked down on the Social Democrats, they called for armed resistance, and civil war broke out in February of 1934. Several months later, Austrian Nazis staged the “July Putsch,” breaking into the chancellery and murdering Dollfuss. When Mussolini made it clear he would defend Austria against any further attempted putsch, Hitler moved quickly to deny any culpability for the act, going as far as expelling the murderers from the Nazi party. From that moment on, Hitler’s trust in the Austrian Nazi party was on shaky ground, and the party itself was rent by further factionalism.26 Kurt Schuschnigg, a former minister of education originally allied with the right-wing Christian Social party, was appointed as Dollfuss’ successor and would remain as chancellor until his resignation on the evening of the Anschluss. Austria remained an authoritarian, anti-democratic “Christian and German” state, which denied legal status to the Nazi party. In the realm of culture, Schuschnigg continued to emphasize the artistic legacy of Austria as central to her identity and distinction from Germany.27 The Catholic Baroque past was hailed, as was the Biedermeier period. In the realm of contemporary art, the regime encouraged heroic monuments, church building and the “revival” of sacred art. Heimat films28 also flourished, serving to boost national pride and consciousness of an independent Austria while helping “invent” a new socially shared set of memories.29 Hitler put an end to such Austrian independence in 1936, when he demanded the Austrian government release jailed Nazis and cease criticizing him in the media. When these demands were met by Schuschnigg in February of 1937—it had become apparent that he

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had little choice—it emboldened the Austrian Nazis. “By 1938,” historian Thomas Weyr notes, “something close to a Nazi shadow government was in place.”30 Anschluss On March 12, 1938, Austria was invaded by Germany and, in matters of policy, ceased to exist.31 As Hitler spoke to the enthralled and fevered crowd that jammed Vienna’s Heldenplatz a few days later, he left no doubt of the symbolic importance he invested in the Anschluss: I now proclaim for this land its new mission. It fulfills the aim called for by the German settlers of every district [Gau] of the Altreich. The age-old Ostmark of the German people should henceforth be the newest bulwark of the German nation and the German Reich. I speak in the name of millions of people of this beautiful German land, in the name of the Steier, of the Upper and Lower Austrians, of the Kartner, of the Salzberger, of the Tirolers and above all in the name of the inhabitants of the city of Vienna when, in the blink of an eye, I unite 68 million of our original German comrades securely into the Reich: This land is German, its mission is understood, it will be fulfilled and the great German national community will never be surpassed in loyalty. Our task will be to solve, through work, and common pledges and unity the greatest social, cultural and economic tasks, above all to develop and build up Austria evermore as a stronghold of National Socialist attitude and willpower. . . . Therefore in these hours I ofer up to the German people the greatest pronouncements of my life. As Führer and Chancellor of the German nation and the Reich, I proclaim forever more for history the entrance of my Heimat (birthland) into the Third Reich.32 The Heldenplatz as the site for this re-unification was strategically chosen; Nazi power and authority would erase and “rewrite” the glory of the Habsburg Empire on the very site designed and built for imperial political-symbolic power.33

Figure 2.2 Hitler at the Heldenplatz, March 15, 1938. Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1987-0922500,_Wien,_Heldenplatz,_Rede_Adolf_Hitler.jpg.

16 Austrian Identity, the Anschluss and the Creation of Ostmark While Austria as an independent nation literally disappeared overnight, the handwriting had been on the wall for months, and Hitler’s plans to annex Austria dated back years, expressed in the very first paragraph of Mein Kampf (1925).34 Hitler’s designs on Austria were made clear in a meeting he held with Schuschnigg at the Berchtesgaden in February of 1938. Yet Schuschnigg was certain that his plan to keep an autonomous and “free” Austria would prevail. In the months leading up to Germany’s invasion, Schuschnigg had determined to hold a nationwide plebiscite on March 13. He believed the results of the plebiscite would make undeniable the Austrian desire to remain a sovereign nation, united under the Fatherland Front. When Hitler learned about the plans for the plebiscite, he mounted a series of immediate demands, including Schuschnigg’s resignation, forcing them into efect before the plebiscite could take place and initiating the events leading up to the Anschluss.35 At 1:00 p.m. on the afternoon of March 11, Hitler signed the order that stated he would send in armed troops on March 13 if all his demands were not immediately met. The orders were repeated to Schuschnigg by telephone from Göring at 2:45 p.m. The president of Austria, Wilhelm Miklas, refused to yield to Nazi pressure to appoint Arthur Seyß-Inquart as a new Nazi-approved chancellor. Claiming that Miklas had sent a telegraph to the Reich requesting their help in keeping order (but in reality manufactured by Göring’s agents), German troops began to amass at the Austrian border. By 8:00 p.m., Schuschnigg went on radio to address the nation: This day has placed us in a tragic and decisive situation. I have to give my Austrian fellow countrymen the details of the events of today. The German government today handed President Miklas an ultimatum, with a time limit, ordering him to nominate as chancellor a person designated by the German government and to appoint members of a cabinet on the orders of the German government; otherwise, German troops would invade Austria. I declare before the world that the reports launched in Germany concerning disorders by the workers, the shedding of streams of blood, and the creation of a situation beyond the Austrian Government’s control are lies from A to Z. President Miklas has asked me to tell the people of Austria that he has yielded only to force since we are not prepared, even in this terrible situation, to shed blood. So we have decided to order the troops to ofer no resistance. . . . And so I take leave of the Austrian people with a German word of farewell uttered from the depths of my heart: God protect Austria.36 While the events of the Anschluss were not inevitable, the Nazi narrative of those weeks and months would certainly portray them that way, enshrining them in a mythical history. As scholar Alon Confino has noted of the Nazi use of history, the past “did not prophesize the future” but the present used the past “to make it seem as if it had.”37 As so many witnesses and authors have written, by nightfall, Austria became a circus of violence, rioting and destruction, and whatever fragile sense of order and decency had been held up by the First Republic collapsed completely. Arrests began immediately, targeting Social Democrats, Communists and Jews, reaching close to 10,000 in the first week. The streets filled with marauding Nazis, beating political opponents and terrorizing any Jews they could lay hands on. Stefan Zweig described the events of that night

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in his memoir, Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday) (1942), with a vividness that still strikes fear in the reader so many decades later: The mask was of. Now there was no longer mere robbery and theft, but every private lust for revenge was given free reign. University professors were obliged to scrub the streets with their naked hands, pious, white-bearded Jews were dragged into the synagogues by hooting youths and forced to do knee exercises and to shout Heil Hitler. All the sickly, unclean fantasies of hate that had been conceived in many orgiastic nights found raging expression in broad daylight. Breaking into homes and tearing earrings from trembling women may well have happened hundreds of years ago. . . [W]hat was new, however, was the shameless delight in public tortures, in spiritual martyrization, in the refinement of humiliation.38 On the morning of March 12, the German Eighth Army marched into Austria; Hitler entered at the place of his birth, Braunau-am-Inn, at four in the afternoon and made his way to his adopted hometown of Linz and then on to Vienna on March 15. Even as they unfolded through newsreel and “journalism,” these events became part of the mythic narrative enshrined in Nazi discourse and transmitted as cultural memory to the populace. Newspapers such as the Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung captured the “miracle” in their headlines: “The German Reich Will No Longer Be Torn in Half!” It reported on the hundreds of thousands who poured into Vienna “in order to welcome Austria’s liberation, and the creator of Greater Deutschland!”39 If the streets of Vienna had recently been full of youth from the Fatherland Front—those who firmly opposed union with the Third Reich—they seemed to have disappeared, like the city itself, overnight. The streets were a riot of Nazi flags, parades and cheering mobs, culminating in the swelling reception for Hitler at the Heldenplatz, where 200,000 people jammed to greet their “liberator.” In the weeks that followed, Austria was awash in unceasing waves of propaganda.40 To replace the “canceled” plebiscite originally scheduled by Schuschnigg, Hitler scheduled a new one on April 10, which would put to the new Gaue of the Reich the question of whether it approved of the union with Germany. In the days leading up to the referendum, the city of Vienna was swathed in banners bearing Hitler’s face and the declaration “Ja!”

Figure 2.3 Stimmzettel vom April 10, 1938. Voting ballot from April 10, 1938. (“Referendum and Großdeutscher Reichstag; Ballot; “Do you agree with the reunification of Austria with the German Reich that was enacted on 13 March 1938 and do you vote for the party of our leader; Adolf Hitler?; Yes/No”). Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stimmzettel-Anschluss.jpg.

18 Austrian Identity, the Anschluss and the Creation of Ostmark On April 9, Hitler spoke of Vienna as a “pearl” whose value he would cultivate: “In my eyes, this city is a pearl! In every case, I will bring forth the value of this pearl. Her care will be entrusted to the entire Reich.”41 Through propaganda, explicit intimidation, arrests and vote blocking, Austria overwhelmingly agreed to the Anschluss; 99.73 percent of the votes returned declared desire for union. Although there was hardly need to kindle antisemitism in the newly annexed territories, no time was wasted on a full-scale propaganda war on the Jews. From August 2 to October 23, the exhibition Der Ewige Jude was displayed at the Northbahnhalle.42 Originating in the Altreich, it drew 412,000 people to the Deutsches Museum in Munich from November 1937 to January 1938. Both Goebbels and Julius Streicher, editor of the vicious antisemitic journal Der Stürmer, welcomed visitors to the opening. Propaganda images spread throughout the show “revealed” to viewers the centuries-old Jewish conspiracy to disenfranchise and conquer Germany, through forces like international communism and a biologically inherited cunning. Through these caricatures and photos, the history of Jewish perfidy, from medieval usury to modern-day banking and swindling, explained the reasons the Jews were condemned to wander the Earth. As depicted in these images, the Jew was physically abhorrent, a leering, hooked-nosed, caftan-clad aberration, a kind of anti-Aryan haunting the city. It would be the largest antisemitic exhibition held in Vienna prior to the war.43 The Political Creation of Ostmark

In the weeks that followed, Austria was dismantled and every sphere, from economics to culture to agriculture, rearranged to begin the process of Gleichschaltung (assimilation and coordination.) By March 13, several new laws governing the Anschluss had been written and declared, with the first article pronouncing: “Austria is a part of the Third Reich.” (“Österreich ist ein Land des Deutschen Reiches.”)44 Seyss-Inquart was made Gauleiter of Ostmark and served as Gauleiter/Reichsstatthalter (Gau leader/governor) of Vienna until April 30, 1939. Josef Bürckel was appointed Reichskommissar für die Wiedervereinigung Österreichs mit dem Deutschen Reich (Reich commissioner for the reunification of Austria with the German Reich) and would serve in the position until March 31, 1940, also taking over from Seyss-Inquart as Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Vienna. He made clear that Austria would no longer exist: The Austria of today must disappear because she is too loaded down, due to historical developments, by anti-Reich and separatist tendencies, and in her current independent formation could repeatedly awaken the hopes of those who stand against the Reich.45 Bürckel’s powers were wide ranging; he was immediately put in charge of propaganda, the Wehrmacht, the police, the foreign ofce and news reports.46 (His responsibilities would later include deportations of the Jews; his suicide in 1944 prevented him from being brought before any court.)47 A special Vienna edition of the Völkischer Beobachter, the chief Nazi newspaper, began publication on March 15. Every form of propaganda—posters, films, newspapers, rallies—was disseminated with the aim of winning over the working class.48 Nazi bigwigs from the Altreich, among them Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Nazi Youth; Reich Minister Hans Frank; and Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, were flown in to drum up enthusiasm. Three weeks after the Anschluss, the Völkisher Beobachter observed that a real shift in the culture had taken place, indicated by the swastika-bedecked

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streets of Mariahilferstrasse, replacing streets that earlier had been devoid of flags and symbols, “a sign for those in the know that the international opposition of the Hebrew faith against the empire of the Germans lives here. Today Vienna is again a German city.”49 Austria now became Ostmark, and beginning in October of 1938, its regions were rearranged in a system of seven Reichsgau der Ostmark: Vienna, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Carinthia, Styria, Salzburg and Tirol-Voralberg.50 Each Gau was headed by a Gauleiter, nearly all of Austrian origin. As they would throughout the Third Reich, clashes occurred between the various regional heads and Berlin. The proliferation of administrative units and rulers continued to be a source of conflict; older forms and ministries were sometimes left in place and then phased out, which often led to multiplication or doubling of those in power. (This would occur again after the outbreak of war, when all Gaue were divided into two major districts for purposes of military protection.)51 While the Ostmark was clearly part of the Reich, it clearly also signified a somewhat separate entity from the Altreich and, thus, continued to be suspect. Within the city of Vienna, too, there were dizzying overlaps of power. Bürckel, as Gauleiter, functioned as the ultimate authority, but beneath him were three deputy majors: Vizebürgermeister Hanns Blaschke (who would play a crucial role in cultural afairs under the Anschluss), Thomas Kozich and Franz Richter, all Vienna natives. Hermann Neubacher was appointed mayor of Vienna on March 13, 1938, but was demoted on April 26, 1940, in part due to his “lax” attitude toward the city’s Jews and Social Democrats.52 Bürckel’s campaign (but not his position) came to an end on May 1, 1939, when a new and labyrinthine body of laws governing Ostmark and its administration went into efect. Apace with the transformation of all former Austrian administrative ofces and laws were the vicious persecution and expropriation of the Jews, which began on the first night of the Anschluss and continued until 96 percent of Vienna’s Jews had been expelled or deported. (By 1942 only about 8,000 Jews remained in Austria.)53 Individually focused beatings, murders and plunder were matched by administrative laws designed to strip the Jews of citizenship, property and rights. Beginning on April 27, 1938, the Decree for the Registration of Jewish Property was established. On May 31, 1938 the Austrian civil service law (Berufsbeamtentumsgesetz) went into efect; immediately, Jews were expelled from universities, schools, museums, theaters, the military, civil service and the law. Within months of the Anschluss, the Mauthausen concentration camp outside Linz was opened. By November of 1938 when Kristallnacht occurred, 4,600 Jewish businesses had been liquidated and 1,831 Aryanized (legally seized from Jews and transferred into non-Jewish ownership).54 An entire apparatus of agencies had been created to confiscate Jewish property and art collections, including the Gestapo Ofce for the Disposal of the Property of Jewish Emigrants (VUGESTA).55 Although estimates are not agreed upon, between 6,000 and 10,000 Jews were arrested and sent to Dachau during the following week of terror. In June 1939, the Central Ofce for Emigration was created (later headed by Adolf Eichmann), which would be responsible for ridding Austria of her Jews. Forced emigration was the ofcial policy until November 10, 1941, when nearly all remaining Jews were deported to their deaths in the East. The Cultural Creation of Ostmark

If nations are “imagined communities,” as Benedict Anderson has written, the creation of Ostmark was one of “erasing” or “un-imagining” the nation of Austria.56 Whatever

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fragile ties had held together Austria now had to be severed and once-firm borders papered over. Parallel to the literal restructuring and creation of a new government was the need for a new construct for the entity now known as Ostmark. This reimagining required a new history, a new culture and the recounting of a new narrative, although the notion of Austria as part of the German volk certainly pre-dated the period.57 The “memory-landscape” was re-envisioned, discarding elements that no longer fit while retaining those that reinforced the new narrative.58 As Oliver Rathkolb has pointed out, the identity and memory of the Anschluss and Ostmark were highly and precisely controlled from the start; it was the photos of adoring crowds at the Heldenplatz, rather than those of Jews scrubbing the sidewalks, that were ubiquitous in the press and used to shape the public memory of the event.59 Rudy Koshar expresses a similar concept when he notes that “the Holocaust was being forgotten as it happened.”60 The cultural realm was vital to the construction of a new collective memory, or rather the replacement of such individual memories with one constructed through institutions.61 As this section will make clear, a new set of narratives, symbols and images attached to the Ostmark become ubiquitous and ever repeated. (Perhaps nowhere was this idea of a constructed “memory” so potent as with the relentless public image of “The Jews” in film, newspapers, textbooks, etc., often successfully destroying previous personal bonds and suppressing personal memories.) The first of all municipal ofces to be restructured under the Ostmark was the Gaukulturamt der Stadt Wien (Cultural Ofce of Vienna), a revision of former Gruppe VII in the Viennese Magistrate’s ofce. This ofce, led by Deputy Mayor Blaschke, had full supervision over cultural life, although both Hermann Stuppäck and Seyss-Inquart were given somewhat similar roles through other branches.62 High-ranking Nazis in Vienna continued to attempt to remain sovereign in matters of culture, which, as we will see, often lead to clashes. Blaschke’s aim was to “guide and educate the Viennese populace” and eliminate “Jewish circles” within the culture.63 The various cities within the Ostmark were branded with new associations that served the Reich: Salzburg became the “Festspielstadt” (Festival City), Linz the “Führerstadt” etc.64 Vienna’s identity would remain slippery and unstable. Along with a continuing problem of dissolving Austrian identity, clearly required by Berlin, was an unwillingness to let go of Viennese distinction in the arts. Vienna’s role, as we shall see, would continue to plague Nazi ofcials in the Altreich, even those at the highest level. In her imperial history and beauty, she represented both a threat to Berlin’s dominance and a continuing reminder of multicultural heritage right in the heart of Ostmark. Austria’s former identity needed to be shed. But how to do so? Several strategies to ease the “forgetting” of Austria were adapted from the opening days. As Hermann Hagspiel notes, the very replacement of the nation’s name with a new regional delineation—the Ostmark—implied the extinguishing of Austria.65 Later, even this designation would be problematic, and in 1942, the term Ostmark was done away with for fear of denoting a separate, sovereign entity.66 The notion of a unique and distinct realm of the Reich would always rouse suspicion: from the start, there were problems with elements within the Austrian Nazi party who preferred to remain independent and did not necessarily welcome the Anschluss.67 Although they were heavily repressed and often arrested, members of groups within the Catholic Church and the Austrian Communist Party openly demonstrated against the Nazi regime in the first months (and again in the final days of the Reich). On October 7, 1938, a large anti-Nazi demonstration was held in front of Vienna’s St. Stephen’s cathedral. (A violent retaliatory demonstration against the protest was then held in the Heldenplatz.)68 Any sign of Austrian allegiance had to be firmly wiped out.

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As part of this strategy, the events of March 1938 were portrayed not as history but with the force and inevitability of myth.69 The Anschluss was revealed as a Wiederanschluss—a re-annexation—and the ofcial history of Austria as an interruption in the fated destiny of a people.70 The living, personal memories of Austrian history and politics were replaced by a fabricated cultural memory.71 A tidal wave of books on Ostmark history, geography and culture were immediately sent into print. Representative of these are Günther Schwab’s Österreich: die Deutsche Ostmark (1938)72 and Friedrich Lange’s Unsere alte Ostmark Österreich (1941),73 which tell the story of the region’s noble origins, its decadent fall at the hands of the treacherous Habsburgs and its salvation under Hitler. Central to this story was how the original German tribal blood had managed to remain pure and unsullied, due to the natural protection of the mountainous landscape: “The remoteness and wildness of the Northern high mountains ranges protected the inhabitants from foreign infiltration.”74 The race had held out against the Magyars, the Romans, the Slavs etc. The clashes between Germans and Romans did not stop, but especially in the later period of Ostmark, continued on centuries longer. Here so often was the fate of the two thousand-year-old destiny of Europe played out, in regard to if and how the regions and people of the Mediterranean sea of our continent, from the North and Baltic Sea in the North on the one hand, to the Mediterranean sea on the other hand, would find their proper order.75 Images of impassable encircling mountains served equally to remind readers of their function as efective barriers against the dangerous areas to the east, filled with subhuman species forever in wait to encroach on German lands, the geological formation serving as Europe’s “stone backbone.” These national myths did not begin with the Anschluss but are rooted in the Ostforschung of writers in the 1930s like Hermann Aubin, who hailed the mountain’s role in protecting the German tribes who settled them.76 As Pieter Judson notes, nationalist groups promoting tourism in the Habsburg Empire had similarly rewritten “a region’s authentic identity in the distant past and then rendered all historical change since this original moment invalid.”77 The books repeatedly traced the same history, starting with the brave German tribes and continuing into the 19th century, selectively slowing down to vilify the Habsburgs and their corrupt rule. No other German land was as much a plaything in the hands of foreign powers as Austria. These powers set aside the organic laws of the Reich and her people, indeed in opposition to them, without scruples they served their own personal interests of power in this part of Germany. And no German tribe had to bear the crime of so much foreign blood streaming beside it.78 Lange includes a simple diagram in which the southwest region of the Reich had once contained the diverse Habsburg state of “12 peoples” and “12 sensibilities,” now transformed into Ostmark, surrounded by friendly nations. In these accounts, the Habsburgs were foreign interlopers on the pure soil of Germany. So, too, both the First and Second Republics were false and dangerous roads down which the (German) Austrians had been led by perfidious elements. “Austria’s path, from 1918 until 1938 was a road of sorrows.”79 Das Buch von der Deutschen Ostmark (1938)

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Figure 2.4 “Das deutsche Quadrat—einst und jetzt” from Friedrich Lange, Unsere alte Ostmark Österreich, Berlin: Nibelungen-Verlag, 1941. Source: Destroyed and out of copyright.

argued that such sorrows were largely the result of a Jewish population inserting itself in the nation, taking up a culture wholly foreign to them. Its author, Richard Suchenwirth, was active in Nazi politics in Vienna by the early 1920s and fled to Germany in 1934 after imprisonment for his illegal participation in the NSDAP.80 His celebration of the Ostmark follows the typical trajectory: It was not just a matter of language; it was about the language of being or not being part of the German people, and the Jew, who had only been casually speaking German, had nothing to do with it in the larger sense. Thus, inevitably the rejection of the Jew from the Volksgemeinschaft and the progressive realization of his disastrous influence in public and economic life also give rise to antisemitism.81 But history had reached its apogee, Suchenwirth noted, and the inevitable destiny of the German people, with the Anschluss. It was as much a sacred fulfillment as an historical victory: But the time had arrived. The development which had followed predestined Laws still mysterious to us, was now at an end. The hour was here. One man raised his hand and there came the German miracle, streaming over the green fields of the borders of the Mark; it flowed through, cheered on by the hearts of millions, who rushed into the streets, screaming, laughing, sobbing, with raised hands, bliss drunk and not grasping the enormity of such fortune. Free Ostmark! German Ostmark!82 In Volk auf dem Marsch: Die Junge Ostmarkreihe (1941) by Anton Hadwiger, the Anschluss was again cast as “Das Deutsche Wunder” (the German miracle), which had released the holy mission of the German race: In these days, as the German Führer moves through his Heimatland in Austria, the German soul is once again expressed in all its fullness, the fullness of God has given to me eternal life, the entire German people joyfully and profoundly join together the last of their scattered and far flung limbs into the pure, everlasting Unity of the Will and the Senses.83

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Hitler had cut through the false borders that separated the race: “Then the Führer came, just at the right time, and with his newly built Wehrmacht cut down the borders between German and German.”84 Thus, the Anschluss had succeeded in blowing away the falsely constructed barriers between Austrians and Germans: “The new Unity is beautifully sealed with blood.”85 Perhaps most exultant was the book published by Heinrich Hofmann, Hitler’s official photographer and a member of his inner circle. Wie die Ostmark ihre Befreiung erlebte: Adolf Hitler und sein Weg zu Großdeutschland. (How the Ostmark Experienced Its Liberation: Adolf Hitler and His Path to Greater Germany) (1940) serves to give a hagiographical account of Hitler’s life and the fate of the Anschluss.86 With hundreds of photographs of Hitler, his surroundings and the regions in which he lived and worked, a new myth interweaving the destiny of Hitler and of the Ostmark was being created. Facing a close-up photo of Hitler in military cap, the opening page announced his pledge: If Providence once sent me from this city in order to prepare me for leading the Reich, she must have endowed me with one Mission, and it can be only one Mission: to restore my beloved homeland to the German Reich.87 In these books, the Anschluss had even redeemed Vienna, a city that had fallen hardest under the corruption and decay of the Habsburgs and of its Jewish presence. Even before the Anschluss, “das verjudete Wien” was often contrasted with the rural, traditional countryside.88 Ostmark was de-judified. Even in Vienna, where the Jews held so much power that they seemed indispensable. There were actually professions in which the Jews represented seventy, seventy-five, indeed eighty percent or more, and even the key places and nerve centers were under their command.89 But with the closing of the department stores, real Austrian businesses had returned to the city. Vienna, once the city of the fewest births and the highest suicide rate, “had once again children, children, children and happy parents.”90 Nearly all these books included, to greater and lesser extent, photographs of the newly redeemed Gaue, most especially picturesque villages, local peasants and regional festivals. From one book to another, the same images were often repeated, giving them an iconic and instantly recognizable authority. Moreover, books from every discipline and of greatly varied function—from children’s primers to tourist literature to folklore and serious history—ofered a singular, unified picture of Ostmark. Vienna was nearly always pictured in images of the Heldenplatz or was often not pictured at all, in favor of colorful barns, snow-capped mountains and dirndl-wearing peasants in Salzburg or Kärtner or Oberdonau. In the field of folklore, for example, a similar attempt to blur the borders between Germany and Austria dominated. The journal Germanien took on the subtitle ÖsterreichDeutsches Land. It was only with the Anschluss that a chair in folklore was established at the University of Vienna; Deutsche Volkskunde als Politische Wissenschaft began publication there with the aim of illuminating the racial basis for folklore.91 Likewise, Germanists such as Heinz Kindermann, Franz Koch and Josef Nadler laid the groundwork for a scholarly celebration of the Ostmark, creating what Hans Hiebel refers to as panegyric hymns to “Community, Germandon, Volkishness, Race, Blood, Soil, Destiny,

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Courage, Loyalty and Allegiance to the Führer.”92 In 1938 Germanist Koch wrote of the Anschluss: . . . [T]his moment has seen the fulfillment of a destiny which grew and deepened for centuries, called by history to form the southeastern border of German blood, that is this same German blood that has been given to fulfill this task. Historian Josef Nadler’s Literaturgeschichte der deutschen Stämme und Landschaften (Literary History of the German Tribes and Landscapes) was originally published during the First Republic, but his pan-Germanic view that Bavaria and Austria were essentially the same culture and race fit well with National Socialist views and was republished between 1938 and 1941 in four volumes as Literaturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes: Dichtung und Schrifttum der deutschen Stämme und Landschaften (Literary History of the German People: Poetry and Other Writings from the German Tribes and Landscapes).93 Along with the promotion of local Dirndln and Trachten, Landesbauernschaften (regional farmer associations) promoted the renewal of local and regional folk songs through Singabende and Dorfabende.94 Even glossy travel literature echoed and reinforced this consistent construction of Ostmark, stressing its geography in preserving the German race and its renewal of a thousand-year history—always traced back to the German tribes—through the Anschluss. In popular culture, too, a similar shift away from Vienna to the colorful, Alpine features of the Ostmark occurred. Films such as Konzert in Tirol (1939) and Hotel Sacher (1939) shifted Austrian identity from Vienna to the Alps.95 In the films produced immediately following the Anschluss, Austrian and even Viennese culture is folded into a kind of Bavarian-Austrian continuity. The audience’s former understanding of Austria is eradicated by shifting the association from a cosmopolitan, sophisticated Vienna to a new regional Heimat.96 This notion was paralleled in the very halls of power. By 1940 those who entered the Wiener Rathaus could see two frescos, carried out by future Künstlerhaus President Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger, depicting Die Rückkehr der Ostmark (The Homecoming to Ostmark) and Die Gaben der Ostmark (Gifts of the Ostmark).97

Figure 2.5 Rudolf Eisenmenger, detail from Heimkehr der Ostmark II (Austria Returning to Its German Homeland), 1940. Mural. Length: 7 m. Vienna Town Hall. Source: The author.

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Each of the frescos measures nine meters long and consists of 13 allegorical figures with frozen gestures. In Heimkehr a Hitler Jugend carries a giant Nazi flag, flanked by a torch-bearing woman in white and a man with broken chains, symbolizing the breaking with the recent past and the glorious new future for the Ostmark. Obvious symbols—a torch representing enlightenment, a wreath representing victory—are held by the vaguely classical figures set in a generic landscape with distant mountains. In Die Gaben, the gifts of music and art are included, with virtues such as Justice and Abundance dressed in stif white togas, while Hatred and Lies sink into the ground or turn their backs. In neither the figures nor the landscape or symbolism is there anything distinctly or even vaguely Viennese in style or subject. Outside of the Nazi flag and the uniform, the work could have been made a century before. Perhaps this generic classical language was meant to give the whole concept of the Ostmark a timeless, mythic feel in contrast to a newly achieved political victory. Through institutions, books, films and, as we shall see, exhibitions, Austria was being erased. Individual heterogeneous memories of her history and identity were being replaced by a singular and ofcial narrative, a selected and politically useful form of memory that Assmann defines as functional memory: “Collective agents such as states or nations create for themselves a functional identity memory through which they adapt a certain version of the past and define their goals for the future.”98 Other scholars have used the term institutional memory to describe a similar entity.99 Functional memory nearly always relies on genealogy; in the case of Ostmark, this took the form of a repeated reference to original Germanic tribes. In the ofcial Nazi accounts, the line from these tribes had been tangled and cut for centuries, only to be reconnected in the events of 1938. The Anschluss was the fulfillment of a pre-existing fate, one that would never again be undermined: “Power desires to legitimize itself retrospectively and to immortalize itself prospectively.”100 Of course, within this new history, no counter-memory could be allowed to exist: The problem with this ofcial memory lies in the fact that it depends upon censorship and coerces rites of commemoration. It lasts as long as the power that supports it. It drives out any unofcial remembrance that might present itself as a critically subversive functional memory.101 As we shall see in the following chapters, art history and art exhibitions would have a critical role to play in promoting functional memory and suppressing other “suspect” kinds. In tandem with other cultural spheres, works of art, photographs and art historical discourse would contribute to forging a new and select collective memory of Ostmark. As Dirk Rupnow notes in his reflections on preservation and destruction in the Nazi period, “A forgetting by decree would be impossible.”102 Indeed, you cannot force someone to forget. But you can replace their memories with other ones, just as you can break a habit by replacing it with another.103 That is the context in which these exhibits should be seen. While the history of Austria and the rich cultural life of Vienna had taken decades to unfold, under the Nazis, far less time was needed to expunge these decades from public consciousness. As Rathkolb reminds us: The “National Socialist Revolution” was first and foremost racist, the creative cultural figures of Jewish heritage—with very few exceptions—were excluded and following that persecuted, deported and finally physically liquidated in the most brutal fashion.104

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Bürckel, charged with the task of bridging the First Republic of Austria and the new entity of Ostmark, believed it his job to “liquidate Austria.”105 Two years after the Anschluss, in April of 1940, a report on the Ostmark economy noted conclusively that “the past had been extirpated from memory and consciousness as if it had never existed.”106 Notes 1. Harry Ritter, “Austria and the Struggle for German Identity,” German Studies Review 15 (Winter 1992): 111–129. 2. Franz Mathias, “1,000 Years of Austria and Austrian Identity: Founding Myths,” in Bischof and Pelinka, 20–31. 3. For two good introductions to the issues surrounding Austrian identity, see Anton Pelinka, Introduction, in Bischof and Pelinka; Anthony Bushell, Polemical Austria: The Rhetoric of National Identity from Empire to Second Republic (Cardif: University of Wales Press, 2013) and the bibliographies therein. Some of the political controversies surrounding these issues are summarized in, Kontroversen um Österreichs Zeitgeschichte. Verdrängte Vergangenheit. Österreich Identität, Waldheim und die Historike, eds. Gerhard Botz and Gerald Sprangnagel (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1994). For an overview of the changing concepts of Austrian identity from the Habsburg Empire until the end of the 20th century, see Ernst Bruckmüller, “Die Entwicklung des Österreichbewusstseins,” in Österreichische Nationalgeschichte nach 1945, vol. 1, ed. Robert Kriechbaumer (Vienna: Böhlau, 1998). For a nuanced discussion of Austrian identity in the 21st century, see the writings of Karner. 4. Charles Maier, “In the Museum of Austrian History,” Contemporary Austrian Studies: Austria Today, vol. 25, eds. Günter Bischof and Ferdinand Karlhofer (New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2016), 25–35. 5. These included Italians, Croats, Czechs, Serbs, Slovaks, Russians, Ukrainians and Slovenes. 6. Bushell, Polemical Austria, 136. 7. Schorske, Fin de Siècle Vienna. 8. Bushell, Polemical Austria, 101; Petropoulos, “The Primacy of Kulturpolitik. 9. Dagmar Lorenz, “Austria, a Sonderfall? Defining German and Austrian Identity,” European Legacy 2, no. 2 (March 1997): 309. 10. Gernot Heiss, “Pan-Germans, Better Germans, Austrians: Austrian Historians on National Identity from the First to the Second Republic,” German Studies Review 16, no. 3 (October 1993): 411–433; Erin R. Hochman, “Ein Volk, ein Reich, eine Republik: Großdeutsch Nationalism and Democratic Politics in the Weimar and First Austrian Republics,” German History 12, no. 1: 29–52. 11. Bell, “Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology and National Identity.” 12. Adam Kozuchkowski, “Austria Hungary in Historiography,” in The Afterlife of Austria Hungary: The Image of the Habsburg Monarchy in Interwar Europe (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013). 13. Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews 1867–1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 14. The tension between rural Länder and Vienna has been extensively discussed. See William Bowman, “Regional History and the Austrian Nation,” The Journal of Modern History 67, no. 4 (December 1995): 873–897. He points out the Habsburg interest in papering over ethnic diversity in favor of “national” or unifying elements such as the imperial bureaucracy, the schools, the military, etc. 15. Bowman, “Regional History and the Austrian Nation,” 892. 16. Hitler uses the term in Mein Kampf. 17. The right-wing nationalist groups originally sprang up as loosely grouped militias, focused on protecting the borders of Austria and growing in number in the 1920s and 1930s. In contrast, the left-wing Republikanischer Schutzbund was well organized and formed after WWI largely to protect the social reform programs. 18. Quoted from the 19th point. The Fourteen Points were presented to Congress in January of 1918. 19. Lamb-Fafelberger, “Beyond The Sound of Music 292. 20. Heiss, “Pan-Germans,” 414; see also Lamb-Fafelberger, “Beyond The Sound of Music.”

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21. Lamb-Fafelberger, “Beyond The Sound of Music”; Lorenz, “Austria, a Sonderfall?” 22. Jorg Haider, Die Freiheit, die Ich meine (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein Taschenbuch, 1993), 109. Quoted in Bushell, Polemical Austria, 51. By the end of the 20th century, the Habsburg history of the city had been firmly and powerfully embodied in cultural memory, sealed in exhibitions, concerts and publications. 23. Bruce Paley, Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis: The History of Austrian National Socialism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981); Maurice Williams, “Some Reflections on Austro-Nazis and their Brand of Nationalism Before and After the Anschluss,” Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 12, no. 2 (1985): 185–305; Radomir Luza, Austro-German Relations in the Anschluss Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975). 24. J. Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria: The Creation of the Ostmark,” (Ph.D diss., University of Maryland, 1972), 24. 25. Some of the high-ranking Austrian Nazis who held this view included Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Hubert Klausner, Benedikt Klaushofer, Josef Leopold and Alfred Persche, head of the Austrian SA prior to the Anschluss. See Williams, “Some Reflections on Austro-Nazis.” 26. Paley, Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis. 27. On the art of the Austro-Fascist years, see the excellent essays in Kunst und Diktatur, including Monica Faber, “Ganz Modern und Kühn: Die Avantgarde und die Propagandaaustellungen in den dreißiger Jahren”; Elisabeth Klamper, “Die böse Geistlosigkeit . . .” and “Die Mühnen der Wiederverchristlichung: Die Sakral Kunst und die Rolle der Kirche während des Austrofaschismus”; Helmut Wohnout, “Im Zeichen des Ständesideals: Bedingungen Staatlicher Kulturpolitik im autoritären Österreich 1933–1938.” Also see Barbara Fellers, “‘Oh, du mein Österreich’: Aspekte der austrofaschistischen Kulturofensive am Beispiel österreichischer Präsentationen im Ausland,” in Politik der Präsentation: Museum und Ausstellung in Österreich 1918–1945, eds. Herbert Posch and Gottfried Fliedl (Vienna: Turia and Kant, 1996), 53–72. For an interesting exploration of painting during the Ständestaat, in relation to issues of regionalism, gender and landscape, see Julia Secklehner, “A New Austrian Regionalism: Alfons Walde and Austrian Identity in Painting after 1918,” Austrian History Yearbook 52 (2021): 201–226. 28. On the concept of the Heimat and Heimat films, see Chapter 4, pp. 60–61. 29. On the concept of invented memories, see Bell, “Mythscape,” and Olick, The Politics of Regret. 30. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 60. 31. The best source in English on the events of the Anschluss is Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl. Also see F. Parkinson, ed. Conquering the Past: Austrian Nazism Yesterday and Today (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989). On the changes rendered to ordinary life, see Hagspiel. Austrian scholar Gerhard Botz has written on nearly all aspects of the Anschluss: for example, Gerhard Botz, Nationalsozialismus in Wien: Machtübernahme, Herrschaftssicherung, Radikalisierung, 1938/9 (Vienna: Mandelbaum Verlag: 2008). For a full bibliography of the Anschluss, see Alfred Low, The Anschluss Movement 1918–1938: An Annotated Bibliography of German and Austrian Nationalism (New York: Garland, 1984). 32. Hitler, speech on the Heldenplatz, March 13, 1938, quoted in Anton Hadwiger, Volk auf dem Marsch: Die Junge Ostmarkreihe (Wien: Deutscher Verlag für Jugend und Volk, 1941), 8. 33. Peter Stachel, “The Heldenplatz as an Austrian Place of Memory,” Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften/Institute of Cultural and Theater Studies, http://www.oeaw. ac.at/ikt/en/staff/publikationen-der-mitarbeiter/peter-stachel-publications-since-1999/ peter-stachel-publications-before-1999/the-heldenplatz-as-an-austrian-place-of-memory/. 34. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Reynal Hitchcock (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1939), 1. Hitler claimed the reunification of Austria to be “a task to be furthered with every means our whole lives long.” Internet Archive, https://archive.org/stream/meinkampf035176mbp/meinkampf 035176mbp_djvu.txt. 35. On the seizure of power and Hitler’s demands, communicated largely by telephone through Hermann Göring, see Botz, Nationalsozialismus in Wien, 62–81. On the unfolding of the events of the Anschluss, see Hermann Hagspiel, Die Ostmark: Österreich im Großdeutschen Reich 1938–1945 (Wien: William Braumüller Verlag, 1995) esp. Chapter 3, “Österreich zwischen Ende und Neubeginn,” 17–58. See also Weyr, Chapter 1.

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36. Kurt von Schuschnigg, radio broadcast (March 11, 1938). Translated and reproduced in “Schuschnigg, in Farewell Speech, Says Nation Wanted No Bloodshed,” New York Times, March 12, 1938, 1. 37. Alon Confino, A World without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide (New York/London: Yale University Press, 2014). Bell, “Mythscape,” 922, refers to the power of the present over the past as “instrumental confinement.” 38. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), 212. 39. “‘Das Deutsche Reich wird niemand mehr zerreißen können!’ . . . um den Befreier Österreichs, den Schöpfer Großdeutschlands zu begrüßen,” Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung, March 15, 1938, 1. 40. Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, pp. 201–204. 41. “[D]iese Stadt ist in meinen Augen eine Perle! Ich werde sie in jene Fassung bringen, die dieser Perle würdig ist und sie der Obhut der ganzen Reiches . . . anvertrauen.” Adolf Hitler, April 9, 1938. Quoted in Botz, Nationalsozialismus in Wien, 222. 42. Rebhan, Die braunen Jahre; Bukey, Hitler’s Austria, 75. 43. Wolfgang Benz, “Der Ewige Jude”: Metaphern und Methoden nationalsozialistischer Propaganda (Berlin: Metropol, 2010). 44. “Gesetz über die Wiedervereinigung Österreich mit dem Deutschen Reich, 13 März 1938.” DocumentArchive, http://www.documentarchiv.de/ns/1938/anschluss_oesterreich_deutschesreich.html, accessed May 23, 2019. 45. Bürckel quoted in Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 106. On the political and historical events of the Anschluss, see Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 17–103. 46. Bürckel was in charge of propaganda under the NSDAP Landesleitung Österreich. There was also a duplicate ofce Reichspropagandahauptamt/Reichspropagandaamt 18 Österreich, headed first by Wilhelm Maul and then by a succession of others. 47. Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 239–240. The author notes that Bürckel took thorough advantage of plundered Jewish property to enrich his own villas with furniture, artwork, etc. 48. On the major propaganda campaign, see Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl; Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 89–90. On the Nazi cultivation of the working class in Austria, see Bukey, Chapter 4. See also Timothy Kirk, Nazism and the Working Class in Austria: Industrial Unrest and Political Dissent in the National Community (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 49. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 72. 50. The system became ofcial on October 6, 1939. Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 120; Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 49–57. 51. This confusing and problematic overlap of power is discussed in detail by Bernbaum. 52. Harry Ritter, “Hermann Neubacher and the Austrian Anschluss Movement, 1918–1940,” Central European History 8, no. 4 (1975): 348–369. 53. In English see The Jews of Austria: Essays on Their Life, History and Destruction, ed. Josef Fränkel (London: Valentine Mitchell, 1967) and Gertrude Schneider, Exile and Destruction: The Fate of Austrian Jews 1938–1945 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995). Wolf Gruner, Zwangsarbeit und Verfolgung. Österreichische Juden im NS Staat 1938–1945. (Innsbruck/Vienna/ Munich: Studien Verlag, 2000). 54. Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 157. 55. The acronym stands for Die Verwertungsstelle für jüdisches Umzugsgut der Gestapo. See below Chapter 3, “Ushering in the Ostmark”; “The Seizure of Art during the National Socialist Regime in Austria,” Artdatabase, https://www.kunstdatenbank.at/the-seizure-of-artduring-the-national-socialist-regime-in-austria.ht. 56. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London/New York: Verso, 1983); On the way that memory functions to shape a nation and its politics, see Jan-Werner Müller, Introduction, in Memory and Politics in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past, ed. Jan-Werner Müller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1–39. For the changes to the school curriculum in the immediate aftermath of the Anschluss, see Peter Utgaard, Remembering and Forgetting Nazism: Education, National Identity, and the Victim Myth in Postwar Austria (New York/London: Berghahn, 2003), 27–28.

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57. For a brief summary of Austrian pan-Germanism proceeding the Anschluss, see Karner, “Paradigms of Identity,” in Negotiating National Identities, 28–29. 58. What Koshar says of an earlier moment in German history can certainly be applied to the period under the NSDAP: “Germany’s response to having too much memory from the preunification period was to create a new layer for the memory landscape, the goal of which was to channel and transform earlier pasts while retaining some of them and destroying many others.” Koshar, From Monuments to Traces, 27. 59. Oliver Rathkolb, “The Anschluss in the Rearview Mirror,” 5. 60. Koshar, From Monuments to Traces, 140. 61. Uwe Baur has painstakingly compiled a list of all the competing cultural ofces and titles operative in Nazi Vienna. See Uwe Baur, “Organisation der Kultur im Gau/Reichsgau Wien,” Uwe Bauer and Karin Gradwohl Schlacher, Literatur in Österreich 1938–1945: Handbuch eines literarischen Systems, vol. 4, Wien (Vienna: Böhlau, 2018), 15–31. 62. On Blaschke as head of the Kulturamt, see Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, 133. Beginning on May 30, 1938, Stuppäck would serve as Kommissar Staatssekretär für Kunst und Kultur. On May 31, 1938, Seyß-Inquart functioned as head of the Ministerium für innere und kulturelle Angelegenheiten. Baur, “Organisation der Kultur im Gau/Reichsgau Wien,” 15. 63. For a thorough account of Blaschke’s role in the cultural afairs of the Anschluss, see Rebhann, Die braunen Jahre. 64. Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 195. 65. Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 47. 66. See Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 222. 67. On this, see Lorenz, “Austria: A Sonderfall?” 68. Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 152. Wolfgang Neugebauer, Austrian Resistance 1938–1945 (Vienna: Edition Steinbauer, 2014). 69. Laura Morowitz, “Hitler as Liberator, Ostmark as Bulwark and Other Myths of the Anschluss,” Contemporary Austrian Studies 29, Myths in Austrian History: Construction and Deconstruction, eds. Günter Bischof, Marc Landry, Christian Karner (2020): 131–150. Erik Meyer speaks of the “instrumentalization of history,” a Geschichtspolitik that aims to influence contemporary debates. “Memory and Politics,” in Cultural Memory Reader, 176. 70. On the Nazi rewriting of history, see Willi Oberkrome, “German Historical Scholarship under National Socialism,” in Nazi Germany and Historical Scholarship. For an example of a history book published in the immediate aftermath of the Anschluss, see Wilhelm Bornstedt, Die österreichische Ostmark in der Deutschen Geschichte (Breslau: Handel, 1938). 71. I am using the ideas of Aleida Assmann, who explores in her work the transformation from living, oral and individual memories to those embedded in institutions. See, for example, Aleida Assmann, “Transformations between History and Memory,” Social Research 75, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 49–72. 72. Günther Schwab, Österreich: die Deutsche Ostmark (Berlin: Karl Specht Verlag, 1938). 73. Friedrich Lange, Unsere alte Ostmark Österreich (Berlin/Leipzig: Nibelungen Verlag, 1941). 74. Schwab, Österreich, 8. 75. Lange, Unsere alte Ostmark Österreich, 9. 76. See, for example, Hermann Aubin, Geschichtlicher Aufriss des Ostraumes (Berlin: Hugo, 1940). 77. Pieter Judson, “Every German Has a Völkish Obligation He Must Fulfill: Nationalist Tourism in the Austrian Empire 1880–1918,” in Histories of Leisure, ed. Rudy Koshar (London/ New York: Bloomsbury, 2002), 153. 78. Schwab, Österreich, 7. 79. “Österreichs Weg von 1918 bis 1938 war ein Leidensweg.” Lange, Unsere alte Ostmark Österreich, 42. For an in-depth discussion of Nazi versions of the Habsburg history of the Ostmark, see below, Chapter 8. 80. By 1926 Suchenwirth had joined the NSDAP Hitlerbewegung, favoring Hitler over an autonomous direction for the Austrian Nazi party. He taught history and Germanistics at many high schools in Munich, becoming a professor at the University of Munich from 1942 to 1945. Felix Czeike, Historisches Lexikon Wien, vol. 5 (Vienna: Kremayr und Scheriau, 1997), 252; “Richard Suchenwirth,” Munzinger-Archiv, https://www.munzinger.de/search/go/document. jsp?id=00000003273.

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81. Richard Suchenwirth, Das Buch von der Deutschen Ostmark (Leipzig: Georg Dollheimer Verlag, 1938), 201. 82. Schwab, Österreich, 14. 83. Anton Hadwiger, Volk an dem Marsch: Die Junge Ostmarkreihe (Wien: Deutscher Verlag für Jugend und Volk, 1941), 26. 84. Lange, Unsere alte Ostmark Österreich, 47. 85. Lange, Unsere alte Ostmark Österreich, 7. 86. Heinrich Hofmann, Wie die Ostmark ihre Befreiung erlebte: Adolf Hitler und sein Weg zu Großdeutschland (Wien: Austria Tabakwerke, 1940). 87. Hofmann, Wie die Ostmark ihre Befreiung erlebte, frontispiece. 88. Pelinka, “Austria’s Darker Side,” 55. 89. Lange, Unsere alte Ostmark Österreich, 63. 90. Lange, Unsere alte Ostmark Österreich, 63. 91. The personalities and organizational history of this issue are covered in Olaf Bockhorn, “The Battle for Ostmark: Nazi Folklore in Austria,” in The Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich, ed. and trans. James R. Down and Hannjost Lixfield (Bloomfield: Indiana University Press, 1994), 135–155. Unfortunately, the chapter does not discuss the specific ideas or themes that characterize these academic discussions. For the more general perversion of the academic realm, see Nazi Germany and the Humanities. 92. “Gemeinschaft, Deutschtum, Volkstümlichkeit, Rasse, Blut, Boden, Schicksal, Lebenskraft, Mut, Treue und Führergefolgschaft.” Hans. H. Hiebel, Der ‘Anschluss der Ostmark an das Reich’: Zur präfaschistische Germanistik in Österreich,” in Austrian Writers and the Anschluss: Understanding the Past, Overcoming the Past, ed. Donald G. Davlau (Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1991), 70. 93. Josef Nadler, Literaturgeschichte der deutschen Stämme und Landschaften, 4 vols. (Regensburg: J. Habbel Verlag, 1912–28). 94. Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 192–193. On the creation of the Landesbauernschaften, see Talos, et al., NS Herrschaft in Österreich, 70. 95. Konzert in Tirol, directed by Karl Heinz Martin (Vienna: Vindobona-Filmproduktion GmbH, 1939), feature film; Hotel Sacher, directed by Erich Engel (Vienna: UFA, 1939), feature film. 96. “Snowblinded.” 97. Holzschuhe and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, 252–255; Stachel, “Vom NS-Leiter des Künstlerhauses zum Gestalter des Eisernen Vorhangs der Wiener Staatsoper: Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger (1902–1994),” in: Peter Bogner, Richard Kurdiovsky, Johannes Stoll (Hg.), Das Wiener Künstlerhaus, 151–158. “Vom Leiter . . .,” 154. 98. Aleida Assmann, “Function and Storage: Two Modes of Memory,” in Cultural Memory Studies, 127–128; On the specifically political use of memory in the European context of WWII and the Holocaust, see Lebow, “The Memory of Politics,” 1–39. 99. See Lebow, “The Memory of Politics,” 13. These uses of the past for the purposes of the present are referred to as “instrumentalized confinement”, by Bell as “Mythscape.” 100. Assmann, “Function and storage,” 128. 101. Assmann, “Function and storage,” 128. 102. Rupnow, “Ihr müßt sein,” 132. 103. Esposito, “Social Forgetting”; Langhole, “Memory in Post-Authoritarian Societies.” 104. Rathkolb, Führerbetreu, 48. 105. Williams, “Some Reflections on Austro-Nazis,” 296. 106. Report of aide Karl Barth on April 1, 1940, “Die Ostmärkische Wirtschaft 2 Jahre in der Großdeutschen Wirtschaft,” translated and quoted in Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 161.

3

Ushering in the Ostmark Vienna and the Künstlerhaus, Spring 1938 to Spring 1939

Accommodation and Resentment While the days following the Anschluss saw crowds assembling to worship Hitler and celebrate the start of the new lives promised to them, the euphoria did not last long. From the spring of 1938 until the end of the war, the mood of the country swung wildly, from disappointment and bitterness back to optimism and then despair again. Ever-new laws were put into efect to address the economic and practical woes, and while some of them achieved their aim, others caused widespread resentment.1 One of the most successful changes was the Jobs Creation Program, part of the National Labor Law, which dropped the unemployment rate from 22 percent (it was far higher in some rural areas) to 3.7 percent in two years. Of course, “new” jobs also became available as thousands of Jews, Communists and other “enemies of the state” were expelled from their jobs. By November 1938, nearly 2,000 Jewish businesses had been Aryanized and another 4,600 liquidated.2 The government invested widely in manufacturing plants and industries, further boosting the economy. However, many of these benefits were ofset by a sharp increase in cost of living and a spate of new taxes.3 The government would continue to keep discontentment and anger from boiling over by constant readjustments and new social programs (and, of course, by blaming all failures and shortcomings on the Jews). Despite a full-scale terror apparatus within the Ostmark, consisting of approximately 20,000 SS and police at the start, there were protests against the new regime, ranging from grumblings to anti-German jibes at theater and sporting events to some organized protests, which were quickly extinguished. As Bukey has shown, the epicenter of protest was Vienna, and this remained so throughout the course of the Anschluss. In the first years of annexation, diferent groups—among them the “Old Guard” Austrian Nazis and members of the Catholic Church and the working class—acted out against the Nazis in diferent ways. Perhaps no group had awaited the Anschluss with such fervor as the “Old Guard,” members of the Austrian Nazi Party who had been loyal for many years, even with their illegal and underground status during the Dollfuss regime.4 While a portion were against the Anschluss to begin with, hoping that the Austrian Nazi party could remain autonomous, many saw it as an opportunity to gain recognition and key positions in the regime. They were mistaken. For the most part, these Old Guard Nazis were snubbed or ignored, and in the intra-party battles, they had clearly lost out. The new Nazi order made clear from the start that their disloyalty would not be tolerated: nearly one-fifth of all arrests after the Anschluss were of Austrian Nazis.5 They regarded both Otto Globocnik, the DOI: 10.4324/9781003353782-3

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first Gauleiter of Vienna, and Josef Bürckel as usurpers who behaved arrogantly and without proper respect. Their resentment grew in October of 1938 with the passing of the Berufsbeamtengesetz (Civil Service Act), which lengthened the work week and restricted vacations. The overall mood of the NSDAP in Vienna was repeatedly described as hostile and anti-German.6 Rather than bearing the brunt of this rage, the rulers of Ostmark cagily steered this anger and animosity into outbreaks and vicious acts against both Jews and the Catholic establishment. While much has been written about the shameful embrace of the Anschluss on the part of the Austrian Catholic Church, led by Cardinal Innitzer in Vienna, many individual Catholics and Catholic youth groups attempted to mount protests against the Nazis.7 The largest anti-Nazi demonstration held in the Third Reich was organized by a group of young activist Catholics who centered themselves around the Breitenfeld parish in Vienna. On October 7, 1938, under the permission of the archdiocese, the group organized a Rosary Mass at St. Stephen’s with the hope of drawing in young anti-Nazi Catholics. Roughly 7,000 showed up for the Mass, demanding to see Cardinal Innitzer and shouting anti-Nazi slogans (“Christ is our Führer!”). Vicious retaliation began that evening and the next day, with groups of Hitler youth storming and ransacking the Cardinal’s palace, beating Church members and throwing the cathedral curate from a window. Anti-clerical violence continued for six days, culminating in a giant rally of 200,000 at the Heldenplatz on October 13. The remaining anger was channeled the next day into a renewed intensive burst of violence and plunder against the Jews in Austria, which would reach its peak on Kristallnacht a month later.8 Another faction in Vienna openly disillusioned with the Anschluss was the working class. Although large numbers joined the German Labor Front and supported many of Hitler’s policies, open signs of dissatisfaction ranged from complaints and ridicule against the “Piefkes” (Altreich Germans) to work stoppages and absenteeism to Communist agitation within specific labor forces such as the Tramway workers and the Vienna Fire Department. Food and coal shortages, the high cost of food and the increasing threat of war contributed to a darkening mood so that by the summer of 1939, “Vienna had become a city churning with ‘bitter discontent,’ ‘tension and nervousness’; everywhere people felt a sense of ‘impending catastrophe’ hardly to be averted by anything short of a miracle.”9 From City to Gau Through a series of laws, policies and administrative restructurings, by the spring of 1939 “Austria” no longer existed, and Vienna had been demoted by many in the Altreich to “just another city.”10 In October of 1938, the former Republic was ofcially divided into seven Gaue: Vienna (with the largest population of 1,900,000), Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Carinthia, Styria, Salzburg and Tirol-Vorarlberg, totaling just under 7,000,000 inhabitants.11 While members of the Altreich would continue to resent Vienna’s dominance, her territory and population were actually expanded, not diminished, under the new system. The region now incorporated Fischamend, Korneuburg, Klosterneuburg, Moedling and Hadersdorf-Weidlingau, and her population rose to 2,087,000.12 It was determined that Vienna would become the “Hamburg of the Southeast,” vitally important for trade.13 From the start of the Anschluss, Vienna’s rulers would struggle to maintain cultural preeminence, and this would contribute sharply to the suspicion over Viennese separatism. Hagpsiel characterizes the attitude as “dethroning Vienna as a cultural metropolis.”14

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The city was regarded as one full of enemies (Feindbilder) and liars (Lügner), who would require special oversight from Berlin.15 In the realm of culture, a particular problem presented itself: how to celebrate Viennese art and music without acknowledging its Jewish and cosmopolitan past. In addition, how could the city promote itself as distinct and special while also upholding her creations as Germanic and completely assimilated to the rest of Reich culture? As Oliver Rathkolb notes, “Many functionaries still believed they could maintain a specific Ostmark character in the arts.”16 Jonathan Petropoulos sees the cultural realm as divided between those artists who toed the party line from Berlin and those who aimed to foster an independent Ostmark culture.17 In many diferent realms, attempts were made to promote an Ostmark art that had the Viennese qualities of “gemütlich, sinnlich, freudig” (cozy, sensuous, joyful) and at the same time seen as marked by National Socialism.18 As was often the case in the Ostmark, there were intersecting and overlapping chains of command in the cultural realm (complicated further by figures moving into new posts and positions).19 Appointed directly from Berlin was leader of the Kommissar Staatssekretär für Kunst und Kultur (Commissioner State Secretary for Art and Culture) and the Landeskulturamt (culture ofce) of the NSDAP, Hermann Stüppack and, beneath him, Landeskulturverwalter (Regional Cultural Administrator) and leader of the Reichskulturkammer für bildende Künste (Reich Culture Chamber for the Visual Arts or RKbK) Leopold Blauensteiner (who played a crucial role at the Künstlerhaus).20 These figures sometimes came into conflict with regional Gauleiter working on directions from Bürckel. As Gauleiter of Vienna, Seyss-Inquart had his own agenda and worked closely with his appointee Dr. Katejan Mühlmann, an art historian from Salzburg who was later fired for having separatist sentiments.21 Yet another area of culture was under the control of Vizebürgermeister Hanns Blaschke. Blaschke had been involved in the 1934 Nazi putsch and would late serve as mayor of Vienna from 1943 until the end of the regime.22 Indicative of how important the artistic realm was to the new identity of Vienna, the first new municipal ofce created in the city was one devoted to culture. On September 28, 1938, the Gaukulturamt der Stadt Wien (the Gau Ofce of the City of Vienna), Gruppe VII, took over supervision of all aspects of cultural life, including theater, film and the visual and decorative arts.23 Until such matters later fell under the control of Bürkel, this made the head of the ofce, Deputy Mayor Blaschke, the most powerful figure in this realm. One of Blaschke’s most immediate problems was the severe blow to Viennese theater resulting from the Anschluss. Half the city’s theaters were immediately closed, Jewish actors and directors were expelled, and a third of the theater’s regular audience—Jews—were no longer allowed to attend. Blaschke’s policy of lowering the cost of cultural events to encourage new audiences was not particularly successful, although attendance would pick up sharply in the winter of 1939.24 Despite numerous exhibits, concerts and plays, Hitler would come only once to Vienna to attend any of these cultural events, visiting the Burgtheater in June of 1939.25 Numerous agencies, among them the Institut für Denkmalpflege (Ofce for the Protection of Monuments) and Sofortprogramm für Investitionen und Verbesserungen (Ofce for Urgent Investment and Improvement) focused on expropriating all the important Jewish art collections, the Rothschilds’ collections foremost among them. They would be used to enrich museums in Vienna while works in the Kunsthistorische Museum would, according to Hitler’s plans, be used to bolster and enhance provincial museums throughout the Ostmark. Figures like Seyss-Inquart and Bürckel would be directly involved in overseeing the systematic robbery while other figures, such as Fritz Dworschak and, later,

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Hans Posse, were handpicked to lead specifically planned programs. Zentraldepots were set up at places like the Neue Hofberg to house large Jewish collections as early as October of 1938.26 By autumn of 1939, the Neue Berg held 10,000 confiscated objects.27 Like the theaters and concert halls, the visual arts in Vienna were completely transformed into vehicles of state power, and the works produced or exhibited within them were made to conform to Nazi ideology. The Akademie der bildende Künste was placed under the Kommissarische Leitung (managing commission) of Alexander Popp, Ferdinand Andri and Wilhelm Dachauer, all three members of the Künstlerhaus.28 The Hagenbund, the most artistically experimental art union in Vienna and the one with the largest share of Jewish members, was summarily closed.29 In contrast, the most important contemporary art space in Vienna, the Künstlerhaus, became a virtual culture arm of the Nazi party and continued to operate until the darkest days of total war. The Künstlerhaus, Vienna: 1938–39 By the time of the Anschluss, the Vienna Künstlerhaus had served as a central exhibition space for three-quarters of a century.30 Founded by the Austrian Artist’s Society (Gesellschaft bildender Künstler Österreichs, Künstlerhaus) in 1865, three years later it became the Vienna Artists Society, whose members included painters, sculptors and architects. The society was housed in a neo-Renaissance building close to the Karlsplatz on the Ringstrasse. In 1897 a group of artists from the Künstlerhaus broke away to form the Vienna Secession, under the leadership of Gustav Klimt. Thanks to numerous scholars—especially Wladimir Aichelburg, who served as archivist of the Künstlerhaus from 1972 to 2010—we can trace the developments of the artists’ society under Nazi rule nearly month to month. Over 100 shows were organized between 1938 and 1945, some traveling to cities in Germany and many others held on site in the various halls and rooms. Sending traveling exhibits of Viennese and Ostmärkische art to Germany and, in turn, exhibiting German artists in Vienna was clearly one way of attempting a “cultural” Anschluss between the Altreich and the Ostmark. The very highest levels of Nazi political functionaries attended and opened the exhibits, from the Reichsstatthalter (governor) of Ostmark, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, to the varied mayors and cultural leaders. While many of the shows displayed the works of contemporary Viennese artists, others were devoted to older art.31 Still other shows focused on other visual media, from posters to prints, photographs, gothic script, maps, letters and documents. On December 18, 1939, the Künstlerhaus was merged with the Vienna Secession (Wiener Secession) to become the “Gesellschaft bildender Künstler Wiens, Künstlerhaus.”32 The shows only ceased in the late summer of 1944. In the five days immediately following the Anschluss, the Künstlerhaus building was requisitioned by 94 members of the police and SA, who used the first floor and ate their meals on the premises.33 The cultural authorities, headed by Kulturamt director Stuppäck, then turned to the business of aligning the artists’ society with the larger cultural program imposed by Nazi rule. Exhibitions were forbidden until after the scheduled April 11 referendum. The choice of president of the Künstlerhaus was an easy one. Leopold Blauensteiner, in place as president since November 24, 1937, was confirmed to remain in his position by the commissioner general of the Cultural Afairs Bureau, as well as to serve on the Permanent Delegation of Artists, and was appointed as Landeskulturverwalter (regional cultural administrator). His ofcial titles were now Präsident, Professor and

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Generalbeauftragter für bildende Kunst der NSDAP (Commissioner General of the Fine Arts of the NSDAP) In addition, beginning on April 7, 1938, Blauensteiner served as head of the fine arts division of the Reich Chamber of Culture (RKbK).34 As a young man, Blauensteiner had attended the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He had his first works shown in Ver Sacrum, the organ of the Vienna Secession, and was considered a member of the Klimt-gruppe. In 1920 he joined the Künstlerhaus. Becoming a member of the Nazi party in 1932, Blauensteiner left it when it was outlawed under the Dollfuss regime, only to rejoin again in 1939. However, he took up membership in the Bund Deutscher Maler Österreichs (Union of German Painters of Austria) in 1937, a society with strongly pro-Nazi sympathies. Blauensteiner maintained his ofce in the Künstlerhaus building until July of 1938, when he moved to the ofces of the RKK on Reisnerstrasse 40.35 On March 18, Austrian newspapers carried a decree that all art exhibitions henceforth would need Blauensteiner’s approval, as would any attempt to remove a work of art from the Ostmark. Blauensteiner would remain president until May 1939, when the position was taken over by Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger.36 He, too, had studied at the Academy of Visual Arts after emigrating from Hungary in 1921 and winning many prizes for his painting in a style mixing classical references and Romantic elements. In 1930 Eisenmenger became the youngest artist to join the Künstlerhaus and became an illegal Nazi in 1933. After representing Vienna at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, Eisenmenger joined the Bund Deutscher Maler Österreich. Eisenmenger later served on the Kommissarische Leitung. His party allegiance would serve him well, as Eisenmenger would go on to have a particularly successful career, marked by large-scale commissions for public murals and works of art. The Zeitung Der Samstag referred to Eisenmenger as “one of the greatest hopes of German painting” (“eine der größten Hofnungen der deutschen Malerei”);37 he was chosen for the Gottbegnadeten-Liste (God-gifted list) compiled by Goebbels in September of 1944. Scholars Ingrid Holzschuh and Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber note the abundance of documents in the archives testifying to Eisenmenger’s ideological commitment to National Socialist policies.38 His works were of such an explicit propagandistic nature that many were destroyed under the Potsdam Agreement of August 1945. These include a Gobelin tapestry Eisenmenger designed for Hitler’s birthday and intended for the new Reichskanzlerei in 1945 entitled Du Bist Deutschland. From 1943 to 1945, Eisenmenger created a triptych of Gobelin tapestries on the theme of the Nibelung for Goebbels. Among the most transparently propagandistic works created to celebrate the Anschluss were Eisenmenger’s two frescos for the Festival Room of the Vienna Town Hall, Heimkehr der Ostmark I and Heimkehr der Ostmark II, allegories painted in his pseudo-classical style.39 (See Figure 2.5.) Eisenmenger’s works serve as a virtual catalogue of cliched Nazi art themes and styles, including stify posed nudes, idealized young peasants and soldiers waving swastika banners, torch-bearing Aryans dressed in togas and so on. At the end of the war, Eisenmenger was banned from working, but by 1947, he had begun to paint again and received prominent public commissions in the 1950s, most notably the one awarded to him for the curtain of the Vienna Opera House in 1955, which caused a large scandal. (In 1995 Ioan Holender, the opera director, determined that Eisenmenger’s curtain had to be taken down due to the artist’s troubling Nazi afliations.)40 Like Blauensteiner, Eisenmenger would conscientiously carry out the artistic and ideological program assigned to the Künstlerhaus. As of this writing, his ofcial website continues to deceptively whitewash his career and activities.41

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Like many of the cultural institutions in Vienna, such as the Volkstheater and the Theater in der Josefstadt, the laws of the Reich Culture Chamber were imposed almost immediately at the Künstlerhaus, resulting in the expulsion of Jewish members and many of those married to Jews.42 All members were sent a questionnaire on March 19, inquiring about their racial descent. By April 1, the Reich Culture Chamber Laws (Reichskulturkammer Gesetzgebung) were fully in efect: “According to the Law, the ‘Aryan paragraph’ has come into force in Austria. For those members who are not Aryans, their relationship will be clarified in the course of the artists’ respective incorporation into the Reichskunstkammer.”43 Of the 188 members, 79 were expelled, along with 12 employees and eight “friends”; by the end of the war, 42 of them were murdered or exiled.44 While many members of the Künstlerhaus were profoundly disturbed by these events, many welcomed them: in April of 1938, 15 percent, or 30 of the 188 members of the Künstlerhaus, had already joined the Nazi party.45 This includes many of the artists who works appear throughout this study: Ferdinand Andri, Robert Angerhofer, Leopold Blauensteiner, Rudolf Böttger, Willhelm Dachauer, Hans Frank, Albert Janesch, Theodor Klotz-Dürrenbach, Siegfried Stoitzner and Robert Streit. If we follow Jonathan Petropoulos’s categorization of artists under the Third Reich into three groups—“opposition-flight, ambivalence-coexistence, enthusiasm-collaboration”46—the majority of Künstlerhaus members would fall into the middle category, with a solid handful in the latter. On April 7, the Künstlerhaus led a rally, headed by members Blauensteiner and Erich August Mayer, to mobilize for the upcoming nationwide referendum on uniting with Germany.47 Blauensteiner declared the “evident and joyful duty with which we will all answer ‘Yes!’ to the question on April 10, with our fullest hearts and our deepest convictions, and in so doing swear allegiance to our Führer.”48 All exhibits now had to have the explicit consent of Adolf Ziegler, president of the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts in Berlin.49 An exhibition of Swiss art, planned before the German invasion, was canceled, and instead, the first show held at the Künstlerhaus during the Anschluss was the Spring Exhibit, (Frühjahrsausstellung), which opened on April 13. It, too, had been in the works for some time, and last-minute changes had to be made to remove the work of 15 Jewish members and to delete their names from the exhibition catalogue.50 The works shown fit with the pragmatic and propagandistic works produced under the Austrofascist regime of the 1930s and, thus, in many cases, made for an easy transition to Nazi-approved aims.51 The majority of works were romanticized landscapes and sentimental genre scenes, but a number of Catholic themes also appeared. Blauensteiner made clear that the stated aim of the exhibit was in accord with Nazi cultural policy, attributing the show to “the liberating action of the Führer, who freed German art from Jewish-international degeneration, and has brought art home again to the people.”52 A full array of exhibitions continued throughout 1938. “Viennese artists’ week” included a lottery to raise money for needy artists, sponsored in part by the Strength through Joy (Kraft durch Freude) program. Exhibitions arrived from Germany, such as “Europe’s Fateful Struggle in the East,” under the patronage of Rudolf Hess. The final exhibits of the year included “The Fifty-Eighth Annual Exhibit,” opened by Gauleiter Globocnik, Mayor Neubacher and Blasche, as well as the Christmas show. The Künstlerhaus served as a major cultural ambassador as well, introducing German audiences to the art of their new “brethren.” “Art of the Ostmark (Kunst der Ostmark),” including works of painting, sculpture and graphic art by contemporary artists, was displayed at the Haus der Kunst in Berlin in the fall, celebrated with a ceremony

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53

in the Reichstag. Variations of the show traveled through many smaller cities in Germany. This building of a cultural bridge between Altreich and Ostmark was particularly efective in the case of propaganda exhibits, such as German Script (Die Schrift der Deutschen), organized by the Schriftmuseum in Berlin and sent to Vienna in September. Its purpose was to encourage the re-adoption of Gothic script in the newly acquired areas of the Reich. To encourage visitors, entrance fees were waived, and the show was subsidized by the city of Vienna with 7,500 RM; Ostmark Reichsstatthalter Seyss-Inquart hosted the opening. In turn, a small exhibit on Calligraphy of Ostmark was sent to Berlin at the end of January 1939. While later shows would attempt to highlight the distinction and particularity of the Ostmark artists, the work produced by the Künstlerhaus members was often indistinguishable both from what they had produced under the Austrofascist regime and from their German counterparts. Paintings trafcked in idealized images of the Heimat, moody local landscapes or pretty Mädchen and children. Sculpture was generally neoclassical in style, focusing on perfected nudes, sports scenes and hero images, such as those by Wilhelm Frass, who had been chosen at the chief advisor for sculptural arts in the culture ofce (Sachberater für Bildhauerkunst im Kulturamt).54 For its crucial role as an outlet of visual propaganda for the Reich, whether through fine art or more popular/utilitarian media, the Künstlerhaus was rewarded with both political and economic support. Beginning in November of 1939, Blaschke dedicated RM 30,000 to renovating the building, and further additions were planned in 1940. In 1941, Goebbels pledged an additional RM 70,000.55 Coverage and promotion of the shows held there were splashed in every major newspaper and journal. They aimed to shape the collective memory of viewers in the Third Reich and envision a new, shared culture stripped of dissonant elements. Notes 1. On the laws and legal changes, see Bolz, Nationalsozialism; on the reaction of various constituencies in Austria, see Bukey, Hitler’s Austria. 2. Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 157. On the full force of violence, expropriation and savagery unleashed against the Jews of Vienna in the immediate aftermath of the Anschluss, see Bischof, “Austria’s Loss”; Gruner, Zwangsarbeit und Verfolgung; Schneider, Exile and Destruction. 3. Bukey, Hitler’s Austria, 73–75. For the many legal and social changes after the Anschluss, see Talos, et al. NS-Herrschaft in Österreich 1938–1945. Also see Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” Chapter 6. On the improved economic conditions for workers in the first year of the Anschluss, see Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 267–269. 4. Bruce Pauley, Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis: A History of Austrian National Socialism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981). 5. Bukey, Hitler’s Austria, 51. 6. Bukey, Hitler’s Austria, chapter three. 7. Ernst Hanisch, “Austrian Catholicism: Between Accommodation and Resistance,” in Conquering the Past: Austrian Nazis Yesterday and Today; Maximilian Liebmann, Theodor Innitzer und der Anschluss: Österreichs Kirche 1938 (Graz/Vienna/Cologne: Styria, 1988). 8. This event is covered in detail by Bukey, chapter five; Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 152 f. 9. DÖW, doc 7495, quoted in Bukey, 83. Timothy Kirk’s work suggests that working-class resentment of Nazi rule took many forms within Austria. See Timothy Kirk, Nazism and the Working Class in Austria: Industrial Unrest and Political Dissent in the National Community (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 10. The quote is from Goebbels’ diary entry of May 30, 1942, quoted and translated in Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 217. The believability of this discourse on Vienna is not of importance

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11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

Ushering in the Ostmark here. As Erik Meyer notes, “[T]he question is not if the image of history communicated is scientifically truthful. Instead, the crucial factor is how and by whom, as well as through which means, with which intention and which efect past experiences are brought up and become politically relevant” (“Memory and Politics,” 176). Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 120. Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 167. Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 167; Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 87. “Entthronen Wiens als Kulturmetropole,” Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 277. Also see “Die Kulturschafenden,” 187–212. Botz, Nationalsozialismus, 17; Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 246. Rathkolb, “Fallstudie: Nationalsozialistische (Un)Kulturpolitik in Wien 1938–1945,” Führertreu, 44–68. Rathkolb in “Die Wiener Note in der deutschen Kunst: Nationalsozialistische Kulturpolitik in Wien 1938–1945,” in Kunst und Diktatur, 332. In the former category, he places Rudolf Eisenmenger, Hermann Stüppack and Dr. Peter Gast, while Baldur von Schirach and Dr. Katejan Mühlmann were suspected of a separatist agenda. Petropoulos, “The Primacy of Kulturpolitik,” 84–86. Luza, Austro-German Relations, 280, notes that Bürckel aimed to secure many of Vienna’s treasures elsewhere in the Reich. Gernot Gruber, “Wiener Musiktradition und ‘Entartetes’ in der Ostmark,” in Die österreichische Äesthetische, Ilije Dürhammer and Pia Janke (Vienna Böhlau Verlag, 2003), 236. For an excellent study of these issues in the realm of music, see Trümpi, The Political Orchestra. See the coherent list provided by Baur, “Organisation der Kultur im Gau/Reichsgau Wien,” 15–31. See also the exhaustive catalogue on this by Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, especially chapter six, “Implementiert Das Kulturamt der Stadt Wien,” 133–180. Petropoulos listed Peter Gast as head of the RKbk. Petropoulos, “The Primacy of Kulturpolitik,” 84. On the various leading cultural figures appointed during the Anschluss, including in the realms of music and theater, see also Rathkolb, Führertreu. On Blauensteiner’s appointment and a brief biography, see Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, 30; 46–47. Petropoulos notes that Mühlmann, along with his “anti-Prussianism,” was also known for extending a helping hand to artists who had not joined the party. (“The Primacy of Kulturpolitik,” 87). On Blaschke, see Chapter 2, note 55. Luza, Austro-German Relations, 286. See also Rathkolb, “Die Wiener Note,” 332; Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, chapter six. “Setting of the Pearl,” 81–82; 158. For a thorough examination of Blaschke’s policies, see Rebhan, Das braune Jahre. See also Rathkolb, Führerbetreu. “Setting,” 137. Schwarz, “Das Zentraldepot der beschlagnahmten jüdischen Kunstsammlungen,” in Hitlers Sonderauftrag; Anderl and Caruso, NS Kunstraub. “The Central Depot for Confiscated Art in Vienna,” Artdatabase, https://www.kunstdatenbank.at/the-central-depot-of-confiscated-art-in-vienna.html. Petropoulos, “The Primacy of Kulturpolitik,” 83. Hagenbund: A European Network of Modernism 1900–1938, ed. Agnes Husslein-Arco (Munich: Hirmer Publishers, 2015). The history of the Künstlerhaus, from its beginnings to the present day, are extremely well documented. See, for example, the books of its longtime archivist, Wladimir Aichelburg, Das Wiener Künstlerhaus 1861–2001: Österreichischer Kunst und Kulturverlag. Band 1: Die Künstlergenossenschaft und ihre Rivalen Secession und Hagenbund (Wien: Gerd Pichler, 2003); Peter Bugner, Richard Kurdiovsky, et al., Das Wiener Künstlerhaus: Kunst und Institution (Wien: Verlag Johann Lehner, 2003). Also see the pages on the Künstlerhaus under Nazi rule in Wladimir Aichelburg, Das Wiener Künstlerhaus 1861–1986: 125 Jahre in Bilddokumenten (Wien: Kunstverlag Wolfrum), 110–115. Copious information on the history of the institution and its exhibits and members is available at http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/. Indeed, the difculty of selling contemporary art rather than older works is addressed by Monika Mayer, “NS-Kunstförderung in Wien am Beispiel des Künstlerhauses und der Österreichischen Galerie,” in Bugner, Das Wiener Künstlerhaus, 327–333. On these mergers, see Monika Mayer, “Freiwillige Verschmelzung: Künstlervereinigungen in Wien 1933–1945,” in Kunst und Diktatur. As noted, the more artistically progressive society of the Hagenbund, formed in 1900, was disbanded completely. See also Monika Mayer,

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33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48.

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“Aspekte der Wiener Ausstellungswesen im Austrofaschismus und im Nationalsozialismus am Beispiel des Künstlerhaus und der Secession,” in Politik der Präsentation: Museum und Ausstellung in Österreich 1918–1945, eds. Herbert Posch and Gottfried Fliedl (Vienna: Turia and Kant, 1996), 87–96. Unless otherwise noted, all factual information on the history of the building is taken from http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/. Baur, “Organisation der Kultur im Gau/Reichsgau Wien,” 17. For a list of other members, see Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, pp. 11–15. For a brief bio on Blauensteiner, see Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, 46–47. For additional information on Blauensteiner, see Historische Lexikon Wien, Band 1, ed. Felix Czeike (Vienna: Kremayr and Scheraiu, 1992), 398. There is very little existing literature on Blauensteiner. He died in 1947 and therefore was not re-embraced by the Austrian establishments as was his counterpart, Eisenmenger. Other sources (e.g., Mayer, “Freiwillige”) list November 8, 1939, as the date of Eisenmenger’s presidency. On Eisenmenger’s tenure under the Nazis, see Peter Stachel, “Vom Leiter des Künstlerhauses in der NS-Zeit zum Gestalter des Eisernen Vorhangs der Wiener Staatsoper: Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger (1902–1994),” in Bogner, Das Wiener Künstlerhaus, 151–157. For reproductions of many of Eisenmenger’s works and an excellent brief biography, see “Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger,” German Art Gallery, http://www.germanartgallery.eu/en/Webshop/0/product/ info/Rudolph_Hermann_Eisenmenger,_Gobelin_%27Du_bist_Deutschland%27_&id=261. Zeitung Der Samstag, August 8, 1942. Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, 265–270. For reproductions and discussions of these frescos, see Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, 250–255. The scandal gave birth to a fascinating contemporary art project, “Safety Curtain,” under the direction of Museum in Progress and the Vienna State Opera. Each year since 1998, a prominent contemporary artist is invited to turn the space of the curtain into a contemporary exhibit for nine months; during the other three months, Eisenmenger’s curtain is displayed. The ways in which the contemporary exhibits literally “hide” or “cover” the Eisenmenger curtain beneath raise interesting questions about Vienna’s Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Christine Oertel, “Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger and His Safety Curtain,” Museum in Progress, https://www. mip.at/attachments/445/. “Im Dezember 1938 wurde er provisorischer Leiter des Wiener Künstlerhauses. Um zu verhindern, dass das Nazi-Regime einen externen politisch aktiven Leiter installiert, drängten ihn seinen Künstlerkollegen, als prominentester Künstler der Zeit den Vorsitz zu übernehmen, nach zweimaliger Absage stimmte her am 01.06.1939 doch zu. In dieser Funktion verhinderte er die Zerstörung der Porträts jüdischer Stifter des Künstlerhauses und setzte sich mit großem menschlichen und finanziellen Einsatz für die durch das Regime in Not geratenen Künstler ein.” Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger 1902–1994, http://www.rhe.eisenmenger.at/. Karl Grimstad, “Politics and the Theater: The Burgtheater in 1939,” in Austrian Writers and the Anschluss, 140. On Eisenmenger’s dismissal of Victor Hammer for having a Jewish wife, see Petropoulos, “The Primacy of Kulturpolitik.” Wladimir Aichelburg,“Der Anschluss 1938,” 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien, 1861–2011 http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/mitglieder/der-anschluss-1938/. These figures come from Oliver Rathkolb, “Der kulturpolitische Kontext 1930–1960: Brüche, Kontinuitäten und Transformation,” in Das Wiener Künstlerhaus, 136–138. A complete list of the members who were victims of the Nationalist Socialist regime appears at the end of his essay. For another discussion of members forced to emigrate, see Aichelburg, “Die Opfer 1938–1945,” 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien, 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/ kuenstlerhaus/mitglieder/opfer/. Research on the fate of the members was carried out by Rosemarie Bergstaller. Rathkolb also notes the names of all these members in his essay. The same statistic is cited by Aichelburg. For more on these issues, also see Jan Tabor, “Und sie folgten Ihm: Österreichische Künstler und Architekten nach dem Anschluss 1938: Eine Reportage,” in Wien, 1938. Petropoulos, “The Primacy of Kulturpolitik,” 82. See page 17, Chapter 2. On the rally, see Aichelburg. Blauensteiner quoted in Mayer, “Aspekte der Wiener,” 87.

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49. Wladimir Aichelburg, “Der Anschluss,” 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien, 1861–2011. http:// www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/mitglieder/der-anschluss-1938/. 50. Jewish artists whose works were removed from the show and the catalogue include Siegfried Bauer, Arthur Ferraris, Stef Gartenberg-Reiner, Josef Grünhut, Hans Lindemann, Irma Rothstein, Fritz Schenck, Wolfgang Schönthal, Oskar Stössel, Alois Strebinger and Pepi Weixigärtner. 51. For a detailed discussion of the themes and styles favored by the Austrofascist regimes, see the essays of Wohnout and Klamper in Art und Diktatur. 52. Quoted in Rathkolb, “Der kulturpolitische Kontext,” 138. 53. Die Kunst der Ostmark, Exhibition held August 27 to September 30, 1938. Haus der Kunst, Berlin. 54. For sculpture, see Gabriele Stöger-Spevak, “Das Künstlerhaus und die Bildhauerei: Zwischen Umbruch und Kontinuität 1919 bis 1955,” in Das Wiener Künstlerhaus. On Frass, see Friedrich Grassegger, “Sein um zu sterben: Vergessene Plastiken des NS Bildhauers Wilhelm Frass,” in Art und Diktatur. Under the Nazis Frass served as Direktor of the Hochschulklasse der Kunst- und Modeschule der Stadt Wien (School of Art and Fashion in Vienna). 55. Aichelburg, “Umbauten 1938–1945,” Das Wiener Künstlerhaus, 437–441.

4

Erasing the City Mountains and People of Ostmark, March 3 to April 23, 1939

Am Abgrund leitet der schwindliche Steg, Er führt zwischen Leben und Sterben, Es sperren die Riesen den einsamen Weg, Und drohen dir ewig Verderben, Und willst du die schlafende Löwin nicht wecken, So wandle still durch die Straße der Schrecken. The footbridge leads o’er the giddy crevasse Between life and death its transition Where giants are barring the desolate pass, And threaten eternal perdition, And lest thou the avalanche there shouldst awaken Tread lightly the terrible path thou have taken —Friedrich Schiller, opening verse, “Song of the Mountain (Berglied),” 1804 Two images, both published within a year of the Anschluss, quickly reveal the Nazi view of the landscape and the people of the newly created Ostmark. Among the over 800 works on display at the Künstlerhaus in March of 1939 was a curious painting by Robert Angerhofer entitled Almabtrieb (1938). Less than one month after the Anschluss, Angerhofer had become a member of the NSDAP. In a crisp style reminiscent of both Neue Sachlichkeit and the German primitifs, Angerhofer depicts a couple dressed in traditional Trachten leading a family of bovines through a wooded clearing. The work is a virtual catalogue of Ostmark motifs, with its hearty farmer couple, its Alpine forest and its encircling snow-covered mountains sealing of the magical world from any outside disturbance.1 A second work published complements the painting while making a point about the Menchen of the Berge in more explicit fashion. This image is a photograph published in Robert Körber’s Rassesieg in Wien, der Grenzfeste des Reiches (Racial Victory in Vienna, Bordertown of the Reich) (1939).2 Here we see a stout, dark-haired couple dressed in traditional Alpine clothing. The caption beneath reads: “A Jew wearing Alpentracht is as ridiculous and out of place as a Moorish synagogue in a Gothic church.”3 The absurdity—and danger—of a Jewish Ostmarker could not be more transparently evidenced. In many ways, this painting and this photo evoke the major aim of the exhibition, which we will explore in this chapter: a “re-envisioning” of Austrian identity to accord DOI: 10.4324/9781003353782-4

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Figure 4.1 Robert Angerhofer, Almabtrieb, oil on canvas, 1938. Source: Private collection.

Figure 4.2 “Ein Jude in der Alpentracht wirkt ebenso lächerlich und stilwidrig wie eine maurische Synagoge in einem gotischen Gotteshaus” (“A Jew wearing Alpentracht is as ridiculous and out of place as a Moorish synagogue in a Gothic church”). Photograph. Source: Robert Körber, Rassesieg in Wien der Grenzfeste des Reiches (Vienna: Universitäts Verlag Wilhelm Braumüller, 1939). Credit: The Dorot Division, New York Public Library.

with the new Nazi vision of the Ostmark. Only those sites and associations that matched the new image of these territories—rural, traditional, timeless and linked with Germanic culture—are given form; all else is elided or simply erased. The focus of the painting on regionalism, mountains, natural beauty and traditional occupation perfectly evokes

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Figure 4.3 Postcard of Wiener Cafe from Ausstellung, Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark, Berlin, 1939. Source: The author.

the larger theme of the exhibition, Berge und Menschen der Ostmark (Mountains and People of the Ostmark) while the photograph hints at the larger ideologies to which it is connected.4 Held nearly one year after the Anschluss, Mountains and People of the Ostmark was enormous in scale, not only in the hundreds of works it displayed but also as a public relations project. Later that spring, the exhibition expanded and traveled to Berlin, including not only fine art but also a host of regional folk arts and photographs, as well as local costumes and foods. The show served to reinforce and propagate some of the deepest Nazi ideologies, including the notion of the Heimat and the Volksgemeinschaft. It held up for celebration a group—the farmers and peasants of the rural areas—who embodied the notion of Blut und Boden (blood and soil) so central to the Nazi worldview. Like many of the large-scale propaganda shows displaying the folk customs, costumes and landscapes of the new regions of the Reich, the exhibition served multiple functions, both ideological and practical. It served to exalt a group—the rural workers and farmers—who remained somewhat resistant to Nazi rule and disafected by its policies in the early months of the Anschluss. By initiating the visitor to these regions, it indirectly boosted the tourist industry; the show was, after all, displayed in the cities of Vienna and Berlin, not in the countryside. Vienna, the most populous and important region of Austria—the crown jewel of the Habsburg Empire and the center of the First Republic— was portrayed as essentially marginal to the identity of the Ostmark. In extolling the mountains and peasants as the essential elements of its identity, the show aimed a direct swipe at Vienna, diminishing its importance and erasing its central role in Austria. In contrast to the noble Alpine regions, Vienna had been “corrupted” for centuries; at the time of the exhibit, the city had still not been “cleansed” of its Jewish population. The city’s divergence was made very clear in texts published that year: In this German border town of the Reich [Vienna], the Jews, foreign in race and blood, during the time of Dollfuss and Schuschnigg’s reign, reached their peak, and under the protection of an alleged “Christian-German” government, the age-old Ostmark of

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Erasing the City the German Reich threatened to slowly transform into a European center of Asiatic Bolshevism.5

The message of the exhibit had been forged already in several publications and in the exhibition Die Deutsche Ostmark, held in the Ausstellungshaus of the Hamburg Kunsthalle only a few months after the Anschluss, in September and October of 1938. (One year earlier, the Künsthalle had been purged of its holdings of modern art.) Focusing on a glorification of “simple” rural life and the economic treasures of the newly acquired Gau, the exhibit consisted of photographs of dramatic mountains, rural industries and hearty peasants whose imagery is strikingly similar to many of the paintings later displayed in the Künstlerhaus.

Figure 4.4 Cernitz, Eisenwerk, Blick auf dem Schneeberg (Ironworks, View on the Schneeberg). Photograph from Die Deutsche Ostmark: Eine Werbeschrift anlässlich der gleichnamigen, Ausstellung: von 1 September bis 10 Oktober 1938 (Hamburg: NS Lehrerbund, Gau Hamburg). Source: The author.

Figure 4.5 Cernitz, Bauer aus Hohentauern (Peasant from the Hohentauern). Photograph from Die Deutsche Ostmark: Eine Werbeschrift anlässlich der gleichnamigen Ausstellung: von 1 September bis 10 Oktober 1938. Hamburg: NS Lehrerbund, Gau Hamburg). Source: The author.

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In the book published to accompany the photography exhibit, the Ostmark was hailed as a treasure box of natural resources and local industries, full of “mineral resources, wood, agriculture, water energy, transport.”6 With the “homecoming of German Ostmark,” the Reich was bestowed with gifts of culture, industry and power.7 The aim of the exhibit at the Künstlerhaus was to drive this idea home on a far larger scale, enshrining the narratives and “memories” that met with ofcial approval. The Exhibition: Planning and Implementation While the show fit seamlessly with Nazi aims, it was, surprisingly, planned prior to the Anschluss and originally scheduled to open in fall 1938. Members from the wide array of Vienna’s contemporary artistic societies were invited to join, including those from the Künstlerhaus Wien, the Secession, the Hagenbund and the Zentralverband Österreichischer Künstler. A jury consisting of 11 members, among them art historian and later director of the Belvedere Museum Bruno Grimschitz and Leopold Blauensteiner, would be responsible for the selection. On August 2, 1937, a letter from the exhibition committee went out to their Viennese colleagues, soliciting submissions. Artists were asked if they had exhibitionworthy examples of works showing the chosen Alpine regions or plans to create them and whether they might focus on figures or landscapes.8 Regional organizations, such as the Kärntner Landsmannschaft and the Verein der Steiermark were also contacted. The origin of the exhibition during the Austrofascist regime reveals a continuity and easy co-existence with (later) Nazi-sponsored culture, not only in relation to artistic style but also, at times, in overlapping ideology. This is not to imply that the two cultures were identical, but rather that it was less an about-face for certain members of the Austrian art establishment than simply fitting one’s vision into the Nazi mold. The subject, symbolism and even the style of visual works could be realigned and reinterpreted to diferent ends. Moreover, the larger context could shift the very way such works were seen and the message they were believed to contain. Shows like the Great Alpine Art Exhibition, curated by Grimschitz and held at the Vienna Künstlerhaus in the autumn of 1927, reveal a precedent in the First Republic.9 Certainly the notion of the Heimat and the function of the show to inspire nationalism pre-existed its Nazi incarnation.10 Indeed, there was much to draw on from the conservative, Catholic and nationalist cultural program of the Ständestaat. Works such as Ferdinand Andri’s Mutter und Kind (Mother and Child), created in 1927 (fig. 4.6), with its monumental peasant mother, might be seen to link back to the abstract and anti-illusionistic aesthetic of the Secession. In the original incarnation of the show, the painting might have celebrated the reactionary gender politics of Austrofascism. In the aftermath of the Anschluss, the image could serve to express the Blut und Boden theories of National Socialism.11 While the concept of the exhibit pre-dated the Anschluss, in its aftermath its aim and approach grew far more ambitious and directly ideological: it would serve as a major vehicle to instill the notion of the Ostmark to a popular audience. The show at the Künstlerhaus would serve as the core for an even larger, truly colossal exhibition “that would concretely embody the people and work in the Ostmark” to be sent on to Berlin.12 Months before the show opened, press releases and articles were sent out to drum up excitement. In the spring of 1939, the Künstlerhaus in Vienna will undertake a large-scale exhibition, Berge und Menschen der Ostmark. . . . Everything will be represented: the beauty

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Figure 4.6 Ferdinand Andri, Mutter und Kind (Mother and Child), 1927. Oil on cardboard, 70 × 60.5. Source: Reproduced in Die Pause 4/5 (1939), p. 129.

of our mountains, the life of our residents, mountain fighters and mountain poets, mountain flora and fauna, a thorough image of our rich Heimat. . . . The infinite love for our Heimat demands that we also reveal the infinite riches of our mountains. One section of the show, “The treasures of the Ostmark mountains” should show our brothers in the Altreich the riches of this “poor bride.”13 A month before the opening, an article in the Völkischer Beobachter—the first of many— prepared audiences for the exhibit: All those who have greeted the homecoming of the Ostmark in the Reich with warm hearts and sympathy, will have the opportunity to see the varied manifestations of this land, which has been written and spoken of so often this last year.14 Other newspapers and journals ofered pre-opening press as well.15 The propagandistic or “educational” value of the show was emphasized too. Eisenmenger wrote to the Gaupropagandaamtsleiter (propaganda minister of the Gau), Dr. Leopold Tavs, to underscore the importance of assuring a large crowd for the exhibit, noting that the educational mission of the show was so central for the Viennese population “that it would be a shame if the greatest possible number of people do not attend.”16 Great fanfare accompanied the March opening. The invitation promised a joyful and immersive experience: The mountains and people of Ostmark are calling you! Follow the call with a joyful heart. You will find the doors of the Künstlerhaus open to receive you at 5:00 p.m. on March 4. Experience the wonderful beauty of the Ostmark, which the art conveys to you. Take pleasure in the enjoyment which the individual Gaue will delight in ofering you.17

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All the important political figures in Vienna attended the opening: Reichsstatthalter SeyßInquart, Gauleiter Bürckel, Mayor Neubacher and head of the Wien Kulturamt Hanns Blaschke. From the Künstlerhaus came Blauensteiner and Eisenmenger, as well as the painter Igo Pötsch, a member of the Künstlerhaus since 1930 and the NSDAP before 1938, who served as director of the exhibition and the Referent (painting head) of the RKK. Representatives from the important cultural organizations, including Kraft durch Freude, and a variety of propaganda branches made an appearance. Hoping to attract a big crowd, the admission price was set at pf. 50. As an added touch, regional specialties were to be served, such as Heidensterz mit Selchsuppe (Steiermark) and Schafskäse und Grießnockerl mit Selchfleisch (Salzburg).18 However, many of the dishes did not materialize due to the food shortages ever present in Vienna.19 The exhibition occupied the entire building and was spread over sixteen rooms, each devoted to one of the Gebirgsgruppen (mountain regions), except for the final room, which mixed geographical regions.20 In contrast to some of the cutting-edge exhibit displays in 1930s Germany recently examined by Michael Tymkiw, the layout of Berge and Menschen was not especially innovative.21 It followed a general Modernist display aesthetic—originating, in fact, with the Secession—of works of varying sizes hung within one horizontal row against white walls. The large size of the rooms and great height of the ceiling in the room, with the walls themselves only continuing about halfway up, gave the exhibit an overall airiness and clarity (an exact contrast to the kind of disordered, claustrophobic layout that characterized shows like the Degenerate Art exhibit of 1937). Altogether, 239 artists participated, contributing 838 works.22 Artists were limited to a maximum of 25 works (ironically, the majority listed Vienna as their current residence), and a variety of media were represented, including oil paintings, tempera, etchings,

Figure 4.7 Installation photo from Berge und Menschen der Ostmark, Künstlerhaus, Vienna, 1939. Source: Courtesy of Künstlerhaus Archive, Vienna, Künstlerhaus, Friedrichstraße (former Secession).

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Figure 4.8 Hans Frank, “Großglockner I,” 1935. Color woodcut on Japon, signed and dated Hans Frank, 38.8 × 32 cm, matted 42.5 × 38.2 cm, WVZD-HF 231. Source: Norbert Stangl-Frank.

Figure 4.9 Marta Elisabet Fossel, Bauersfrau von Murboden (Peasant Woman from Murboden), 1938.

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colored drawings, watercolors, woodcuts and pencil and charcoal drawings. The subject matter consisted almost exclusively of Alpine landscapes and peasant portraits. While the works on display were meant to celebrate a distinct Ostmark topography, they clearly appealed to those in the Altreich as well; Frank exhibited 23 of his works at the annual Haus der Deutschen Kunst exhibits, selling similar mountain views to Hitler, Albert Speer and Heinrich Himmler. Fossel also exhibited regularly in the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung, including this drawing in 1939, sold to Hitler for RM 12,500.23 In the Berge und Menschen show, the mountains were seen in every season and from every angle: pastoral, sublime, empty or inhabited by farmers, loggers and harvesters. Just as recent scholarship has begun to allow for an understanding of the full range of aesthetics on display at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, it is hard to qualify the style of the works included in the 1939 exhibit.24 They ranged from windswept Romanticism, to Bruegelesque folk scene, to crisp Academism.25 While some of the works had been created specifically for the show, many more, as noted, had been made before the Anschluss but lent themselves to varied interpretation. Frank’s landscape style, for example, hardly changed over his lifetime. His characteristic paintings show panoramic views with monumental peaks looming over tranquil tended fields. The image of the Allgäuer Alpen is slightly more rugged, bringing the viewer in closer. His paintings of lone farmers tending fields with yoked animals would seem tailor made to illustrate Nazi ideology but, in fact, date back to the end of WWI. In contrast, many of the artists in the show had, prior to the Anschluss, worked in far more Modernist styles. Some had begun their careers at the Secession before WW1 or during the First Republic. As Olaf Peterson has noted, verism and the realism of Neue Sachlichkeit were easily turned from social criticism to a kind of Magic Realism embraced by artists with decidedly right-wing inclinations.26 The “instinctive” and local style of their submitted works was hardly their only or more “natural” language of representation. Decades before, they had produced images in “decadent” and sensuous styles entirely at home in the Secession and entirely cosmopolitan. (Such was the case, for example, with Richard Harlfinger and Alfred Cossmann.)27 For some artists, like Cossmann, the erasure of the city as a subject in the Mountains and Men show was echoed by the purging of elements deemed modern. Others, such as Alfons Walde, or Andri, continued in a style closer to that of their youth but disengaged from Modernist ethos. Some of the participating artists, like Josef Dobrowsky and Sergius Pauser, had held close personal and professional ties to Jews prior to 1933. Both these painters had been members of the Zinkenbacher art colony alongside Jewish artists such as Bettina BauerEhrlich and Lisel Salzer and had worked for Jewish patrons.28 Other artists had been (illegal) Nazi party members even before the Anschluss (e.g., Rudolf Böttger and Stephanie Hollenstein). There is no simple correspondence between a style embraced by Nazi sponsors and the political/ideological allegiance of the artists exhibited. Whether the artist was a true believer or simply an opportunist cannot be ascertained from the style or even the iconography of their images (noting again that some of the images were retrofitted to fit with the Nazi agenda).29 We can say only that the imagery they produced served and was seen to reflect the ideology and aim of the Künstlerhaus under Nazi control and sponsorship. The cover of the catalogue featured a close-up of a weathered peasant, depicted with the symmetry and frontal pose of an icon. The catalogue essay was written by Karl Hans Strobl, who had studied the visual arts in Vienna but had had little success selling his works, turning instead to writing in both art publications and as a novelist

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Figure 4.10 Cover of exhibition catalogue Berge und Menschen der Ostmark. Künstlerhaus Wien. Source: The author.

and fantasy literature writer. An illegal Nazi, he joined the Reichsschrifttumskammer (Reich Chamber of Writers) early on.30 He served for a time as editor of the luxury art publication Kunst dem Volk, published by Heinrich Hofmann in Vienna.31 In the catalogue essay, Strobl’s overwrought prose portrayed the show as a lifelong, noble and urgent task of artists. Moreover, his narrative completely dovetailed with the ideas promoted in textbooks and history books that extolled the mountainous geography of the region as a kind of stone barrier protecting pure Germans from the racial threat of the East.32 From the beginning a great mission and task was given to the artists, a new territory was ofered to him: Mountains and People of the Ostmark. Ever since rich rewards have been brought home from our landscape painters, and it was not only [Austrian artist] Egger-Lienz who knew how to elevate the rough people of the Ostmark Alps to monumentality. This exhibit focuses solely on the mountains but within this narrowlydefined subject the artistic Will is given the widest leeway. The mountains as landscape forms, the mountains as an economic object, the mountains as Lebensraum.33 The region served as “Europe’s stone backbone.”34 Moreover, the mountains nourished the soul: “Here is joy in the realization of all the powers of the body and the soul and the bold play with danger.”35 The two central questions of the show, Strobl claimed, were “What do men create from the mountains?” and “What do the mountains create from men?”36 Such an exhibition had at its center an important ideological aim. “And all this,” wrote Strobl, “may contribute to the knowledge and understanding of the importance of Austria for the Volksgemeinschaft [national/racial community] of eighty million German people in the heart of Europe.”37 These ideas would continue to be echoed throughout the period and would come to be seen as an essential component of ostmärkische art. A 1940 essay written to accompany the Großen Deutschen Kunstausstellung (Great German Art Exhibit) noted of the Ostmark painter: “It is striking that the landscape, be it animated or inanimate, occupies the grandest of all spaces; this finds its explanation in the fact that the man from

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the mountains thinks and lives more closely to nature then in the flatlands.” While the Viennese run of the show would turn out to be disappointing, bringing in only 10,943 visitors in total, it was clearly meant to do far more than just provide an afternoon’s entertainment for visitors. It drew from some of the deepest Nazi ideologies and, in turn, served to give these ideologies a solid and specific form. Blut und Boden: Rural Austria

The hearty, earthbound peasant that so dominated Nazi visual propaganda had little counterpart in reality. Despite the Nazi idealization of the farmer, the agrarian sector of Ostmark was hardly enthralled, in return, with the new government. As Evan Bukey has shown, the farming populations of rural Austria, especially in the Tyrol and Salzburg, remained deeply suspicious and often resentful of the new rulers and their policies.39 In the immediate months after the Anschluss, the Nazis pushed through several policies to relieve the poverty of the rural regions, including the establishment of the Reich Food Estate to purchase huge quantities of meat, wine and fruit; government subsidies; and the elimination of barriers and tarifs. In all, the Reich would pour RM 120 million into improving Austrian agriculture. But these measures were balanced and, in many cases, overridden by restrictive rules such as the Entailed Farm Law, which prevented all but adult males from inheriting land. The Reich Food Estate, an onerous bureaucracy, replaced local cooperatives and interest groups. Its continual pressure on farmers to produce at fixed prices created deep anger among small-scale farmers. The anti-clericalism of the regime also had a severe negative impact on the predominantly Catholic Gaue as well, as did the fears of coming war. The response was a widespread flight from the land. In some areas, two-thirds of farmhands and low-level workers—milkmaids, stable boys—emigrated to cities. This was, of course, exacerbated by the conscription of men for the war efort. Bukey notes that “for most of the rural population the agrarian crisis remained acute and painful.”40 Between 1938 and 1945, a third of the paid workforce abandoned the countryside. Worst hit were Steiermark, Carinthia, Salzburg and Tyrol.41 With far fewer workers, wages rose sharply, ofsetting any gains for most farmers. In 1941 the Ostmark Landesbauernführer (director of farmers) concluded that these high salaries had overshadowed all the other benefits: Unfortunately, after the completion of the Anschluss, the hoped-for improvement in the Agrarian sector failed. The explanation lies mainly in the fact that the well-known flight from the countryside, also occurring in the Altreich, happened here at such a pace, that with all the adverse efects stemming from the unexpected wage increases, it cast all the positive efects in the shadow.42 In the early months after the Anschluss, the mood of the farming populations was described as “irritable,” “suspicious,” and “not especially friendly.”43 Thus, among its many functions, the Berge und Menschen exhibit can be seen as a shrewd paean to those sections of the populace in need of some positive attention. The images on display were almost exclusively limited to the regions, populations, occupations and vistas of the rural regions. These farmlands, woods, mountains and industrial plants were invariably depicted as beautiful, peaceful and abundant: how could 800 positive images be wrong? If the exhausted peasant in Styria or the disenchanted farmer

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in Upper Austria had no opportunity to see an exhibition in Vienna, they nevertheless could easily have learned about the show through the aggressive and widespread coverage in both the national and local press. (As discussed later in this chapter.) The show functioned as a propagandistic love letter to the rural populations who were proving far harder to win over in the aftermath of the Anschluss than had been expected. One prominent theme of the show was the raw materials and economic promise of these regions, summed up by the notion of the “treasures of Ostmark,” an aspect not neglected in Strobl’s essay: “The beauty and boldness of the mountains, which ofer themselves up to the hard-working people, cannot go unremarked. Forests cover their center, thunderous waters plunge, converted into power, within the stone giants run mines and tunnels of ore and salt.”44 Indeed, the first room of the show included Igo Pötsch, Wein; Max Neubock, Salz; and Rudolf Böttger, Holz.45 This theme would be magnified when the show moved later to Berlin, as the title of the show became Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft (Industry) der Ostmark. Reviews of the Berlin exhibit incorporated this concept very closely, noting that the show gave a clear concept of the larger political structure that well conveys an idea of the German mission of Ostmark, portraying the fruitful and eternal creations of their culture; on the other hand, it harbors an abundance of precious small treasures, which never ceases to amaze us.46 Visually, many works depicted the farmlands of the mountains as economic kernels; in addition to the pristine and Romantic landscapes, there were many worked ones. Nearly every agrarian occupation was shown, with a particular abundance of harvesters, woodworkers, fieldhands etc. Herbert von Greifenthal Reyl-Hanisch’s Der Holzfäller, 1937, looks more like a member of the Nazi Youth on a rural retreat than an overworked rural laborer. The painter’s cold, strange style, deemed Neue Romantik, seems tailor made for Nazi propaganda, evident in his landscapes and portraits. Magical, precisely rendered

Figure 4.11 Herbert von Greifenthal Reyl-Hanisch, Der Holzfäller (Woodcutter), 1937, oil on canvas. Source: Private collection.

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landscapes evoke both German Old Masters like Albrecht Altsdorfer and the hyper-clarity of Neue Sachlichkeit. As he was disgusted by modern society and industrialization and sympathetic to National Socialism, the themes of the exhibit resonate through many of Reyl-Hanisch’s paintings, although his death in 1938 prevented him from directly addressing the themes of the Anschluss in his work.47 But like much of the imagery in the show, his subjects and style had originated to serve the Austrofascist government and his quasi-religious glorification of motherhood and the peasant actually pre-date the Nazi rise to power. The healthy, blond woodcutter, ax in hand, could certainly be seen to exemplify the robust and clean nature of life in the countryside. In his renown study Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Republic, Jefrey Nerf explored what appears to be a paradox: the Nazis’ embrace of both a backward-looking nostalgia for pre-industrial life and, simultaneously, a glorification of technological Modernism.48 The other side of the coin of the irrational blood and soil fixation was the embrace of a Fascist aesthetic of the machine. Certainly, some aspects of this ideology were promoted as part of the embrace of Ostmark—for example, in the celebrations surrounding the Reichswerke Hermann Göring (Hermann Göring Factories) in Linz49—but were not on display in the imagery chosen for the show. What is striking is how these works make no attempt to modernize the agrarian worker or his tasks. Rather than up-to-date machinery and sleek factories, the artists focus on the most basic of tasks and tools, often the very simple ax and the act of woodcutting.50 When buildings and locations connected with industry do appear, they are “translated” into a pre-industrial language; modern technologies are seen through the softening lens of a romantic vocabulary. In contrast to sublime Alpine vistas, many views showed mills (Ferdinand Brunner, Verfallene Mühle bei Spital) and electricity sources (Elektrizitätswerke by Artur Beusenbauch). In Franz Gruber-Gleichenberg’s Murkraftwerke Marnitz—Frohnleiten: Steirische Wasserkraft- und Elektrizitätswerke, the buildings resemble Roman aqueducts in an Arcadian landscape. Josef Dobrowsky’s Goldbergwerk im Naßfeld bei Gastein (Gold Mine in Nassfeld near Gastein) (1938) portrays the gold mine as a rustic retreat or ski lodge at the foot of soaring mountains. The exhibition of Dobrowsky’s paintings highlights the (at times) more open embrace of Modernism on the part of Vienna, in contrast to Berlin. Dobrowsky’s early work had been deeply influenced by Gustav Klimt and Ferdinand Hodler, and in 1919 he had joined the Secession. His warm, earthy painting style had brought him awards and acclaim during the First Republic, and the artist became known for his rich use of color.51 Alongside both Jewish and non-Jewish artists, Dobrowsky had been a member of the Zinkerbach Art Colony in the decade before the Anschluss. Dobrowsky’s works were removed from the 1937 Gross Deutsch Ausstellung, reportedly at the direct command of Hitler,52 for expressing “decadent elements,” yet he was often included in Künstlerhaus exhibits throughout the period of Nazi rule. In composition and atmospheric efect, Dobrowsky’s Goldbergwerk was a virtual translation of the photos like Cernitz, Eisenwerk, Blick auf den Schneeberg from the Die Deutsche Ostmark (Figure 4.4), with the ironworks nestled cozily at the foot of breathtaking peaks.53 His loose handling of paint and layered colors form a sharp contrast to the tightly focused works of other artists in the show. If some of the paintings such as Goldbergwerk in Berge und Menschen drew from the continual photographic propaganda in the early months of the Anschluss, photographers were clearly aiming to eternalize these images by evoking painterly precedents.

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Figure 4.12 Josef Dobrowsky, Goldbergwerk im Naßfeld bei Gastein (Gold Mine in Nassfeld bei Gastein), 1938, oil on canvas, 116 × 144 cm. Source: © Belvedere Vienna.

Yet, as noted, photography itself was notably absent from the show; the media displayed was traditional (and often linked to pre-industrial forms), rather than the modern and machine-based art of the camera. Perhaps this neglect of “reactionary Modernism” lies in the intended audience for the show, the middle-class and even working-class viewers to whom the imagery filtered down through newspaper and magazine coverage. They had certainly not read the theories of figures like Werner Sombert or Josef Spengler, whom Nerf references, but rather were drawn to rural nostalgia in its simplest form. If the Berge were given full celebration in the exhibit, the Menschen often appeared in close-up portraits, revealing their “pure” racial stock.54 Works like those of Fossel (Figure 4.9) or the etching of Alfred Cossmann (1870–1951) focused almost exclusively on the physiognomy and local clothing of the farmers. A close-up of the peasant on the left of Cossmann’s etching served as the opening for a lengthy article on the exhibit appearing in the most exclusive art publication in Vienna, the magazine Kunst dem Volk.55 Cossmann was a student of the Wien Kunstgewerbeschule from 1886 to 1895 and was once a member of the Hagenbund, joining the Künstlerhaus in 1905; in subject, his etching could not form a sharper contrast with

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Figure 4.13 Alfred Cossmann, Bauern aus dem Pinzgau (Peasants from Pinzgau), c. 1938. Etching. 18.5 × 27 cm (7.3 × 10.6 in). Source: Private collection.

Figure 4.14 Alfred Cossmann, Ex Libris Leo Lippmann. Source: Reproduced in Dekorative Kunst vol. 12 (1912), p 300.

his Art Nouveau stylizations and sensuous nudes from earlier in the century. An exlibris etching Cossmann created for one of his clients that was reproduced in an issue of Dekorative Kunst in 1912 shows a bespectacled bibliophile, hardly a beloved figure in Nazi mentality: the client, Leo Lippmann, was a noted Jewish lawyer from Hamburg who would commit suicide with his wife upon learning of their deportation to Theresienstadt.56 While the etching shares the focused, detailed treatment and physiognomic sharpness of the Bauern etching, Cossmann received the Goldener Lorbeer prize in 1945 and was well lauded by the Nazi regime, chosen as a gottbegnadeter (god-gifted) artist by Goebbels.57 Such close-up portraits of characteristic peasants were a staple of propaganda posters, books and exhibits like Die Deutsche Ostmark (Figure 4.5). Within the context of the exhibit—rather than as a property “inherent” to the style itself—such

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works served to “prove” the notion that the mountains had indeed preserved the racial purity of the inhabitants. Christian Weikop traces the history of German images of the peasant, including through the Romantic and anti-industrial movements of the 19th century and through the National Socialist era. The detailed, close-up treatment of artists like Fossel and Cossmann could be assimilated into the style and iconography of photos appearing in publications like agricultural minister of the Third Reich—and the figure who coined the oft-repeated phrase, Blut und Boten—Richard Walther Darré’s 1928 Das Bauerntum als Lebensquell der Nordischen Rasse (The Peasantry as the Life Source of the Nordic Race).58 For such viewers, this treatment of the peasant would also have brought to mind the noted photographs of Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, whose Das Deutsche Volksgesicht (The Face of the German People) (1932) was highly celebrated in Nazi circles.59 As in Lendvai-Dircksen’s images, the works in the Mountains and Men exhibit never give us the individual name of the peasant subject, only their specific region and the work they perform. The figures in an oft-reproduced painting in the show, Anton Lutz’s Oberösterreichische Bauernfamilie (Peasant Family from Upper Austria) (1938), with their blond hair and sturdy builds, seem to have wandered out of some Aryan dreamscape. The farmerfather, with rolled-up sleeves and a simple jug, appears to visit the family on a break from making cider. The blonde mother carries one child while her son clings to her leg, and her youngest sleeps in a cradle at her feet, overseen by the grandmother. The room is filled with local peasant furniture (like the folk pieces displayed in the later Berlin iteration of the show), and a prominent Catholic image with cross hangs on the wall, reassuring viewers of the compatibility of Nazi and Christian morality. While Lutz’s artistic training in Munich resulted in a loose, Impressionistic style, he abandoned it in this work in favor of a kind of airless neo-Realism characteristic of works displayed in the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, where the artist often exhibited to acclaim, winning the Gaukunstpreis in 1942.60 His figures therefore become archetypes, representatives of the universal, age-old and soil-tied peasant.61 Despite earlier art historians claiming his appeal to the National Socialists rested on his Munich style and his earlier motifs of nudes and rustic settings, it is clear here that in the case of this painting, Lutz’s depiction could be understood as a virtual illustration of the Nazi family. This is not to claim that Lutz believed in this ideology—his personal beliefs are not discussed—only that his work certainly reflected it well. Such arguments are bolstered by the fact that his 2006 exhibit at the Belvedere contained only one work from the Nazi period—surely no accident—making it difcult to cast judgement in either direction. Paintings in the 1939 show, like Lutz’s peasant family, form the visual counterpart to the “blood and soil” ideology that fueled the Anschluss.62 Tourism The exhibit not only trafcked in flattery and praise for the mountain regions and people of Ostmark but also, on a practical level, helped these regions economically by helping drive up tourist travel in the countless small hamlets and mountain valleys depicted in the hundreds of paintings. By the summer of 1939, many peasants and landowners had begun to make up for severe farming losses through the tourist trade, selling local foods and crafts to the stream of visitors or renting properties and opening inns to accommodate them. In Salzburg alone, an additional one million tourists visited the area in the year following the Anschluss.63

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To be sure, the tie between tourism and nationalism—later to be exploited by the Nazis—had already been forged earlier. We can see a direct line between strategies around tourism, even within the Habsburg Empire, and promotion of it as a means to increase nationalism and to portray it as a social and moral obligation. Pieter Judson has noted how nationalist groups in Austria were keenly involved in promoting areas for tourism, seeing the “presence of Germans” as proof that the landscape had been conquered and encouraging tourists to patronize places associated exclusively with German ownership. By the turn of the century, nationalists were already linking the act of tourism with “duty, labor and personal virtue.”64 With the splintering of the Habsburg Empire at the end of WWI, tourism in Austria had received a severe blow.65 Realizing its importance both to forging a united national identity and to its economy, many Austrians determined to expand and improve the tourist industry. This push for tourism dovetailed perfectly with progressive laws under the First Republic, promoting family vacations by automobile to the Alpine regions. In addition to the ubiquitous touring guides and advertisements, the government built new roads and highways, most notably the Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse from 1930 to 1937.66 The structure of Austrian tourism followed a notion of regional diversity within national unity; each region was responsible for its own tourism under the Landesfremdenverkehrsämter, but these were under the umbrella of the national Österreichische Reise- und Verkehrsnachrichten. During the First Republic, tourism served to underline the regional distinctions of the land and customs while fitting them within a wider Austrian identity. Österreich: Sein Land und Volk und Kultur (1927) praised tourism: “For no other country has tourism the political, even the patriotic mission, it has for us. Only tourism can spin the thousands of threads, which connect us with the way of thinking and feeling of the Austrian.”67 Moreover, 12 years before the Anschluss, tourism was being hailed as a means by which Germans could recognize the Austrian mountains as part of a larger German Reich: I would like to recommend to the Germans whose holidays lead them to the Austrian Alpine world, that when they find themselves in the land blessed with beauty . . . they should . . . consider the thought, this is also part of your Fatherland, this is also referred to in German song, your love of the Fatherland also includes this.68 But the rise of National Socialism deeply imperiled Austrian tourism as part of their efort to weaken the nation. Beginning on June 1, 1933, all German tourists traveling to Austria had to pay a tax of DM 1,000. (This was kept in place until the 1936 “accord” with Germany.) The murder of Chancellor Dollfuss and the spread of (illegal) Nazi attacks further cut the number of tourists to Austria by half. With the annexation of Austria, those connected to the realm of tourism now had to work hard to re-boost the industry. While they would draw on ideas already in place in the First Republic, there were also notable diferences. In the 1930s, Vienna itself was highly promoted as a tourist region, a cosmopolitan delight symbolized by the ubiquitous Viennese cafes.69 This was not the case after the Anschluss. Moreover, what had previously been the responsibility of the independent nationalist groups or regional associations now became the purview of the government, which could provide resources and pressure previously unavailable.70 As with history books and exhibitions, tourism was yet another means to purge “Austria” from the collective consciousness. Erich Bernard noted that after the Anschluss, any notion of an independent Austria was beseitigt (eradicated) from the Grossglockner

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Alpine Highway. A sign was placed at its entrance, claiming Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein. 10 April 1938 (May it be for all of Germany. 10 April 1938), and nearby, an inscription read, Die Pracht dieser Bergwelt brachte Österreich dem deutschen Vaterland am 13 März 1938 als Morgengabe mit. (Austria brought the splendor of these mountains to the German Fatherland as a gift of their union on 13 March 1938.)71 Thus, the tremendous achievement of the Alpine highway was attributed to the Anschluss (and thus, the National Socialists), and the First Republic was stripped of its accomplishment. Many of the images in Berge und Menschen der Ostmark share vantage points and imagery, particularly sublime mountain views, with tourist photos and advertisements.

Figure 4.15 Tourism brochure, “Neustift, Ostmark, Tirol,” LFV Tirol, 1939. Source: The author.

Figure 4.16 Hans Figura, Alberg, St. Anton. Etching, vintage aquatint on satin, 1940s. Source: The author.

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Hans Figura—who traveled widely and maintained a studio in New York City during this period—contributed ten etchings to the exhibit. Often the areas shown were those most in need of tourism, endowed with beauty and a kind of restorative nature. Like the tourist brochure photo, his etching combines the ruggedness of the mountains with vernacular inns and church steeples. Nor were winter sports—an essential part of the Ostmark tourist industry—neglected. Works like Ferdinand Andri’s Schiläufer and four paintings by Alfons Walde, who specialized in pristine snowy mountains (often with winter sports figures) were included in the exhibit. While Walde’s subjects were entirely acceptable by Nazi standards, his style veered toward the more abstract, even toward the simplified and flat (perhaps a remnant of his days in the Secession). Julia Secklehner had argued that Walde’s images might be seen as examples of “critical regionalism,” combining regional motifs and focus with an awareness of modern style and changes; this is reflected in his depiction of both local Tyroleans and tourists on vacation.72 His focus on Alpine sports in the Tyrol pre-dated the Anschluss and had already been awarded many prizes during the 1920s. Visitors to the exhibit would have been familiar with his works through the many postcards and posters of his work.73 By the time of the exhibit, Walde had already declared himself against the regime and by 1940 had begun to come under some suspicion; he was dismissed from his position as an engineer and received a visit from the Gestapo.74 Walde’s inclusion was another example of appropriating an artist’s pre-existing and popular imagery to accord with Nazi aims (even if the artist did not share the ideology). One function of the show was thus to introduce the Viennese (and later Berlin) audiences to the regional diversity of Ostmark, with the idea that they, in turn, would follow up with a visit and to serve as inspiration for further tourism. The promotion of tourism for “every man”—prior to the war, the Kraft durch Freude (Kdf) sponsored “Sozialtourismus”—was part of the larger promise for the betterment of the working class.75 As scholar Alon Confino notes: “The Nazis took the framework of tourism-Heimat-identity and infused it with racial ideology. The aim of Nazi tourism was to build a utopian racial community where race would replace class as the organizing principle.”76 Thus, along with these practical and economic aims were deep-rooted ideological ones. Berge und Menschen der Ostmark went to the very heart of the Nazi ideologies of the Heimat and the Volksgemeinschaft. The Heimat The exhibition was received by an audience whose attitude toward the landscape had already been shaped, in part, by the Heimat movement and must be understood in relation to it. During the interwar period, the Alpine landscape became nearly synonymous with the Austrian Heimat, and the mountain itself stood as its most potent symbol.77 Despite Nazi attempts to tie the concept of the Heimat back to Germanic tribes, the Heimat movement only dates back to early 19th-century Germany and exploded after 1871 as a result of modernization and the unification of the country.78 As scholar Alon Confino notes: “Heimat became immemorial because memory is short: an alleged timeless national memory, invented in the second half of the nineteenth century, for an alleged timeless nation, unified in 1871.” The concept of a homeland, an attachment to one’s national soil, pervaded so many domains of culture, from schoolbooks and popular literature to forms of mass media. One product that grew out of the movement was Heimatbücher, books that celebrated the topographical, cultural and historical characteristics of a given region. So, too, the Heimatmuseum spread rapidly in this period, a

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phenomenon we shall look at later in the discussion of the Berlin iteration of Berge und Menschen. Rooted in an emotional vision of the land, the concept of the Heimat, like other Romantic notions, arose from an urban class somewhat estranged from nature. While the Heimat discourse included the economic strength of the region and even contemporary developments, there was also a nostalgic thread running through it, a celebration of rural life and its mores, products and sentiments. According to Confino, the power of the Heimat lay in its ability to mediate between the regional and local and the national, between the elite and the popular.79 Essentially, the regional came to represent the local; the local served as a metonymic symbol of the entire country. This was achieved in part by focusing on elements common to most regions and seeing the local as part of, rather than in conflict with, the whole. Viewed this way, the regional emphasis of Berge und Menschen strengthened, rather than competed with, the identity of Ostmark and further allegiance to the entire Reich. These identities were interwoven, rather than one overshadowing or threatening the others. To celebrate the Tyrol or the landscapes of Steiermark was to celebrate the greater Reich. “The novelty of Heimat nature, however,” writes Confino, “was that it enlarged the territory of sentimental belonging from a local to a national one.”80 Viewers could feel ownership and pride in a landscape they had not yet seen or visited. Such was surely one of the larger aims of the exhibit. Elements common to Heimat images included local houses, church towers and cityscapes, often nestled within abundant landscapes. Moreover, the Heimat was inseparable from the visual: “The Heimat idea virtually called for visual representations to transmit the notions of nature, landscape, territoriality and folklore.”81 Such images abounded in “postcards, journals, textbooks, museums” and reached their peak in tourism images. Simultaneously, a cult for the Alpine regions grew as the mountains nurtured a romantic and sublime aesthetic. While the Heimat has been celebrated in song, poetry and painting, the 20th century brought new forms of Heimat worship in the form of Heimatphotographie and the Heimatfilm. In First Republic Austria, the Heimat functioned as an important aspect of identity, a celebration of local, regional cultures and the wider link to Germanic identity. It was tourist literature and its accompanying visual language that formed an image in people’s minds, in part because it’s “main purpose was to convey not historical accuracy but a world that was diferent from everyday life.”82 As Elizabeth Cronin has noted, in the 1920s, Heimat culture grew more popular, manifesting itself in forms as diverse as tourist brochures, films, photography and the Bergfilme.83 A genre focusing on a quest or adventure in the mountains, pitting man or woman against nature and often ending with an epiphany of wisdom or self-enlightenment, the Bergfilme was deeply popular in the first half of the century in Germany and continues to have a particular resonance in Austria. Heimat photography was perhaps best embodied in the work of William Angerer, whose stark images of snow-covered Alpine regions had a decidedly Modernist flavor with their flattened picture planes and strong surface designs. As noted, painters who made the Alpine reaches their specialty in the 1920s, like Alfons Walde, were represented in Berge und Menschen, indicating a clear continuity between the language of the First Republic and Nazi Austria in regard to the Heimat; the Nazis harnessed the sentiment for the Heimat, rather than inventing it.84 Yet no Heimat photos appeared in the exhibit. Perhaps the photos lacked the folksy, pre-Modernist flavor that the entire show intended to evoke, as we noted earlier, and perhaps they were too closely associated with the image-world of the First Republic.

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The promotion of the Alpine regions as echte Ostmark was also celebrated and imaged in popular films of the time. As Robert von Dassenowsky has shown, even prior to the Anschluss, films such as Konzert in Tirol (1938) had focused on an Austro-German culture in the Alpine villages that hardly difered from that in Bavaria. This film, as well as Hotel Sacher (1939), shift the identity of (former) Austria away from the urban and urbane Vienna to the provincial, snow-covered villages. The association of the provincial with the pure and the good—so striking in Mountains and People—found its counterpart in films marketed to a popular audience, which served to entertain while driving home messages about the nature of village versus city life found in so many other realms of culture.85 What is interesting for our purposes is the way in which the sublime cult of the mountain mapped perfectly onto the Ostmark myth of the ancestral land as a barrier to racial corruption. Both focused intently on the mountainous areas that had kept the race “pure.” In his catalogue essay, Strobl revived this theme: Here in fact is the real border between Mitteleuropa and Eastern Europe. This is because the plane, on which man stands to look back on the last wave of the Wienerwald, already belongs to the East, and here is where the stream of humanity pouring from the East was repeatedly halted.86 If the paintings in the Berge und Menschen show drew on Heimat imagery, so too did the flurry of publications aimed to introduce the Ostmark to the wider Reich. A similar choice of locales and a very similar aesthetic operates in each. The vernacular houses and sublime peaks appear equally in these realms, a balance struck between the simple and accessible structures and the majesty of the mountains beyond. Confino notes that in order to avoid charges of elitism, Heimat images were simple in structure and style, and this may apply as well to the paintings.87 However, in contrast to more popular Heimat images, the photos in the Ostmark books and the paintings in the exhibit almost never include the city and often provide a closer and more intimate look at the landscape. Distinct, too, from the often-empty Heimat images,

Figure 4.17 Oscar Laske, Dachstein, oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in exhibition catalogue Berge und Menschen der Ostmark. Künstlerhaus Wien. Genossenschaft der bildenden Künstler Wien. Author’s collection.

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Figure 4.18 Der König Dachstein, photograph from Richard Suchenwirth. Source: Das Buch von der Deutschen Ostmark (Georg Dollheimer Verlag, 1938), p. 97.

the photos and exhibition images frequently include agrarian laborers hard at work or placed within nature. The visual continuity between photograph and painting is undeniable, despite the fact that Laske’s landscapes, according to one biographer, were a form of “inner emigration”—a desire to escape, rather than embrace, the changes occurring under the Anschluss.88 In such images, the Heimat becomes inseparable from the Volksgemeinschaft formed in its crucible, the land and people profoundly entwined. The deep biological ties of the “racial community” would replace and erase former divisions by class and economics (and perhaps held a special potency in the Ostmark, given the civil war that had ripped apart the nation only four years earlier). By 1933, völkische themes were woven through the Heimat literature as well as the texts of the Preservationist movements.89 This conflation, too, is evident in Strobl’s text: And in the Lebensraum of the mountains, man is entirely diferent than in the hurried and abrasive throng of the city. From the constant danger and struggle around the existence of the mountain rise myths, and they become to him living Beings. The seclusion of the settlements in the valley compels separateness and distinction in need and manner of life, distinguishing neighbor from neighbor. From the ancient days, in the darkest moments of prehistory, rich secrets and wisdom were preserved and remain alive in the present. Customs and occupations transform and determine the racial expression and the spiritual preservation of mankind in the mountains, and to sense and to give them compelling form is perhaps the most important task of the artist.90 This racial expression could be seen to have taken form in works such as Fossel’s Bauersfrau von Murboden (Figure 4.9) and Maz Bradaczeh’s Kärntner Bäuerin (cat. 54); the specific region was “visible” in the physiology and facial features of the peasantry. So, too, the abundance of “peasant homes” that appear in Berge und Menschen combine nature and culture, the soil of the people with their particular cultural expression as in Hans Figura’s Bauernhaus bei A. (cat. 142) or Laske’s Dachstein (Figure 4.16). This rootedness and domestication of the land stood in powerful contrast to the culture of the Jews, whom Hitler referred to as “nomads without Heimat”91 and as Heimatlose. In the mindset of Darre, whose 1928 text on the peasantry we noted earlier and who was

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perhaps the most important proponent of Blut und Boden, “only racial contamination could erode one’s feeling for the Heimat.”92 A similar dual emphasis on the larger Germanic racial heritage and regional culture took form in books like Fibel Ostmark (1941), dedicated to photos of the various folk costumes common in specific Gaue of the Ostmark. Such costumes gave proof of the continuing bloodline. Regional dress in the Tyrol-Vorarlberg showed that “in its valleys the legacy of the ancestors and the tribes, who moved here to the South, lives on unchanged through the course of time.”93 (The renewal of distinct Trachten and Dirndln, like the promotion of regional folk songs, was institutionalized under the National Socialists.)94 The images in the book drew heavily on Biedermeier painting and, at times, shared a strong visual link with paintings in the exhibit.95 Such costumes were the “distinct forms of Ancient German folk art,” and contact with the land renewed and continually revived such sentiments. If the Heimat was “healthy” and “restorative” in the ideology of Nazism, the city was its opposite. In the anti-urban view of Nazism, the city was more than insignificant; it was dangerous.96 Just as the new geographical divisions and nomenclature eradicated “Austria,” the exhibition Berge und Menschen erased its urban contributions. Both the general concept of the city and the specific, important city of Vienna were written out of history, neglected in the visual record. In many diferent ways, exhibitions and popular and academic books contrasted the despoiled urban dweller with the hearty peasant of the Alpine region. In his textbook, Neue Erziehung (New Education) (1943), published in Berlin, Helmut Stellrecht railed against city life, which led to the “disintegration of the German soul”: “All of the pleasures of the world are ofered people in the large cities. Consumption, work and haste make them nervous. . . . Lunatic asylums and mental institutions are above all filled with urbanites.”97 Cities mixed healthy with racially pure and diseased blood. Blickle reminds us of how the Heimat—and here we can expand to the landscape images of the exhibit—“stands in contrast to modern experiences such as alienating city life, the industrial workplace, the technologized mode of existence, the realm of politics and the nation State.”98 Through omission and overt condemnation of urban life, Vienna stood apart from all that was to be reclaimed and resurrected in the Ostmark. Reception of the Exhibit For all its careful planning, Berge und Menschen der Ostmark was not an unqualified success in terms of the number of visitors it attracted and the number of works sold. Fewer than 11,000 visitors came to the exhibit. In total, somewhere between 97 and 107 works were purchased by the Reich and another 27 bought by the city of Vienna. Thirty-eight of the works were sold to private collectors. Altogether, the exhibit brought in about RM 112,000.99 Yet in terms of public relations and bringing the show to the attention of a wider public, the organizers must have been satisfied. Those who could not make it to the show were able to read about it in myriad newspapers, journals and magazines, from the most elite to those aimed at a solidly working-class audience, from dailies to more political publications. The Vienna edition of the Völkischer Beobachter covered the show on three separate occasions. Notices of the show, along with descriptions aimed at repeating the lofty language of the ofcial press releases, appeared in, among others, Wiener Tagblatt, Neues Wiener Tagblatt, Kleines Volksblatt, Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung and Rundpost Wien, as well as scores of regional newspapers such as the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten and Salzburger Volksblatt.100

64 Erasing the City With art “criticism” banned by Goebbels by 1936, many of the articles served to simply describe and enumerate the works on display rather than to engage with them seriously.101 Several features discussed and included photos of the illustrious figures who had opened the show.102 The Salzburger Volksblatt printed the menu of regional specialties served on opening night.103 Those who missed the exhibit could see full-page spreads such as the one that appeared in the March 16 issue of Das in-teressante Blatt, featuring works such as Rudolf Böttger, Holz; Ingo Pötsch, Wein; Karl Stemolak, Frohe Jugend; Sepp Mayrhuber, Bauernfamilie (study for a fresco); Franz Xavier Wolf, Weinbauern aus Niederdonau; and Herbert Reyl-Hanisch, Der Holzfäller. The Böttger and Reyl-Hanisch images were particular favorites. In contrast to the kind of “empty” coverage in these papers, longer features attempted to convey the ideological messages of the show. This was the case for the articles in the Kunst dem Volk, Völkischer Beobachter and Die Pause, which devoted considerable attention to the exhibit. The Kunst dem Volk spread, “Berge und Menschen der Ostmark: Zur Eröfnung der grossen Ausstellung im Wiener Künstlerhaus,” was introduced with a detail from Cossmann’s print Bauern aus dem Pinzgau (Figure 4.12). It immediately set out the larger political aim of the exhibit: It is indeed satisfying to know that this [Künstler] house, which was repeatedly attacked in the years before the Anschluss, now ofers a worthy home to all artists from the Ostmark. They have all joined together. After years of dangerous politics, it is an uplifting feeling to see artists from all camps coming together. The great notion of fraternal union and mutual understanding has finally found expression in art. It is absolutely necessary to recall the situation in the art of the post-war period to fully grasp the great accomplishment of this exhibition in its artistic and political significance.104 Thus the show itself, creating from once-splintered communities a sense of unity and shared goals, was portrayed as a metaphor for both the Anschluss itself and the Volksgemeinschaft that had been so cruelly torn asunder in the post-WWI period. The Völkischer Beobachter repeatedly covered the show, beginning in February of 1939, celebrating it as a visual manifestation of the “Heimkehr der Ostmark ins Reich” (“Homecoming of the Ostmark”): On the other hand, those who have welcomed the return of the Ostmark to the Reich with their warm hearts and their deepest sympathy will be given the opportunity to see this land, about which in the last year so much was written and spoken of, in all its manifold phenomena.105 The show would travel on to Berlin, the article noted, in order for as many people as possible to learn to appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of the Ostmark. The journal also gave coverage to the show on March 2, 5 and 7, reproducing several of the works on display. One of the chief editors of the Viennese edition of Völkischer Beobachter wrote personally to Director Karl Gerold at the Künstlerhaus in April of 1939 to express an interest in obtaining Reyl-Hanisch’s, Holzfällerbild (Figure 4.11) for his private collection, noting that he had “never seen an exhibition of such high quality.”106 Berlin If the exhibition gave the Alpine regions of former Austria their due as worthy portions of the Reich (at the expense of Vienna), it was all the more important to convince those in the

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Figure 4.19 “Berge und Menschen der Ostmark.” Source: Das interessante Blatt (March 16, 1938), p. 10; reproduced again in the Völkischer Beobachter issue of March 7.

Altreich of their good fortune in acquiring them. The task was larger than simply bringing two-dimensional works to Berlin; as one Berlin newspaper noted, the exhibit would bring “all of the Ostmark to Berlin.”107 Running from May 26 to June 25, 1939, from the start, the Berlin version of the show was far larger and more comprehensive.108 In addition to fine art, the exhibition would contain examples of folk art from all the represented Gaue and accompanying fashion shows, cafes and sporting events (Figure 4.3). As in the Vienna exhibit, regional specialties were planned, but by then, food shortages had made this impossible. Renamed Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark, the exhibit functioned not only to expand the Volksgemeinschaft by some seven million but also to present Ostmark as the “treasure chest” of the Reich with its rich lands, abundant industry and cultural riches. The chief sponsor of the show was Hermann Göring, who personally attended the opening in a rare cultural cooperation between the cities, which would largely cease under the next Reichsstatthalter of Vienna. Additional sponsors present included Seyss-Inquart, Bürckel, Mayor Neuberger and Blauensteiner, as well as the Reichsdirektoren of Ostmark culture, farmland and industry and State Secretary Dr. Kajetan Mühlmann. The site of the exhibit was the grounds of the Funktower (radio tower) in Charlottenburg, with the overall design of the show under the supervision of architect Herbert

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Matuscher.109 Occupying the Kunstturm (art tower), it spread into nine diferent halls as well as the terrace gardens, including rooms devoted to Landwirtschaft (agriculture), Industrie, and Forstwirtschaft (forestry), as well as a restaurant, cafe and hall of fashion at the Palais Lobkowitz.110 The large Ehrenhalle was divided between exhibits of “culture” and “art.” In contrast to the kind of homogeneous, white-walled display that characterized the Vienna iteration of the show, each room in Charlottenberg was seemingly designed around the particular theme or media it held. In addition to the works from the Künstlerhaus, the exhibition contained works and objects from the Akademie der bildenden Künste, the Gewerbeförderungsdienst and the Technisches Museum Wien. Regional pottery and textiles were showcased in the section devoted to folk art and crafts. National Socialist attitudes toward folk art (Volkskunst, distinct from Kunst dem Volk) were exceedingly complex and cannot be adequately dealt with here beyond pointing out some issues directly relevant to the exhibit.111 Its embrace by Nazi critics and ideologues is in contrast to the late-19th- and early-20th-century appropriation of folk art as an authentic, exotic and visually stimulating source of inspiration for the modern artist (as was the case among the Blaue Reiter circle in Murnau). Nor was Volkskunst grouped in with other forms of art, such as African or Oceanic, in a quest for the “primitive.”112 Professional artists could not practice or absorb its style, which was thought to have emerged organically from the race and soil. While certain precepts about folk art were already in place with Romanticism, in the Third Reich, Volkskunst took on added meaning and resonance, becoming a primal expression of the Volk. It expressed both regional characteristics and the essence of Nordic culture on the whole. In 1936 the Museum für Deutsche Volkskunde, housed in the Schloss Belvedere, held the first exhibit devoted to peasant art.113 The valorizing of peasant craft was, of course, part of the general celebration of the Bauern so clearly on display in the Mountains and Men exhibit. The works were displayed within the section on Volkstum und Brauchtum (Folklore and Customs), separated from the fine arts on display. As examples of “decorative” and utilitarian art, such works stood as an antidote to the cosmopolitan, urbane and well-known Modernist products of the Wiener Werkstatte, whose products exemplified the Jewish Vienna of the fin de siècle.114

Figure 4.20 Postcard with view of Ehrenhalle, Ausstellung. Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark, Berlin, 1939. Source: The author.

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The exhibition style of the Volkskunst section strongly recalled the eclectic, mixedmedia displays of the Heimatmuseum, no doubt with some intention. In contrast to the spacious hanging in the fine art section, it had a far busier feel, with objects lined against the walls and set on tables, the walls covered in paintings or reproductions of scenes of peasant labor and daily activities. As Alfredo Cruz-Ramirez notes, the Heimat museum was seen “as the almost instinctive expression of an attachment felt by individuals for their native land.”115 It followed closely, for example, the Haus der Rheinischen Heimat, inaugurated by Josef Goebbels in 1936 and devoted to “artistic, craft and economic life.”116 Artistic expression was subsumed under the cultural expression of a given “people.” The mixture of folk objects, local ceramics, heraldic banners, paintings, farm implements etc. would have been familiar to German viewers who had visited some of the hundreds of Heimatmuseen that had sprung up since the turn of the century.117 Thus, the ideological concepts of the Heimat

Figure 4.21 Postcard, Volkstum und Brauchtum (Folklore and Customs), Ausstellung, Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark, Berlin, 1939. Source: The author.

Figure 4.22 Postcard “Land u. Forstwirtschaft,” (“Land and Forestry”). Ausstellung, Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark, Berlin, 1939. Source: The author.

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and the Volksgemeinschaft were even more blatantly celebrated in the Berlin incarnation of the show through the objects included and their manner of display. Other sections of the exhibit more closely echoed the orderly, symmetrical presentation of the science museum. Flora, fauna and the antlers of hunted prey were carefully arranged and laid out in the room devoted to “The Economic Sector of Land and Forest”; on the walls were four colossal paintings by Ferdinand Andri devoted to Ostmark themes.118 Metal screens, which perhaps evoked the pattern of the conifer trees placed in the room, were hung with cutouts of forest animals while two large maps were fit into floor displays and angled for maximum visibility in the center of the room. Small white globe fixtures hung from the ceiling. The overall mood seemed to aim at the feel of a regional lodge or local club. Entirely new to the Berlin incarnation were the tapestries shown in the Ehrenhalle, dedicated to the history and legends of the Ostmark.119 The Ehrenhalle had a high-coffered ceiling, with a large, simplified Neoclassical-style colonnade displaying tapestries hung between squared columns. The overall feel was a kind of stripped-down classical grandeur. In the great lobby hung a plaque reading Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark. Other scenes showed the struggle against the Turks, the adventures of the Babenberger, the first great colonization under Maria-Theresa, the fight against Napoleonic forces etc. At the crossroads of the exhibition a large plaque, fitted into a porticolike structure, was dedicated to Ostmark’s “greatest son, Adolf Hitler”120 (Figure 4.20). The expanded size of the show paid of: more than ten times as many people attended the exhibition in Berlin, bringing the total to 150,000 (although organizers had hoped to attract half a million) and raising RM 22,763 from sales.121 A 150-page catalogue was published to accompany the exhibit, containing a full list of paintings on display, color and black-and-white reproductions and a map of the show. As in Vienna, the exhibition was given full and extensive coverage in the press, both by local papers and by the journals and news outlets closely associated with the Nazi party.122 Nearly all commented on the show as proof of the deep cultural connection between Ostmark and the rest of the Reich and the abundant treasures that the Ostmark could now share with her newly united regions. The reviewer of Das Kleine Volksblatt noted: “This great historical show has not neglected to represent, both literally and figuratively, the inextricable and intimate connection of history and culture between the Ostmark and all the provinces and regions of the Reich.”123 In a feature entitled “Die Ostmark kommt nach Berlin” (“The Ostmark Comes to Berlin”), the Berlin Lokal Anzeiger reported that Professor Blauensteiner had begun preparations for the show even before the Anschluss. “What had begun as a monument to the German spirit, is now a monument to the Ostmark.”124 For this reviewer, the structure of the exhibit helped bring out the “large political framework, the German mission of Ostmark” while also providing the viewer with an endless array of small treasures to charm them.125 Karl Maria Grimme, writing in Der Getreue Eckart, praised the state for its support of Ostmark artists, “some of the most gifted amongst those of the German tribes.”126 The Völkischer Beobachter once again worked on promoting the exhibit. The show was praised for helping inspire appreciation for the culture and economic life of the Ostmark: One of the spiritual and cultural problems concerns the value of the Ostmark for the Reich. The political separation between the Altreich and all its accompanying

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phenomena has led to the fact that the relation with Ostmark was seen in the first place as a political one, and the esteemed old culture of this land, the economy created and thriving under difcult circumstances, did not always receive appropriate consideration.127 The most extensive press coverage of the show was in the Viennese popular culture journal Die Pause, which devoted an entire issue to the exhibit.128 Filled with copious illustrations in color and black and white, it functioned as an accompaniment to the show, providing articles on every aspect of Ostmark culture, economy and art. As in the earlier show and publications, Ostmark was celebrated as a Bollwerk des Deutschtums (bulwark of Germanness).129 Each Gau received its own feature, highlighting the beauty of the region and its unique contributions, from the Festspiele and castles of Salzburg to the Oberdonau as “Die Heimat des Führers,” to winemaking and the electric industry. Vienna was celebrated, as in the exhibition itself, not for its citizens or physical features but as the cultural epicenter of the Ostmark, with numerous features on her music, literature, theater, visual arts and fashion (“a rival to Paris and London!”), all with a Schlagober flavor.130 Neglecting fin-de-siècle Vienna completely, the text noted only the great advancements made by Mayor Karl Lueger, “whom Adolf Hitler had monumentalized in Mein Kampf,” in turning the city into a “volkshygienischen” city.131 Nearly every period of art in the Ostmark was covered, with the calculated omission of fin-de-siècle and 20th-century Modernism. Many paintings and artists who appeared in the exhibit were featured as well.132 Although the bad weather had resulted in fewer visitors than hoped for,133 the show continued on to the Landesmuseum in Wiesbaden. When war broke out in September of 1939, the museum was requisitioned for the military, the show disbanded and the works returned to Vienna. *** While Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark was on display in Charlottenburg, Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) arrived in Vienna. The brainchild of Joseph Goebbels, the exhibition opened in Munich in July of 1937 with the aim of portraying modern art as a tool to destroy the culture and spirit of the German nation, but the concept of cultural degeneration had been a central rallying point of the Nazi party from much earlier on. The show was held in the Hofgarten of the Institute of Anthropology, directly across from the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German Art Exhibit), meant as a direct contrast, a showdown between the healthy and beautiful—the inherent creativity of the German people—and the perfidy and moral corruption of the cosmopolitan artist. Over 650 artworks, culled and “purged” from German museums, were displayed for the purpose of mockery or to make their viewers recoil in horror. Altogether, the purging had “cleansed” German museums of 5,238 works.134 The organizer of the show was Adolf Ziegler, head of the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Culture Chamber). Closing in Munich on November 30, the show traveled to 11 other cities in the Reich and would come to be seen by three million visitors in total, the largest blockbuster ever held in the Germanspeaking world.135 Focused on movements from 1910 on—the ones particularly despised by Hitler himself—the works of living German Expressionists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde were particularly targeted. The only Austrian artist included in the show (which predated the Anschluss) was Oskar Kokoschka, whose works were first made

70 Erasing the City known to the public at the Viennese Kunstschau in 1908. Of the 112 artists in the exhibit, only 6 were Jewish, but many of the works and artists were seen to be “Jewish” in spirit. Using the artworks as “evidence” of degeneration, the exhibit helped conflate in the public mind the degenerate, the imbecilic, the Bolshevik and the Jewish. The raw and distorted imagery of modern art was cast as the product of a deranged and dangerous sensibility. Derogatory labels and incendiary wall text (“An insult to German womanhood!” “Insolent mockery of the Divine!”) were meant not only to mock the works but also to inflate their moral threat to the nation. The exhibit was also profoundly important for establishing an “ofcial” Nazi attitude on the arts, one that reflected the views of Hitler. Until 1937, National Socialist policy and opinion on the work of many living artists was not yet settled, with many highranking party members supportive of various German movements, from the Bauhaus to Expressionism.136 The Degenerate Art exhibition also set in motion a post-war narrative that cast all artists working in modern styles as “victims” of the regime, conflating radical art with anti-fascism. This oversimplified construction is perhaps most problematic in the case of Emile Nolde, who was the most represented artist in the exhibit and also a fervent member of the Nazi party with deep antisemitic beliefs. This narrative has only recently been challenged by scholars like Petropoulos and Potter and with groundbreaking exhibitions held in Germany in 2019.137 Even after the 1937 exhibit, many prominent Nazis continued to collect modern works—most often those looted from Jewish families—for their own pleasure or for profit. The Degenerate Art show arrived at the Vienna Künstlerhaus on May 7 and remained until June 18, 1939. In popularity, it far outdid the Berge und Menschen exhibit, perhaps to the chagrin of the latter’s organizers, bringing in 147,000 visitors in total, or nearly 5,000 people a day.138 In some ways, however, the Berge und Menschen show served as a foil to the Degenerate Art exhibit, much like the Greater German Art Show, in that it established the pure, the Aryan, the rural, the beautiful, the healthy and the eternal as the antithesis to the decayed, the Jewish, the cosmopolitan, the ugly and the infirm. Two of the mocking labels on the Degenerate exhibit walls—“German Farmers—a Yiddish View” and “Nature Seen by Sick Minds”—formed a direct contrast to the images that had been displayed in the Berge und Menschen show, filled with its hearty peasants, sweeping landscapes and well-tilled fields. If some of the artists abandoned academic crystalline outline or traditional realism, they nevertheless produced afrmative and “wholesome” views. Attitudes toward modern art had a diferent dynamic in Vienna. As we will explore, Baldur von Schirach, Reichsstatthalter of the city from 1940 on, would be openly supportive of some modern artists, even extending a personal invitation to the “degenerate” Emil Nolde. As late as 1943, the Viennese press carried positive tributes to Egon Shiele’s works, pride in the Viennese heritage coming into tension with the party line against Expressionism. Perhaps the show made some modern art more rather than less acceptable by drawing a dividing line between the acceptably modern, seeking to capture a “higher” reality, and the truly raw and radically distorted visions derided in the Degenerate Art exhibit. Nevertheless, whatever cultural pride the Viennese had taken in the city as an epicenter of Modernism could no longer be sanctioned. A new history of modern art—as a cultural expression of deviance and decay—blocked out any glory Vienna might have gotten as her catalyst. If Jews had been disproportionate contributors to the flourishing of Viennese Modernism, her problems could now be laid at their feet.

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Erasing the City and Its Inhabitants The end result of the Berge und Menschen exhibit was an attempt to implant in the population of the Third Reich—most importantly the urban viewers in Vienna and Berlin—an image of Ostmark as a rural, picturesque, geographically diverse and beautiful land of lakes, mountains, natural resources and hearty peasants. Whatever individual memories viewers possessed of Austria could now be deleted and replaced with an agreed-upon communal memory; in the very repetition of these images lay their power. As Assmann has written: Similarly, what we have experienced ourselves and what we have read about or seen in films can be difcult to disentangle. Oral narratives, texts and photographs are important props of autobiographical memory, which explains why the boundary between individual memory and shared material signs (such as texts and images) is not always easy to draw.139 Colossal exhibits like Mountains and People, along with institutions like the Heimatmuseum and the myriad texts examined previously, provided the material to shape a new cultural memory for inhabitants of the Third Reich.140 They helped make the process of forgetting the city, of obliterating the conflicted view of Vienna’s past, less an act of rational relearning than one of involuntary replacement. It rested less on conscious assimilation than on a will to believe, embodied in the many institutions forged during the Anschluss. In this newly shaped memory, if Vienna had any importance at all, it was as an occasional exciting and brief excursion, a kind of cultural showpiece and not a “real” place. Its cosmopolitan and urban streets, filled with monuments of Habsburg rule and Modernist institutions, its polylingual populations and—lying always beneath the surface—its verjudete (jewified) history, were anathema to the real Ostmark. In contrast to the other six Gaue, Vienna could not ofer the confirmation of a racially pure population and romantic landscape that linked it tightly to the Altreich and this made her suspect.141 “What makes Vienna difcult is the diference in blood within its city walls. The ofspring of all those races which comprised the former Austria live there.”142 Neither Hitler nor Goebbels ever gave up seeing Vienna both as a mongrel city and as an upstart.143 In Die Deutsche Ostmark, juxtaposed with the photographs of smiling peasants and sublime snow-covered mountains were statistics on “das Volk der deutschen Ostmark.” In Vienna, there still lived “192,000 observant Jews.”144 In Vienna, the “racial Jews” comprised nearly 80 percent of all lawyers, and “of 177 newspaper writers, 124 were of the Jewish race.”145 No text laid out the problem with Vienna in clearer fashion than Robert Körber’s vicious Rassesieg in Wien der Grenzfeste des Reiches (Racial Victory in Vienna, Border Town of the Reich) (1939). The author had been an illegal Nazi, publishing his Antisemitismus der Welt in Wort und Bild in 1935,146 and utilized the same method of juxtaposition of healthy German images and those of stereotypical and disturbing images of Jewish physiognomies, streets and structures. The book opened with a dedication to Hitler and to “countless victims, martyrs and heroes of the German people, on Ostmark soil, who shielded them from boundless usury and misery in the thousand year war of the Jews against the Germans.”147 Following a chapter on the racial diferences between Germans and Jews, the book details Vienna’s “invasion”

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by Jewry, beginning in the Middle Ages and culminating, (as we shall further explore in Chapter 8) in the First Austrian Republic. Under the Jews, Vienna had become a “Judenstadt [Jewish city] in the middle of the border town of the East, a piece of Asia in the German city of Vienna.”148 The threat that the Jewish population presented to Vienna was relayed with a photo of the Fernsprechbuch (phone book), under which the caption read, “Symbolic of the replacement of Germans by Jews, the heroic names of Germans, Hermann and Siegfried, are matched by Kohn and Pollak.”149 While the Jews had destroyed the city, they had not been able to truly infiltrate the Berge. This point was made, as we have seen, with a photo of a dark-haired Jewish couple sporting folk costume (Figure 4.2). By the time these texts were published, however, attempts to “correct” the Jewish problem were well under way. In August of 1938, Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (the Central Ofce for Jewish Emigration) was established in Vienna by Bürckel and headed by Adolph Eichmann.150 Its role was to oversee and hasten the expropriation and expulsion of Jews from the city. The method of the ofce would later be expanded and serve as the model for the Reich Central Ofce for Jewish Emigration in Berlin, headed by Reinhard Heydrich. It would later serve a crucial role in the deportation of Jews from the German-speaking countries to their deaths in the East. The noose grew ever tighter around the Jews of Vienna in 1939. The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (IKG) was charged with keeping the poverty-stricken and unemployed Jewish communities afloat, through soup kitchens and the like, while also tasked with helping Jews to emigrate. Forced to give up driver’s licenses, memberships, jobs and all other public amenities, the Jews remaining were forced into an ever-more-desperate existence. Alongside coverage of the Degenerate Art exhibit in May, the Völkischer Beobachter celebrated the purge of Jews from Vienna: “To date 100,000 Jews of the Hebrew faith have emigrated from the Ostmark. Welcome progress in Jewish cleansing: They’re leaving!”151 Soon the presence of the Jews in Vienna would trouble the Ostmark no longer. Like the city itself and its modern history, the Jews would be made to disappear. Another article in the Völkisher Beobachter made their future absence clear: By the year 1943 the Jewish element in Vienna will have been wiped out and made to disappear. No shop, no business will be permitted by that time to be under Jewish management, no Jew may find an opportunity anywhere to earn money with the exception of those streets where the old Jews and Jewesses are using up their money—the export of which is prohibited—while they wait for death, there must be no signs of Jews in the city.152 In the Berge und Menschen exhibit, neither Jews nor the city itself were visible, providing a blueprint for those who aimed to make such a purified image into reality.

Notes 1. Angerhofer received his training at the Munich Academy of the Fine Arts and became a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus in 1937 and, in May of 1938, a member of the NSDAP. He was well received by the Nazi establishment, appearing in the 1937 Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung in Munich and winning the Oberdonau Gaukulturpreis für Malerei in 1941. His work fell into obscurity after the war. For a brief biography on Angerhofer, see Norbert Loidol, “Holzknechte im Windbruch,” University of Klagenfurt. http://wwwg.uni-klu.ac.at/kultdoku/

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2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

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kataloge/39/html/2953.htm, accessed May 12, 2019. Text taken from Land der Hämmer: Heimat Eisenwurzen. Region Phyrn-Eisenwurzen. Katalog der Oberösterreichischen Landesausstellung, ed. Julius Stieber (Salzburg: Residenz-Verlag, 1998), 533; A. Klee, “Angerhofer, Robert (1895–1987), Maler, Graphiker und Bildhauer,” Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon ab 1815 2003–2022, Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage/Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, https://www.biographien.ac.at/oebl/oebl_A/ Angerhofer_Robert_1895_1987.xml. The author of the entry notes that Angerhofer’s works following the Anschluss “[b]edienten die Ideologie der neuen politischen Machthaber.” Robert Körber, Rassesieg in Wien, der Grenzfeste des Reiches (Vienna: Universitäts-Verlag Wilhelm Braumüller Wien, 1939). Körber, Rassesieg, 20, plate 11. By the time of the book’s publication, laws had been passed prohibiting Jews from wearing such costumes—for example, in Salzburg, which explicitly forbade Jews from “öfentliches Tragen von alpenländischen [echten oder unechten] Trachten.” On the antisemitic discourses surrounding Trachten, see Gundolf Graml, Revisiting Austria: Tourism, Space and National Identity, 1945 to the Present (New York/London: Berghahn Books, 2020), 677–689. There is very little literature on the exhibit. The longest discussion is that of Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, pp. 270, 272 and 274. They also include reproductions of materials from the exhibit including installation photos, postcards and included paintings, pp. 271, 273, 275–280. Körber, Rassesieg, 9. “Bodenschätze, Holz, Landwirtschaft, Wasserkraft, Verkehrslinien,” in Die Deutsche Ostmark: Eine Werbeschrift anlässlich der gleichnamigen Ausstellung: vom 1 September bis 10. Oktober 1938 (Landesbildstelle Hansa, Hamburg: NS-Lehrerbund, Gau, 1938), 3. Die Deutsche Ostmark, 3. Letter from the Ausstellungsleitung of the Genossenschaft der bildenden Künstler, Wien, 2. August, 1937, Berge und Menschen file. Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. Große Alpine Kunstausstellung: Die Alpen im Bilde vom XV Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. September to October 1927. Künstlerhaus Wien. For a discussion of such Alpine imagery in fine art during the Ständestaat, see Julia Seklehrer, “A New Austrian Regionalism: Alfons Walde and Austrian Identity in Painting After 1918,” Austrian History Yearbook 52 (2021): 201–226. For a discussion of the many continuities and predecessors to Nazi art propaganda within the Austrofascist state, see Oliver Rathkolb, “Nazi Aesthetik und die Ostmark,” in Die österreichische nationalsozialistische Ästhetik, ed. Ilija Dürhammer (Vienna: Edition Die Angewandte Universität Press, 2003); Oliver Rathkolb, “National Sozialistische (Un)Kulturpolitik in Wien 1938–1945,” in Im Reich der Kunst, 247–276. Helmut Wohnout, “Im Zeichen des Ständesideals Bedingungen Staatlicher Kulturpolitik im autoritären Österreich 1933–1938,” in Art und Diktatur; Petropoulos, “The Primacy of Kulturpolitik,” 77–82. Andri would contribute 14 works to the Bergen und Menschen exhibit and would come to be particularly praised by Goebbels. Ernst Klee, Das Kulturlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Bd. 17153. Vollständig überarbeitete Ausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 2009). Earlier in the century, Andri had worked in the Jugendstil style and for wealthy Jewish patrons like the Gallias. See his portrait of the Gallia children, 1901, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Letter from Ausstellungs- und Messe-Amt der Stadt Berlin to Professor Blauensteiner, December 7, 1938. Berge und Menschen file. Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. Untitled and undated press release, Berge und Menschen file. Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. “Bergen und Menschen der Ostmark,” Völkischer Beobachter, February 15, 1939, 6. For example, Rundpost Wien, February 25, 1939. Letter from R.H. Eisenmenger to Dr. Leopold Tavs, Gaupropagandaleiter, Vienna. March 3, 1939. Berge und Menschen file, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. Invitation card, Künstlerhaus Archiv, Berge und Menschen der Ostmark file. Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv.

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18. Other foods included on a menu for the opening were Gefüllte Nudeln from Carinthia and Hasenöhrl mit Sauerkraut from the Upper Danube. Menu, Berge und Menschen der Ostmark file Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. 19. Aichelburg, “Ausstellungen,” http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/ausstellungen/. 20. For the content of the show see the published catalogue, Berge und Menschen der Ostmark, März 4 bis April 30, 1939 (Vienna: Genossenschaft der bildenden Künstler Wien, 1939). 21. Michael Tymkiw, Nazi Exhibition Design and Exhibition (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2018). 22. Mayer, “Aspekte der Wiener,” 88. 23. “Hans Frank,” German Art Gallery, http://www.germanartgallery.eu/m/Webshop/0/product/ info/Hans_Frank,_Adler&id=90; “Ankäufe des Führers aus der ‘Großen Deutschen Kunstausstellung 1939’/‘Haus der Deutschen Kunst (Neuer Glaspalast)’ Anstalt des Öfentlichen Rechts in München,” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2004676963/. Frank stated that he was from “bäuerlichen Ahnen.” Earlier in the century, Frank had attended both the Akademie der bildenden Künste and Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna. Regine Schmidt, Hans und Leo Frank. 100 Wechselausstellung der Österreichischen Galerie. Unteres Schloss Belvedere, exhibit catalogue, February 19 to March 23, 1986. Fossel was a specialist in images of Bavarian folk culture, particularly her depiction of dress in Styria, Marta Elisabet Fossel Gedächtnisausstellung, March 20 to April 13, 1980, exhibit catalogue, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum (Graz, 1980). Her work found favor (for fairly obvious reasons) under the Nazi regime. See Herbert Lipsky, Kunst einer dunklen Zeit. Die bildende Kunst in der Steiermark zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Ein Handbuch (Graz: Leykam, 2010). 24. On the complicated issues surrounding the style of works shown at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich, see the scholarship of Julius Redzinski, e.g., Chapter 1, note 53. 25. For the co-existence of these styles and the varied meaning of their symbols, see Olaf Peterson, “Behind Reality: Austrian and German Art Between the Wars,” and Andreas Huyssen, “A Literature of Disenchantments: From Weimar into the Third Republic,” in Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of the 1930s (New York: Neue Galerie/Prestel, 2018). 26. Peterson, “Behind Reality.” 27. Cossmann had studied graphic art and ceramics at the Kunstgewerbeschule from 1886 to 1895. He was hardly a simple peasant painter; Cossmann’s bookplates and graphics abounded with femmes fatales and the stylizations of Art Nouveau. Harlfinger, too, had been a member of the Secession during the first decade of the 20th century. 28. Helen Zimmerebner, Zinkenbacher—eine Österreichische Worpswede? Shicksale der Malerkolonie am Wolfgangsee St. Gilgen (Museum Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie, 2012). Another member of the Künstlerhaus, Max Neuböck, had been married to a Polish Jew from Łodz. See Chapter 6 below, note 197. 29. Claus Jesina, in her catalogue essay for a gallery show held in 2003, was quick to separate the appropriation of Frank’s imagery from his own apolitical stance: “Er soll an dieser Stelle keinesfalls die Ideologie oder die Diktatur der Nationalsozialisten, die neben den Gräueltaten auch zu einer Verarmung der Kunst und des Geistes führten, verteidigt werden.” Claus Jesina, Die Maler-Familie Frank. Hans, Leo, Hans der Jüngere. Mit einem Werkverzeichnis der Druckgraphik (Vienna: Galerie 16, 2003), 8. 30. For information on Strobl, see George C. Schoolfield, Young Rilke and His Time (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 2009). 31. Schedlmayer, “Kunst dem Volk,” 7; 20–23. 32. On this see Chapter 2. 33. “Strobl,” Berge und Menschen, unpaginated. 34. “Europas steinernes Rückgrat,” Strobl. 35. Strobl, Berge und Menschen. 36. “Was machten die Menschen aus den Bergen? und: Was machen die Berge aus den Menschen?” Strobl, Berge und Menschen. 37. Strobl, Berge und Menschen. 38. “Ostmärkische Künstler,” in Große Deutschen Kunstausstellung im Haus der Deutschen Kunst bei München. Juni-Oktober 1940 (Munich: Knorr und Hirth, 1940), 11. 39. See Bukey, “The Farming Populace: Anger and Anguish,” Hitler’s Austria, 112–130. 40. Bukey, “The Farming Populace: Anger and Anguish,” Hitler’s Austria, 119.

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41. Michael Mooslechner and Robert Stadler, “Landwirtschaft und Agrarpolitik,” in NS-Herrschaft in Österreich 1938–1945, eds. Emmerich Tálos, Ernst Hanisch and Wolfgang Neugebauer (Vienna: Verl. für Gesellschaftskritik, 1988), 69–94. 42. Leistungsbericht der Landesbauernschaft Donauland, erstattet vom Landesbauernführer Dipl. Ing. Anton Reinthaller, Wien, 1941. Quoted in Mooslechner and Stadler, “Landwirtschaft und Agrarpolitik,” 69. 43. Bukey, “The Farming Populace: Anger and Anguish,” Hitler’s Austria, 121. 44. Strobl, Berge und Menschen. 45. Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, 272. 46. “Die Ostmark kommt nach Berlin,” Berlin Local Anzeiger, May 26, 1939. 47. On Reyl-Hanisch see Christoph Bertsch, “Herbert von Reyl-Hanisch: ein österreichisches Schicksal?” in Herbert von Reyl-Hanisch: Das Land der Seele eds. Christoph Bertsch und Markus Neuwirth (Neufeld: Lustenau, 1991). Reyl-Hanisch’s father died in military battle in 1914. Noting the artist’s early attraction to German Nationalism, Bertsch states: “Sein früher Tod 1937 bewahrt Herbert V. Reyl-Hanisch zwar davor, endgültig der nationalsozialistischen Propaganda zu erliegen, nicht jedoch vor einem Vereinnahmung seiner Kunst von dieser Seite.” 48. Jefrey Nerf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 49. Helmut Fiederer, Reichswerke “Hermann Göring” in Österreich (1938–1945) (Veröfentlichungen des Historischen Instituts der Universität Salzburg, number 16) (Vienna: Geyer, 1983). 50. See, for example, Wilhelm Dauchauer’s Harvest Time (cat. 108) and Rudolf Böttger’s Holz (cat. 49). 51. Dobrowsky’s work is well covered in the literature. For an introduction, see “Josef Dobrowsky” in Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon ab 1815 (2. überarbeitete Auflage—online) Institut für Neuzeit- und Zeitgeschichtsforschung. PUBLIKATION: ÖBL Online-Edition, Lfg. 6 (27.11.2017), http://www.biographien.ac.at/oebl/oebl_D/Dobrowsky_Josef_1889_1964. xml; Herbert Zemen, Josef Dobrowsky 1889–1964, ein Künstlerbildnis (Vienna: Privatdruck, 2007). He was the subject of an exhibition at the Belvedere in 2014–15: Josef Dobrowsky: Wahrnehmung und Farbe: Meisterwerke im Fokus, Belvedere Museum, September 17, 2014 to January 18, 2015. 52. See the press release from the Belvedere: Masterpieces in Focus: Josef Dobrowsky Perception and Colour, Upper Belvedere September 17, 2014 to January 18, 2015, https://www.belvedere.at/sites/default/files/jart-files/pm-dobrowksy-en.pdf. In 1941 Dobrowsky served for two and half months in the reserve of the Luftwasse. For more biography, see Herbert Geise, Josef Dorbowsky: Überall malt er die Innenseite der Erscheinungen (Wien: Giese and Schweiger, 2007). 53. Die Deutsche Ostmark: Eine Werbeschrift anlässlich der gleichnamigen Ausstellung von 1. Sept. bis 10. Oktober 1939 (Hamburg: Lehrerbund Gau Hamburg/Landesbildstelle Hansa Hamburg, 1939), 46. 54. On the image of the peasant, see Dieter Bartetzko, Stefan Glossmann and Gabriele VoigtländerTetzner, “Die Darstellung des Bauern,” Kunst im 3. Reich: Dokumente der Unterwerfung, ed. Georg Bussmann (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins, 1980), 310–346. 55. “Berge und Menschen der Ostmark: Zur Eröfnung der großen Ausstellung im Wiener Künstlerhaus,” Kunst dem Volk (March 1939): 21. 56. Ina Lorenz, “Leo Lippmann—A German Jew,” in: Spätes Gedenken: A History Society Remembers Its Excluded Jewish Members, ed. Joist Grolle and Matthias Schmoock (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2009). 57. Frühjahrsausstellung mit Kollektionen Alfred Cossmann, Max Frey, Rudolf Heinz Keppel, Oskar Laske, Karl Mader, Pavao Peric. Künstlerhaus Wien, March 20 to April 20, 1952, 7. 58. R. Walther Darre, Das Bauerntum als Lebensquell der Nordischen Rasse (Munich: J. S. Lehmanns Verlag, 1938). 59. Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, Das deutsche Volksgesicht (Berlin: Kulturelle Verlagsgesellschaft, 1932). 60. Lutz served in the military from 1939 to 1944 but continued to paint. Primarily a landscapist, Lutz created several peasant paintings and nudes that echo closely the style favored by Nazi-lauded artists like Adolf Ziegler. See the exhibition brochure, Elizabeth Nowak-Thaler,

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61.

62. 63.

64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78.

Erasing the City You Never Know What Will Happen Next . . . Die Sammlung 1900–2010, February 12, 2010 (Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, 2010). An exhibition held at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in late fall of 2005 to spring of 2006 essentially neglected his relationship to National Socialism, laying the artist’s popularity on the fact that his works happened to “entsprachen ganz dem damals herrschenden Kunstgeschmack.” Peter Assmann, “Anton Lutz—Rezeption, Entwicklung, Schönheit,” in Licht Impressionen: Der Maler Anton Lutz 1894–1992. Exhibition catalogue. (Vienna: Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, December 8 to March 5, 2006), 65. Christina Welkop, “August Sander’s Der Bauer and the Pervasiveness of the Peasant Tradition,” Tate Papers, 19 (Spring 2013), http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tatepapers/19/august-sanders-der-bauer-and-the-pervasiveness-of-the-peasant-tradition, accessed 22 June 2017. On the importance of the Blut und Boden ideology in the Anschluss, see Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 273–277. Bukey, “The Farming Populace: Anger and Anguish,” Hitler’s Austria, 124. Tourism would again be central to Austrian identity after the war. On this see Graml, Revisiting Austria; Journal of Austrian Studies 46 (3): 51–76; Günter Bischof, “‘Conquering the Foreigner’: The Marshall Plan and the Revival of Postwar Austrian Tourism,” The Marshall Plan in Austria, eds. Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka and Dieter Stiefel (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2000), 357–401. Judson, “Every German .  .  .,” in Histories of Leisure, 147–168. On tourism as duty and virtue, see Judson, p. 151, who notes that tourism did not always have the intended efect of increasing national allegiance but rather increased regional pride. On tourism in Austria between the wars, see Georg Rigele, “Kulturschock am Lande: Tourismus und Fremdenverkehr in Österreich in den Dreißiger-Jahren,” in Kunst und Diktatur; Rudy Koshar, “Germans at the Wheel: Cars and Leisure Travel in Interwar Germany,” in Histories of Leisure; Corinna M. Pennston Bird, “Cofee, Klimt and Climbing: Constructing an Austrian National Identity in Tourist Literature 1918–1938,” in Histories of Tourism, ed. John K. Walton (Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2005). For the importance of tourism in rebuilding Austrian identity during the Second Republic, see Graml, Revisiting Austria. Erich Bernard, “Symbol unseres Lebensmutes: Der Bau der Großglockner Hochalpenstraße 1930–1937,” in Art und Diktatur. Ludwig Leer, “Burgenländischer Fremdenverkehr,” in Österreich: Sein Land und Volk und Kultur, ed. Michael Haberlandt (Vienna and Weimar: Verlag für Volks und Heimatkunde, 1927). English translation quoted in Bird, “Cofee, Klimt and Climbing,” 53. Von Teichmann, Österreichische-Deutsch Fremdenverkehrs und Reisezeitung (Vienna: Ost. Dr. U Verlag, 1926). English translation quoted in Bird, “Cofee, Klimt and Climbing,” 53. Bird, “Cofee, Klimt and Climbing.” Confino, Germany as a Culture of Remembrance, 220, notes, for example, that between 1933 and 1939, the KDF funded paid vacations for every worker. Bernard, “Symbol unseres Lebensmutes,” 240. Secklehner, “A New Austrian Regionalism.” Gerd Ammann, Carl Kraus und Rudolf Leopold, Ausstellungskatalog Alfons Walde (Vienna: Leopold Museum, 2006). Most biographies on Walde contain reference to a Gestapo visit or “interrogation.” See, for example, the timeline on the website of his estate: Alfons Walde: Oberndorf 1891–1958 Kitzbühel, http://alfonswalde.com/cms/. A 2009 article by Richard Raskin in the online journal POV claims that Walde was discussing his fears for Jewish friends by 1938. Richard Raskin, “From Leslie Howard to Raoul Wallenberg: The Transmission and Adaptation of a Heroic Model,” POV 28 (December 2009), https://pov.imv.au.dk/Issue_28/POV_28cnt.html. On this see Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 269; 284–285. Alon Confino, in Germany as a Culture of Remembrance, 116. This aspect of Austrian identity continues until today. On symbols of Austrian identity, see Karner, “National Symbols.” Elizabeth Cronin, “Lost Somewhere in the Mountains: Wilhelm Angerer and Austrian Heimat Photography,” History of Photography 32, no. 3 (Autumn 2008): 251. For a good introduction to the philosophical roots of the Heimat concept, see Peter Blickle, Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002).

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79. Confino, Germany as a Culture of Remembrance; Blickle, Heimat, 47. 80. Confino, “Heimat, National Memory and the German Empire 1871–1918,” in Germany as a Culture of Remembrance, 140. 81. Confino, Germany as a Culture of Remembrance, 159. 82. Confino, Germany as a Culture of Remembrance, 119. 83. Elizabeth Cronin, Heimat Photography in Austria (Salzburg: Fotohof Editions, 2013). 84. For a discussion of the theme of Heimat in literature during the Third Reich, see Karl Müller, “Unsere heimischen Primitiven sind uns fremder als die Südsee: Beobachtungen zur ‘Heimatliteratur’ während der NS Zeit,” in Die Österreichische nationalsozialistische Ästhetik. 85. Robert von Dassenowsky, “Snowblinded: The Alps Contra Vienna in Austrian Entertainment Film at the Anschluss,” Austrian Studies 18 (2010): 106–123. 86. Strobl, Berge und Menschen, unpaginated. 87. Confino, Germany as a Culture of Remembrance, 171. 88. Cornelia Reiter, Oskar Laske 1874–1951: Ein vielseitiger Individualist (Salzburg: Galerie Welz, 1995), 12.; Walter Koschatsky and Tobias Natter, Oskar Laske 1874–1951, exhibit catalogue. Kunsthaus, Wien, February–May 1996 (Vienna: Museumsbetriebs, m.b.H., 1996). A former member of the Hagenbund, Laske joined the Künstlerhaus in 1928 and remains a very well-exhibited and well-known artist in the German speaking countries but is virtually unknown in the US. His Ship of Fools, 1923 is owned by the Belvedere Museum. 89. See Thomas Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity 1885–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), esp. “From Landscape to Lebensraum: Race and Environment under Nazism.” 90. Strobl, Berge und Menschen. 91. Confino, Germany as a Nation of Remembrance, 159. 92. Confino, Germany as a Nation of Remembrance, 161. 93. Aristide Tschebull, Ostmark Fibel: Trachten der Gaue der Ostmark (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1941), 30. 94. Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 192–193. 95. See, for example, the image of Kärnten: Mölltal from p. 31 and William Dachauer, Harvest Time (cat. 79). 96. See the classic study by Klaus Bergmann, Agrarromantik und Großstadtfeindschaft (Meisenheim/Glan: Verlag Anton Hain, 1970). 97. Helmut Stellrecht, Neue Erziehung (Berlin: Wilhelm Limpert, 1943). 98. Blickle, Heimat, 17. 99. These figures come from a press release, Berge und Menschen der Ostmark, Künstlerhaus Archive, but the exact figures have been disputed by scholars. Aichelburg gives the total amount brought in at RM 121,909. Monika Mayer gives the figures at 97 works sold to the Reichsstatthalter totaling RM 54,073, as well as works from the city of Vienna and private collectors bringing in a grand total of RM 152,432. See Mayer, “NS-Kunstförderung in Wien.” In another publication, she attributed the low sales of the exhibit to the varied quality of the works. Monika Mayer, “Gesunde Gefühlsregungen: Das Wiener Ausstellungswesen,” in Art und Diktatur. The numbers given by Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, p. 272, are 107 (Reich), 27 (Vienna) and 33 (private buyers). 100. Das Kleines Blatt, March 3, 1939; Wiener Tagblatt, March 4, 1939; Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung, March 4, 1939: Münchner Neueste Nachrichten March 7, 1939; Neues Wiener Tagblatt, March 3,6 and 12, 1939; Kleines Volksblatt, March 5 and 27, 1939. 101. Richard Overy, The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany/Stalin’s Russia (England: Penguin, 2004), 271. 102. Kleines Volksblatt, March 5, 1939 and March 27, 1939, including a photograph with SeyssInquart at the opening. 103. Salzburger Volksblatt, March 1, 1939, 5. 104. “Berge und Menschen der Ostmark; Zur Eröfnung der großen Ausstellung im Wiener Künstlerhaus,” Kunst dem Volk (March 1939): 21. 105. Völkischer Beobachter, February 15, 1939, 6. 106. Letter from Hauptschriftleiter (Editor-in-Chief), Völkischer Beobachter, Viennese edition to Direktor Karl Gerold, Künstlerhaus Wien, April 6, 1939, Berge und Menschen file, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv.

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107. “Die Ostmark kommt nach Berlin,” Berlin Lokal Anzeiger, May 26, 1939. 108. Rebhann, Die braunen Jahre, 66, briefly mentions the exhibit, noting that the show bypassed any reference to the time when people from the Alpenländer were migrating in large numbers to the capital of Vienna. 109. Aichelburg, “Verzeichnis der Ausstellungen 1886 bis 2010,” Wladimir Aichelburg, 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien, 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/ ausstellungen/verzeichnis/. 110. The layout of the exhibit was reported in “Die Ostmark Schau,” Völkischer Beobachter, April 23, 1939, 6. A Viennese “House of Fashion” had opened in the Palais Lobkowitz on February 22 1939 and a fashion academy in March; the aim was to make Vienna a fashion rival for Berlin. For more on this issue, see Chapter 6 below. 111. See Herbert Nikitsch and Bernhard Tschofen, Volkskunst: Referate der österreichischen Volkskundetagung in Wien. Im Auftrag des Vereins für Volkskunde in Wien und des Österreischen Fachverbands für Volkskunde (Vienna: Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde, 1997), esp. Bernward Deneke, “Volkskunst und nationale Identität 1870–1914,” 13–28. My thanks to Megan Brandow-Faller for sharing this source. 112. For an introduction to this long history, see Mark Antlif and Patricia Leighton, “Primitive,” in Critical Terms for Art History, eds. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Schif (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996), 170–184. 113. Ulrich Steinmann, “Die Entwicklung des Museums für Volkskunde von 1889–1964,” in Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Hrsg.): 75 Jahre Museum für Volkskunde 1889–1964, Festschrift (Leipzig: Druck H. Arthur Scheeps, 1964), 7–47. 114. For pointing out this relationship, I thank Megan Brandow-Faller. For the work of Josef Hofmann, co-founder of the Wiener Werkstätte under the Nazis, see Elana Schapira, “Our Great Josef Hofmann: Undoing the Austrian Profile of a Celebrated Architect,” in Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design, eds. Megan BrandowFaller and Laura Morowitz (London/New York: Routledge Press, 2023) 58-73. 115. Alfredo Cruz-Ramirerz, “The Heimatmuseum: A Perverted Forerunner,” Museum International 37, no. 4 (December 1985): 242. 116. Cruz-Ramirez, “The Heimatmuseum,” 243. 117. On the Heimatmuseum, see Confino, 134–139. 118. Tabor, “Die Gaben . . .,” 292. 119. Titles are listed in “Die Ostmark Schau.” 120. “Die Ostmark Schau.” 121. Aichelburg. Mayer puts the figures of works sold in the Berlin exhibit at RM 54,073. Mayer, “Gesunde und Gefühlsregungen.” 122. See, for example, “Das Ostmarkerturm,” Frankfurter Zeitung, May 27, 1939; “Wiener Röcke schweben daher. Nur das Wetter war frosting,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, May 26, 1939; “Farbenspiel am Funkturm—zur Blumengarten der Ostmark,” Deutscher Allgemeine Zeitung, May 31, 1939; Morgenpost Berlin, May 27, 1939. 123. Das kleine Volksblatt, May 11, 1939, 10. 124. Berlin Lokal Anzeiger, May 26, 1939. 125. Berlin Lokal Anzeiger, May 26, 1939. 126. Die Getreue Eckart, May 1, 1939. 127. Völkischer Beobachter, April 23, 1939, 6. 128. Die Pause, 4 (4/5) (1939). Vienna: Preßverein des Wiener Bildungswerkes. 129 Albert Wischek, “Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark,” Die Pause 4, no. 4/5 (1939): 3. 130. Die Pause 4, no. 4/5: 154. 131. Wischek, “Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark,” 5. 132. These include the painter Oswald Haller and the ceramicist Hans Scheibner. Large color reproductions of Fernand Andri’s Mutter und Kind and Anton Traurig Klagenfurt’s Die auf dem Berge leben were featured. 133. Aichelburg, “Verzeichnis der Ausstellungen 1886 bis 2010,” Wladimir Aichelburg, 150. Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien, 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/ ausstellungen/verzeichnis/ 134. The Department of Art History of the Freie Universität in Berlin lists the full inventory of works confiscated from German museums. “Database ‘Entartete Kunst,’” Freie Universität Berlin, https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/db_entart_kunst/datenbank/index. html.

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135. Stephanie Barron, Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (Los Angeles: County Museum/Harry Abrams, 1991); Olaf Peterson et al., Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2014). The exhibition has been widely and extensively covered and has come, for many, to epitomize the Nazi attitude toward modern art. 136. Frederick Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics (New York: Overlook Press, 2002), 151–168. 137. Petropolous, Artists under Hitler; Potter, Art of Suppression; Bernard Fulda, Aya Soika and Christian Ring, A German Legend: Emil Nolde and the Nazi Regime, exhibit catalogue. Berlin: Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart, April 12 to September 15, 2019 (Prestel Verlag, 2019); Aya Soika, Meike Hofmann and Lisa Marie Schmidt, Escape into Art? The Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period, exhibit catalogue. Brücke Museum: April 14 to August 11, 2019 (Hirmer Munich, 2019). 138. Ernst Ploil, “The ‘Entartete Kunst’ Exhibits in Austria,” in Peterson, Degenerate Art, 128–135. 139. Aleida Assmann, “Transformation between History and Memory,” Social Research 75, no. 1 (2008): 49. 140. I argue here that the exhibition was an example of “functional memory” (Assmann) or “institutional memory.” See discussion and footnotes in Chapter 2, footnote 98. 141. For the Jew’s essential foreignness in the Alpine culture of Austria, see “Lost Mountains and the Violence of Alpine Anti Semitism,” in Tait Keller, Apostles of the Alps: Mountaineering and Nation Building in Germany and Austria, 1860–1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016) and Albert Lichtblau, “Ambivalenz der Faszination: Sommerfrische & Berge,” in Hast Du meine Alpen Gesehen?: Eine jüdische Beziehungsgeschichte, eds. Hanno Loewy and Gerhard Milchram (Vienna: Bucher Verlag, 2009), 116–131. 142 Hitler quoted in Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 297. 143. Hamann documents that this view of Vienna dates from Hitler’s youth till his death. Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, esp. chapter three “The Imperial City.” 144. “Glaubens-Juden 192,000,” Die Deutsche Ostmark, 2. 145. Die Deutsche Ostmark, 2. 146. Robert Körber and Theodor Pugel, Antisemitismus der Welt in Wort und Bild (Dresden: Groh, 1937). 147. Körber, Rassesieg, dedication. 148. Körber, Rassesieg, 59. 149. Körber, Rassesieg, 241. 150. For an English translation of the document establishing the ofce, see “Establishment of the Central Ofce of Jewish Emigration in Vienna” Jewish Virtual Library https://www. jewishvirtuallibrary.org/establishment-of-the-central-ofce-for-jewish-emigration-in-viennaaugust-1938; Doron Rabinovici, Eichmann’s Jews: The Jewish Administration of Holocaust Vienna 1938–1945 (Cambridge: Polity: 2011); Schnedier, Exile and Destruction. 151. Quoted and translated in Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 141. 152. Quoted in Bukey, “The Farming Populace: Anger and Anguish,” Hitler’s Austria, 135.

5

Cultural Politics, Separatism and Baldur von Schirach Summer 1939 to Spring 1942

Throughout the summer and remaining months of 1939, the erasure of both Austria and Jewish life in Vienna continued apace. In May, as the Mountains and People of Ostmark exhibit educated Berliners on their new “family members,” the Ostmark laws went into efect, ofcially deleting the existence of Austria. In the same month, the remaining Jews in Vienna were herded into ghettos formed in the second, ninth and twentieth districts, allowing them to largely disappear from view. In October 1939, the first deportation of Viennese Jews to Poland began. A group of 1,800 men were rounded up and sent close to the Soviet border, where many were beaten and shot, the others taken to Siberian labor camps.1 The literal erasure of Jews in the Ostmark was, however, predicated on their nearubiquitous presence in the symbolic field. They were ever present in speeches, propaganda posters, articles and all realms of culture.2 Textbook curricula and newspapers kept all alert to their dangers, from youth to old age. As forced emigration, impoverishment and violence diminished their numbers, the specter of the Jew loomed ever larger in the collective and cultural memory of the Viennese public. Separatism and War While the idea of a separate “Austria” had been politically obliterated, it did not disappear from the minds of the Viennese. (One might argue here that individual memory challenged the new ofcial or institutional memory that had been invented to replace it.)3 A form of “separatism” began to emerge, most notably in the cultural realm, which would continue to irk ofcials in Berlin until the very end of the war. Its presence was regarded as so powerful that by January 1942, even the term Ostmark, referring to a distinct, unified entity, was stricken and outlawed.4 Public reference could now only be to specific Gaue. Consequently, the thematizing of “Ostmark” subjects—for example, in the frescos commissioned from Eisenmenger for the Vienna Rathaus (Figure 2.5)—disappeared from works of art as well.5 At the political level, several diferent groups formed with the aim of resistance. The most important group consisted of Communists, who made by far the largest contribution to the Resistance movement. Three separate groups emerged from the Catholic Right and liberal Catholicism, all of them calling themselves Österreichische Freiheitsbewegung (Austrian Liberation Movement).6 Countless acts of individual resistance led to work stoppages, strikes and small acts of sabotage. Although open dissent was nearly impossible, there were plenty of disgruntled and angry Viennese.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003353782-5

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The Anschluss had brought a reduction in unemployment and an increase in marriage rates, but inflation, high food prices and food shortages had led to anxiety and demonstrations.7 A level of anti-German sentiment arose in the summer of 1939, directed at the “Piefkes,” “Preussen” and “deutsches Gesindel.”8 Viennese residents became aware that they were paying higher prices than their Altreich “brethren” for food, heating and goods.9 Historians of the period chart growing anti-German outbursts in the public sphere, at sporting events and most frequently at cultural venues. In taverns and cabarets, crowds were wont to hurl insults, even directly against the Nazi party. During Theater Week in June of 1939, anti-German outbursts occurred in playhouses, cinemas and operas.10 So, too, in mid-October, designated Gau Culture Week, the Philharmonic’s performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was ascribed with decidedly separatist intent.11 By November, the Berlin Gestapo were describing Vienna as a “showplace of unrest.”12 In May 1940, Bürckel received an anonymous letter complaining that “Vienna belongs to the Viennese, get rid of those Piefkes in all the ofces.”13 Despite the difculty in winning over the rural populations, however, it was the city of Vienna that was seen as the “holdout” and the true threat to assimilation. With the invasion of Poland and the outbreak of war in September of 1939, further hardships were imposed on residents of the city: strict rations, tax increases, shortages of food and gasoline, blackouts etc. In response, the cultural leaders in Vienna stepped up their oferings even further, planning a continual array of festivals, cultural events and performances. The Völkischer Beobachter claimed “record audiences for cinemas, theaters, concerts.”14 As they would do even more starkly under the future Reichsstatthalter Baldur von Schirach, many of the events straddled a delicate line between celebrating a distinct Viennese sensibility and history and attempting to toe the party line. As Oliver Rathkolb noted, “Many functionaries believed it possible to maintain a specific ‘Ostmark’ artistic profile.”15 Yet any attempt to flaunt particular Viennese elements raised eyebrows back in Berlin. They would soon come to see that this allegiance to a specific artistic character came at a price. In August 1939, the Kunstgewerbe museum exhibited works both Altdeutsch and Donaulandische, with special sales of contemporary artists competing in the show.16 To accord with Vienna’s recognition as “Fashion City of the Reich”—a House of Fashion had been part of the Mountains and People exhibit at Charlottenburg—a day of fashion was held in September.17 A Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wiener Mode und Geschmack Industrie was formed to compensate for the destruction of the (largely Jewish) prewar industry.18 These attempts to establish a distinct Ostmark cultural identity continued through the new year. But it was Linz, not Vienna, that was foremost on Hitler’s mind in the artistic arena. On June 21 Hitler established the Sonderauftrag Linz (Special Commission Linz), whose most important accomplishment was to be the establishment of the Führermuseum, planned to occupy the heart of a dazzling cultural complex in the city. Hans Posse, former director of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Gallery) in Dresden was placed in charge of the commission. He would travel several times to Vienna that summer to inspect the confiscated works—among them the Old Master paintings stolen from the Rothschild collection—stored in the Neue Berg and help himself to the choicest picks. He would continue embellishing the future collection with works looted in conquered Reich territory until his death in 1942. It was Hitler’s intention that the Führermuseum would outshine anything in Vienna, replacing it as the cultural center not only of the Ostmark but also of the entire Third Reich.19

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In the spring of 1940, a shake-up in the cultural life of the Ostmark occurred. On March 3, Bürckel—who had already become Reichsstatthalter of Vienna at the beginning of 1939, following Seyss-Inquart—was put in charge of all cultural institutions under Gau control, and in April, Neubacher ended his post.20 One of the institutions that now fell under Bürckel’s charge was the Künstlerhaus, which had merged with the Secession on December 18, 1939, calling itself the Gesellschaft bildender Künstler Wiens.21 The newly joined institution virtually functioned as an organ of the Nazi party. Architects set to work on renovating and expanding the premises with an allotted budget of RM 30,000, planning major changes to the sculpture hall and originally intending to add a cafe and restaurant. With the Künstlerhaus building set for important renovations and repairs, all exhibitions of the newly joined Gesellschaft would be held from November 1941 on at the former Secession building. Taking over the well-known Modernist art temple designed by Joseph Olbrich certainly symbolized a virtual takeover of the forces of artistic modernity in Vienna.22 This, no doubt, delighted Baldur von Schirach, who saw himself as the arbiter of culture in the Reich and someone who was willing to embrace a particular Viennese Modernism. Von Schirach

If Hitler saw himself as the political savior of the Third Reich, Baldur von Schirach saw himself as the cultural savior of Vienna. He was one of many men in the Nazi hierarchy, among them Adolph Hitler, who could discuss murder over dinner and then change into tie and tails for a night at the opera. Von Schirach was acutely sensitive to aesthetics, brought to tears by a symphony or aria but deaf to the cries of real people around him. It was his high level of cultural sophistication that led Hitler to assign von Schirach to the most powerful position in Vienna, where he served both as Gauleiter (party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (governor).23 Under von Schirach, many propaganda exhibits were held at the Künstlerhaus, some under his direct sponsorship. In examining his role in the cultural activities of Nazi Vienna, we must keep in mind two major points. First, von Schirach took a certain pride, even glee, in rankling Berlin and, above all, Goebbels, by elevating the cultural standing of Vienna. Even when it was not politically expedient, von Schirach did all he could to have Vienna perceived as the most important cultural locus in the Reich. Secondly, von Schirach was skilled in using art and culture to justify and whitewash the regime and to erase the people and history the Nazis were set on obliterating. At the Nuremberg trials and in his autobiography published in 1967, von Schirach portrayed himself as under the sway of Hitler’s fiery hypnotism. He was born in Berlin in 1908 to an American mother with family ties going back to the Civil War. His father, from a distinguished German family, served as director of the Court Theater in Weimar.24 The young von Schirach was steeped in theater and German poetry, including Modernist figures such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Stefan Georg. In 1925, as an 18-year-old who had already read Mein Kampf, von Schirach heard Hitler speak and then re-encountered him at a performance of the Walkürie. At Hitler’s suggestion, von Schirach began study at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, taking classes with, among others, the art historian Wilhelm Pinder, whose nationalism and antisemitism endeared him to the Nazi party.25 Spotting von Schirach’s talent for pageantry and promotion, Hitler quickly elevated him from leader of the National Socialist Student League to Reich Leader for

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Youth Education and Reichsjugendführer of the German Reich in 1933. He became the driving force and undisputed leader of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), where he controlled all aspects of education and indoctrination and exercised his love of parades and ceremonies. In August of 1940, Hitler removed von Schirach from his post to serve as Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Vienna, informing him, “In Vienna, one needs to possess a keen sense for cultural-political problems and that was the reason I chose you.”26 Satisfying Hitler’s demand to “solve the Jewish problem” in the city, von Schirach was given plenty of leeway to pursue his cultural exploits. Indeed, he set about rejuvenating the theater, cinema, opera, symphonies and museums, attempting, in his words, “to restore the old traditions.”27 His budget for improvements and acquisitions to the Kunsthistorische Museum alone exceeded RM 2 million.28 Like Hitler, von Schirach cared deeply about art and took enormous pride in what he saw as his cultural supremacy, seeing himself as a soldier on the “artistic front.”29 If other Gauleiter had used art to bolster politics, Schirach played politics to further his artistic aims. While Hitler at first gave free reign to von Schirach, regarding him as one of his few cultural equals, Goebbels proved a fierce enemy.30 The propaganda minister was incensed by von Schirach’s attempts to one-up Berlin and supersede all other cities in the Reich in the cultural sphere. In addition to his jealousy, Goebbels took these moves as a personal afront to Hitler, whose profound distrust of Vienna had continued since his days as a thwarted art student in the city. Goebbels made it clear that he would not allow von Schirach’s ambitious plans to succeed: “Vienna is just another city with a million people, like Hamburg. Schirach is on the wrong path. The Führer hates Vienna’s atmosphere, he spent so many unpleasant years in the city that his aversion to Vienna is easy to understand.”31 Indeed, Hitler intended to punish the city, leaving it of the list of places on which he would lavish extensive rebuilding programs.32 Von Schirach would clash with Hans Posse and other administrators as well, who wanted to see Vienna’s artistic riches spread throughout the Ostmark and Altreich.33 Baldur von Schirach was canny and, at times, went along with the party line of Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer, downplaying Vienna’s distinction in the Ostmark and the Ostmark’s distinction from the Altreich.34 In a 1940 issue of the popular cultural journal Die Pause, his photo appeared with the following quote: “Vienna and the young folk on the Danube are joined together through their shared history, through their economic unity, and through the political events of our day.”35 He did not hesitate to join the party in condemning works he believed were degenerate in spirit: “Our painting was degenerate, it had become sick, rotten and mendacious. The confrontation with Negro culture was rightly denounced. Nothing was as necessary as this sharp cut with which our Führer sorted the sick from the healthy.”36 But in the climate of separatism, many of the events arranged by von Schirach were seen in a suspicious light, and he often did little to counteract such fears. His celebration of beloved Viennese figures was often perceived as a salvo against Berlin. He seemed to have taken even further the statement by Hugo Jury, Gauleiter of Lower Austria: “Kein verberlinertes Wien und kein verwienertes Berlin!” (“No Berlinifed Vienna and no Viennified Berlin!”).37 It did not help matters when von Schirach appointed Walter Thomas as the Generalkulturreferat, or cultural czar, of Vienna. Thomas had joined the Nazi party in the late 1930s but had worked as a theater critic and director, playwright and editor of a revue, with a bohemian streak in his taste and strong friendships with many artists, musicians and playwrights.38

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Two events in 1940 put Berlin on high alert against separatism and set the context in which von Schirach’s celebration of Viennese culture would be interpreted. On September 29, 1940, the Neue Wiener Tagblatt published an inflammatory essay entitled “Wien—Refugium der deutschen Seele” (“Vienna—Refuge of the German Soul” written by culture critic, propaganda ofce head and Nazi party member Aurel Wolfram. In this essay, Wolfram argued for the poetic and theatrical superiority of Vienna, “the capital of the inner Reich,” in contrast to the cold, bureaucratic nature of Berlin.39 His pitting of Vienna against Berlin, with the former city portrayed as superior on all cultural fronts, was so transparent that Goebbels immediately fired him. Two months later, on November 28, an incident at a soccer game held in the Prater made clear how the crowd felt about their German “brethren.” During a match between the German champion Schalke and the Viennese team Admira, a crowd of 52,000 jeered and hooted any advantage to the Germans, going so far as to yell anti-German slogans.40 The end of the game did not put a halt to the hostilities as a fired-up crowd smashed the windows and slashed the tires of von Schirach’s limousine. The Gestapo immediately set out to find the ringleaders. Thus, von Schirach’s attempts to hoist Vienna into the cultural limelight were always regarded with wariness. His desire to promote Vienna as the fashion capital of the Reich— a move that made sense to him since the city was associated with elegance and female beauty—was shut down by Berlin. Every theater production, opera and exhibit devoted to Austrian luminaries struck cultural arbiters in the Altreich as intentionally provocative. The program set up for Grillparzer Week at the beginning of 1941 had too many seeming references to the (despised) Habsburg period.41 Berlin stepped in to shut down a production of Johannes Balk for its “incendiary” reference to a subverted people.42 Goebbels was particularly aggrieved by von Schirach’s insistence that Vienna was the “first musical city of the Reich” and his deep pride in the Vienna Philharmonic.43 Such moves did little to stop von Schirach, who had ever-larger and more extensive cultural plans for “his” city. On April 8, 1941, he laid out costly and ambitious plans for a whole host of cultural events in Vienna: revisions to the Volkstheater; Mozart Week; architectural projects; new centers for learning, arts, dance and acting; and the renewal of museum collections. July brought a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of architect Otto Wagner.44 It was hoped that the Mozart Week festivities planned in late 1941 would be an opportunity to see the musician as a great Volkskünstler (artist of the people) rather than a specifically Viennese prize.45 “With this,” the Völkischer Beobachter noted, “an intellectual synthesis between the Reich and Vienna should be put on display.”46 The event was enormous, with over 60 concerts, radio productions, theater productions and an exhibition. When Goebbels attended the Vienna Philharmonic concert, however, he grew outraged since the program included Furtwängler’s conducting of Mozart’s Requiem, which he had specifically forbidden. He blasted both von Schirach and Thomas for “letting Catholic Vienna conduct religious propaganda under cover of a Mozart festival.”47 Calling Thomas to his hotel room, he made clear how he viewed any such acts: You’re the guilty one, you alone. You support Vienna separatism. Your policies are hostile to the Reich. You’ve been seduced by the liberalistic reactionaries in Vienna. This Mozart Week is a scandal that has nothing to do with us. It had only one aim—to give Vienna a monopoly on the arts. But you won’t succeed. Berlin is and will remain the capital. I have it in my power to make Vienna a cultural village.48

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Such tongue lashings did not result in von Schirach changing his aims. Not only did he continue to mount cultural events dedicated to Viennese artists, but he also often stepped over the line in premiering “jazz-like” music or exhibiting artists considered degenerate. (His sponsorship of such visual artists and of the 1943 retrospective of Gustav Klimt will be examined in a future chapter.) Von Schirach had a keen sense, as well, of what the disenchanted Viennese wanted from culture at that moment. It was not bombastic symphonies and frozen, Naziapproved statues but typical lighthearted Viennese fare. At the cinema, Wien-Film fed the audience a steady diet of comedies and musicals. While the films certainly carried political and social messages, they did so wrapped in historical dramas and high theatrics.49 Ostmark’s music was characterized as gemütvoll-sinnes freudige (sentimental and sensuous), light in mood and tone.50 So, too, did theater productions focus on carefree Viennese pieces; from 1940 to 1944, the city put on productions of Wienerinnen, Brillanten aus Wien, Die Kluge Wienerin, Die Gigerl von Wien and similar shows.51 As much as legendary Viennese artists, von Schirach understood that a charming, breezy exhibition of beautiful Viennese women would both please the public and subversively deliver a snub to Berlin. Despite the high attendance at theater, opera and museums during von Schirach’s tenure, he could not hide the fact that Viennese culture and art had been pierced in its heart and gutted. The contributions of Jewish playwrights, writers, musicians and artists were stricken from the record, unplayed, unmentioned, unseen. Contemporary Jewish Viennese artists, if lucky, were in exile. The others faced a far worse fate under von Schirach. At the time that von Schirach arrived in Vienna, there were approximately 50,000 to 60,000 Jews still left in the city; 65,000 apartments and 33,000 businesses had been Aryanized.52 Although he did not trouble himself with the practicalities of persecution, he was proud to provide what was needed to those who did.53 The first large-scale deportations of Jews began in February 1941; by the end of March, 5,000 had been sent to the East. Beginning in September, all Jews had to wear the yellow star (purchased from the IKG for eight pfennings a piece) displayed prominently on the left side of their chests. By then Eichmann had been succeeded as director of the Central Ofce for Jewish Emigration by the vicious SS ofcer Alois Brunner, a man who wore white gloves when beating Jews to avoid becoming soiled by them.54 In the fall, 20,000 Jews were deported to Lodz; under Aktion Reinhard, 17,500 of them were murdered. After November 10, all emigration was prohibited. Of the 170,000 Jews in Vienna on the eve of the Anschluss, only 8,000 remained in December of 1942. The anguish and sufering of a single individual seems not to have troubled von Schirach, who noted with pride in April of 1942: “We have deported them by the train load and in doing so have eased both provisioning in this city and the housing situation.”55 In his address to the European Youth Union in September of 1942, the Reichsstatthalter made clear that the destruction of Jewry and the progress of culture marched in lockstep: Every Jew who operates in Europe is a danger for European culture! If anyone wants to reproach me for having sent from this city—which was once the capital of Jewry— tens of thousands of Jews to Ghettos, I have to respond that I consider this an active contribution to European culture.56

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27.

Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 156. Confino, A World without Jews. On the varied use of these terms, see Olick. For more on this, see Chapter 7. Tabor, “Die Gaben der Ostmark,” 279–280. Groups with this name included those around Priest Karl Roman Scholzl and a liberal Catholic group led by Karl Lederer, as well as one led by lawyer Jacob Kastelic. See Wolfgang Neugebauer, Austrian Resistance 1938–1945, trans. John Nicholson and Eric Kanepa (Vienna: Edition Steinbauer, 2014). On these groups, see especially Section IX; see also Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 145–147; Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 295–315. Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 149–152; Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 132; 245–247. Bukey, “The Farming Populace: Anger and Anguish,” 75; Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 324. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 164. Bukey, “The Farming Populace: Anger and Anguish,” 69. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 145. For more on the Ninth Symphony, see Chapter 8 below, pp. 162–3. Reported in Bernbaum 199, see note 65, Letter to Gestapo Ofce, Vienna from Gestapo Ofce Berlin, November 21, 1939. Noted in Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 324. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl. Art und Diktatur, 332. Rebhann, Die braunen Jahre, 71. Rebhann, Die braunen Jahre, 22; Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 245. For more on the establishment of Vienna as the center of the fashion industry, see Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, chapter seven, “Die Wiener Institutionen der Mode und des Kunsthandwerks,” 181–244 and my Chapter 6. On the Führermuseum, see Schwarz, Hitlers Sonderauftrag Linz, and her many other publications on the subject. On Bürckel, see Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 160. Neubacher ended his post on April 26. See Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 183–185. Mayer, “Freiwillige Verschmelzung,” 293; Wladimir Aichelburg, “Umbauten 1938–1945,” Das Wiener Künstlerhaus, 437–441; Kurdiovsky, “Das Künstlerhaus von der Gründung bis 1945,” in Bogner, Das Wiener Künstlerhaus, 36. The entire story of the move to the Secession building is told in Aichelburg, “Ausstellungen,” Wladimir Aichelburg, 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/ausstellungen/. Baldur von Schirach, Ich Glaubte an Hitler (Hamburg: Mosaik, 1967); Chapter seven, “Mein Gau, mein Wein: Als Gauleiter und Reichsstatthalter in Wien 1940–1945” and chapter ten, “Verwienert: vom jungen ‘Kronzprinzen’ zum Ablösekanditaten,” in Oliver Rathkolb Schirach: Eine Generation zwischen Goethe und Hitler, (Vienna/Graz: Molden Verlag, 2020). Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 245. For a good English introduction to von Schirach, see Eugene Davidson, The Trial of the Germans: An Account of the 22 Defendants Before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (Columbia/London: University of Missouri Press, 1997). For bibliographical information on von Schirach, see Rathkolb, Schirach; Davidson, The Trial of the Germans; Jonathan Petropoulos, The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 220–225; “Vienna’s Second Chance: Baldur von Schirach, Aug 10, 1940–March 3, 1940,” in Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 171–225. Von Schirach, Ich Glaubte an Hitler, 40. Von Schirach, Ich Glaubte an Hitler, 264. Quoted and translated in Luzá, 297. “[D]ie alte Tradition wiederherzustellen.” On von Schirach’s cultural program, see Rathkolb, “Die Wiener Note in der deutschen Kunst: Nationalsozialistische Kulturpolitik in Wien 1938– 1945,” in Art und Diktatur; Rathkolb, “Nazi Ästhetik und die Ostmark,” in Die österreichische nationalsozialistische Ästhetik; Rebhann, Die braunen Jahre, 110 f; Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl; von Schirach, Ich Glaubte an Hitler, 286; See also Schwarz, “Baldur von Schirachs Museumspolitik,” in Hitlers Sonderauftrag Linz, 121–125.

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28. Schwarz, Hitlers Sonderauftrag Linz, 123. 29. Rathkolb, “Der Kulturpolitische Kontext: 1930–1960: Brüche, Kontinuitäten und Transformation,” in Bogner, Das Wiener Künstlerhaus, 140. Von Schirach discussed bringing numerous musicians and artists to Vienna to renew her cultural pre-eminence. Von Schirach, Ich Glaubte an Hitler, 286. Also see Rathkolb, “Nazi-Ästhetik und die ‘Ostmark,’” in Die österreichische nationalsozialistische Ästhetik, 21–22. 30. According to von Schirach, 288, Goebbels saw him as “Kulturfeind Nr. 1.” 31. Goebbel’s diary entry May 30, 1942, quoted and translated in Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 217. 32. On this see Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 311–385. 33. See pp. 33–34 in Chapter 3, “Ushering.” Schwarz, Hitlers Sonderauftrag Linz, 123. 34. Rathkolb makes clear that von Schirach, for all his upholding of Viennese culture, was not attempting to stir up separatism. Rathkolb, Schirach, 195. 35. Die Pause 5 (1940): 9. 36. Von Schirach, quoted in Die österreichische Ästhetik, 22. Trümpi, The Political Orchestra, 12, notes that it was never a matter of challenging Nazi rule, but rather of defending the jurisdiction of each city. 37. Quoted in Rathkolb, “Kulturbetriebskultur 1938,” in Wien 1938, 363. 38. On Thomas see Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl; Rebhann, Die braunen Jahre, 117 f. Also see Thomas’ autobiography, Bis der Vorhang fiel. Berichtet nach Aufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1940 bis 1945 (Dortmund: Schwalvenberg, 1947). 39. The incident is discussed in Rathkolb, Schirach, 192; Rebhann, Die braunen Jahre, 60; Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 182. Wolfram had been an “illegal Nazi” during the 1930s. On Wolfram see Trümpi, The Political Orchestra, 123–126. 40. See Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 183–184. 41. Rebhann, Die braunen Jahre, 134. The week began January 5, 1941. 42. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 197–199; von Schirach, Ich Glaubte an Hitler, 286; Trümpi, The Political Orchestra, 126. 43. Trümpi, The Political Orchestra, 129. 44. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 198. 45. The term is Goebbel’s. Quoted in Gernot Gruber, “Wiener Musiktradition und ‘Entartetes’ in der Ostmark,” in Die Österreichisches nationalsozialistische Ästhetik, 214. 46. Quoted in Gruber, “Wiener Musiktradition und ‘Entartetes,’” 213–216. 47. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 202. 48. Quoted and translated in Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 202. 49. Gertrude Steiner-Daviau, “Zur Ästhetik der Wien-Film,” in Die Österreichische nationalsozialistische Ästhetik. 50. Gerhard Scheit, “Musik-Standort Wien im Dritten Reich: Regionale Beiträge zur Ästhetik der Vernichtung,” in Die Österreichische nationalsozialistische Ästhetik, 236. 51. Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner, “Theater in ‘Reichkanzleist’: NS-Ästhetik auf ostmärkischen Bühnen und ihr Nachhall in der Zweiten Republik,” in Die nationalsozialistische Österreichische Ästhetik, 183. 52. Michael John, “Migration in Austria: An Overview of the 1920s to 2000,” in Understanding Multiculturalism, 131. 53. At the Nuremberg trials, von Schirach was sentenced to 20 years in Spandau prison for his role in the deportation of Vienna’s Jews and his role as head of the Hitler Youth. On his role in the destruction of Viennese Jewry, see chapter eight, “Sonderaktion: Deportation und Ermorderung der jüdischen Bevölkerung Wiens” in Rathkolb, Schirach. 54. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 208. 55. Quoted and translated in Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 209. On the fate of the Jews, see Schneider, Exile and Destruction; Gruber, “Wiener Musiktradition und ‘Entartetes.’” 56. Quoted in Gruber, “Wiener Musiktradition und ‘Entartetes,’” 222.

6

Erasing the Jewess The Beautiful Viennese Female Portrait, June 13 to July 12, 1942

In remembering one faces the world, in forgetting one faces oneself. Andrea Langenohl, “Memory in Post-Authoritarian Societies”1 How does one remember an absence? James Young, “Memory and Counter-Memory: The End of the Monument in Germany”2

The art of portraiture, in contrast to Romantic landscapes or glorified allegories, did not lend itself easily to the National Socialist worldview.3 Portraiture rests on the specificity of the individual, a concept somewhat at odds with Fascism. It holds up the singular, historically bound person rather than the universal or the type. Yet portrait exhibitions held in the Third Reich can nevertheless be gleaned for their ideological content. As film scholars have noted of the Tendenzfilme produced during the Nazi period—often melodramas or even comedies—less transparent forms of propaganda can be even more efective because of the subtle manner in which they convey ideology.4 Moreover, in Nazi society, the lines between public and private were utterly blurred; any private image could, and often did, become politicized. Gender and beauty ideals were directly and specifically promoted by the State and attempts were made to regulate them on many levels. Portraits were subject therefore to political and public scrutiny in their production, display and interpretation. They reflected not only a broader set of cultural values but, at times, might directly mirror state policy. As late as 2010, Heildrun Zettelbauer noted a lacuna in the scholarship on gender relations within Austrian National Socialism, making exploration of issues such as female portraiture even more pressing.5 As Irene Guenther notes in her important study, Nazi Chic: Fashioning Women in the Third Reich: Dismissing what seems to be superficial (in this case, fashion) or assuming a onedimensional female image (for example, cosmetics-free face and dirndl [sic] dress) when, in fact, there were numerous female images, has caused us to overlook an integral component of life under the National Socialist regime. Especially given the modern age of consumerism, media-driven politics, illusory substance, and mass culture in which Nazism thrived, much can be learned by exploring the important position accorded female fashioning in the Third Reich.6 A study of contemporary, privately commissioned female portraits therefore ofers us an excellent opportunity to examine lesser-known constructions of femininity and female DOI: 10.4324/9781003353782-6

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identity within the Nazi regime, many of which contest the accepted or ubiquitous Dirndlclad Mädchen or Aryan mothers. As paintings commissioned by the sitters, these images perhaps come closer to what real women in Vienna looked like, or hoped to look like, than allegories or propaganda posters. Moreover, they reveal the tensions and contradictions not only between the idealized presentation of women’s roles and lives and their own self-images but also between the mounting of an escapist, lighthearted show of lovely Wienerinnen and the complete disappearance of the Jewess from the public space of Vienna. *** On June 13, 1942, the Künstlerhaus opened its exhibition of Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild (Beautiful Viennese Female Portraits).7 This theme had a long history in the city and at once connected artistic production in wartime Vienna to its glorified cultural tradition. The show was the brainchild of Baldur von Schirach, who saw in it a chance to continue his promotion of the particular artistic superiority of Vienna. It was yet another salvo in von Schirach’s battle against the cultural directors of the Altreich, above all Goebbels. The fashionable female portrait was deeply interwoven with the best and most well-known of Vienna’s achievements in the visual arts and with von Schirach’s attempt to compete in the realm of the fashion industry. It fostered the notion of Vienna as a sophisticated city of charm, one even rivaling Paris. Given the common Nazi definition of female beauty, the title of the show may have led visitors to expect a great number of braided farm girls or fresh-faced blondes, but such was not the case. In part this was surely an attempt to distinguish something quintessentially Viennese in taste. For the audience—especially the women to whom it was pitched—the show ofered escape from the ubiquitous image of the hearty mother or the practical Hausfrau at a time when the war was demanding more and more sacrifices. An exhibit of beautifully dressed, even theatrically costumed sitters ofered a vision of normalcy, a rebuke to the endless paens to thriftiness. The majority of images portrayed

Figure 6.1 Cover of catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger. June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt. Source: The author.

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relaxed and stylish women at leisure, belying the life of conscripted labor in which so many found themselves. Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild must be understood in a specific Viennese context. It consciously evoked artistic predecessors from both the recent and the more distant past. The discourse surrounding the show relied on both personal, living memory of previous images and ideals (the Neue Frau of the First Republic) and the cultural construction of the beautiful Wienerin of the Biedermeier period. The paintings therefore provided both a sharp point of (positive) contrast, a corrective and, to a surprising extent, also points of great continuity with the female imagery produced during the Austrofascist period (just as the works in the Berge und Menschen der Ostmark exhibit were at times indistinguishable from those produced in the decade before.) Visitors to the exhibit may well have recalled the 1928 Das schönste Österreichische Frauenporträt show as they experienced this one as many of the same artists contributed works to both shows.8 Like the construction of the Volksgemeinschaft, the appeal of the exhibit rested as much on who and what were carefully excluded from the show as it did on the images presented. This concept operated in several ways. While a few female artists contributed selections to the exhibit, the show helped position Woman as the quintessential subject of art, the timeless model rather than the creator. For the most part, the female artist—who had flourished during the interwar period in Vienna9—was largely invisible: Frauenkunst was replaced by Frauenbild. Missing, too, from the images on display was any reference to the Neue Frau who had so dominated both the portraiture of the Neue Sachlichkeit and the popular press.10 But the most glaring invisibility in the show was that of the Jewess. The image of the beautiful Jewish Wienerin was so interwoven with the fame of Viennese portraiture that her absence was palpable. In writing on absence in relation to the Holocaust, Julie Kalman and Daniella Doren note the powerful interplay between memory, presence and absence: Using absence as a tool for analysis allows us to broaden our enquiry beyond the concept of remembering. It ofers the vocabulary to ask particular questions of the past and its relationship to the present: what are the ways in which absences are recalled? What might strategic or significant absences, or presences, tell us?11 How did the Wiener Frauenbild show function to erase Jewish women, who had literally disappeared from the city? Is it possible, through their absence, to find lingering traces of reference to them? By 1942 Vienna was largely judenfrei in reality, but perhaps her image could not so easily be banished. Despite all attempts to present a lighthearted and escapist show, it took place in a city that had deported and murdered nearly all of its Jews, and this fact lay repressed just beneath its surface. On some level, the schöne Wienerin could only gain visibility and worth in relation to her distance from the (absent) Jewess. In other cases, some of the archetypes recalled in the portraits evoked the Jewess even as her very existence and her history were efaced. “Paradoxically,” historian Omer Bartov has written, “just as the Reich was declared progressively judenrein the specter of Jewish presence seemed to haunt people’s imagination even more.”12 Inception and Design of the Exhibit In September of 1941, members of the Künstlerhaus were invited to contribute works for an exhibition that would not only play to Vienna’s artistic history but would also

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Figure 6.2 Photo from opening of Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild. Visitors viewing sculpture by Edmund Moiret, Höhere Verlangen (Lofty Desires). Source: Künstlerhaus Archive, Vienna, Künstlerhaus, Friedrichstraße (former Secession).

be supervised closely by the Reichsstatthalter von Schirach: “As is already well evident from previous discussions, the Reichsleiter takes a special interest in cultivating the art of beautiful female portraiture.”13 The exhibition was to be conceived of as one that honored Vienna’s “indigenous female beauty,” along with von Schirach’s “serious aesthetic beliefs.”14 Vienna’s future artistic fortunes would be profoundly impacted by the quality of the exhibit.15 Their work on this show was not only an “obligation” to von Schirach but also so important to him that special cash prizes were to be awarded for the most beautiful entries: four entries would win RM 5,000 and another ten works would garner RM 1,000 each. The expected success of the theme was thought to lie with its appeal to women. It was a strong contrast to several of the other Künstlerhaus exhibits planned around the time, which focused on military or state themes.16 But the timing of the show was no accident. It provided a breezy and escapist theme as the Reich plunged further into war, and the lives of once-comfortable women began to be characterized by rations and shortages in clothing and other textiles. It corresponded to a ratcheting up of promotion for an exclusively German and Viennese fashion industry after the military conquest of France. Denying the reality of women’s lives, the show would reveal Vienna as a true capital of charming women.17 Moreover, the show would have a special appeal to the public as the “most beautiful portrait” would be chosen by the votes of the viewers. Promotion of the exhibit began in February of 1942 with a special tea for women held on the premises of the Künstlerhaus, with another held in March.18 To write the catalogue essay, Potsch solicited the fiction writer and minor Baltic noble Siegried von Vegesack, believing that his “poetic soul” would allow him to capture best what they had in mind for the essay. Potsch called upon him to help revitalize the “neglected art” of female beauty, “which has been so vital to the tree of art.” Even beyond capturing the “seelischgeistige” (emotional and spiritual) essence of the woman on the canvas (an expression writers would return to many times), Potsch noted, they wished to convey the aim of the artists in grasping the inner values of the depicted subject. They hoped the portraits would transmit the Fluidum (spiritual lifeforce) of the artist and his subject, in contrast to the calculated scientific optics of photographed portraits.19 However, it was Rudolf Alexander

92 Erasing the Jewess Moissl, who was appointed Künstlerhaus press ofcer by Blauensteiner and published books on a variety of cultural topics, from exhibitions to the “ancestral homeland of the Führer,” who ultimately penned the catalogue essay.20 Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, along with two other small exhibitions, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart and Die Meisterpreisträger, served as the annual spring exhibit for the Künstlerhaus, beginning on June 13, 1942.21 Doors opened at 11 a.m. to a quintet playing Schubert Opus 163. Deputy Mayor Hanns Blaschke presided over the festivities while Eisenmenger led the ofcial greeting.22 Blaschke declared the artists in the show to be no less in the service of the Reich than her soldiers: The yearning for the proper race gives the artist the strength for his work, the soldier the strength for his sacrifice, the worker the strength for endurance, and for all of us our great happiness through art. Thus this exhibition is no mere social event, but a worthy demonstration of our noble National Socialist community, to the great thanks and encouragement of the artist, to the joy and resignation of our great community, and for all of us a commitment to victory.23 The show would remain on exhibit for one month, after which it traveled to several cities including Wroclaw, Cologne, Braunschweig and Bruno.24 Although the show was originally intended to be displayed in Berlin, this plan did not materialize, nor did the director of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst attend the opening as expected (no doubt another missive in the ongoing cultural battles between the cities).25 Yet despite wide press coverage, the exhibit was hardly a blockbuster; by the end of its run, only 42,490 had attended the show at the Wien Künstlerhaus.26 The short essay that Moissl published to accompany the show did not discuss specific works or artists, leaving that to the myriad popular press articles. Instead, it discussed the exhibition theme as a kind of noble endeavor, underscoring the essence of Viennese beauty and connecting it to racial heritage while laying the previous decline of portraiture on the materialistic nature and greed of the Jews. The essay opened by noting the universal and ancient roots of portraiture. But soon Moissl turned to the downfall of the genre, which was not caused by a lack of funds but rather by an abundance of wealth: But the decay of portraiture did not coincide, however, with an economic crises of our people, but rather was only apparent during the Gründerzeit when all kinds of economic activities were sought, so that paradoxically we might say that it was precisely Money, to which the portrait fell, like a sacrificial victim, to Moloch.27 The reference to Moloch, the Old Testament God of child sacrifice, was an obvious reference to Jewish patronage. The reference continues, in sometimes veiled form, throughout the essay. While some loyal artists continued to devote themselves to faithful portraits, “the portrait inevitably became the Bourgeois art of high luxury par excellence.”28 While artists like Waldmüller and Amerling remained faithful, “many other artists traveled to strange lands, in order to dance around the golden calf.”29 Portraits had become a tool of vanity, a means of buying immortality and personal reward rather than a celebration of universal humanity. If this problem was widespread, the essay conveyed, it was not the fault of the good Viennese artist but of the Jew who had corrupted them: “The art of those days also sufered from the fact that it was not merely a problem of painting but, above all, of the Jew as a customer

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and dictator of taste, which forced the creator into this alien direction.” With the revival of the German volk, portraiture had at last come back to its elevated aims. The Viennese artist had taken up the important task of celebrating those “who are rooted in the blood of the national volk, people who not only sprout from it like flowers and grass, but experience the joy of such knowledge in their last and most attuned nerve.”31 It was not the sitter but the artist, the designer—for Moissl a clear homage to the Führer—who gave shape to the body in accord with the Will. The essay ended by proclaiming that “Woman, who stands at the beginning of all Art and prepares its cradle, should thus initiate the revival of portraiture.”32 Through the use of the term cradle, Woman is reinscribed as Mother and the producer of beauty, whether artistic or racial. A pamphlet essay prepared by A. Hembo, writer on “female aesthetics and anthropology,” exalted the mystical and eternal beauty of the Wienerin.33 Her loveliness was celebrated as (Vitalitätquell) (life source), an “ewiger Vererbung befindlichen Urmaterie” (inheritance of primal matter). A show of individual portraits was turned into an occasion to celebrate the blood and race women passed on to the children, the real definition of her “beauty”: “Formed over centuries, the blood of Austria has taken on tangible form through today’s Wienerin.”34 Based on the discourse in the essays and broader National Socialist views on the “ideal” woman, one would imagine the show to have been filled with images of redcheeked farm girls and angelic mothers.35 But no such imagery was in evidence, nor did the show have the inner coherence we might assume of a propaganda exhibit. In media, style and type of portrait, the show was, in fact, quite diverse. While the majority of works were oil on canvas, entries also included drawings, watercolors and sculptures in stone and plaster. As we shall see, the style was far more varied than the predominant Academism on display at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst. Oddly, not all the works in the show were female portraits; hanging on the walls were depictions of S.A. Gruppenführer Hermann Neubacher by Rudolf Böttger, as well as an image of a certain Professor Ferdinand Porsche.36 Böttger specialized in portraying members of the Nazi party, becoming a member of the NDSAP prior to the Anschluss, and served in various administrative capacities under Baldur von Schirach, including referent for painting in the RkbK.37 He had also been responsible, alongside Eisenmenger, for frescos and wall paintings in large state buildings. A self-portrait of the artist Robert Fuchs could be seen in the exhibit as well.38 Some works were not portraits at all but genre scenes, generic nudes or landscapes. Although popular portraitists like Sergius Pauser and Max Frey were well represented in the exhibit, it also included many artists who were not specialists in the field of portraits but had a specific chosen work (often of their wives) included in the show. What elements characterized the majority of works chosen for display? As this chapter will explore, in general, the paintings portrayed women who looked fashionable, au courant, relaxed or seductive, with a kind of Viennese flair. A large number depicted performers and actresses, some rather well known. Perhaps surprisingly, only one work depicted its sitter as a mother, Mutter und Kind (cat. 59), a wooden sculpture by artist Margarete Hanusch, whose 1937 sculpture of a standing girl had been purchased by Hermann Göring.39 The show was clearly calculated to boost pride in a distinctly fashionable Viennese culture while linking back to important portrait predecessors. In examining the works in the show, we see a far wider range of acceptable imagery for women in Nazi Vienna than might be expected and an array of sources that they subtly recalled.

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Figure 6.3 Siegfried Stoitzner, Bildnis einer Wienerin (Portrait of a Woman), 1942, O/C, 64 × 74 cm (cat. 229). Whereabouts unknown. Source: The author.

An example of a work that seemed to nod to the “typical” Aryan beauty type while keeping an element of visual sophistication associated with Viennese art is Siegfried Stoitzner’s Bildnis einer Wienerin, 1942, in fact a portrait of his wife, Albertina. Strawberry blonde and blue eyed, Albertina wears no make-up, and her body is fully covered. Yet she is hardly a uniformed Mädchen or simple farm wife; there is an elegance to her stark black dress, her of-center pose, her inward expression and her mannered hands that recalls the female sitters of Gustav Klimt. The asymmetry and assertiveness of her pose feel distinctly modern. Yet such veering from the typical cannot in any way be read as a political commentary: Stoitzner (1892–1976) had joined the illegal Nazi party by 193440 and would be expelled for his participation in 1945 (to be readmitted only in 1950). It was often von Schirach himself, as we will see, who promoted a style seen to be a direct challenge to the Altreich. The Viennese portrait show reveals numerous points of tension even within what appeared to be a tightly planned program. The Nazi ideals of “femininity,” beauty and women’s roles came into conflict with the way that real women wanted to be portrayed, and we can see this gap revealed not only in the myriad fashion magazines and commercial publications of the time but also in the type of portrait they commissioned. Glamor and sophistication far outweighed the merits of the thrifty housewife, the self-sacrificing mother or the “ursprünglichen Frau” (original woman) characterized by her “Natürlichkeit” (naturalness) who appeared so often in Nazi discourse and speeches.41 Irene Guenther’s research on the discourse and reality around women’s fashions during the Third Reich serves as a useful guide on female portraiture as well: Already early on in the Third Reich, there were conflicts between those who proposed a female image that coincided with National Socialist ideology—a return to the “true

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German” look, as they called it—and others who continued throughout the Nazi years to embrace facets of modernity. This more moderate and, at times, pro-modern group included numerous German fashion designers, artists, and writers who reveled in the lively cultural scenes of Berlin and Paris and continued to incorporate these as well as international influences into their lives and work. Revues, cabarets, the latest dance craze, popular music, Parisian haute couture, movie stars, jazz, big city nightlife— designers drew from all of these trends to express in clothing the spirit of the time.42 As in fashion, the portraits in this show nodded at larger trends and cultural touchstones. And like fashion and women’s “self-fashioning,” they were no less subject to public scrutiny and debate. If the schöne Wienerin was connected to fashion (and decidedly more so than her Altreich counterpart), visual references and discourse also linked her to her predecessors: the beloved wife of the Biedermeier period and the view of women under Austrofascism. The sponsoring of a contest to choose the fairest of them all, with cash prizes ofered and the audience as the final arbiter, directly connected the exhibit to cultural trends of the decade before. Embrace and Rejection of the Neue Frau: The 1928 Elida Portrait Contest The women depicted in the exhibit were an obvious “corrective” to the Neue Frau who had so dominated the interwar period. Throughout the 20s, her image had been everywhere in the popular press, films, novels and mass media and had dominated the portraiture of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement. As Lisa Silverman has shown, the Viennese variant of the Neue Frau could often co-exist, even in the same image or self-presentation, with more “feminine” or seductive imagery. The 1920s fashion photos of the wildly popular Madame d’Ora (the Jewish Dora Kallmus) often combined more common Neue Frau references with French fashion and “feminine” accouterments.43 Scholars such as Susanne Meyer-Büser have argued that the rejection of the Neue Frau was already well in place before the Anschluss.44 Although certain elements of society never embraced the Neue Frau, some scholars suggest that by the late 1920s, a swing had occurred toward a more traditional and more conservative construction of women that impacted the visual arts as well.45 In Austria, however, this “backlash” did not occur until the Ständestaat as part of the more general gender ideology promoted under Austrofascism and resulted in both a discourse and a visual imagery that would flow seamlessly into the portraits of the Nazi period. In addition to her obvious “masculine” and “mannish” traits, criticism of the Neue Frau often focused on her “un-German” qualities and associated her with Jewish culture, with French fashion and with American Modernism.46 Her fashion and attitude seemed to be a kind of German copy of American celebrities like Louise Brooks and Clara Bow.47 As popular journals like Tempo reveal, the close of the 20s brought a decided retreat from the Bubikopf and short skirt in favor of more “feminine” and traditional styles. Nevertheless, we might see the late 20s as a period in which there was a great deal of ambivalence over the image of Woman, resulting in a hybrid construction which at times nodded to the Neue Frau while wholeheartedly rejecting other elements of this construction to foster a conservative image.48 The complexity of attitudes toward the modern female image is revealed by beauty contests of varied sorts, which reached a peak of popularity in the Weimar Republic.49

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The more “feminine” style was on display, for example, at the first Miss Germany beauty pageant, held in 1927, where the chosen winner wore her hair in long blonde braids, linking her to the traditional German maiden.50 Another beauty contest, this one sponsored by the magazine Tempo in January of 1929, reveals an ambivalence toward the Neue Frau; while embracing the “modern” working girl, the selected semi-finalists were largely traditionally pretty. “Die Schönheit der berufstätigen Frau” (“The Beauty of the Working Girl”) was announced in the magazine on January 19, noting that “professional beauties” would be discouraged in favor of the intelligent, free-spirited working girl.51 The “face of the female generation” would be chosen from among low-level clerical workers in factories, ofces, shops, schools and hospitals, as well as students and housewives.52 Many of the women entered photos of themselves in their work uniforms, although others appeared in “modern” bathing suits. The winner chosen was Erna Koch, who appeared as a smiling, sweet-faced young woman in her cook’s uniform. While she was far removed from the radical, “mannish,” and knowing Neue Frau, she was clearly a representative of a new kind of independent working girl who would be ushered of the stage with the rise of Nazism. Despite the distance of the winner from the espoused Nazi ideal, in many ways, this contest created a solid line of continuity with the 1942 Künstlerhaus show. As with the schöne Wienerin exhibit and another show we will examine shortly, solicitations were made broadly and then broken into categories for varied cash prizes. Rather than using professional judges, the winners were selected by a broad audience or readership to reflect popular opinion. (This would cause problems within the anti-democratic culture of National Socialism). And in some of the more popular press reviews of the 1942 show, the beauty of the portrait was clearly conflated with the physical beauty of the sitter; the question posed was not which work of art was the most beautiful but which woman was “the fairest of all.”53 This conflation did not originate in this period; as Julie Johnson has shown, The Art of the Woman, the first exhibition of the Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichische, held in 1910, was subject to the same facile comparison. Critics repeatedly noted that the fashionably dressed female visitor was in competition with her painted counterparts in the exhibit.54 But an even closer predecessor of the Künstlerhaus show—surely one that many who attended in 1942 well remembered—was the exhibit held for the Elida Preis für das schönste Ősterreichische Frauenportrait in 1928.55 The contest was in response to a larger German one sponsored by the Elida Kosmetikfirmen, “Das schönste deutsche Frauenporträt.” In February of that year, a call went out for artists to submit their works, with a RM 10,000 prize for first place. From the 365 artists who entered pieces in the show, 26 works were chosen for display at Galerie Gurlitt in Berlin, followed by a large public relations campaign and a tour through Dusseldorf, Munich and Hamburg. The winner, chosen by popular consent, showed a modern young woman in a contemporary interior by Willy Jaeckel. While her short hair and simple dress were quite up to date, the pretty young sitter was a far cry from the severe, bubikopft and smoking women who appeared in many of his portraits of the 20s. (Jaeckel would be forced to resign in 1933 and some of this works declared “degenerate.”)56 In her study of the contest, Meyer-Büser notes that with some spare exceptions, the more radical elements of the Neue Frau were largely absent from the entries.57 The motifs that characterized her in the portraits of the 1920s—cigarettes, monocles, sharp poses—were little in evidence. Meyer-Büser reads this as evidence of an emergent backlash against the Neue Frau and a turn to more

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Figure 6.4 Willy Jaeckel, Stehende Mädchen (Standing Girl), 1928, O/C, 160 × 120 cm. First prize, Elida contest, 1928. Destroyed in studio fire, 1943.

Romantic and 19th-century models, an argument made by other art historians of the period.58 However, this definition of the Neue Frau rests on a narrow set of visual tropes. Scholars Elizabeth Otto and Vanessa Rocco argue, instead, that what defined the Neue Frau throughout the world was not a specific set of visual markers but a kind of selfpossession and association with “freedom.” It was her independence in public and private life and her “learning to define [herself] beyond [her] relationship to home and family” that characterized her.59 The Austrian version of the contest, Das schönste österreichische Frauenporträt, was announced in the July 1928 issue of the journal Kunst und Wissenschaft. It was held under the auspices of the Delegation der Künstlervereinigungen, a variety of Viennese exhibition societies including the Künstlerhaus, the Secession, the Hagenbund and the Bund österreichischer Künstler. The finalists were chosen by a jury consisting of painters Ferdinand Andri, Rudolf Bacher and Fritz Silberbauer, all of whom would go on to have successful careers after the Anschluss, as well as poet Karl Ginskey and art publicist and critic Arthur Roessler.60 The first-place winner would receive ATS 7,500, with 34 of the works selected for a December exhibit in the yearly Christmas show of the Künstlerhaus.61 A slim catalogue was published to accompany the exhibit, with a short essay by Arthur Roessler. Roessler had made clear in his criticism of other shows that women were fit only as subjects of art, rather than as creators. (He was a particularly venomous critic of work created by the Wiener Frauenkunst, noting that their energies would be better spent on procreation than artistic creation.)62 He was clearly more comfortable with Frauenbilder than Frauenkunst, describing the varied styles of the works on display in the 1928 Elida show as positioned between “neue Sachlichkeit und photographiegetreuern Naturalismus.” Yet only one artist, Max Frey, whose portraits would appear again in the 1942 show, truly evoked the harsher variant of the Neue Frau with her severely cut hair and androgynous features.63 Her simple shift and slightly askew pose also lend her an edgy air. In Frey’s Portrait of Frau G.F., included in the 1942 exhibit, no trace of the Neue Frau remains. With her fashionable hat, stylish blouse and delicate watch, the sitter appears modest, tasteful and proper, her gaze averted from the viewer. Her straight spine, gloved

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Figure 6.5 Max Frey, Frau Portrait, oil on canvas, c. 1928. Source: Reproduced in Ständige Delegation der Künstlervereinigung, Elida Preis für das schönste österreichische Frauenporträt, Vienna, 1928. Whereabouts unknown. Source: © 2023 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Bildrecht, Vienna.

Figure 6.6 Max Frey, Portrait of Frau G.F., oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger. June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 40). © 2023 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Bildrecht, Vienna.

hand and inscrutable expression project the character of a person attuned to decorum. While the painting’s status as missing allows us only to contemplate the black-and-white reproduction in the 1942 show, it seems as if the style was considerably more open and sketchy than the cold and glassy figures posing in the Haus der Deutschen Kunst. The vast majority of images in the 1928 contest do not challenge traditional portraiture and depict conventionally pretty women, many bejeweled and in luxurious dresses and standard poses. This was less a full-throated rejection of the Neue Frau than

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the softer and more seductive variant of it seen in Vienna (and in the popular press of Czechoslovakia).64 Flowers and lace decorate the comfortable interiors in which they sit. The 1928 Elida exhibit ofered an ambivalent attitude toward “modern” (i.e., liberated) women; while nodding toward the Neue Frau, we can also see a revalorization of standard feminine types. The winner of the contest, Sergius Pauser’s Frau (Dr. Beck) is a good case in point of this “hybrid” construction with the painting considerably more cutting edge than the majority of works chosen. While lacking the obvious signifiers of the Neue Frau—cigarette, chopped bangs, flat chest—Dr. Beck wears a shapeless shift and sports a sharp haircut. Her confrontational gaze is directed straight at the viewer, and her pose reads as both defiant and defensive (and in contrast to the numerous “wives” and “Frauen” she is, as her title signifies, a woman of powerful intellect.) Defined in this manner, the portrait epitomizes the Neue Frau with her bold look, her assertive body language and the declaration of her as a professional woman (Dr. Beck). While Roessler referred to Pauser as the portraitist of “society women, of elegance and charm,” the judges’ explanation for their pick reveals a desire to break with convention, selecting the work “because his female portrait of noble objectivity, dispensing with conventional pose, represents today’s woman, who is profoundly interested, spiritually and intellectually, in the nature and developments [Wesen und Werden] of our day.”65 Pauser, who had begun as an Expressionist, had become a sought-after Neue Sachlichkeit portraitist by the time of the contest, enjoying the patronage and friendship of many of his Jewish contemporaries.66 His Magic Realist and New Objectivity works aligned him with some of the most modern portraitists in the 1920s. In addition to the winning piece, Pauser had entered a portrait of his wife, Anny, which served as the cover for the Elida Contest catalogue. Although somewhat softer than Dr. Beck, Anny appears self-possessed, intense, with a bold gaze and with little feminine adornment. After the Anschluss, Pauser, whose studio was in the Leopoldstadt district, saw many of his favored clients flee. Never attracted to the Nazi party, Pauser was reportedly in despair over the purge of “degenerate” artists from the ranks of Germany and Vienna.67

Figure 6.7 Sergius Pauser, Frau (Dr. Becker), 1928. Oil on canvas. Elida Contest, France. Source: Reproduced with the permission of Wolfgang Pauser.

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Figure 6.8 Sergius Pauser, Bildnis meine Frau Anny (Portrait of My Wife Anny), 1928, oil on canvas. Source: Reproduced with the permission of Wolfgang Pauser.

Figure 6.9 Sergius Pauser, Im schwarzen Kostum (Anny) (In Black Costume (Anny)), oil on canvas, 86 × 64 cm, Kunsthandel Schütz, Wien. Source: Reproduced with the permission of Wolfgang Pauser.

He kept his head above water by turning to a more “classical” style for his portraits and distancing himself from the “modern” woman who appeared in works such as those for the Elida contest or his Dame mit Hund (1934), which showed a cigarette-smoking sitter of Jewish lineage in a still-Expressionist style.68 In sharp contrast, the Anny we see in Pauser’s 1942 entries for Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild is nearly unrecognizable. The clean, monumental forms and forthright manner of the first portrait have given way to a woman who seems fragile, her eyes skirting away from the viewer, her oncesolid body decidedly thinner and less muscular, the bright colors and hat giving her the air of startled bird. Altogether, Pauser had six works shown in the 1942 exhibit. His numerous inclusions surely rest, at least in part, on his prior win at the Elida contest, which would have been part of the collective memory of many visitors to the latter show. In all six of the works,

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we see Pauser trafcking in obvious signs of traditional femininity: flowers, hats, elegant poses. Many of the other artists included in 1942 had also been finalists in the 1928 show. For the Elida contest, Alfred Gerstenbrand had shown Kokotten Frauleins, girls so “Viennese” in their character that one critic felt they had walked out of the fin de siècle: This countenance he creates is so Viennese, this face, these kissable lips, these “schlamperten” eyes, as the Viennese like to say, reflect that much-blasphemed type we meet in Schnitzler, Bahr or Salten. . . . [F]or obvious reason we can call her “Mizzi.”69 In 1942, certainly no one was daring to evoke the Jewish Salten or Schnitzler in reference to Gerstenbrand’s Viennese girls. Additional artists whose portraits were included in both shows were Ferdinand Kitt, Albert Janesch and Robert Streit.70 Their 1928 works show stylish and well-groomed women, who, short hair aside, would not have been out of place in the later exhibit. To what extent, if any, we might ask, did some of the beauty types on display in 1928 read as distinctly Jewish? Did images such as Erich Albert Lamm’s Portrait, with its dark-haired woman in a large coat with decidedly “non-Aryan” features, or Siegmund W. Hampel’s sitter, with her fur stole and dark eyes, evoke the fashionable Jewess so well known in the Weimar popular press?71 (Unfortunately, the identity of the women seems lost to history.) Born in Berlin in 1873, Albert Lamm spent many years in the small Swiss village of Muggendorf. While Lamm had a longstanding friendship with Jewish artists like Curt and Sophie Hermann, this did not prevent him from expressing antisemitic sentiments at times.72 Hampel had been a friend of Gustav Klimt, working in an Art Nouveau and Symbolist style. In 1900, he joined the Hagenbund and produced very few portraits. He largely ceased exhibiting after the Anschluss, retiring to Nussdorf am Attersee.73 Whether or not viewers read the images this way, what we might call a “Jewish type” was not irreconcilable with “Viennese”: the two terms did not necessarily cancel each other out, just as there were ways of reconciling traditional “femininity” with attributes of the Neue Frau.

Figure 6.10 Erich Albert Lamm, Portrait. Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in Ständige Delegation der Künstlervereinigung, Elida Preis für das schönste österreichische Frauenporträt, 1928. Vienna, 1928.

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Figure 6.11 Siegmund W. Hampel, Portrait. Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in Ständige Delegation der Künstlervereinigung, Elida Preis für das schönste österreichische Frauenporträt, 1928. Vienna, 1928.

While the increasingly tense political and economic pressures in Weimar Germany helped lead to an embrace of “traditional” gender constructions, there were elements specific to Austria that led to a turn away from the Neue Frau. (For one, the glamorous, warm Wienerin was never as closely associated with the New Woman, and her appeal never rested on a kind of “radical” chic or Vermännlichung (androgyny).) But her rejection was also closely interwoven with the gender politics of Austrofascism. Just as the nationalistic landscape of isolating mountains predated the Anschluss and was easily adopted for later National Socialist aims,74 so the construction of Woman under Austrofascism was tailor made for appropriation by the Nazis. Indeed, under the Christian Fatherland Front, the role of Woman as Childbearer and Mother was praised nearly as often and with as much fanaticism as under the Anschluss. Public glorifications of motherhood were commonplace, with holidays devoted to her, parades and festivals and copious discourse on her sacred role. Hers was the domestic sphere. The image of motherhood created by artists for public consumption in posters, broadsheets etc. could not be closer to the fruitful, Aryan peasant mother worshipped during the Nazi regime. In this postcard issued for Mother’s Day by the Mutterschutzwerk (League of Maternity Leave) in Salzburg, a mother in regional dress and wooden clogs nurses her infant beneath a tree, flanked on either side by a working farmer and the ubiquitous mountain peak. One would certainly be hard pressed to distinguish the imagery from the image of motherhood that flourished after the Anschluss. With the rise of the Ständestaat, female ambition toward careers or politics was portrayed as highly unnatural, a betrayal of both family and state.75 The ideology of Austrofascism included a “Rekatholisierung, Remaskulinisierung und Diskriminierung von Frauen.”76 While in real terms, this meant a systematic shrinking of the role of women in the workforce and a host of legal discriminations, in the sphere of representations, it meant a sharp retreat from the New Woman. By the early years of the 1930s, in many publications and realms, critics demonized the Neue Frau, especially the Vermännlichung (androgyny) of women, which went against the strict gender divisions of the authoritarian state.77 Scorn was heaped on the Bubikopf, on the wearing of make-up, on manly fashions and on “jewified,” “French” and “American” taste. These ideas were taken over whole cloth by Nazi ideology, which played up the

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Figure 6.12 Mother’s day postcard with poem, “Mein Kind,” and woodcut, Mutterschutzwerk der Vaterländischen Front Salzburg, Landestelle Salzburg, 1936 (8018). Source: The author.

danger of the Neue Frau as both gender and race traitor. In a 1932 brochure, 100,000 Children at a Stroke: Woman as Broodmare of the Third Reich, feminist and Nazi resistor Käthe Leichter warned Austrian women what their lives would become under National Socialism, noting what the party would do with those in their female Manliness, with monocles on their eyes, hanging out smoking in Cofee houses and bars, penning erotic diaries for Jewish newspapers, or enlightening lascivious Asians.78 Both beauty contest and Elida contest show that the female ideal on display at the Künstlerhaus in 1942 was not an about-face but that earlier ideals could be, and intentionally were, assimilated. Such reference to earlier popular contests gave a sheen of normalcy and continuity at a time of disruption, hardship and restriction for the kind of middle-class women envisioned as the ideal consumers of the exhibit. This updating of an exhibition theme popular during the First Republic fostered the illusion that perhaps culture and society had not been drastically restricted and altered, that strong lines of continuity connected preand post-Anschluss life. This was helped by the fact that the Neue Frau in Vienna had never been as radical as her counterpart in Berlin. Despite this seeming connection, however, what the latter show lacked were beauty types connected with contemporary Jewish Wienerinnen. Along with its purging of Jewish artists and sitters, for all its references back to the earlier “most beautiful” exhibits, Das schönste Wiener Frauenbild had profound diferences with those earlier manifestations. Not only was the beauty type far more conservative, but the “democratic” voting for the selections, paralleling the universal sufrage of the Weimar Republic,79 did not apply to the later contest. Although the press releases announced that the public would choose the winners, and reviews promised this as well (“The Visitors Choose the Winner: Which is the Most Beautiful Female Portrait?”),80 this plan was summarily canceled by von Schirach in August: Reichsleiter von Schirach has decided that a publication on the voting results concerning the images in the exhibit “Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild” should not go

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forward, on political grounds. In case of any queries, it should be stated that this vote should only be used to provide information intended for the Künstlerhaus.81 A matter as important as the ideal image of the Viennese woman could not be left in the hands of a fickle public but needed to meet with state approval. The 1942 Exhibit and the Wienerin under National Socialism

Portraits in the 1942 show difered from those created during the First Republic, as well as from female imagery associated with the Altreich. The portraits not only contest the specific tropes of the Neue Frau, such as the Bubikopf, but also, on a deeper level, firmly reject her image, along with assertive body language and confrontational glances. It is either in relation to home and family that these women are identified (again, we may point out the large number of works picturing the artists’ wives) or as entertainers and performers. Beyond their role as charming companions or celebrities, they seem to be largely removed from public life. In presenting the most beautiful Viennese portraits, artists, critics and viewers attempted to connect her to a distinct type, an age-old tradition that was decidedly diferent from the Altreich maiden. Discussion of the show often touched on the notion of the beautiful Wienerin not as a representation of an individual but as the biological expression of her people and her nation: When one pronounces the name of our city, this soft, melodic, tender “Vienna,” not only does a beautiful, musical rhythm resonate in it, a rhythm which seems to have turned to stone in the shapely monuments, but also the cheerful, maternal, supple nature of our women echoes in it. The fact that we symbolize Vienna with a female figure shows how much her grace has always been a hallmark.82 Similarly, the exhibition review in Die Pause described both the portrait of Viennese women and the women themselves in their biological essence, as manifestations of the city: In the spiritual-biological, real Tradition thrives. In man, the city becomes individualized. It’s objective spirit becomes the creative principle and takes the form of the soul. . . . Thus one understands how much of the “Viennese” there actually is in the Viennese portrait. And moreover when Viennese painters depict Viennese women one encounters in the artistic experience the purest aura of an intellectual and spiritual Being (geistigen und seelischen Wesenheit), who has become the immortal possession of this city.83 The notion of the Wienerin as a special treasure or distinction of Vienna ran through the discourse of reviews in popular journals as well. “The best thing the Viennese possess are their women,” noted the reviewer of the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, while the Österreichische Volks-Zeitung declared that “The portrait of beautiful Viennese women reflects the grace of our city.”84 In some ways, the beautiful Wienerin was yet another treasure of the Reich, like the natural resources or mountains celebrated on other occasions. It is clear from the language that the Viennese woman embodied the city through her blood and race, but there were other ways in which she functioned as a stand-in for

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the city itself. Many of the paintings referenced specific achievements in Viennese visual culture, evoking periods in which its portraiture was particularly renowned: the Baroque and 18th century, as well as the more recent years of the Habsburg Empire. Stylistic and iconographical references in the works put viewers in mind of earlier celebrated moments in the Viennese artistic legacy. This no doubt gratified von Schirach, who never missed an opportunity to extol Vienna’s superior culture. It would have been difcult for anyone attuned to Vienna’s cultural fortunes to have put on a show of female portraiture without recalling the work of both Hans Makart and Gustav Klimt.85 While Makart dominated Viennese portraiture in the last decades of the 19th century, Klimt did so for the first decade of the 20th. Klimt would get his due, as we shall see in Chapter 8, with the 1943 retrospective held at the Künstlerhaus. While Makart held sway during a period that the National Socialists largely despised and wished to erase from Vienna’s history—the period of Habsburg rule—he was nevertheless acclaimed for contributing new icons in the long parade of Viennese beauties. In 1940, the 100th anniversary of his birth, he was given a retrospective exhibit in Salzburg, organized by Bruno Grimschitz, who was brought in two years later for Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild show (and once again for the 1943 Klimt exhibit).86 The exhibit was also under the sponsorship of Göring. Like the exhibits we are examining in this study, the Makart retrospective was a carefully calculated exercise in cultural rewriting. Many of Makart’s most important patrons, including his favorite sitter, Hannah Klinosch, were Jewish, yet no images of her or of any known Jewish sitter appeared in the 1940 show. Jewish patrons and Jewish subjects were simply erased, unmentioned and invisible. But if the works of Makart himself were celebrated, the artifice and striking poses of his sitters seem to have been consciously rejected. Most of the portraits in the 1942 show, for all their elegance and emphasis on fashion, exhibit a modesty and understatement, with simple gestures and forthright expressions. In their low-key glamor and relatively painterly surface (certainly in comparison to the glassy-smooth surface of works by Altreich artists like Arnold Ziegler), images like Josef Dobrowsky’s Dame in violetten Kleid (chosen for the cover of the “Wiener Frauenbild” catalogue) or Rudolf Böttger’s Frau Helene Wenter (cat. 13), may have seemed like an appropriate retort to the wealthy, bodacious women immortalized by Makart.

Figure 6.13 Hans Makart, Hannah Klinkosch, 1875, 200 × 112 cm (78 3/4 × 44 1/8 in.). Source: Neue Galerie, New York.

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Figure 6.14 Josef Dobrowsky, Dame in Violetten Kleid, oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger, June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 28). © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Bildrecht, Vienna. Author’s collection.

Figure 6.15 Andreas Patzelt, Bildnis einer jungen Wienerin (Image of a Young Viennese Woman). Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger, June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 161). Author’s collection.

The paintings of Dobrowsky and Andreas Patzelt have a sensuality and command very diferent from the colder, more austere portraiture of Berlin, and intentionally so. Dobrowsky had been a member of both the Vienna and Prague Secessions, focusing his career equally on portraits and landscapes. His images of women have a stylistic freedom and intensity of color that distinguish his works from many of his Künstlerhaus contemporaries. His foray into more abstract and simplified forms, even at times in the rendering of faces, illustrates the range of taste/tolerance for Modernism, even within upper Nazi circles. Reproductions or discussions of his work were very common in reviews of the 1942 show. While included in many Viennese exhibits from 1938 to 1943, in 1937, Hitler had Dobrowsky’s works removed from the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, revealing a genuinely diferent set of standards in Vienna.87 (So, too, some of Pauser’s paintings had been earlier removed from German shows).

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For his four portraits included in the 1942 exhibit, Patzelt received the Dr. Joseph Goebbels prize.88 He specialized in female portraiture, churning out bust-length generic images of pretty girls, rendered in pseudo-Renoiresque brushstrokes. His images trafc in standard “feminine” tropes of flowers, jewelry and flowing hair, closer to rococo portraiture than to many of the more dynamic images in the show. His portrait of a young Viennese girl, included in the Künstlerhaus exhibit, was less evocative of French styles than his usual images. Although not a Nazi party member, his works were rather well known throughout the Reich, his girls praised as “embodiments of the German race.”89 Yet there is nothing about the bare-shouldered, wind-swept young sitters in his paintings that specifically connects them to National Socialist ideals or even “racial types.” Here again it is less the intention of the artist or anything distinct in the work that led them to be seen as reflective of Nazi ideas, but rather the framework of the exhibit and the discourse surrounding them, which oddly continues to the present day. (One contemporary website notes that the “[T]he graceful designs of his paintings reflect the security and culture of the race.”)90 If the stagey poses and costumes of Makart’s sitters were rejected, his special penchant for painting female entertainers was not. Indeed, Makart had an afnity for painting performers and the stars and celebrities of the Burgtheater. For several reasons, the 1942 exhibit also highly favored sitters from the world of theater, stage and film. Dancers and singers from the great stage and opera houses appeared throughout the rooms of the exhibit; in all, portraits of at least 14 well-known performers were included in the show. The special Viennese preference for portraits of beautiful actresses and performers linked the show not only to Makart but also to the Biedermeier period. Biedermeier and the “Good Old Days” Indeed, Biedermeier portraiture was a strong point of reference for the show. Many of the portraits can be seen as contemporary versions of the Biedermeier portrait with their lighthearted, charming images of stylish women in their comfortable domestic interiors. In its celebration of the gemütliche, contented wife of the Vormärz period, such portraits provided a model for women in Nazi Vienna, even as their own lives contradicted the carefree life of leisure on display. To be sure, the Biedermeier portrait had been an artistic port of call in other periods. Aside from their connections to Vienna, such portraits gave form to a self-satisfied middle class who sought life’s pleasures in the domestic realm and in the sphere of culture, rather than in the political realm. In the early years of the 20th century, the Galerie Miethke held a very large Alt-Wiener portrait exhibit in April of 1905, whose purpose, Gemma Blackstone notes, was in part to “assuage the anxiety of the new Viennese.”91 In the generations of the Vormärz, focused on “family connections, socio-cultural belonging and economic security,” the Viennese at the beginning of the 20th century could find a mirror of their own political disengagement. Portraits like Waldmüller’s or Moritz Michael Dafnger’s, of their own wives, gave visual form to a kind of socially stable, home-and-hearth mentality that would be of particular appeal during periods of social insecurity. At the time of the 1928 Elida contest, Viennese newspapers also alluded to the Biedermeier period as a time of “good old days,” including pictures from the exhibit alongside those of “Die Grazerin” or “Die Wienerin” from the second quarter of the 19th century.92 An exhibit held in 1930 at the Galerie Neumann and Salzer served as a

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Figure 6.16 Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller. Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, 1850, Belvedere Museum, Vienna. Source: Artothek of the Republic of Austria, permanent loan, Belvedere, Vienna

Figure 6.17 Franz Eybl, Wiener Aristokratin (Aristocratic Viennese Woman) and Carl V. Saar, Dame mit Rosen im Haar (Woman with Rose in Her Hair). Source: Reproduced in Bruno Grimschitz, Die schöne Wienerin in Bildnissen von 1800 bis 1850.

bridge between the 1905 show and that of 1942. Die schöne Wienerin in Bildnissen von 1800 bis 1850 was organized, like the Künstlerhaus exhibit as well as the Makart retrospective, by Bruno Grimschitz. Stressing the schwämerischen (enthusiasm) and koketten Weiblichkeit (coquettish femininity) of the Wienerin, the gallery displayed many of the well-known portraits by 19th-century masters.93As scholar Sabine Plakolm Forst-Huber noted, the exhibit must be seen as a reactionary counterweight to two large shows mounted the same year by the Vereinigung bilderner Künstlerinnen and the Wiener Frauenkunst, as well as the Internationale Frauenkongress in 1930.94 Biedermeier painting as a realm of idealized family life and social order was certainly not lost on Adolf Hitler, who upheld these artists as superior to all others.95 The Biedermeier wife, with her beauty, delicacy and Gemütlichkeit, provided a good model for women under National Socialism, albeit one that contrasted with the self-martyring mother and hearty peasant girl. The Biedermeier woman was easily assimilated into the

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Wienerin. Publications by Anna Tizia Leitich, Die Wienerin (1939) and Wiener Biedermeier (1941), argued explicitly for the Biedermeier woman as the model for the Viennese woman of the day. Both books were copiously illustrated with reproductions by Waldmüller, Amerling, Dafnger and other well-known portraitists of the Biedermeier. Leitich, who lived for a time in the United States, wrote for the Neue Frei Presse and Deutche Allgemeine Zeitung, relocating permanently to Vienna in 1928. Much of her writing in the 20s focused on the role of the New Woman, arguing for their increased rights and independence, a theme that she had abandoned by the end of the decade.96 Like the 1942 exhibit, Leitich’s books and articles were aimed primarily at a female audience. We can be certain that the organizers of the 1942 exhibit were familiar with and approving of Leitich’s texts; in 1948, when the post-war Künstlerhaus reprised the theme of the beautiful Wienerin for an exhibit, it was Leitich who wrote the 50-page catalogue. In her chapter entitled “Die schönen Frauen des Biedermeier” (“Beautiful Women of the Biedermeier Period”), Leitich noted that All art is only a search of life, but Biedermeier made life an art. Its beautiful women were able to express themselves in the presence and admiration of their husbands and in return gave the warmth and structure only they can provide.97 Woman’s role in the Biedermeier period as keeper of harmony was clearly an apt model for contemporary wives: The Biedermeier period is like a beautiful child on whose curly head we lay our hands, an object for our hour of renewal, a resting place for the eyes and the heart. . . . Is it not a perfect model for humanity? Like so many of the writers on the schöne Wienerin, Leitich extolled her eternal essence, inseparable from both her blood and the soil: No matter her costume, she always remains the same; always a child of that German, light, south-tinged Wiener Walde, which, beginning with medieval minstrels, has enchanted all artists, above all, the musicians of the city and found its most popular expression in the Viennese waltz.98 Like her Vormärz predecessor, her role was to provide all the comforts of home and community: Comfort, spreading beauty, easing the roughness of daily life, deepening its possibilities and making it shine. It is an art that is most important for shaping the human community and its external relationships. . . . As an anonymous housewife, she appears in the hospitable, convivial, artistic, and cultural life of the city, which without her would be unimaginable.99 What had ended the glory of the Biedermeier and led, according to Leitich, to the Biedermeierdämmerung was the Revolution of 1848, followed by the rule of the Habsburgs, a narrative well in keeping with National Socialist discourse on Austrian history.100 Yet the spirit of the Wienerin lived on: “But indeed, the Biedermeier epoch is not at all dead! Within it lives the heart of the city at its most beautiful, its most brilliant, and its most German.”101

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The model of the Vormärz woman was clearly meant to inspire women in Nazi Vienna to see themselves in her mirror. At the conclusion of the book, Leitich praised the fashionable woman of the day, commending both the dress designer Emile Flöge (former companion of Gustav Klimt) and the contemporary taste for Dirndls (a mode of dress encouraged by ofcial Nazi dictate, launching a Tracht renewal movement).102 It was only a short distance from the loving, happy Hausfrau of the Biedermeier to the contented wife under Nazi rule. In her radio address on the day of the Anschluss (March 13, 1938), Else Muhr-Jordan, director of the Vienna NS Frauenschaft, laid out the place of women in the new regime: The world of men is the State, the public realm, the world of women is the family, on which the entire world of public life is erected. The two worlds must be separate from each other. In one belongs the power of sentiment, the other the power of action. According to the wishes of the Führer, who strives for the most natural path of life, women should remain women in their essence and in all manner of life, so would he also have it that men should remain, in every way, men.103 In his catalogue essay for the show, Moissl drew a direct connection between the Wienerin of the Biedermeier period and the contemporary women portrayed at the Künstlerhaus: The Viennese woman of the Vormärzes still lives in the images of the Old Masters [Waldmüller and Dafnger]. Does the Viennese woman of today know that she will be given the same immortal life when—as she did in this exhibit—she points art toward the eternal path?104 If portraits in the exhibit were seen to evoke the Biedermeier period, it was not due to stylistic similarity. Rather, it was the beauty, ease, domestic comfort and fashionability of the women that created a contemporary counterpart to their Vormärz “sisters.” This connection was made explicit in a review of the show for the Österreichische Volks-Zeitung: Even if the woman of our day, compared to her sister from the Biedermeier or the Vormärz, dampened her light-heartedness and her uninhibited cheerfulness, in adaptation to current living conditions, the kindness and grace of her heart remained as true as ever and has allowed her to become what we most appreciate her for today: a happy, good companion of man.105 Despite the “changed living conditions”—a reference to the war—the sitters appeared as lovely and happy wives. In an update of this pattern, Albert Janesch contributed images of both his wife and his niece for the 1942 show.106 Janesch would be so unrepentant for his Nazi past that the 1947 Entnazification Commission would recommend he not be readmitted to the Künstlerhaus. Some held him particularly responsible for the “Nazi” reputation that tainted the artist’s group.107 While several of his works fit the “typical” Nazi ideal of peasant Madonna or lifeless blonde nudes,108 Bildnis meine Nichte Walli (1934) depicts a pretty sitter at home at a dressing table. She is the 20th-century equivalent of the many 19th-century femmes à toilette. Walli is perfectly, if modestly, groomed, pausing before putting on her strand of pearls in a cozy, well-outfitted interior, a modern update of works like Waldmüller’s Frau Elise Höfer (1827).109

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Figure 6.18 Albert Janesch, Bildnis meine Nichte Walli (Motherhood Defense Action of the Salzburg Fatherland Front) (Portrait of My Niece, Walli), 1934, cat. 91. Source: Private collection.

Figure 6.19 Albert Janesch, Bildnis meine Frau (Portrait of my Wife), 1934, oil on canvas, 90 × 100 (cat. 88). Source: Private collection.

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Figure 6.20 Hans Frank, Mädchen mit Gitarre (Girl with Guitar). Whereabout unknown. Source: Reproduced in catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger, June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 33). Permission: Norbert Stangl-Frank.

Figure 6.21 Frans van Mieris, La Joueuse de théorbe (Woman Playing a Lute), oil on panel, 1663, height: 33.7 cm (13.2 in) width: 29.2 cm (11.4 in), National Galleries of Scotland, Alte Pinakothek. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Janesch’s portrait of his wife, Maria Antonia, has a slightly aristocratic air.She is placed against a large landscape with their loyal dog resting his chin on her knee, very much in the spirit of Biedermeier sitters with their favorite pets.110 She appears to be a well-bred and stylish woman. Many other works easily recall the mood or conventions of the Biedermeier portrait. Hans Frank’s Madchen mit Gitarre is clearly meant to serve as an updated response to images of young girls playing lutes in earlier Dutch and Biedermeier paintings. Like so many of the artists in the exhibit, Frank had been a member of the Secession in its earlier and Modernist iteration.111 As a landscapist, his works were collected by Hitler, Speer and Himmler and, as we have seen, were on display in the Berge und Menschen exhibit of 1939. Portraiture was highly unusual in his oeuvre. There is something slightly jarring about this older formula juxtaposed with such contemporary hairdo and clothing. Once again, the girl is modest but elegant with her understated jewelry and blouse. The same tasteful elegance characterizes the sitters in Karl Maria May’s Bildnis Frau M.B. and Robert Streit’s Bildnis Frau Amsler.112

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Figure 6.22 Karl Maria May, Bildnis Frau M.B, oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger, June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 129). Author’s collection.

Figure 6.23 Robert Streit, Bildnis Frau Amsler, oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger, June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 232). Author’s collection.

Streit, like many of his fellow members, had joined the Nazi party illegally and would be one of the last members to be reinstated at the Künstlerhaus.113 May would become the first post-war president of the Künstlerhaus, serving from 1945 to 1954.114 The women in both images are in comfortably furnished interiors, dressed in restrained but clearly fashionable clothing and make-up, each wearing a single piece of jewelry. If they had any identities outside the household, the portraits do not hint at them. They have as little in common with the celebrated peasant mother as with the Neue Frau. One of the most popular Biedermeier motifs was the figure by the open window.115 Jan Bolesław Czedekowski’s Im Fenster (At the window) reprises the theme with two young women, both of whom wear clothing taken directly from the fashion publications of the day (see next section) and possess an understated glamor.

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Figure 6.24 Jan Boleslaw Czedekowski, Im Fenster (At the Window), oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger, June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 24). Author’s collection.

Like dozens of their Vormärz counterparts, they gaze at the outside world from the safety and comfort of the interior. Czedekowski was born in Galicia and trained at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, becoming a sought-after portraitist on both sides of the Atlantic. He was not, in fact, a member of the Künstlerhaus and emigrated to the US in 1946, becoming a citizen in 1952 and then, a year later, returning for the remainder of his life to Vienna. In addition to Im Fenster, Czedekowski contributed two works entitled Wienerin to the schöne Wiener Frauenbild show.116 His works were likely included at the suggestion of Karl Strobl (author of the catalogue for the 1939 Bergen und Menschen der Ostmark exhibit) as Strobl would go on to write a monograph on the artist in 1959.117 The popularity of Czedekowski’s portraits among Polish, American and Austrian patrons makes evident that there was nothing decidedly “Ostmarkisch” or particularly “Germanic” about them. In fact, of all the works in the show, this work was chosen as a favorite by viewers.118 With his interest in promoting a distinct Viennese culture, von Schirach was surely pleased with the evocations of Austrian Biedermeier painting. He was no doubt familiar with another leitmotif of Biedermeier portraiture: the frequent portrayal of actresses and stage personalities of the day. The lighthearted, entertaining and cultured world of the stage was the perfect complement to the cozy and sheltered world of the family. As Leitich noted in her Wiener Biedermeier: The Biedermeier was the most lively, the most creative theatrical epoch in Vienna. Every people (volk) has the need for inner and outer stimulation, for drama.119 Ballerinas like Fanny Elser, who danced at the Josefstadt, or the actress Lola Montez, made a regular appearance in the works of Biedermeier artists.120 As noted, the 1942 exhibit included not only many well-groomed Hausfrauen but also a large number of women from the world of theater and film, whose portraits were often highlighted in reviews of the show. These included numerous actresses from the Burgtheater, three singers from the Opera Haus and musicians, as well as cinema stars like Paula Wessely and Winnie Markus. This emphasis was closely aligned with Baldur

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von Schirach’s aim of turning Nazi Vienna into the theatrical center of the Reich. In his memoirs, von Schirach bragged of his aim of reviving the “old tradition,” personally inviting back to the city artists such as Paula Wessely, Raoul Aslan, Edward Balser, Clemens Krauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Richard Strauss.121 The Wienerin was a staple of theater production during von Schirach’s rule, including shows such as Das Mädl aus der Vorstadt, Die kluge Wienerin, Wienerinnen, etc.122 Three of the four works exhibited by artist Hans Schweiger were of famed film stars.123 Vera Balser-Eberle (who would later marry actor Ewald Balser, whom von Schirach hoped to coax back to the city) was represented by a charcoal drawing. She was a star of both stage and screen and, at the time, was married to the Nazi lawyer, Erich Führer, responsible for “Aryanizing” and expropriating the possessions of the Bloch-Bauer family, including Gustav Klimt’s famed Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer.124 Based on the finished oil painting, she, too, was shown à toilette, preparing to place a string of pearls around her neck, in a dress and chair clearly meant to evoke earlier centuries. The film actress Elfriede Datzing, also portrayed by Schweiger, made five films with Wien-Film, playing ingenues in musical comedies.125 The catalogue of the 1942 show contained a reproduction of Schweiger’s Bildnis der Schauspielerin Winnie Markus. The Czech-born Markus made her career with Wien-Film during the Nazi period, staring in Mutterliebe (1939) by the director Gustav Ucicky, the illegitimate son of Gustav Klimt. Markus continued to act into the 21st century. She embodied the “Deutsches Fraülein” with her delicate features, light blonde hair and air of innocence rather than obvious sex appeal.126 Schweiger emphasized her charm and fashionability, depicting her in an up-to-the-minute hat and soft curls. She thus appeared both as an “Aryan goddess” and as a beguiling Wienerin. Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild included two portraits of Paula Wessely, the most celebrated of Viennese actresses during the Nazi period. Her career is inseparable from the Anschluss for not only did she publicly declare herself pleased with the incorporation into the German Reich, but also her most famous role was arguably in Gustav Ucicky’s 1941 Heimkehr, a Nazi propaganda film made to stir anti-Polish sentiment and justify the brutal treatment of the Polish population.127 Film scholar

Figure 6.25 Hans Schweiger, Bildnis der Schauspielerin Winnie Markus (Portrait of the actress Winnie Markus). Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger, June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 222). Author’s collection.

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Robert von Dassanowsky notes how Wessely’s “normalcy,” lack of glamor and motherly qualities made her a particularly fitting star for Nazi cinema.128 Her work was supported by both Hitler and Goebbels. In the post-war years, Wessely expressed regret for her participation in films like Heimkehr and maintained that she had continued to help Jewish artists whenever possible.129 Given Wessely’s fame, her portraits would have been immediately recognizable. She appeared in a study by Robert Streit with the kind of “average wife” appearance for which she was known in her films; indeed, it was one of the least glamorous images in the show. She wears neither jewelry nor make-up and appears in a nondescript setting. The other portrait of her in the show, also by Streit, forms a strong contrast. It fits well into the Biedermeier mold, with Wessely in a 19th-century dress, silhouetted against a mountainous landscape. The numerous images of celebrities boosted Vienna’s reputation as a city known for its abundant theatrical and musical talent, an image that von Schirach would fight to maintain until the days of total war. It also gave the show a kind of popular appeal and relevance to mass culture, linking it to the images that abounded in the popular press and in women’s magazines, just as it did with popular fashion magazines of the day, as we shall see. It echoed the pages of these magazines by showcasing performers, actresses and society women (in contrast to the female types that appear repeatedly in Nazi propaganda).130 For example, Winfried Kurzbauer, a featured dancer at the Vienna Opera House who was portrayed at the Künstlerhaus in a plaster sculpture by Alfred Hofmann, would appear on the covers of both Mein Film and Funk und Film a few years later.131 Dailies that trafcked in gossip on film stars and included their photos, such as Das Kleine Blatt, gave coverage to the exhibit, noting its inclusion of both ordinary girls and celebrities.132 In referencing movie stars and society women, the 1942 exhibit served the function of escapism, depicting women in the Reich as leading lives of carefree leisure and fashionable pursuit. In reality, the life of most Viennese women was radically diferent.

Figure 6.26 Robert Streit, Bildnis Paula Wessely (study). Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger, June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 230). Author’s collection.

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Figure 6.27 Robert Streit, Portrait of Paula Wessely. Oil on canvas. Source: Agefotostock.

Figure 6.28 Das Kleine Blatt, June 14, 1942, p. 9.

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The Beautiful Woman of Leisure? The life of domestic ease depicted in most of the exhibition portraits masked the actual conditions for women in Vienna. In the spring of 1942, the government imposed severe food rations, as well as sharp restrictions on tobacco. Cosmetics, footwear and toothpaste had become increasingly scarce, along with fuel and firewood.133 By 1942, women had, in fact, begun returning to the workforce, some to careers and the less fortunate to the drudgery of the assembly line for the unceasing war efort. While women had seen both their university admission and their employment cut drastically between 1933 and 1936, in accord with the gender politics of the Austrofascist state, the war necessitated women’s return to many now-underfilled occupations.134 In particular, they were encouraged to enter “female fields” such as nursing, social work and teaching but were ushered into more intellectual and prestigious fields as well. Michelle Mouton notes that by 1944, nearly half of all university students were women.135 The woman’s journal Die Frau reminded women that such work was an obligation: “[T]oday the academically talented woman not only can study, she is expected to train and work, where she can accomplish the most.”136 Yet none of the portraits in the Künstlerhaus show portray women at work or in uniform; even the portrait of Dr. Lily Hansick shows her sitting with folded hands and passive pose.137 Far more women were conscripted into factory labor, into mindless, low-paying jobs. The number of women who entered the Kriegshilfdienst rose radically from 1938 to 1940, from 30,000 to 150,000.138 By 1942, the 56-hour work week was standard for women.139 The public discourse on the “female industrial proletariat” was carefully controlled.140 The Völkischer Beobachter kept up a steady stream of reminders for women not to abandon their duties outside the home; Gauleiter Bürckel cautioned all girls and women “to do their part to support the struggle at the front, to the best of their abilities.”141 Positive images of happy factory workers and seamstresses abounded in the press, as did photos of highranking ofcials visiting them at their work sites. Von Schirach visited one such factory in November of 1943, ofering a motivating talk to the “girls” there, praising their fashionable culture and light-hearted cheerfulness. The Viennese woman however, also understands how to work and it is a triumph of her character that she surrounds the drab realities of everyday life with a glimmer of happiness through her cheerful nature.142 Her work outside the home, of course, was not to interfere with her first duty of producing children for the state, as the Völkischer Beobachter noted: “The working mother will also bear children.”143 Like her Altreich counterpart, the Wienerin was exalted above all for giving birth: “The city of Vienna takes great pleasure in the birth of her five children.”144 While her Mutterdienst (maternal service) was her highest contribution to the state, she was also expected to fulfill her service to the Reich through the proper forms of culture, housework etc.145 Bürckel made this clear in a speech on May 11, 1940: There is no more honorable task for women and girls . . . than to stand in the factories where our soldiers are forged. . . . Therefore wives of the Party leaders, wives of the officials and ofcers, German girls, it must be your highest honor to pitch in everywhere, and if the party comes to you in the next few days, with the request to step up to any machine, or execute some task at home, then no woman who is not thoroughly and fully engaged in her household may be excluded.146

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Figure 6.29 Harold Reitterer, Kleo Freifrau Hammer-Purgstall. Oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger, June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 200). Author’ collection.

While the portraits often focused on women who worked in the entertainment industry, depictions of female artists were nowhere in evidence despite their existence in reality. There is little indication in the portraits that women like Baroness Kleo (Clothilde) Freifrau Hammer-Purgstall worked in creative fields. Married to the composer Heinrich Hammer-Purgstall, Kleo was a sculptor and painter.147 In her portrait by Harold Reitterer,148 she appears as a glamorous, very stylishly dressed model with a veiled hat and costly suit (but with a rather frank and defiant gaze). The extremely complex and complicated realm of women artists under National Socialism cannot be adequately dealt with here, aside from pointing out their neglect as sitters at the Künstlerhaus show and, ironically, a few of their contributions as producers.149 For women artists who complied with the NS-approved style and subjects (as well as the acceptance of their separate and lesser achievement),150 there was the Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen der Reichsgaue der Ostmark, into which the myriad female art associations had been folded.151 Several members contributed to the 1942 exhibit, including Hertha Bitterlich, Margarete Hanusch, Valerie Hecke-Andrik and Lois Pregartbauer. From the available images, their works do not difer in their presentation of women from those of their male counterparts, nor do they all adhere to some preconceived notion of “Nazi” art but display a range of styles, some leaning toward Expressionism, others boldly or more abstractly painted. Like the surrounding discourse on the exhibit, women were still largely the objects, rather than the agents or subjects, of the show. Women’s art was often treated as a separate “realm” during the Nazi period: for example, in the large Künstlerisches Frauenschafen exhibit held at the Ausstellungshaus Friedrichsstrasse (the former Secession Gallery) in the summer of 1940, drawn from submissions by the Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen der Reichsgaue der Ostmark (VbKO).152 In the same year, an exhibit of female artists was held in the Altreich, Künstlerische Frauenschafe, selected from the works of the NS-Frauenschaft und Deutschen Frauenwerke.153 The show included puppet shows and children’s parades, with the aim, as always, of placing all work by women within the framework of motherhood. Overlapping nearly exactly in time with the Künstlerhaus exhibit of 1942, the VbKO held their

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second yearly exhibit in their newly “purged” incarnation at the Wien Kunsthalle.154 With paintings and sculpture nearly indistinguishable from those of their male peers, the female artists displayed close to 300 works, from landscapes to portraits and genre scenes. Given their simultaneous occurrence, perhaps the schöne Wiener show served as a foil to the Frauenkunst show, reasserting women’s place as models and muses, rather than creators. By the time of the 1942 exhibit, so many of the most important women artists in Vienna had been exiled or deported, for a disproportionate number of them were Jewish.155 Julie Johnson points out their efacement during the Nazi period (for example, the name of the celebrated Tina Blau removed from a stop sign or the rewriting of Austrian art history by Bruno Grimschitz—whose contributions to the Künstlerhaus exhibits under study here have been frequently noted—to make it judenfrei).156 In 1938 both the Wiener Frauenkunst and the VbKO were “Aryanized.” Thus, Jewish women artists were the subject of a double erasure, both as successful women and as Jews. Other than the performers depicted, who existed in many ways only as glamorous images, the women portrayed would seem to have no existence outside those of cheerful fashion plates. What feelings did such portraits of charming, contented women inspire in their female viewers? Did they fulfill a deeply needed desire for escape, for a sense that despite the ongoing war and its deprivations, life was continuing in normal fashion? Did they tap into the pride of Viennese women? Or did they perhaps evoke feelings of resentment as women, faced with daily rationing, continual admonitions to be thrifty and their “leisure” time all but demolished by meaningless work for the war efort, came to look at image after image of impeccably dressed and happy wives? Not only would such images of relaxed and carefree women have been at odds with the lives of average Wienerinnen, but so also would the costly and up-to-the moment fashions shown on many of the sitters. By the time of the Künstlerhaus exhibit, the most severe of the clothing rations had gone into efect. Although Reichskleiderkarte (the clothing rations card) dated to the fall of 1939, a far more extreme version was issued in late 1941, including sharp reductions in textiles and leather, to the complaint and consternation of the public. Thus, while the emphasis on clothing that dominated so many of the works was seldom openly acknowledged in reviews, it would have been glaringly obvious to viewers of the show.157 Readers of the exhibition review published about the show in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt on June 23, for example, had merely to glance down the page to read an article entitled “Kleidenkarten gelten im ganzen Reich” (“Clothing ration cards in efect throughout the Reich”) to be brought back to reality.158 The schöne Wienerin and Vienna as Fashion Capital To some extent, the entire realm of fashion is anathema to National Socialist ideology. As writers from Walter Benjamin to Roland Barthes have explored,159 fashion derives its power from the ever-new, the continually changing. The National Socialist Weltanschauung, premised as it was on the biological and racial “eternal,” was thus by nature opposed to fashion. In ofcial discourse, the concept of fashion was seldom promoted and was often portrayed as decadent and dangerous. Yet in the realm of real life, as opposed to ideology, the situation was far more contradictory and nuanced. Rather than condemn fashion outright, many upheld fashion as long as it was truly “German,” not only in its place of manufacture but also in its “character.” Clothing became yet another arena in which one could assert their allegiance to the Reich and to its values. Even this practice, however, was

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hardly stable and ubiquitous; a look at the fashion journals, advertisements and portraiture of the period reveals that women often self-fashioned in ways that directly contradicted the espoused state ideals. Moreover, such nods to the importance of fashion resonated in Vienna, a city that had been chosen to serve as the “fashion capital of the Reich.”160 From the neck up, Nazi policy espoused a “natural” face, devoid of make-up and over-grooming and hair that did not look overdone.161 Women were to avoid the “artifice” of plucked eyebrows and painted lips, which made them look too much like their American counterparts or Hollywood starlets. As with everything else under National Socialism, this kind of “modern” and artificial look, so prominent in fashion layouts and advertisements, was also condemned on racial grounds. One should look at the fashion magazines! With them, one can at least negatively clarify what the face of a nation is not. One should study the bodies and faces, the postures and expressions found in these sketches to learn what kind of “people” are being ofered in these magazines as “modern” and “exemplary.” At any price, one wants to be “exotic”—well, they look negroid, balinese, mongolian, or whatever, but under no circumstances normal, European, and German. . . . This crazy mixture of races is still ofered to us today as “Die Dame”! What is mirrored here is also not the “Elegante Welt”—rather, they are the monstrous creations of that “wrong thinking” which in Germany we have already driven out of the other arts.162 Megan Brandow-Faller has noted how prominent make-up was also associated with Jewish women’s self-fashioning.163 As both Uta Poiger and Irene Guenther argue, women often ignored such proscriptions completely: both ordinary girls and women in the highest circles of the Nazi elite, such as Eva Braun and Emma Göring. Ads abounded for make-up, hair-removal items, etc. in direct contrast to the recommended ideals. Journals targeting ordinary women, like Wiener Illustrierte, included plenty of photos of women engaged in daily activities sporting finely tweezed brows, coifed hair and cosmetics. As a fully made-up blonde peers into a hand mirror in a July 1942 issue, the caption beneath reads, “Mirror, mirror in the hand . . . The eternal question of all women.”164 Plenty of the sitters in the 1942 schöne Wiener show either actually wore or had themselves depicted with make-up and carefully groomed brows. Max Neuböck’s

Figure 6.30 “Spieglein, Spieglein” (Mirror, Mirror). Advertisement. Wiener Illustrierte. July 29, 1942, p. 10.

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Figure 6.31 Max Neuböck, Bildnis L.R. Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger, June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 157). Author’s collection.

Portrait of L.R. shows the sitter with perfectly arched brows, eyes and lips lined with make-up, a high pompadour and even sleek nail polish.165 So, too, Pauser’s wife, Anny, seems to wear a full face of make-up on her eyes, cheeks and lips (Figure 6.9), as does the model in Czedekowski’s Im Fenster (Figure 6.24). Dobrowsky’s sitters have bright red and clearly “artificially colored” lips (Figure 6.14). Very few of the images ofer what can be described as “well-scrubbed faces.” Even the more modest and less formal of the women portrayed (e.g., Robert Streit’s Frau Amsler (Figure 6. 23) and Janesch’s Bildnis Walli (Figure 6.18) follow the general beauty ideals of the time period rather than “naked” faces with unplucked eyebrows. Viennese women of the day followed the ideals in popular magazines far more closely than the thunderings that came out of the party manuals or that were dictated to them by the Führerinnen of their women’s groups. If ofcial policy condemned the wearing of make-up for its association with negative (and non-German) elements, this was certainly the case for the latest fashion. While Paris was clearly seen as the prime competitor in the realm of style, contemporary fashions were also associated with the “foreign,” American and Jewish. Two solutions or proscriptions were imposed from above. One was to be entirely “anti-fashion” and to promote the wearing of Dirndln and uniforms. Trachten (regional folk dress) and Dirndln were encouraged, of course with scrubbed faces and often with braids, a celebration of the true German peasant girl. In Schwarze Korps, the journal that targeted the wives of the SS elite, fashion of any sort was pitted against the idea of the “natural” and the völkische and therefore castigated. (Yet despite this, these women often dressed in the most expensive French fashions.)166 Women were also encouraged to wear their uniforms, at once releasing them from the decadent concerns of fashion and showing their allegiance to organization and Reich. Another argument emerged, in which fashion itself was not only tolerated but strongly supported as long as it was German fashion. Both strategies—anti-fashion and German fashion—were premised on the complete disappearance of a once-dominant Jewish clothing industry. The field of ready to wear, or Konfektion, was centered in Berlin in the first decades of the 20th century and was a predominantly Jewish arena, from designers to manufacturers to the owners of clothing and department stores.167

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Konfektion, a counter to the haute couture field inarguably dominated by France, involved over 800 firms and a third of the city’s workers in the 1920s. As with every other field of cultural or economic endeavor, the Nazis vowed to crush the Jewish-dominated clothing industry in Germany and largely decimated it in a few years’ time.168 As Irene Guenther notes, the attack on the industry had begun even before the Nazi takeover but reached a crescendo after 1933: “Most importantly, ‘German fashion’ meant ‘racially appropriate’ German clothing, which translated into the elimination of all Jewish influences from the German fashion world.”169 The Konfektion industry was replaced by a powerful network known as The Working Association of German-Aryan Manufacturers of the Clothing Industry, or Adefa, founded in 1933. The association really began to grow and come into its own only in 1938, alongside another association, the Working Association of German Firms of the Weaving, Clothing and Leather Trades, or Adebe, founded in January of 1938.170 Thus it was just around the time of the Anschluss that the importance of the German fashion industry began to increase. Elsa Muhr-Jordan, addressing women in Vienna only weeks after the Anschluss, made clear that fashion choices mattered to them, even as a racial issue: She distanced herself from the excesses of fashion introduced to us by the overwhelming Jewish influence. No one will force her to go around in sackcloth and ashes, but we must be mindful of certain restrictions: not because we are prudes. Praise god, the prowess of women in sports proves just the opposite, but the reason is because we are diferent from Jewesses, who show of their erotic appeal much too freely.171 Women were to be “feminine” but also understated. Overly sexy or ornamented clothing was associated with “Jewish” immodesty. (Such debates on “conspicuous dressing” played out within the Jewish community itself in the 1920s and 1930s.)172 Lisa Silverman has deftly noted that the close association between Jewish women and conspicuous consumption had both a negative side and one strategically used for marketing products.173 Given the significant attention paid to pattern, cut and clothing in so many of the portraits, surprisingly little was said about it. Very few acknowledged the details of style and dress as fully as the reviewer in the Kölnischer Zeitung: Some have fashionable poses, some tastefully present what Viennese women select from the workshop, or the showcase, or what is specially created for them This is the case with the lady [in] Girl with the Red Hat by Sergius Pauser. There is no shortage of conventional “society pieces,” the Lady in evening dress. Some seem a little perplexed, as is the case with the old panels in the Ancestral Gallery, which we as original members of the ensemble would not want to miss.174 Yet, given this discourse, we must ask what messages were sent by the clothing worn in the portraits. Even in the more abstractly painted ones, we often have enough detail to see that the clothing follows very closely the cut and tailoring of the fashions of the day: for example, in the slightly pufed sleeves, the design patterns or the length of jackets and skirts. Did such portraits signal allegiance to the newly fledged German clothing industry? With a few exceptions, the majority of portraits avoid cleavage or bare shoulders in favor of more modest and plain tops. Did this, too, signal a distance from what was seen as the “excesses” and overly sexualized dress of the Jewess?

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Figure 6.32 Postcard of “Kaufhaus der Wiener,” fashion display from Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark, Berlin, 1939. Source: The author.

While the issues around the German clothing industry were important, without question there was an added importance placed on fashion in Vienna, which many in the city hoped would replace Paris as the epicenter of high fashion. It was seen as part of the cultural heritage of the beautiful Wienerin, a kind of emphasis on glamor and femininity in contrast to the kind of edgy style and mass production that had dominated in Berlin. In the early 20th century, Wien Mode had been more closely associated with high-end products than the kind of mass-produced industries in Berlin and had flourished during the interwar period.175 We have seen that in the Berlin show of Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark, a section on fashion was included, announcing the city’s preeminence in the field. Already by the summer of 1938, Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wiener Mode und Geschmacksindustrie (the Society for the Promotion of the Viennese Fashion and Taste Industry) had been established. The cultural ofce would have a special unit devoted to the fashion economy; yearly art shows would be held; and a new fashion academy would be opened. At the head of the Wiener Modeamt (Vienna Fashion Bureau) was Wiener Werkstätte founder and architect Josef Hofmann, who had joined the Nazi party ten days after the Anschluss.176 The Haus der Mode opened on February 22, 1939, in the former, now “Aryanized,” Palais Lobkowitz.177 The organizers and artists participating in the 1942 schöne Wiener exhibit would have been aware of the importance of fashion for the sponsor of the show, Reichsstatthalter von Schirach. Even before his transfer to Vienna, when he was still leader of the Hitler-Jugend; von Schirach was one of only two high-ranking Nazis—the other being stage designer Benno van Arendt—invited to a private showing held in the fashion salon of Schulze Bibernell, which had been commissioned to design dress uniforms for women in the Reich Labor Service.178 Not only was he seen as a steadfast cultivator of beauty and culture in Vienna, but he was also perhaps the prime figure urging the promotion of Vienna as the fashion capital of the Reich.179 Seeing himself as a leader in the “taste industry,” von Schirach repeatedly attempted to wrest control of the fashion industry from Berlin and almost saw his hopes realized in 1940. In the summer of that year, plans were

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made to establish fashion studios, headed by leading designers, in the city. In November of 1940, the Völkischer Beobachter noted 50 of the fashion salons in the city were working to insure “Vienna the first rank among the fashion centers of the newly awakened Europe.”180 But pushback against this was strong and ongoing from both Goebbels and Robert Ley, chair of the Labor Front, neither of whom wished to give up the control centered in Berlin. Goebbels eventually determined to decentralize the fashion industry, depriving Vienna of the funding for such an operation. Nevertheless, von Schirach took opportunities whenever they arose to foster attention on the Viennese fashion industry, such as holding regular fashion weeks in the city. For the 1941 fashion week, journalists from 17 nations came to preview the 1942 lines.181 The clothing on display in the 1942 portrait show, therefore, may have reflected pride in the fashion-forward reputation of Vienna, nationalist allegiance to the German manufacturing industries and a clear attempt to distance the beauty types from the “decadent” and consumerist taste of the Jewish woman. In many cases, the clothing seen in the portraits was taken directly from the fashion magazines of the day. The skirt worn by Janesh’s wife (Figure 6.19) is strikingly similar to the one shown on a page in a 1941 issue of Wiener Modenzeitung, as are the pufed sleeves, lapels and cinched waist of her jacket.182 In yet another portrait of an artist’s wife—Theodor Klotz-Dürrenbach’s painting of his wife, Trude—she is even posed like a fashion model and wears a dress whose fit, cut, details and length could have fit seamlessly into a 1940 issue of Perfekt Mode, as could her hair style. Many of the portraits, such as those by Reiterrer, Pauser, Streit and Schweiger, place great emphasis on glamorous dresses, hats, gloves and jewelry, conveying the women as those of elegance and high fashion sense. In others, such as the portraits by Max Frey and Karl Maria May, the modesty and restrained taste of the clothing may have been understood as creating a clear diference from the more “conspicuous” and “showy” taste of Jewish women (Figures 6.6 and 6.22). Yet for all those eforts—the purging of Jews from the fashion industry, the repression of their history in fashion and fine art and their deportation and disappearance from the city—was the Jewess rendered invisible in a show dedicated to the most beautiful portraits of Viennese women? Or did such attempts to deny her existence serve as a reminder of her absent presence?

Figure 6.33 Wiener Modenzeitung 15 (1941), p. 2.

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Figure 6.34 Theodor Klotz-Dürrenbach, Bildnis Trude Klotz-Dürrenbach. Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced in catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger, June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 108). Author’s collection.

Figure 6.35 Perfekt Mode, p. 99 (1940).

The Absent Jewess The Jewess is nearly absent in the Nazi imaginary. Neither in discourse nor in imagery do we find her. The reasons for her elision are not hard to fathom: in Nazi discourse, the primary presentation was of the Jew as rapist, both sexual and economic. And this, of course, is a far-from-unique gendered presentation.183 Scholars such as Sander Gilman have pointed out that the male Jewish body is marked as Other from the start through the act of circumcision.184 Jewish males could not “pass” in society as could the female Jew. Lisa Silverman has noted the absence of Jewish women in First Republic Austrian culture, doubly Othered as both Jews and females.185 Moreover, the topoi of Jewess in Western Europe is a largely positive and sympathetic one: most commonly that of la belle Juive.186 By the late 19th century, most European countries had their own version of la belle Juive: the beautiful, seductive, Eastern, darkeyed and raven-haired Jewish woman. In 1825, in his Essays on English Literature,

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François René Chateaubriand famously wrote that “Jewesses have escaped from the curse of their race.”187 But by the late 19th century, the beautiful Jewess was often conflated with the seductive femme fatale. As Kerry Wallach notes, there were many ways in which the Jewess could be recognized and many things that marked her, but by the 1920s, a new interest in her “embodied racial and ethnic diferences” took hold.188 This was particularly true in Germany where her power lay in part in her split identity: she was both “asiatische und Deutsche” (Eastern and German).189 She was marked in part by her Eastern dress. The Jewess was physically distinguished by her “dark skin and eyes, curly abundant hair, often a kind of ‘Mediterranean type.’”190 Throughout Germany and Eastern Europe during the 1920s, both publications and beauty contests sponsored by Jewish communities intentionally emphasized a distinctly Jewish beauty type—for example, with bobbed hair and dark coloring—who was promoted as a kind of transnational figure.

Figure 6.36 Gabriel Joseph Marie Augustin Ferrier, Judith, 1875, oil on canvas, 114.3 × 81.3 cm (45 × 32 in). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 6.37 Anonymous, “Jeune fille juive” (Young Jewess). Morocco, postcard, c. 1910. Source: The author.

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If Vienna had been historically understood as both the most Eastern and the most Jewish of German cities, how could the Jewess not figure in the tradition around the schönste Wienerin? How could any exhibit attempting to render the most beautiful fail to take her into account? For all the National Socialist assertion of the blonde, fair-skinned and blue-eyed Aryan as the only recognized form of physical beauty, it is striking how few of the 1942 “most beautiful” portraits depict fair sitters. Some of the women, in fact, could arguably be classified as “Jewish” beauty types (Figures 6.29). Many portraits depict women in heavy veils and head wraps (Figures 6.14 and cat. 179, cat. 260),191 which surely evoked, at least for some, the popular imagery in painting and photography of la belle Juive. Was this an attempt on some part to recoup the Jewess while erasing her, to salvage those admired parts while condemning the real Jewesses to death and annihilation? The absence of the Jewess was made far more problematic by the fact that the two most lauded portraitists in recent Viennese history, Makart and Klimt, had cast Jewesses in central roles in their oeuvres.192 As noted, Makart’s favorite sitter was Hannah Klinkosch, the beautiful, fashionable daughter of Jewish silverware manufacturer Josef Carl Klinkosch, who converted to Catholicism (Figure 6.13). Makart portrayed her no less than three times, and one of his portrayals of her was shown at the Paris World Fair

Figure 6.38 Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, 1907, oil, silver and gold leaf on canvas. 54 × 54 in. Source: Neue Galerie New York/Art Resource, NY.

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in 1878. Other Jewish women (e.g., Henrietta Mankiewicz and Sarah Bernhardt) appear throughout Makart’s works.193 As we argued earlier, the “elimination” of Jewish women in Vienna in 1940 was echoed in the Makart retrospective organized by Bruno Grimschitz, where none of the artist’s Jewish portraits appeared. In the case of Gustav Klimt, only the Jewish Adele Bloch-Bauer was portrayed more than once (in fact, three times if one counts his 1901 Judith and Holofernes as a disguised portrait, which many do); he produced more drawings of her than of any other sitter.194 Klimt’s entire career, most especially his portraits, are unthinkable without his support from the Jewish women of Vienna’s fin de siècle.195 Thus in the 1942 Künstlerhaus exhibit, the figure of the Jewess, along with real Jewish women, functioned as an absence. This is so because she had once been so present. Geneviève Zubrzycki clarifies the meaning of absence in the context of the Holocaust: This is not a state that simply describes what or who is not there, but rather it calls attention to what and who is no longer: is no longer there, and is no longer, tout court. In this second sense, then, absence is more than a lack: it is a void, a vacuum, a hole. This definition captures not only the empirical, observable state—“There are no or few Jews here”—but also the fact that this was not always so. Absence in this historical-temporal sense emphasizes the traumatic passage of one state (presence) to another (absence).196 While there was a literal lack of Jewesses portrayed for the show, did visitors not flash, if even only for a moment, to those they had seen in works by Klimt, by Makart, the Jewish types on display in the 1928 Elida contest? Or those women they had known, had seen, in restaurants and theaters and on the Ringstrasse who had so conveniently disappeared? The type of woman so dominant in the exhibit—the theatrical woman and the woman of fashion—surely conjured the Jewess who had occupied such a central place in those realms. And what of the artists in the show? Which of the beautiful women on display most reminded Max Neuböck (Figure 6.31) of his own beautiful former wife, Nina Wayland, who had likely been murdered by the time the exhibition opened its door? From 1924 until their divorce in January of 1938, Neuböck was married to Wayland, who came from a Jewish family in Lodz. No longer legally protected after the divorce, Nina was deported back to Lodz and eventually sent with her family to Lithuania. Although the artist was never able to establish her whereabouts after her deportation from Lodz, she and her parents were almost certainly murdered in the Holocaust. Neuböck kept his final portrait of Nina in his possession for the rest of his life. What did the smiling, self-assured sitters—even his very own—evoke for Neuböck?197 In late-19th- and early-20th-century French and German culture of performance, the Jewish woman was central. Alison Rose observes about the fin de siècle that The Jewish woman was an attractive figure on the Viennese stage despite anti-Semitism. Whether she functioned as a victim or as a villain, she almost invariably appeared exotic, alluring, and beautiful. . . . The attraction of the “otherness” of the forbidden Jewish woman undoubtedly contributed to her popularity on the stage.198 Both Sarah Bernhardt and Rachel (Rachel Félix) were Jewish, and their roles as seductresses and exotic figures were inherently interwoven with their identities. The phenomenon of Jewish actresses, singers and dancers was widespread in the 19th century.199

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Seduction, performance and public identity were often intertwined with the perceived exoticism of the Jewess. I am not arguing here that all actresses or performers were thought to be Jewish, but rather that the predominance of singers, actresses etc. only further revealed the strange absence of the Jewess in the 1942 show. In this show, the Wienerin replaced her, perhaps quite literally stepping into her shoes, rather than rejecting her entirely as a figure of diference. And such acts raised her specter; she could not so easily be banished from the collective memory. The Jewess haunts these images, even as the exhibit repressed her existence. Was the collective memory of the fashionable, style-conscious Jewess also so easily forgotten, or rather replaced by her Aryan counterpart? Only years before, the Jewish woman had been inextricably associated with all things new, and that, of course, included the ever-current world of fashion. In her book on Die Moderne Jüdin, published in 1913, Else Cronen noted that the Jewish woman was the essence of elegance, “indisputably far more elegant than the German woman living right beside her.”200 It had been Jewish women who formed the core of patronage for the avant-garde fashions of the Secession during the fin de siècle, such as the clothing designed by the Schwestern Flöge.201 Writing in Die Dame and Elegante Welt (the very publications that had come in for attack by Elsa Muhr-Jordan for their “negroid” and “Jewish” flavor),202 Jewish female journalists had been the trendsetters within the fashion world of Berlin.203 Madame d’Ora (the Jewish Dora Kalman) had an enormous influence on Viennese women in the 1920s and 1930s with her fashion photography, as did Ella Zirner-Zwieback, through her design studio.204 Photos of Zirner-Zwieback show her in a distinctly Jewish vein, her dark, short hair and fur often visual tropes for the fashionable Jewess.205 What—or whom—did the carefree visitor to Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild see when they looked at Alfred Gerstenbrand’s Dame im gelben Abendkleid (Woman in a Yellow Evening Dress)? Like so many others, Gerstenbrand had had an early career as a Modernist, attending the Wien Kunstgewerbeschule with Karl Moser and Josef Hofmannn, showing portraits of both Gustav Klimt and Sigmund Freud in the explosive 1908 Kunstschau and joining the Secession in 1918. In another life, he had had numerous Jewish patrons and friends,

Figure 6.39 Alfred Gerstenbrand, Dame im gelben Abendkleid (Woman in Yellow Evening Dress). Image destroyed (overpainted). Source: Reproduced in catalogue, Frühjahrs Ausstellung: Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart, Die Meisterpreisträger, June 13 to July 12, 1942. Künstlerhaus Wien. Druck Ehrlich and Schmidt (cat. 50). Author’s collection.

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among them industrialists and department store magnates like Alfred Gerngross, Gustav and Willhelm Heller and members of the Herz-Kestranek family. Under the Nazis, Gerstenbrand continued to paint and also served as an exhibition curator. In later days, he made contact with the Austrian resistance in Salzburg.206 With the windswept background and her elongated proportions, the woman in Gerstenbrand’s portrait perhaps recalls an aristocratic sitter from a British painting.207 Did she also, however—and certainly only in the most subtle of ways—recall another long-limbed, slough-eyed, elegant and beautifully dressed Viennese woman in evening clothes: the famed Adele Bloch-Bauer? (Figure 6.38). Did her yellow dress recall the intoxicating gold of the Klimt portrait and the color associated with the Jew’s badge of shame? Surely such evocations were not intentional, and perhaps, they were not there at all. The absence of the Jewess at the 1942 Künstlerhaus show was not a “natural” state. She had been an unspoken part of the long history of Viennese portraiture and among the most celebrated of beautiful Viennese women. Her absence, I have argued, was more than a lack; it was a loss and a void. As with other instances of National Socialist memoricide, it was not enough merely to have taken her future: that is, to have murdered her. The organizers, participants and artists of the 1942 exhibit eradicated her name and her history and rendered her, in every sense of the word, faceless. Notes 1. Andrea Langenohl, “Memory in Post-Authoritarian Societies,” in Cultural Memory Studies, 182. 2. Young, “Memory and Counter-Memory,” 4. 3. This is in contrast to the common depiction of female nudes, which often stood as representations of the “body of the nation” or allegory. For a thorough examination of female nudes in Nazi art, see Elke Fritsch, “Kulturproblem Frau: Weiblichkeitsbilder in der Kunst des Nationalsozialismus (Vienna: Böhlau, 2006). 4. David Welsh, Propaganda and the German Cinema 1933–1945 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001). 5. While acknowledging the important work on gender and National Socialism by scholars such as Ingrid Bauer and Johana Gehmacher, Zettelbauer notes that there is still much work left to do “in particular on the role of Austrofascism and its specific gender images . . . the gap between gender discourse and social practice . . . spaces across the political and the private” and in many other areas of Austrian National Socialism and gender. Heidrun Zettelbauer, “Anti-Semitism and the Strategies of Homogenization: German-nationalist Women’s Associations in Styria and Graz,” in Mapping Contemporary History III: 25 Jahre Zeitgeschichte und der Universität Graz, eds. Helmut Konrad and Stefan Benedik (Vienna: Böhlau, 2010). 6. Irene Guenther, Nazi Chic: Fashioning Women in the Third Reich (London: Berg Fashion Library, 2001), ebook. 7. To my knowledge, there is no secondary literature on the exhibit outside the two pages in Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, 297; 300. 8. These include Josef Dobrowsky, Hans Frank, Ferdinand Andri, Ferdinand Brunner etc. 9. On the role of women artists during the First Republic, see the works of Megan BrandowFaller, The Female Secession: Reclaiming “Women’s Art” at the Viennese Women’s Academy 1897–1938 (University Park: Penn State Press, 2020); Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, Frauenbilder und Bilder von Frauen im Wiener Ausstellungsbetrieb in der Politik der Präsentation: Museum und Ausstellung im Österreich: 1918–1945 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 1996). 10. Visions of the Neue Frau: Women and the Visual Arts in Weimar Germany, eds. Marsha Meskimmon and Shearer West (London: Scolar Press, 1995). 11. Julie Kalman and Daniella Doren, “Absence in the Aftermath,” Journal of Contemporary History. Special Volume: Absence in the Aftermath, 52, no. 2 (April 2017): 207. The authors express the importance of understanding absence not only as an empirical reality but as a device for studying the Holocaust: “Absence, in contrast, is a conceptual tool that we bring to

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12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Erasing the Jewess history; specifically, in this case, to the history of the gaps left in European societies following the non-return of Jews after the Shoah.” Omer Bartov, “Defining Enemies, Making Victims: Germans, Jews, and the Holocaust,” American Historical Review 103, no. 3 (June 1998): 779. Igo Pötsch and R. H. Eisenmenger, “Das Wiener Frauenbild,” Press Release, September 26, 1941, Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild file, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives,Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. Aichelberg reported that the show was inspired by a letter in October 1941 from a Frau Herta Boresch, but the press release clearly pre-dates the letter. J. A. Hembo, Wien: Die ewige Hauptstadt der weiblichen Schönheit: Ein ästhetisches Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung, Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild. Undated, Das schönste Wiener Frauenbild file, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. Letter of September, 1941. Das schönste Wiener Frauenbild file, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. For example, Zwischen Westwall und Maginot Line, January 19, 1941 to February 28, 1941; Wanderausstellung der NS-Gemeinschaft Kraft durch Freude, November 1, 1941; Deutsche Künstler sehen das Generalgouvernement, March 16, 1941. Typed press release, Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild. Undated. Das schönste Wiener Frauenbild file, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. Eisenmenger, Press release, February 10, 1942. Das schönste Wiener Frauenbild file, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. Letter from Igo Pötsch to Herr Siegfried von Vegesack, April 25, 1942, Das schönste Wiener Frauenbild file, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. A map for the show was originally intended but abandoned due to paper shortages. Moissl co-authored an earlier book with Igo Pötsch, 500 Jahre Stephansturm (Wien: Harbour, 1933) and, in the year after the show, wrote the text for a publication highlighting colored prints by several Künstlerhaus artists: R. A. Moissl, Kunst der Gegenwart (St. Pölten: St. Pöltner Zeitungs-Verlags, 1943); Rudolf Alexander Moissl, Die Ahnenheimat des Führers (St. Pölten: St. Pöltner Zeitungs-Verlags, 1940). Frűhjahrs Ausstellung: Das schőne Wiener Frauenbild; Deutsche Kupferstecher der Gegenwart; Die Meisterpreisträger 1942 Gesellschaft Bildender Künstler Wiens Künstlerhaus. June 13 to July 12, 1942, in den Außtellungshäusern I. Karlsplatz 5 und 1 Friedrichstraße 12. Invitation to opening of Frühjahrs-Ausstellung 1942. Das schönste Wiener Frauenbild file, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. Blaschke quoted in Jan Tabor “[U]nd sie folgen ihm: Österreichische Künstler und Architekten nach dem Anschluss 1938. Eine Reportage,” in Wien 1938. Sonderausstellung, exhibit catalogue. Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, ed. Siegwald Ganglmair (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1988), 414. Wroclaw Castle Museum (October 4, 1942 to November 16, 1942); Muschelsaal at City Hall, Cologne (November 1, 1943 to February 7, 1943); Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig (July 3, 1943); Artist’s House, Brno (August 5, 1943). Letter from Herrn Director Kolb, Haus der Deutschen Kunst, June 13, 1942; a press release from von Schirach indicated that he hoped the show would also go to Danzig and Berlin. Das schönste Wiener Frauenbild file, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. Aichelberg, “Verzeichnis der Ausstellungen 1868 bis 2010,” Wladimir Aichelburg: 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/ausstellungen/ verzeichnis/. Moissl, “Vom Porträt zum Bildnis,” unpaginated. “So wurde das Bildnis naturnotwendig zur Bourgeoiskunst hochbürgerlicher Luxuslaune.” Moissl, “Vom Porträt zum Bildnis.” “[M]ancher andere nach fremden Ländern gewandert war, um sich in den Tanz ums goldene Kalb einzureihen.” Moissl, “Vom Porträt zum Bildnis.” Moissl, “Vom Porträt zum Bildnis.” Moissl, “Vom Porträt zum Bildnis.” Moissl, “Vom Porträt zum Bildnis.” This may be the same A. Hembo who served as editor of Das Rendezvous: Illustrierte Wiener Revue during the 1890s. See Allgemeines Bücher-Lexikon, vol. 1889–92, ed. William Hensius (Leipzig: F.A. Brodhaus, 1894).

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34. “Das autriche Plasma als biologischer Begrif hat bei der Wienerin von heute in Laufe der Jahrhunderte greifbare Formen angenommen.” The use of the term austriche (rather than Ostmärkische) is extremely unusual here. Hembo was perhaps attempting to cast the Wienerin in an elegant frame by referring to her with a French term. 35. On the “ideal” woman in National Socialism, see the classic study, Claudia Koontz, et al. When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (London: New Feminist Library, 1984) and Frietsch, Kulturproblem Frau. 36. Rudolf Böttger, Gesandter S.A.—Gruppenführer Doktor Hermann Neubacher (cat. 12); Anton H. Karlinsky, Professor Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche, Pionier der Arbeit (cat. 94). 37. Florian Jung, “Der Maler Rudolf Böttger in Metten (1945–1952),” in Deggendorfer Geschichtsblätter 27 (2005): 315–344; Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, 133; 143. 38. Robert Fuchs, Selbstbildnis (cat. 45). Like so many of the artists under discussion, Fuchs had earlier worked in a Modernist style, contributing portraits to the Neue Freie Presse in previous decades. For a brief biography on Fuchs, see Abraham Hedwig, Kunst und Klultur in Wien, http://www.viennatouristguide.at/Friedhoefe/Zentralfriedhof/Index_40_Bild/40_ fuchs_140.htm. 39. The sculpture was purchased for Göring’s Karinhalle. On Hanusch see Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, Künstlerinnen in Österreich 1897–1938. Malerei—Plastik—Architektur. (Vienna: Picus-Verlag, 1994), 84, 236, 270. 40. Anton Robert Bodenstein, Siegfried Stoitzner: Ein Leben für die Kunst (Vienna: Christian Brandstätter Verlag, 2006). Stoitzner joined the Künstlerhaus in 1941. 41. Friztsche, 81. 42. Guenther, “Fashioning Women in the Third Reich,” in Nazi Chic. 43. Lisa Silverman, “Ella Zirner-Zwieback, Madame d’Ora and Vienna’s New Woman,” in Fashioning Jews: Clothing, Culture and Commerce, ed. Leonard J. Greenspoon (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2013). 44. Susanne Meyer-Büser, Das schönste Deutsche Frauenportrait: Tendenzen der Bildnismalerei in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: Reimer, 1994). 45. Jochen Yung, “The Modernized Gretchen: Transformations of the ‘New Woman’ in the Late Weimar Republic,” German History 33, no. 3 (March 2015): 52–79. 46. Leonora-Viktoria Edith Skala, “Die Darstellung von Weiblichkeit in der Kunst des Austrofaschismus,” PhD. thesis, University of Vienna, 2010; Darcy Buerkle, “Gendered Spectatorship, Jewish Women and Psychological Advertisement in Weimar Germany,” Women’s History Review 14, no. 4 (September 2006): 625–636; Silverman, “Ella Zirner-Zwieback.” 47. Yung, “The Modernized Gretchen,” 61. 48. In the same year, the Vienna Secession held their “Internationale Aktausstellung,” nodding to a more conservative image of woman as nude subject. 49. Mila Ganeva, “Miss Germany, Miss Europe, Miss Universe: Beauty Pageants in the Popular Media of the Weimar Republic,” 11–130, and Kerry Wallach, “Recognition for the ‘Beautiful Jewess’: Beauty Queens Crowned by Modern Jewish Print Media,” in Globalizing Beauty: Consumerism and Body Aesthetics in the Twentieth Century, eds. Hartmut Berghof and Thomas Kühne (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 111–130; 131–150. 50. Yung, “The Modernized Gretchen.” 51. “Die Schönheit der berufstätigen Frau,” Tempo (January 19, 1929), 1. Translations are those of Yung. 52. The categories in which the women were submitted were as follows: ofce workers, sales clerks, telephonists and other technical professions, teachers and nurses, hospitality, factory workers, academic professions and students, and domestic workers including housewives. 53. “Wer ist die Schönste von Wien?” Zwölf Uhr-Blatt (July 8, 1942); “Bildende Kunst im Dienste der Frauen Schönheit,” Wiener Kronen-Zeitung (June 13, 1942), 4. 54. Both the painted subjects and the female artists were subjected to this objectifying gaze, which reduced artistic achievement to the creation, with make-up or with paint, of a pretty face. Julie Johnson, The Memory Factory: The Forgotten Women Artists of Vienna 1900 (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2012), 314–321. 55. Elida Preis für das schönste Österreichische Frauenportrait. Ständige Delegation der Künstlervereinigung, Wien, 1928. In the company’s advertisement, they invariably depicted a blonde, soft “Nordic” type.

134 56. 57. 58. 59.

60.

61. 62.

63.

64. 65. 66.

67. 68.

69. 70.

71. 72.

73.

74. 75.

Erasing the Jewess Dagmar Klein, Der Expressionist Willy Jaeckel (Cologne: Müller Botermann, 1990). Meyer-Büser, Das schönste Deutsche Frauenportrait. See Skala, “Die Darstellung von Weiblichkeit.” Elizabeth Otto and Vanessa Rocco, “Introduction: Imagining and Embodying New Womanhood,” in The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s to the 1960s, eds. Elizabeth Otto and Vanessa Rocco (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 1–20. On Andri, see Chapter 4, footnote 11. Rudolf Bacher had been a founding member of the Secession, although his works were more traditional in style, and he remained highly celebrated under the Nazis. Fritz Silberbauer was a noted Graz artist who joined the Nazi party and created several murals under the commission of the NS Party. The show was held in the Mittelsaal of the Künstlerhaus from December 10 to 18. MeyerBüser, Das schönste Deutsche Frauenportrait, 27 f; Skala, “Die Darstellung von Weiblichkeit,” 46 f. On Rössler’s misogynistic criticism, see Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, “Frauenbilder und Bilder von Frauen im Wiener Ausstellungsbetriebe,” in Politik der Präsentation: Museum und Ausstellung in Österreich 1918–1945 (Wien: Turia und Kant, 1996), 101; Brandow-Faller, The Female Secession, 149–150. Frey joined the Künstlerhaus in 1932. Although he would go on to have a successful career, especially as a landscapist, in 1938 his works were rejected by the Hilfswerk bildender Kunst for not conforming to the “artistic will of National Socialism.” Berthold Zierl, “Max Frey,” Biografie. Berufsvereinigung der bildenden Künstler Österreich, http://biografien.zierlart.at/ max-frey/, accessed July 26, 2015. See also the brief biography on Frey in Frühjahrsausstellung mit Kollektionen Alfred Cossmann, Max Frey . . . See Karla Huebner, “Girl, Trampka or Žába? The Czechloslovakia New Woman,” in The New Woman International, 231–251. Elida Preis für das schönste österreichische Frauenportrait. For example, the architect Jacques Groag and the artist Frederick Sinaiberger. Ursula Prokop, On the Jewish Legacy in Viennese Architecture: The Contribution of Jewish Architects to Building in Vienna 1868–1938 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2016); Monica Jane Strauss, “Vienna on the Vistula,” Refugee Tales. Blog, May 22, 2013, https://refugeetales.com/page/2/. For a good English language introduction to Pauser and his works, see Isabella Ackerl, Sergius Pauser, http://www.sergius-pauser.at/home/en/. Sergius Pauser, Dame mit Hund (Magda Popper), 1934, oil on canvas, 73 × 60 cm, WV 251, Deutschland. Born into a Jewish family, at some point, Popper converted. See her profile at “Magdalena ‘Magda’ Popper” Geni.com, https://www.geni.com/people/ Magdalena-Magda-Popper/6000000012472475393. Critic Soyka quoted in Meyer-Büser, 29. The quote refers to Schnitzler’s one-act play, Countess Mitzi (1915). Ferdinand Kitt (1887–1961) served as president of the Secession from 1926–29. Married to a Mischling, Kitt was also on shaky ground with the RkBk for intervening for his colleague Ludwig Neumark. Schuhe and Forst-Plakolm, Auf Linie, 198. Both Streit and Janesch were Nazi party members. On this issue, see later in this chapter, pp. 126 f. In a letter written to Holtzendorf on April 25, 1913, Lamm makes an antisemitic slur toward the art dealer Paul Cassirer. The letter is reproduced in the 2012 catalogue of the artist’s exhibition: Rainer Hofmann and Jens Kraus, Albert Lamm: Landschaft und Mensch, exhibit catalogue. Fränkische Schweiz-Museums (Tüchersfeld, 2012), 18. I am grateful to Jens Kraus for making me aware of the catalogue and for his knowledge of Lamm’s work. “Hampel, Siegmund Walter,” Österreichisches Biographisches Lexicon Institut für Neuzeitund Zeitgeschichtsforschung. 1815–1950, vol. 2 (Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1958), 171, http://www.biographien.ac.at/oebl/oebl_H/Hampel_SigmundWalter_1867_1949.xmlf. On this, see above, Chapter 4. Veronika Duma, Linda Erker, Veronika Helfert and Hanna Lichtenberger, “Changing the Perspectives. Gender Relations in Austrofascism,” Austrian Journal of Historical Studies (ÖZG) 3 (2016); Irene Bandhauer-Schöfmann, “Hausfrauen und Mütter im Austrofaschismus: Gender, Klasse und Religion als Achsen der Ungleichheit,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für

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82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

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Geschichtswissenschaften 27, no. 3 (2016): 44–70. In October of 2014, a workshop was held at the University of Vienna on the topic “Perspektivenwechsel: Neueste Arbeiten zur Frauenund Geschlechterforschung 1933/1934 bis 1938 in Österreich.” A recent workshop on the topic was organized by Alys George and Britta McEwen, “The New Woman in Interwar Vienna”, Virtual workshop, Stanford University and Creighton University, March 8, 2023. Duma, et al., “Changing the Perspectives.” Katie Sutton, The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany (Brooklyn, NY: Berghahn Books, 2011). Anonymous (Käthe Leichter), 100.000 Kinder auf einen Hieb—Die Frau als Zuchtstute im Dritten Reich (Wien: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1931). Yung sees it as an intended parallel. Yung, “The Modernized Gretchen,” 15. Anton Stieger, “Die Besucher verteilen den Preis: Welche ist das schönste Frauenbild? Die Urne im Künstlerhaus,” Wiener Neueste Nachrichten, June 29, 1942, 2. The review discussed a “ballot box” and noted that “the public alone” would decide. “Reichsleiter von Schirach hat entschieden, dass eine Veröfentlichung der Volksabstimmung über die Bilder der Ausstellung ‘Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild’ aus politischen Gründen nicht erfolgen soll. Auf eventuelle Anfragen soll mitbestellt werden, dass diese Abstimmung lediglich der internen Informationen des Künstlerhauses dienen soll.” Letter of Walter Thomas to Rudolf Eisenmenger, August 6, 1942. Das schönste Wiener Frauenbild file, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. “Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild’ spiegelt die Anmut unserer Stadt,” Adolf Bassaraba, Österreichische Volks-Zeitung, June 14, 1942, 3. Karl Powak, “Die schöne Wienerin: Sonderschau im Wiener Künstlerhaus,” Die Pause 6 (1942): 23. “Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild spiegelt die Anmut unserer Stadt,” 3. Doris Lehmann, “Portraying Viennese Beauty: Makart and Klimt,” in Facing the Portrait: The Portrait in Vienna 1900, ed. Gemma Blackshaw (London: National Gallery, 2013). I take this issue up later, specifically in reference to Jewish sitters, pp. 128–29. Bruno Grimschitz, Hans Makart (1840–1884) Katalog der Gedächtnis-Ausstellung anlässlich der 100. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages. May 28 to August 31, 1940 (Salzburg: ResidenzCarabinierisaal, 1940). On Dobrowsky see Chapter 4, p. 53. Petropoulos, Artists Under Hitler, 292, notes that Albert Speer purchased a watercolor by Dobrowsky in 1944. Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, 300. “Bildende Kunst in Wien. Zur Jubiläumsausstellung der Gesellschaft Bildender Künstler,” Kunst im Deutschen Reich 1 (January 1942): 42. “Die Anmut seiner Gemälde reflektieren kompositorisch die Sicherheit und Kultur der Rasse,” Kunstdetektei. Kunstermittler. Gemäldesuche. The website claims to be aimed at “[D]ie Suche und Rückgewinnung entwendeter oder sonst verlorengegangener Kunstwerke, Gemälde oder Antiquitäten ein.” https://www.kunstdetektei.de/kunst/kuenstler/patzelt-andreas/. Gemma Blackstone, “Past Time and Present Anxieties at the Galerie Miethke,” in Facing the Modern. The 1905 show produced a brief catalogue with an introduction by Hugo Haberfield, Das Wiener Portrait in der ersten Hälfte des XIX. Jahrhunderts, 1905; Also see the essay by Tag Gronberg, “Biedermeier Modern: Representing Family Values,” in Facing the Modern. Mayer-Büser, 100. She notes many illustrations of portraits from the era of Ludwig I. “Die schöne Wienerin in Bildnissen von 1800 bis 1850: Ausstellung in der Galerie Neumann & Salzer, Wien,” Die Kunst für Alle (1930): 184–185; Bruno Grimschitz, Die schöne Wienerin in Bildnissen von 1800 bis 1850 (Vienna: Galerie Neumann and Salzer, 1930). Plakolm-Forsthuber, “Frauenbilder und Bilder von Frauen,” 107. The VbKO held its Zwei Jahrhunderte Kunst der Frau at the Hagenbund, and the Wiener Frauenkunst held an exhibit at the Hofburg entitled Wie sieht die Frau? I am grateful to Megan Brandow-Faller for pointing out the simultaneity of these exhibits. Hitler’s admiration for artists such as Waldmüller, Rudolf Alt and Carl Spitzweg cannot be overestimated. Indeed, the reasons behind his admiration still await full study. The epicenter of Hitler’s planned Linz Museum would contain the works of the Austrian Biedermeier period. Brigit Schwartz, Geniewahn: Hitler und die Kunst (Vienna: Böhlau, 2009). Scholarship still lags on the figure of Leitich, especially on her work once she relocated back to Vienna. See Rob McFarland, Red Vienna, White Socialism and the Blues: Anna Tizia Leitich’s America (Sufolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2015).

136 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102.

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107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112.

113. 114. 115. 116. 117.

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Erasing the Jewess Anna Tizia Leitich, Die Wienerin (Stuttgart: Franckh’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1939), 161. Leitich, Die Wienerin, 10. Leitich, Die Wienerin, 14. Leitich, Die Wienerin, 188. On Habsburg history, see Chapter 8. Leitich, Die Wienerin, 191. Emile Louise Flöge had been the special companion of Gustav Klimt until the end of his life. She and her sister, Helene, had been celebrated as reform dress designers of the Wiener Werkstätte, opening their dress shop, Schwestern Flöge, in 1904. After the Anschluss, the sisters continued to work from their home on Ungargasse. Wolfgang G. Fisher with Dorothea H. Ewan. “Gustav Klimt and Emilie Flöge: An Artist and His Muse,” Woman’s Art Journal 17, no. 2 (1997): 42. According to Guenther, Nazi Chic, “All espoused the virtue of Trachten-Kleidung, its rich Germanic history, its deep symbolic significance as a metaphor for pride in the homeland, and the importance of its revival. The rhetoric fed perfectly into the Nazis’ wider program of ‘blood and soil.’” Else Muhr-Jordan, radio address, March 13, 1938, quoted in Siglinde Bolbecher, “Wunschloses Unglück: Frauen und Männerbild im Nationalsozialismus,” in Wien 1938, 332. Moissl, Das schöne Wiener . . . Bassaraba, “Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild spiegelt die Anmut unserer Stadt,” 3. Janesh was a celebrated war painter in both WWI and WWII. He trained at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. In 1919 he joined the Wien Künstlerhaus. For a brief biography, see Jack Kilgore Gallery, https://www.kilgoregallery.com/artworks/1111/, accessed July 10, 2018. On several occasions, he painted his wife, for example see, Janesh, Portrait of His Wife in Blue Stoll, 1925, and his 1933 Self-Portrait with Wife, 1933, private collection. See Wladimir Aichelburg, “Probleme der Entnazifizierung 1945–1952,” Wladimir Aichelburg, 150 Jahre das Künstlerhaus Wien, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/ mitglieder/probleme-der-entnazifizierung-1945-1952/. See his Bauernadonna (1921), private collection, and Halbfigürlicher weiblicher Akt vor Landschaftshintergrund (1932), private collection. “Bildnis der Schauspielerin Elise Höfer,” 1827, O/C 67.5 × 52 cm, inventory number N.33.051 Wien, Wien Museum. See, for example, Jan Adam Kruseman, Portrait of Alida Christina Assink, 1833 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) or Georg Waldmüller, Son Ferdinand with Dog, 1836 (Neue Pinakothek, Munich). On Frank see Chapter 4, page 49. Streit studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and joined the Künstlerhaus in 1924. In 1941 Hitler purchased Streit’s portrait of Hugo Jury, Gauleiter of Lower Danube at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst exhibit. Projekt des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte in Kooperation mit dem Deutschen Historischen Museum und Haus der Kunst, Große Deutsche Kunstaustellung 1937–1944, http://www.gdk-research.de/de/obj19364712.html. Karl Maria May studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He joined the Künstlerhaus in 1928 and served as its president from 1945 until 1954. Hans Vollmer, ed., Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler des 20. Jahrhunderts, vol. 6 (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1953–1962). Aichelburg, “Probleme der Entnazifizierung 1945–1952.” Holzschuhe and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, p. 269, report that May attempted to “whitewash” the acts of his predecessor, Eisenmenger. The theme was the focus of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the Nineteenth Century (April 5 to July 4, 2011). Catalogue nos. 22 and 23. Karl Strobl, Boleslaw Jan Czedekowski: The Artist and His Work (Vienna: Kunst ins Volk, 1959); A. Rohrhofer, Gedenkausstellung mit Vernissage: Boleslaw Jan Czedekowski (1885–1969) Liebe zu Lofer. Dorfzeitung.com, https://dorfzeitung.com/archive/author/karl/ page/78?print=print-search. Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, 300. Leitich, “Theater und Theaterleute,” Wiener Biedermeier, 168. See for example Joseph Karl Stieler Lola Montez (1847) and Joseph Kriehuber’s lithograph of Fanny Elsser, 1830.

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121. Von Schirach, Ich Glaubte, 271; 286. 122. Deutsch-Schreiner, “Theater in ‘Reichkanzleist,’” 83. The author warns against seeing such Vienna-centric choices as somehow linked to the resistance; they were rather part of von Schirach’s cagey tactics to win over the Viennese public. 123. Due to his common name, it is difcult to find information on Schweiger. He is listed by Aichelburg as a member of the Secession in 1939. 124. “Vera Balser-Elber,” Kürschners Biographisches Theater-Handbuch, ed. Herbert A. Frenzel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1956); On Führer, see Sophie Lillie and Georg Gaugusch, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (New York: The Neue Galerie, 2009), 10. 125. Rudolf Polt, The Films of Elfriede Datzing (Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press, 2011). 126. Dianna Winnie Vogel, Winnie Markus, http://www.winniemarkus.de/2_ueber.htm. 127. Heimkehr, directed by Gustav Ucicky, Wien-Film, 1941, Film. 128. Robert von Dassanowsky, Screening Transcendence: Film under Austro-Fascism and the Hollywood Hope 1933–1938 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018). Ebook. 129. Im Wechselspiel. Paula Wessely und der Film, ed. Armin Loacker (Vienna: Filmarchiv Austria, 2007). 130. Skala notes, “In alle diesen Magazinen entdeckt man immer wieder dieselben Modelle, wie z. B. Porträts von Schauspielerinnen oder Tänzerinnen, wie auch bekannte Damen der Gesellschaft.” Skala, Darstellung, 60. 131. Funk und Film 49 (1946); Mein Film (April 11, 1947). 132. Bruno Brohasta, Das Kleine Blatt, June 14, 1942, 9. 133. Bukey, “The Farming Populace: Anger and Anguish,” 173–174. 134. Michele Mouton, “From Adventure and Advancement to Derailment and Demotion: Effects of Nazi Gender Policy on Women’s Careers and Lives,” Journal of Social History 43, no. 4 (Summer 2010): 945–972; Karin Berger, Zwischen Eintopf und Fließband: Frauenarbeit und Frauenbild im Faschismus: Österreich 1938–1945 (Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1984); Bolbecher, “Wunschloses Unglück,” 331. For primary texts on women industrial workers under Nazism, see Annette Kuhn and Valentine Roth, Frauen im deutschen Faschismus, vol. 1 (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1982) esp. “Der Einsatz der Frauen im Kriegsfall,” 107–119. 135. Mouton, “From Adventure and Advancement to Derailment and Demotion,” 950. 136. Translated and quoted in Mouton, “From Adventure and Advancement to Derailment and Demotion,” 950. 137. See catalogue 212, Hans Schachinger, Frau Dr. Lily Hanslik. 138. Mouton, “From Adventure and Advancement to Derailment and Demotion,” 952. 139. Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 291. 140. Anne Marie Tröger, “The Creation of a Female Assembly Line Proletariat,” When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany, eds. Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann and Marion Kaplan (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984). 141. Bürckel, Völkischer Beobachter, May 1940. 142. Völkischer Beobachter, November 3, 1943, 5. 143. Völkischer Beobachter, January 1, 1939, 4. Quoted in Karen Berger, Zwischen Eintopf und Fließband, 24. 144. Quoted in Bolbecher, “Wunsches Unglück,” in Wien 1938, 330. 145. The Ostmark Frauenschaft consisted of five divisions: Kultur, Erziehung, Mütterdienst, Volkswirtschaft and Hauswirtschaft. On women as mothers in the Ostmark, see Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 289–292. 146. Bürckel quoted in Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 291. 147. See for example Johann and Theresia Prassel, Arbeiten von Cleo-Hammer Purgstall vom Schloss Hainfeld (Feldbach Südoststeirischer Verein für Heimatkunde, 2010). 148. Reitterer’s name is spelled in a variety of ways. A member of both the Künstlerhaus and the Secession, Reitterer became an abstractionist. He specialized in murals and mosaics. In 1943 he was drafted in the Wehrmacht but was wounded eight months later. Gert Ammann, Harold Reitterer 1902–1907: Verliebt in die Natur. Heimat Blatter: Schwazer Kulturzeitschrift 68 (June 2010), https://www.rabalderhaus-schwaz.at/index.php/heimatblaetter/send/4-heimatbltter-2006-2010/34-heimatblaetter-nr-68.html.

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149. On the fascinating issue of the female artist in Vienna prior to the Anschluss, see the works of Brandow-Faller and Plakolm Forst-Huber. Also see Johnson, The Memory Factory. 150. Even here, however, there were exceptions, such as the career of Stephanie Hollenstein, president of the VbKO, a lesbian and practitioner of Expressionism. Hollenstein contributed several works to the Berge und Menschen der Ostmark exhibition, 1939. I am grateful to Megan-Brandow Faller for bringing her to my attention. Evelyn Kain, “Stephanie Hollenstein: Painter, Patriot, Paradox,” Woman’s Art Journal 22, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 2001): 27–33. 151. Its earlier incarnation began with the Anschluss, then was the Kunstverband Wiener Frauen, which lasted until 1941. 152. Jan Tabor, “Und sie folgen ihm: Österreichische Künstler und Architekten nach dem Anschluss 1938. Eine Reportage,” Wien 1938, 410. 153. The show was held on June 8, 1940, and included works by Hertha Strzygowski and Katherina Wallners, Lilly Charlemont and Valerie Czepelka. 154. Zweite Jahresausstellung 1942: Der Vereinigung Bildender Künstlerinnen der Reichsgaue der Ostmark. Wiener Kunsthalle. June 3 to July 6, 1942. The organization was originally founded in 1910. 155. Among the Jewish artists who emigrated, Johnson lists Bettina Bauer-Ehrlich, Anna LesznaiJaszi, Louise Merkel-Romée, Frieda Salvendy, Lilly Steiner and Franziska Zach. Female artists deported to Auschwitz include Ella Iranyi, Sofie Korner, Elisabeth Jung, Luise Woh and Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. 156. See Johnson, “Erasures,” 43–46; “1930–1938: Erasure,” in The Memory Factory. Johnson notes that Grimschitz removed Jewish artists from his 1943 edition of Maler der Ostmark im 19. Jahrhundert (Vienna: A. Schroll & Co, 1943). 157. Guenther discusses the issue of clothing rations in detail. The first Reichskleiderkarte was introduced on November 14, 1939, and the third in late 1941, lasting until the close of 1942. The latter one cut the rations by 30 points. 158. “Spannung um schöne Frauenbilder,” and “Kleideskarten gelten in ganzen Reich,” in Neues Wiener Tagblatt, June 13, 1942, 5. 159. Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Peter Wollen, “The Concept of Fashion in the Arcades Project,” boundary 2, 30, no. 1 (2003): 131–142. 160. See pg. 124. 161. On Nazi proscriptions regarding female beauty and style, see Guenther. See also Uta G. Poiger, “Beauty, Cosmetics and Vernacular Ethnology in Weimar and Nazi Germany,” in Globalizing Beauty, 191–212. 162. Reichsbetriebsgemeinschaft Textil (July 1935): 38, 39. Quoted and translated in Guenther. Poiger notes that an overuse of cosmetics was often associated with a kind of “Jewish-Oriental” woman. 163. Megan Brandow-Faller, “Blurred Boundaries: Life, Work and Legacy of Vally Wieselthier,” in Design Dialogue: Jews, Culture and Viennese Modernism, ed. Elana Shapira (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2018), 229–246. 164. Wiener Illustrierte (July 29, 1942): 10. 165. Born in 1893 in Graz, Neuböck, the son of a sculptor, joined the KH in 1935 and served primarily as a landscapist. On Neuböck, see p. 129. 166. Liliane Crips, “Modeschöpfung und Frauenbild am Beispiel von zwei nationalsozialistischen Zeitschriften: Deutsche Mutter versus Dame von Welt,” in Frauen und Faschismus in Europa: Der faschistische Körper, eds. Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz and Gerda Stuchlik (Pfafenweiler: Centaurus-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1990), 228–235. 167. Mila Ganeva, Women in Weimar Fashion: Discourses and Displays in German Culture 1918–1933 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008), 5. Jewish firms included Rudolph Herzog, Valentin Mannheimer and Hermann Gerson. 168. Roberta S. Kremer, Broken Threads: The Destruction of the Jewish Fashion Industry in Germany and Austria (Oxford: Berg, 2007). 169. Guenther, “Fashioning Women in the Third Reich.” 170. Guenther. Adefa’s “goals were to safeguard and cultivate National Socialist ideals in the textile, clothing, and leather industries; to eliminate all business ties between German and Jewish enterprises connected with these industries; to support and promote German businesses involved in these industries; and to help create a German ‘clothing culture.’”

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171. Else Muhr-Jordan, Die Deutsche Frau, April 4, 1938. Quoted in Bolbecher, “Wunsches Unglück,” 332. 172. Kerry Wallach, “Weimar Jewish Chic: Jewish Women and Fashion in 1920s Germany,” in Fashioning Jews: Clothing, Culture and Commerce, ed. Leonard J. Greenspoon (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2013), 113–135. 173. Silverman, “Stadt ohne Jüdinnen: Absent Jews and Invisible Women in The City Without Jews,” Becoming Austrians, 66–102. 174. Kölnischer Zeitung, January 13, 1943, quoted in Im Reich der Kunst, 284. 175. Silverman, “Picturing Vienna’s New Woman: Madame d’Ora meets Ella Zwieback-Zirner,” in Fashioning Jews. 176. Hofmann’s activities for the Nazi regime have only very recently begun to be studied. See Elana Schapiro, “‘Our Great Josef Hofmann:’ Undoing the Austrian Profile of a Celebrated Architect,” in Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design, eds. Megan Brandow-Faller and Laura Morowitz (London/New York: Routledge, 2022). See also the “digi story” on the website devoted to the exhibition, “Josef Hofmann: Progress Through Beauty” held at MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) Vienna, December 15, 2021 to June 19, 2022, https://www.mak.at/digistory/josefhofmann_en/index.html#group-sectionAustrofascism-and-National-Socialism-Nw0UWx57or. 177. Holzschuh and Plakolm Forsthuber, chapter seven, 181–144. 178. Guenther. The author relates an anecdote in which von Schirach demanded of the designer Heinz Schulze that he allow girls in the Reich Labor Service to model the dresses by marching in them on stage. 179. On this see Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 190–193. 180. Völkischer Beobachter, November 3, 1940. Quoted and translated in Guenther. 181. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl. 182. Wiener Modenzeitung 15 (1941): 2. 183. M. Davies, P. Pollard and J. Archer, “Efects of Perpetrator Gender and Victim Sexuality on Blame Toward Male Victims of Sexual Assault,” The Journal of Social Psychology 146, no. 3 (2006): 275–291. 184. Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York: Routledge, 1991). 185. Silverman, “Stadt ohne Jüdinnen,” Becoming Austrian, 66–102. 186. The concept of the Belle Juive has a long history and has been extensively explored. See Yaëlle Azagury, “La Belle Juive,” Lilith (Spring 2018), https://www.lilith.org/articles/la-belle-juive/; Ulrike Brunott, “All Jews Are Womanly, but No Women Are Jews: The ‘Femininity’ Game of Deception: Female Jew, Femme Fatale Orientale, and Belle Juive,” Orientalism, Gender and the Jews: Literary and Artistic Transformations of European National Discourses, eds. Ulrike Brunotte, Anna-Dorothea Ludewig and Axel Stähler (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2015), 195–220. 187. Chateaubriand, quoted in Azagury. 188. Kerry Wallach, Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017). 189. Else Croner, Die Moderne Jüdin (Axel Junker Verlag, 1913), 21; Sander Gilman, “Salome, Syphilis, Sarah Bernhardt and the ‘Modern Jewess,’” in Love and Marriage=Death and Other Essays on Representing Diference (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998). 190. Wallach, Passing Illusions, 44; “Recognition for the beautiful Jewess.” 191. Catalogue no. 179, Viktor Pipal, Frau mit Vögelin and catalogue no. 260, Rudolf Zeileissen, Dame mit Schleier. 192. Lehmann, “Portraying Viennese Beauty.” 193. Lehmann, “Portraying Viennese Beauty,” 93–97. 194. Sophie Lille, “The Golden Age of Klimt. The Artist’s Great Patrons: Lederer, Zuckerkandl, and Bloch-Bauer,” in Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections (New York: Prestel, 2007), 54–89. 195. This issue will be taken up in far more detail in Chapter 8. Jewish women were central to Klimt’s career, not only as sitters but as patrons and as journalists in support of his work. On the women in his works as Jewesses, see Suzanne Kelly, “Perceptions of Jewish Female Bodies through Gustav Klimt and Peter Altenberg,” Imaginations: Journal of Cross Cultural Image Studies (May 2012), http://imaginations.csj.ualberta.ca/?p=2949.

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196. Geneviève Zubrzycki, “The Politics of Jewish Absence in Contemporary Poland,” in Journal of Contemporary History. Special Volume: Absence in the Aftermath 52, no. 2, (April 2017): 251. 197. Anneliese Köstenberger, “Erlebte Geschichte—Obdach einst—Zeitzeugen berichten” 3. Beitrag: NEUBÖCK—Zeitzeugenbericht von Ministerialrat i.R. Prof. Dr. Rupert Zimmermann. Brochure for exhibit held September 23 to 27. October 27, 1995, Zirbenlandgalerie Haus Köstenberger in Obdach, https://obdach.istsuper.com/fileadmin/_migrated/content_uploads/ Beilage_-_Neuboeck.pdf. There is little material available on the artist. See the brief entry on him in Bild und Plastik mit Kollektionen Günther Baszel, Emil Beischläger . . . Künstlerhaus Wien, March 28 to May 1953, Unpaginated. 198. Alison Rose, Jewish Women in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 213. Also see her chapter six, “Literature and Culture,” 181–218. 199. Brunotte, Orientalism, 69; Sander, “Salome and Sarah.” On Rachel see Rachel M. Brownstein, Tragic Muse: Rachel of the Comédie-Française (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1995); On Bernhardt see Carol Ockmann and Kenneth Silver, Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama (New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press, 2005). 200. Croner, Die Moderne Jüdin, 82. 201. Kimberly A. Smith, “The Tactics of Fashion: Jewish Women in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna,” Aurora: A Journal for the History of Art IV (2003): 135–154. 202. See earlier in this chapter, note 171. 203. Wallach, “Weimar Jewish Chic: Jewish Women and Fashion in 1920s Germany,” in Fashioning Jews. 204. Silverman, “Picturing Vienna’s.” 205. Silverman, “Picturing Vienna’s,” 84. Both the dominance of Jews in the 18th-century fur trade of Eastern Europe and the exotic associations of fur seem to have made the fur coat a clothing item signifying the Jewess. Jenna Weissman Joselit in A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and the Promise of America (New York: Holt, 2002) writes about fur as an early 20thcentury symbol of arrival for Jewish immigrants in America. 206. Franz Gerstenbrand, Ruth Kaltenegger, Helmut Schipani et al., Alfred Gerstenbrand 1881–1977. Künstlerleben eines Jahrhunderts: 1881–1977 (Vienna: Christian Brandstätter Verlag, 2009). 207. Fascinatingly, the portrait seems to have been altered after the war to represent another sitter. Dame im gelben Abendkleid, 1942, reproduced as image no. 253 in Alfred Gerstenbrand 1881–1977: Künstlerleben eines Jahrhunderts, 168 shows the exact same painting, only with the sitter’s hair altered to blonde. According to Dr. Günther Friedrich of the Museumsverein Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie, the painting was originally commissioned to represent Frau Rainer zu Harbach. However, for an unknown reason, the hair was changed before the portrait was exhibited in the 1942 show. After the war, Gerstenbrand apparently repainted the hair to once again represent zu Harbach. The work remains in a private collection. I am grateful to Dr. Friedrich for sending me the reproductions of the images and for sharing his knowledge on Gerstenbrand.

7

The Pearl Loses Its Luster Summer 1942 to Defeat at Stalingrad1

Throughout 1942, major art exhibitions, concerts and theatrical performances continued to be mounted in Vienna, but outside that realm, the luster of life in the city had long since begun to fade. Close to 1,300,000 Austrians were serving in the Wehrmacht, and those who remained at home increasingly felt the long shadow of war on their lives.2 Shortages of food and daily necessities—bread, milk, potatoes, toothpaste, cofee—contributed to the hunger and exhaustion of long hours at conscripted labor. By summer, fear of air raids added to the worry; on August 13, the Americans hit the city with 187 tons of explosives, resulting in 184 casualties and 800 wounded.3 Frustration and annoyance toward the Piefkes and Preussen continued to be fairly commonplace, but there were few public demonstrations. Despite low morale and dissatisfaction, little resentment was expressed toward Hitler, and the Anschluss continued to have support, even if it had begun to sag a bit. There was no popular turn against the Nazi regime; if there had been, von Schirach had strict orders from Hitler to immediately and, if necessary, violently suppress it.4 Austrians who were wayward received increasingly harsher penalties in the People’s Courts, with the number of death sentences climbing; somewhere between 7,000 and 35,000 non-Jewish Austrians were executed in the later years of the war.5 The specter of Austrian separatism had become so disturbing that by 1942 the very concept of Ostmark was suspect. Beginning on January 19, the term Ostmark was forbidden; the region would now be referred to only as the Alpen und Donauland (the Alpine and Danube Lands) (although its inhabitants would continue to be referred to at times as Ostmärker), even for celebrations of the Anschluss.6 Propaganda and films would move away from themes like the Anschluss and the Heimkehr in Reich in favor of local themes in each Gau.7 In the art publication Kunst dem Volk, which had dedicated its early years to helping define and locate an Ostmarkische Kunst, features on the concept sharply declined.8 In a speech of May 1942, Hitler made a point of using the new term, specifically in the context of forecasting Vienna’s decreasing cultural prominence for the Reich, vowing   .  .  .  to break Vienna’s supremacy in the cultural realm within the Alpen und Donau regions and to allow for competition with Linz as well as the expansion of it in Graz, so that those populations, which were never enthusiastic about Vienna in the cultural realm, would be strengthened.9

DOI: 10.4324/9781003353782-7

142 The Pearl Loses Its Luster He would continue to threaten Vienna on the cultural front the following year, noting that he would not stand for an elevation of the city at the expense of others. “At one time,” he claimed Vienna was to remain the sole focus in the realm of Ostmark culture. Therefore I am now against such a development and I am creating other centers of culture to counteract this danger in a timely manner. Otherwise Vienna has too great a cultural appeal. Therefore must everything which Vienna has taken from the provinces be returned to them once again.10 But if the idea of Viennese separatism was quelled in name, it continued unabated in the actual artistic arena, stirring up resentment, for example, at von Schirach’s costly European Youth Festival held in the autumn of 1942.11 In that year, the city was allotted RM 11 million to be spent on a variety of exhibits, shows and concerts. In the midst of shortages and rations, the Belvedere acquired two Corots, as well as works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Aristide Maillol and Claude Monet.12 The end of the year saw celebrations for Hauptmann and Beethoven. Lighthearted Viennese fare dominated in the theaters. Goebbels continued to scold Schirach for his choices, including Tchaikovsky concerts and productions of Shakespeare.13 In October, the city held a Jubiläum der Wiener Kunst attended by von Schirach, Thomas, Blaschke and Josef Hofmann, along with political leaders like Seyss-Inquart and all of the Gaueleitern. Writers steered clear of the term Ostmark: “Our history is the history of Becoming, of Splendor, of the downfall of a Dynasty [the Habsburgs], and bears witness to the fortunes of the Danube and Alpine lands.”14 In his speech during the festivities, von Schirach extorted artists to think of themselves as cultural soldiers: The artist, too, has his mission. He is not bound to the State or to rich merchants, he is homegrown and incorruptible. . . . Our contemporary art is ill, because it cannot distinguish truth from reality.  .  .  . Beware, my young student comrades, do not be cowardly with your brush and pledge to assume the attitude of classical Man!15 Yet under Culture Czar Walter Thomas, the city continued to push boundaries within the visual arts, championing artists who were anathema in other areas of the Reich. (Thomas himself was increasingly suspected for his willingness to try to help out Jewish artists.) He mounted an exhibit of drawings by the Belgian Symbolist James Ensor and purchased 55 of them.16 In late spring, Thomas arranged for the artist Emil Nolde and his wife to come to Vienna in order to meet with von Schirach.17 Although Nolde was a long-time member of the Nazi party and adhered to its ideology, including a profound antisemitism, he had been held up to a particularly pointed scorn in the 1937 Degenerate Art exhibit and had been forbidden to paint in 1941. Both Schirach and his wife deeply admired the artist’s works (and made sure to bring some of them home), but the Reichsstatthalter refused to intervene on Nolde’s behalf. The arrival of the artist in Vienna had quickly fanned rumors that the city was planning a large exhibit of Nolde’s work, which outraged Rosenberg who threatened serious trouble if such came to pass. Schirach was canny enough to know when to back down, although Nolde continued to hold out hope that his approval would result in a warming of opinion toward his work. Under Thomas’s direction, the Albertina held a show in February of 1943, Deutsche Zeichnungen der Jahrhundertwende, which included works by Gustav Klimt, Egon

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18

Schiele, Kathe Kollwitz and Louis Corinth. State institutions celebrated Vienna’s native artistic sons with Wien Kunst und Kultur at the Wiener Stadtbibliothek and the Otto Wagner Gedächtnisschau at the Wien Stadtmuseum.19 While dedicating many shows to German artists in 1942 and 1943, the Künstlerhaus continued to spotlight Viennese artists, exhibiting Ostmärkischer prints and etchings (November 1942), The Viennese Cityscape (June 1943), Viennese portraits of artists and scientists (November 1943) and Viennese Drawings and Graphics (December 1943).20 It was an exhibit held at the Künstlerhaus in February of 1943, Junge Kunst im Dritten Reich, (Young Art in the Third Reich) that would finally call an end to Schirach and Thomas’s relative artistic liberalness. Opening just days after the defeat at Stalingrad, the exhibition struck a strong nerve, leading to Thomas’s downfall and Schirach’s fall from Hitler’s grace. Commencing on the same day as the large Gustav Klimt memorial exhibit (the subject of the following chapter), Junge Kunst contained 587 works by 187 artists and was meant to showcase the best contemporary artists working in Vienna.21 The impressionistic and brushy styles of the works were hardly radical, certainly no more so than some of the works on display in the 1942 Die schöte Wiener Frauenbild exhibit. In fact, many of the same artists appeared in both shows.22 But coming as it did on the heels of the announcement about the defeat at Stalingrad—where 40,000 soldiers from the Ostmark would be killed—the show seemed like a direct provocation from Schirach. The show seemed to be plagued from the beginning. Just prior to the launch of the show on February 7, a law had gone into efect in the city prohibiting exhibition openings during the day, so the time had to be shifted to evening. (On the same day, coincidentally, Hitler had called all the Gaueleitern to his headquarters to discuss the defeat at Stalingrad.)23 The curator of the show was Wilhelm Rüdiger, a committed antisemite, who had also been Reich Youth Leader.24 The Völkisher Beobachter gave the show a full page of coverage and pointed out that the Young reference in the show’s title had less to do with the age of the contributing artists than with freshness or a sense of novelty

Figure 7.1 C.O. Müller, In der Loge, oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown. Source: Reproduced from Wilhelm Rüdiger Junge Kunst im Deutschen Reich. i. A. des Reichsstatthalters & Reichsleiters Baldur von Schirach. Ausstellung February–March 1943 im Künstlerhaus Wien. Vienna: Ehrlich & Schmidt, 1943. Source: https://archive.org/details/JungeKunstImDeutschenReich1943_123.

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in contrast to the annual exhibits at the Munich Haus der Deutschen Kunst.25 This no doubt alarmed Berlin, and Hitler sent Benno von Arendt, a member of the SS who served as Reichsbühnenbildner (Reich stage designer) to visit the show. Arendt reported back that the show was “liberalistische Schweinerei” (“a libertarian mess”). After only 9,084 visitors and four weeks of running time, the exhibit was shut down and Schirach ordered to the Berghof. Holding an open copy of a magazine reproducing images from the show, Hitler railed at Schirach: “A green dog! And you have a quarter of a million copies printed which mobilizes all the cultural Bolsheviks and reactionaries against me. This isn’t youth education but sabotage!”26 On his return to Vienna, von Schirach summoned Thomas to his ofce and let him know his tenure was over. “I went too far and let things happen that should not have happened.”27 He would send Thomas to fight on the Eastern Front. Goebbels was giddy, writing in his diary on March 18: “Schirach feels pretty small right now. He sent Thomas to the soldiers. I believe that in the foreseeable future we won’t have any problems with art policy in Vienna.”28 Thomas was replaced by Hermann Stuppäck. Later that spring, von Schirach and his wife, Henrietta, returned to Berchtesgaden, along with Martin Bormann, Goebbels and Albert Speer. Schirach’s suggestion that the Ukrainians might be enlisted in the Nazi cause angered the other visitors and led to a sharp dressing down by Hitler. Later that evening, Henriette related to Hitler her experience of watching Jewish women rounded up in the streets of Amsterdam, an incident that disturbed her. Hitler let loose in a tirade: “How absurd that you come to me with this sentimental drivel. What concern of yours are these Jewesses in Holland?”29 From that moment on, von Schirach was permanently out of favor with Hitler, although he maintained his position until the end of the war. If Henrietta had raised some concern over the treatment of Jews, her husband clearly did not share her sentiments. Under von Schirach, the persecution and deportation of Viennese Jewry continued apace. Among city residents, the regular appearance of transports leaving from Aspang station carrying doomed Jewish victims locked into cattle cars did little to appease their anger toward the remaining Jews for “causing” the shortages and daily disturbances of life.30 By the end of 1942, fewer than 8,000, or 5 percent of the Jewish population of Vienna, remained in the city; 32,721 Jews had been deported to ghettos and to their eventual death in the East.31 Notes 1. At the Wiener Rathaus on April 9, 1938, Hitler famously referred to Vienna as a pearl: “[D]iese Stadt ist in meinen Augen eine Perle! Ich werde sie in jene Verfassung bringen, die dieser Perle würdig ist.” Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 72. 2. Bukey, “The Farming Populace: Anger and Anguish, 176; Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 73–79; 263–266. 3. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 241; Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 74. 4. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 184, 214. 5. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 245. 6. Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 7; Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 212. 7. Im Reich der Kunst, 280. 8. Schedlmayer, “Zeitung Kunst dem Volk,” 111. 9. Bolz, Nazionalsozialismus in Wien: Machtübernahme, 68. 10. Hitler on June 26, 1943, quoted in Schwarz, Hitlers Sonderauftrag Linz, 165. 11. On Schirach’s ideas for a “Europäischen Jugendkongress” see Rathkolb, Schirach, 142 f.

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12. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 210; “Bruno Grimschitz und die NS-Kulturpolitik unter Reichsstatthalter Baldur von Schirach,” in NS Kunstraub. 13. Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 254. 14. Gustav Künstler, “Jubiläum der Wiener Kunsterziehung” Neues Wiener Tagsblatt, October 25, 1942, 3. 15. Baldur von Schirach quoted in “Jubiläum,” 3. 16. The show took place on September 28, 1941. “Bruno Grimschitz und die NS-Kulturpolitik unter Reichsstatthalter Baldur von Schirach,” NS Kunstraub. 17. Bernhard Fulda, Aya Soika and Christian Ring, Emil Nolde: The Artist in the Third Reich (Munich: Prestel, 2019), 158–159. 18. Mayer, “Gesunde Gefühlsregungen,” in Kunst und Diktatur, 301. For a review of the show, see Dr. L. Sprintschitz, “Kulturbericht: Grafik der Jahrhundertwende,” Neues Wiener Tagblatt, February 28, 1943, 3. 19. Rebhann, Die braunen Jahre, 201. 20. Ausstellung ostmärkischer Grafiken und Radierungen, November 18, 1942–December, 10 1942; Das Wiener Stadtbild, June 11–August 15, 1943; Wiener Bildnisse aus Kreisen der Kunst und Wissenschaft 1900–1943, November 27, 1943–February 27, 1944; Wiener Zeichner und Grafiker, December 18, 1943–February 20, 1944. 21. Wilhelm Rüdiger, Junge Kunst im Deutschen Reich. Ausstellung Künstlerhaus Wien, February to March 1943 (Vienna: Ehrlich & Schmidt, 1943). For the most recent discussion of the exhibit, see Gregory Maertz, “Modernist Art in the Service of Nazi Culture: Baldur von Schirach and the Junge Kunst im Deutschen Reich,” Patterns of Prejudice 50, no. 4/5 (2016): 337–358. For information on the exhibit and the scandal that resulted, see Jan Tabor, “Junge Kunst im Deutschen Reich,” in Kunst und Diktatur, 940–941; See also Rathkolb, Schirach, 335; Rebhann, Die braunen Jahre, 120; von Schirach, Ich Glaubte, 288 f.; Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 213 f. 22. This includes Josef Dobrowsky, Rudolf Eisenmenger, Max Frey, Ferdinand Kitt etc. 23. Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 73. 24. Rathkolb, Schirach, 209. 25. Heinrich Neumayer, “Junge Kumst im Deutschen Reich: Zu der Ausstellung im Künstlerhaus,” Völkischer Beobachter, February 9, 1943, 3. 26. Schirach, Ich glaubte Hitler, 288. Translated in Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 218. 27. Schirach quoted and translated in Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 219. 28. Goebbel’s diary entry March 18, 1943, quoted and translated in Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 219. 29. Schirach, Ich glaubte Hitler, 292–293. The full story is recounted in Davidson, The Trial of the Germans, 305–306. 30. Bukey, “The Farming Populace: Anger and Anguish,” 178. 31. Bernbaum, “Nazi Control in Austria,” 203.

8

Erasing the Fin de Siècle The Gustav Klimt Exhibit, February 7 to March 7 1943

It may nonetheless be asserted that the complementary phenomenon to physical annihilation does not have to be forgetting, but can be museum memory instead. —Dirk Rupnow, “‘Ihr müsst sein, auch wenn ihr nicht mehr seid’: The Jewish Central Museum in Prague and Historical Memory in the Third Reich”1

At the high point of fin-de-siècle Vienna, a diferent image of the city was already being envisioned. In the year 1900, antisemitic priest, politician and author Joseph Scheicher had already contemplated the erasure of Viennese Jewry and the nation of Austria. His novel, Aus dem Jahre 1920: Ein Traum von Landtags- und Reichsratsabgeordnenten Dr. Joseph Scheicher (From the Year 1920: A Dream of Parliament and Government Deputy Dr. Joseph Scheicher) is set in the title year, two decades after Austria became Ostmark, and the Jews of the city were banished by Mayor Karl Lueger.2 The Jewish district of Leopoldstadt is now Luegerstadt, and the Christian population has at last been liberated from its Jewish exploiters. Such themes were later taken up in the far better-known novel, Die Stadt ohne Juden (City without Jews) (1922) by Hugo Bettauer, which also satirized fin-de-siècle antisemitism and imagined a city from which the Jews had been expelled. In the novel by the Jewish Bettauer—who would come to be murdered by an antisemite in 1925—the expulsion of the Jews leads to widespread economic disaster until their integration back into the city—a fate, of course, that would never come to pass.3 The virulent antisemitism of turn-of-the-century Vienna, lauded by Scheicher and mocked/condemned by Betthauer, was the dark undercurrent of a time and place known in the popular imagination for an explosion of Modernist culture and Jewish contribution and was, no doubt, shaped in relation to it. The modern, cosmopolitan and Jewish Vienna of the fin de siècle was a despised locus in the Nazi historical imaginary.4 A number of Nazi ideologues, historians and authors focused on the verjudet nature of late Imperial Vienna. As Bettauer had understood, fin-de-siècle Vienna was perceived as a place where Jews controlled “all of the economic, spiritual and cultural life.”5 Vienna 1900 was a polyglot, multicultural city, a place where European Jewry had risen to unforeseen heights of economic prosperity and cultural influence. It was the site of the last flourishing of the hated Habsburg Empire, portrayed as a corrupt and dangerous interruption in the true Germanic history of what was now Ostmark. As the final legacy of the Habsburg “invasion,” which had severed the bond between Germans of Ostmark and the Altreich, the fin de siècle would need to be largely erased from history. DOI: 10.4324/9781003353782-8

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Thus it surely comes as a surprise to many that Klimt was not declared entartete (degenerate), given his morbid, sensuous and unconventional works. In many ways, Klimt evoked a Vienna—multicultural, artistically radical, Jewish—distinctly at odds with the image of Ostmark so carefully and repeatedly constructed. If earlier shows like Berge und Menschen der Ostmark and Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild had functioned to erase the city and the Jewess, both came roaring back to life in the art of Gustav Klimt. Indeed, his career intersected with the final decades of the Habsburg Empire, with the heady culture of fin-de-siècle Europe and with the “birth of Modernism,” three historical constructs that were anathema to the Nazi worldview. Yet in Nazi Vienna, Klimt was a figure of celebration whose reputation was acclaimed and whose works were highly sought. (The plunder of the Bloch-Bauer’s six Klimt paintings is only the most well-known example, but there are many others, as we shall see.) Klimt was the beloved and favored artistic son of the city, someone who had brought her glory and fame. What Michelangelo was to Florence and Manet to Paris, Klimt was to Vienna (even if, as in the case of Manet, this was not true during his own lifetime). For Baldur von Schirach, Klimt was the embodiment of Vienna’s privileged and enviable artistic inheritance. Gustav Klimt thus presented a thorny dilemma to the art establishment of Nazi Vienna: how to mount an exhibit of the most iconic Viennese artist, someone whose early career was dependent on late Imperial government and whose later one rested heavily on Jewish patronage, whose works had come to evoke a time and place despised as decadent and perverse in ofcial discourse. In 1943 the Künstlerhaus solved this dilemma: the Klimt Memorial exhibit in the former Secession building celebrated a Gustav Klimt without the Habsburg inheritance, the Modernist fever and the Jewish support that had produced him. Habsburg Perfidy While Klimt’s name is synonymous with the Vienna Secession, his early career and the entirety of his life were lived within the final flourishing of late Imperial Vienna.6 His death from a stroke in 1918 could not have more neatly overlapped with the death of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. While Klimt would come to rely exclusively on private patronage following the scandal surrounding the University paintings, the Künstler Compagnie, which Klimt founded along with his brother Ernst and with Franz Matsch, was embraced by the Imperial government. They received important commissions to decorate buildings on the Ringstrasse, most importantly the Burgtheater and the Kunsthistorisches Museum.7 Jeroen Van Heerde describes Klimt as deeply loyal to the Habsburg state, like most artists of his day, and thoroughly dependent on it: “In this they focused not only on the advantage of a state commission or purchase but also on the attention, recognition and applause of the government in the form of awards, titles etc.”8 Klimt’s interactions with the Habsburg state continued into his time at the Secession. During the first year of its existence, on April 6, 1898, Franz-Josef paid a personal visit to the Secession.9 In turn, the Secessionists “projected pan-Austrianism” and reflected glory on the Empire. Klimt did not remain an ofcial artist, but the patrons he worked for and the era he worked in were deeply shaped by the role Vienna played in the Habsburg Empire. The era in which his life and career unfolded was not one regarded with sympathy by most figures within the Nazi party. While some figures remained nostalgic for the dynastic history of the Habsburgs, far more despised the Imperial family and, in particular, the last emperor of Austria-Hungary, Franz-Josef.

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In the texts of academic historians working in Nazi Vienna and in popular historical accounts for mass audiences, the Habsburgs were portrayed as corrupt and world-trotting figures who had sold out and forced a separation between the “brethren” of Austria and Germany: the Habsburgs had turned the once pure Ostmark into part of a mongrel Empire, put the Slavic populations on equal footing and emancipated the Jews. Yet earlier in the century, many Pan-Germans had viewed the Habsburg legacy as a continuation of the Catholic Holy Roman Empire and an embodiment of the German mission.10 Under the Austrofascist regime, the Catholic, aristocratic and traditional nature of the Habsburg Empire held deep appeal. It was often praised by historians writing in the 20s and 30s as a period that had kept ethnic and nationalist insurgency in check. In the mid-30s, Chancellor Schussnigg was not immune to playing on nostalgia and hinting at the idea of a future restored empire.11 Following the Anschluss, however, the Imperial past was often the source of fervent scorn. The Habsburg rulers were derided as interlopers, decadent outsiders who had betrayed Austria in allegiance to the royal family and the Catholic Church. Nazi discourse portrayed them as cosmopolitan traitors, aligned against the German Volk; the rulers’ hearts lay with the Spanish, Italian and French and the Papacy, willing to sell out German blood at every turn. The titles of Nazi publications alone reveal their contempt: Aufruf gegen Habsburg: Revolution in drei Jahrhunderten (Outcry against the Habsburg: Revolution in Three Centuries), Nie wieder Habsburg! Habsburger in der Geschichte der Deutschen (Never Again Habsburg! The Habsburgs in the History of the German People), Die Habsburger: Die Tragödie eines halben Jahrtausends deutscher Geschichte (The Habsburgs: Tragedy of a Half Millenium of German History.)12 A colorful representative of these texts is Gottfried’s Zarnows’s Gekrönt-entehrt! Europas Schicksal, Habsburgs Schuld. Das Problem des XX Jahrhunderts (Crowned— Dishonored! Europe’s Fate, Habsburg’s Fault. The Problem of the 20th Century) (1937).13 Zarnow was the pseudonym of Ewald Moritz, who penned other books outlining the treacherous deeds of the Habsburgs.14 Moritz served as publisher of a rightwing weekly, Die Deutschen-Spiegel, banned by the Nazis in July of 1933 for not always following the party line.15 Gekront focuses on the nefarious plots of the last empress of Austria-Hungary, Zita, wife of Charles I and mother of Otto, to restore her son to the throne at all costs. She is cast as a spider, ensnaring her prey in a web reaching from Paris, London and Rome. Sparing no cost, no means, no victim to reach her aim, the Empress Zita “sacrifices even the father of her eight children. . . . The road is clear, but at the end of it the purple cloak of the Habsburgs will lie as a shroud over Central Europe.”16 She and Otto, pretender to the throne, lie in wait to chain the will of the German nation, cutting it down to size. “Habsburg is the rock of Rome, on which the Greater-German idea will shatter. Habsburg is also the torch that will spark the battle for the soul, existence and honor of the German people.”17 Historian Karl Itzinger, in his Nie wieder Habsburg! agreed, referring to the Habsburgs as a “papal dynasty” that was treacherous for Germany and Austria.18 Prior to the Anschluss, Itzinger was an illegal SA member and leader of the Freikorps Oberland. From 1938 until the end of the war, he served in many ofcial NSDAP positions while publishing both “history” and fictional works. (Itzinger’s National Socialist past was largely forgotten until recently; in 1981, a street in Ried im Innkreis was named after him.)19

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Alfred Rapp, another historian reflecting popular Nazi ideas, noted that the House of Habsburg experienced more crises than any other dynasty.20 Although she was the carrier of the German crown, she was, in essence, a “dynasty without a nation.” In the nineteenth-century it is no diferent than in the sixteenth, in the fifteenth century of German Habsburg history, it is no diferent than in the first Placing the fate of the German nation before the question of unity, the reality of Habsburg history makes it difcult to answer: they were a roadblock on the way toward German unity.21 In an interesting conflation, Rapp blamed the Habsburgs for bringing disease and “the Habsburg nose” to Austria. (The spread of disease and large noses was usually attributed to the Jews.)22 The perfidy of the Habsburgs had led up to the events of the mid-century: “The great renunciation of German blood and German soil on the Danube, in the Caesarian section of 1866, completes the Habsburg fate of German history.”23 Hitler carried a deep-seated hatred for the Habsburgs, formed during his days as a failed artist in Vienna (his abiding disgust with the fin de siècle will be explored in greater depth later in this chapter). Referring to the Habsburgs as “the most miserable dynasty ever ruling over German lands” and seeing their destruction as necessary for the rise of a German Reich, he condemned former German leaders for not abandoning them: “Germany’s sticking to this ragged Habsburg state, come what may, was a crime for which the responsible leaders of German policies should still be hanged.”24 Hitler seethed with a particular hatred for Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his Czech wife; within hours of the Anschluss, he had their sons, Maximillian and Ernst Hohenberg, arrested and deported to Dachau.25 In his paean to the Anschluss, Wie die Ostmark ihre Befreiung erlebte: Adolf Hitler und sein Weg zu Großdeutschland (How Ostmark Experienced Its Liberation: Hitler and His Path to Greater Germany) (1940), Hitler’s private photographer and confidant (and father of Baldur von Schirach’s wife, Henrietta) Heinrich Hofmann repeated the Führer’s contention that despite the vast superiority of the Germans, the Habsburgs refused to recognize them as the inherent leaders: The German people had always provided the state of the Habsburgs with almost all its leaders, with the ofcial language in parliament, with the ofcial language used in all high ofces, with the military language of the army—and yet it seemed impossible, for ten million people to sustain a state of fifty million in the long run, so powerful were the centrifugal forces of the individual actions which found themselves in German hands, this was likewise the case with foreign trade—so long as Jews were not active in it—but even this was not enough to provide an economic or spiritual unity in place of a political one.26 The protection of all ethnic groups within the Austro-Hungarian Empire was the very antithesis of the Nazi Weltanschauung, embodied in Nazi policy. But the greatest crime of the Habsburgs, in Nazi conviction, was, of course, their centuries-long protection of European Jewry (with notable exceptions such as Albert V and Maximillian I, who pursued antisemitic policies).27 Duke Frederick II had issued his “Fredericianum” to Austrian Jewry, guaranteeing them freedom of movement, the right to trade, defense of life and property and the right to settle. After he was confirmed by his successors in 1278,

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1330 and 1358, Vienna became a haven for Jewry from Austria, Germany and Western lands until their expulsion and destruction in the 15th century. The following centuries saw alternating waves of protection and persecution from varied Habsburg leaders; under Frederick II, Leopoldstadt was established as a Jewish ghetto in 1624, until the expulsion of the Jewish population once again in 1670. The 18th century saw the rise of the Hofjuden, court Jews, whose financial acumen was much in demand by the monarchy. Although it only concerned a very small circle, under the Toleranzedikt of 1782, Joseph II abolished the yellow badge and, for the first time, allowed Jewry into the domains of the army, trade, education and factories, leading to a group of prosperous Jewish merchants and financiers.28 But it was in the second half of the 19th century, as Nazi historians never tired of reminding their readers, that the Jewish population of Mitteleuropa exploded, largely due to the policies of Franz Josef. By then, Habsburg lands held the largest concentration of Jews west of Russia. The Emperor’s Toleranzpatent, Clause 19 of Cisleithania’s national constitution of 1867, finally gave the Jews complete emancipation: “All ethnic groups in the nation have equal rights and each ethnic group has an inalienable right to preserve and cultivate its nationality and language.” It was in those decades that Jews throughout the Empire streamed into the city of Vienna. In 1777, of the 350,000 Jews in Austria, only 520 resided in Vienna. By 1850 the number had risen to 11,000, and in the first decade of the 20th century, up to 175,000. For the Nazi Robert Körber (whose writings we briefly discussed in Chapter 1), the Verjudung of Vienna could be solidly blamed on the Toleranzpatent of Franz-Josef for “believing the Jews could be Germanified like everyone else.”29 Scholars of Third Reich cinema have revealed a corresponding anti-Habsburg sentiment, notably in popular Wien-Film. This marks a contrast to films during the Ständestaat, which often trafcked in Habsburg nostalgia. Robert von Dassanowsky explores Erich Engels 1939 Hotel Sacher as a rejection of both Red Vienna and Vienna as a capital of a Mitteleuropean Empire. He sees the plot, centered on the betrayal of a UkrainianAustrian military ofcer by a Slavic-Austrian woman working for the Russians, as “intended, at least cinematically, to bury the Habsburg myth”30 and to rewrite historical “memory,” negating the Habsburg past and, by association, the anti-Nazi Austrofascist regime. Along with this, Austrian identity in the film is rerouted from Vienna to rural and Alpine regions, a perfect complement to the discourse at play in the Berge und Menschen exhibit of 1939, which we explored earlier.31 In a similar fashion, Johann Hüttner reads the 1941 film Die Liebe Augustin, directed by E.W. Emo (not to be confused with the film of the same name from 1960 by F.W. Murnau) as a harsh criticism of Austrian institutions and of the Habsburgs.32 The film follows the life of 17th-century Emperor Leopold I, depicted as foolish, corrupt and wholly unconcerned with the Viennese Volk. Throughout numerous historical dramas, court life and Austrian ofcialdom are mocked and portrayed as self-interested and oblivious to the needs of the people. Thus such Tendenzfilms,33 seemingly unpolitical, furthered the narrative of Habsburg treachery driven home in both academic and popular history books. So, too, art exhibitions like those at the Künstlerhaus served to impact popular perceptions of history or, more accurately, historical myths.34 Fin de Siècle: Verjudet Wien If Nazi strategy around Habsburg history was to cast aspersions upon it and create a cultural and institutional memory of their villainy, when it came to the celebrated Vienna

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fin de siècle, Nazi publications aimed to ignore it, to erase those decades as if they had never existed or to cast it as an island of “rassenfremde Volk dem Juden” (“racially alien Jewry”).35 The turn of the century was, for many reasons, more problematic in the Nazi imaginary than earlier periods of Habsburg rule. It was the high point of Jewish immigration as Vienna would reach its peak Jewish population in those decades and the few immediately following. Many of these newly arrived Jews were Ostjuden and fed the stereotypes perceived by many non-Jews. Secondly, this period was one in which Jewish contributions emanated not only from banking and political realms but also from many reaches of culture including the press, literature, theater, science, philosophy and music and when many Jews served as patrons of the visual arts and architecture.36 Fin-de-siècle Vienna was not only linked with the Jewish upper bourgeoisie but was also, of course, celebrated as a wellspring of Modernism. If earlier decades of cultural Modernism had “belonged” to Paris, Vienna was arguably the most important—and, in many ways, the most radical—of Modernist cities in the centuries spanning 1900. Thirdly, the fin de siècle was not a distant historical period whose outlines could be entirely shaped by Naziapproved discourse but was part of the living memory of many people in Nazi Vienna. Inevitably, individual memory and knowledge of this time and place might compete with and challenge the constructed cultural memory woven in the Nazi imaginary, making it a site of conflict. If the end of the century saw a vast increase in the Jewish population, it was by no means a monolith. As noted earlier, while only about 11,000 Jews lived in Vienna prior to the reign of Franz Josef, by 1910, the number had soared to 175,000 (and would reach its peak in the early 1920s, when 201,513, or 10.8 percent of the total population of Vienna, were Jews).37 Moreover, the wave of immigrants to the city was less assimilated than in earlier times and decidedly poorer; many of these Ostjuden came from the region of Galicia. By 1914, 25 percent of all Viennese Jews were Galician in origin. Yet if such Ostjuden were threatening in their foreignness and diference, a strata of well-assimilated and financially secure Jewry was resented for the cultural capital it had acquired in turnof-the-century Vienna. Many industries, including Konfektion (ready-to-wear clothing), leather goods and department stores, were largely in the hands of Jewish ownership, and Jews were overrepresented as well in more high-status fields such as medicine, law, theater and opera. By 1900 Jews comprised one-fourth of all students at the University of Vienna. Marcia Rozenblit has shown that regardless of class status, Jews tended to form neighborhoods with other Jews, living primarily in the areas of Leopoldstadt and, for the better of, Alsergrund and the Inner City.38 Despite its glittering facade, early 20th-century Vienna was rife with political, economic and social strife, exacerbated by profound changes stemming from industrialization.39 Mass resentment, combined with the swell of Jewish immigrants, contributed to new forms of political and racial antisemitism (although the hatred was hardly confined to the lower classes). Karl Lueger, Christian Socialist leader and mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910, was the first modern politician to come to power on an antisemitic platform.40 As has been widely explored, Lueger became a hero for Hitler, who arrived in Vienna during the period we are exploring. Indeed, for Hitler, the fin-de-siècle city was Vienna, a time and place on which he became fixated and that continued to impact cultural politics in Vienna throughout the Nazi period. The attitudes he held toward Vienna, transmitted to Goebbels and others, as seen throughout this book, are in part a result of his personal experience of the city. Arriving first as a 17-year-old on a trip funded by his mother to satisfy

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his artistic ambitions, he would relocate to the city in 1906 in an attempt to pass the exam for entrance to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. In shock over his failure, Hitler soon learned that his mother was dying of breast cancer. Returning to the city after her death, Hitler lived a marginal existence there until leaving for Munich in 1913. He remained almost completely immune to the Modernist culture that surrounded him, never attending, for example, the enormous 1908 and 1909 Kunstschau exhibits held while he was there (rather bizarre for a young art student) and never mentioning the work of any of the Secessionists except Alfred Roller, whom he was too shy to meet, despite a letter of introduction.41 By 1910 Hitler was a deep admirer of Lueger and an avid reader of the Pan-Germanist and antisemite Georg Schönerer.42 Yet he maintained personal relationships with individual Jews—some friendly fellow travelers at the shelters and hostels in which he lived, others Jewish dealers who sold his fledgling works—and had not yet formed a globalizing hatred for Jewry, which would only emerge during his experience of German defeat in WWI. Writing later in Mein Kampf, however, Hitler cast his “awakening” to the Jewish problem as a result of his years in Vienna: [F]or since I had begun to concern myself with this question and to take cognizance of the Jews, Vienna appeared to me in a diferent light than before. Wherever I went, I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity. Particularly the Inner City and the districts north of the Danube Canal swarmed with people whom even outwardly had lost all resemblance to Germans.43 This vision of Vienna, crowded with nefarious, turbaned Jewish men swarming through the Leopoldstadt district, takes photographic form in Robert Körber’s 1939 Rassesieg in Wien, der Grenzfeste des Reiches (Racial Victory in Vienna, the Border Fortress of the Reich). Körber’s juxtaposition of healthy Aryans and feeble, threatening-looking Jews

Figure 8.1 Hebräische Aufschriften für Wiener Judengeschäfte vor der Machtergreifung. (Hebrew Letters on Viennese Jewish Businesses after the Power Grab). Photo from Körber, Rassensieg in Wien, der Grenzfeste des Reiches (Vienna, 1940), p. 301, fig. 292B. Source: The Dorot Jewish Division, New York Public Library.

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was examined earlier as a text that attempted to demonize the urban and verjudet nature of the city.44 If the city had formerly had to contend with Hofjuden and powerful individual Jews, it was clear in Körber’s text that the last century had transformed Vienna into the “European headquarters of Asiatique Bolshevism.”45 Thwarting Vienna’s role as the “border fortress of the Reich,” the modern city fell sharply under control of a racially alien Jewry that “pulled the strings of the state and press, theater and film, banks and stock markets, state and financial institutions.”46 Copious photographs of Leopoldstadt drove Körber’s message home. Hebrew signage and storefronts turned the city’s streets into “shtetls.” (The “Jewish business” advertisement on the archway of the street is, in fact, a sign for a synagogue located in the building.)47 While numerous photos showed streets crowded with black-hatted Ostjuden, the author also included portraits of a virtual who’s who of Jewish luminaries from the fin de siècle, including Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, as further proof of how thoroughly the city had been verjudet. In the final chapter of Körber’s book, all is set to right as the onslaught of the last century is halted and turned back with the Anschluss. “Die Befreiung Wiens und der Ostmark von der jüdischen Fremdherrschaft durch den Nationalsozialismus.” (“The Liberation of Vienna from Foreign Jewish Domination through National Socialism”) makes clear that the city has at last been entjudet: This is the historical and cultural work of salvation of the Führer, that in a single day and without bloodshed, he triumphantly ended the millennial war between Germans and Jews in the Ostmark in triumph and at the same time gave his people the longedfor Greater Germany!48 The image of early 20th-century Vienna as a “cesspool of Jewry,” witnessed in texts such as Mein Kampf and Rassensieg, reveals why the period was maligned in Nazi Vienna.

Figure 8.2 Der jüdischer Universitätsprofessor Dr. Sigmund Freud and Der Jude Albert Einstein (The Jewish University Professor Dr. Sigmund Freud and The Jew Albert Einstein) Photo from Körber, Rassensieg in Wien, der Grenzfeste des Reiches (Vienna, 1940), p. 301, fig. 292B. Credit: The Dorot Jewish Division, New York Public Library

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If fin-de-siècle Vienna was viewed as a time and place where Jewish contribution was outsized, this went hand in hand with its foray into Modernism; the two phenomena were intertwined. The Jewish role in Viennese Modernism is profoundly complex and has been the subject of decades of debate among scholars.49 Recent scholarship has seen a backlash against an earlier tendency, evident in the works of authors including Eric Hobsbawm, Peter Gay and, more notably, Ernst Gombrich and Carl Schorske, to underplay Jewish contribution.50 Scholars have sought the explanation for Jewish influence in Viennese culture in a variety of phenomena from Jews’ outsider status to a culture of the book and education to sensory elements within Jewish rituals practiced at home to an attempt to gain status through culture while more recent authors focus on more subtle and context-specific embrace or rejection of Jewish identity.51 While Steven Beller sees Jews playing a less significant role in the visual arts—outside their place as patrons—Elana Schapira emphasizes the impact of Jewish references, identity and self-fashioning, often stemming from the (Jewish) patrons themselves, in major architectural and visual commissions.52 Both Beller and Shapira attribute the Jewish dimension in finde-siècle Viennese culture to the individual Jews who made it, as well as to larger elements within Jewish history and culture reflected in it, and both focus largely on a Jewish elite. In some fields, the overlap of Jewish artists maps nearly perfectly with the creation of radical new forms and genres, and certainly Jewish patrons were at the forefront of support for Modernist artists in the visual realms53 (a phenomenon that Carl Schorske’s canonical text largely overlooked). Thus, turn-of-the-century Vienna represented a double threat or, perhaps more accurately, a double horror within the Nazi view of history. This triangulation between Jews, Modernism and the Nazi category of entartete (degenerate) within the construct of Vienna 1900 continued to be operative, even in recent decades. The extent to which this conflation was still active is revealed by a scene in Ruth Beckermann’s 1987 film Die papierene Brücke (The Paper Bridge), in which we see figures attending the blockbuster Traum und Wirklichkeit exhibition held at the Künstlerhaus in 1985. Accompanying the footage, we hear the voice of Beckermann narrating: “Freud, Schnitzler, Schoenberg. Fin-de-siècle Vienna is ‘in.’ . . . They haven’t shown so many Jews here since the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibit. Suddenly they belong.”54 The irony of the Künstlerhaus as the site of both the Degenerate Art show and a decades-later celebration of (a Jewish-entangled) Viennese Modernism is not lost on Beckermann (and we might add here the Klimt memorial exhibit as another point on this constellation). The revulsion for and celebration of “Jewish” Modernism are revealed as two sides of the same coin, both focused on something inherently Other. Scott Spector goes somewhat further in his argument on “Modernism without Jews,” noting that both philosemites and antisemites have found in all Germanic manifestations of the modern a profoundly Jewish element: The philo-semitic and pro-modernist argument in this case (as in others) is dependent on the twin premises that modernism is Jewish, and yet that modernism’s Jewishness is somehow hidden and needs to be revealed .  .  . It is hence a somewhat counterhistorical exercise to seek to reconstruct a German discourse on the modern or “modernism” purged of reference to Jews, Judaism, or Jewishness.55 Spector’s term anti-modern anti-Semitism gets at the twinned nature of the two while warning us that we might be attributing to some nebulous notion of the “Jewish” something inherent in Modernism itself.

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For our purposes, we might argue that the omission or erasure of “the Jewish” is simultaneously an erasure of the modern (and of the modern, the Jewish). For the Nazis, the latter was often dependent on the former. Hence, it was a common strategy in Nazi publications to simply omit both. The period might be demonized (as in Körber), or it might be simply negated altogether. Such is the case in Karl Ginhart’s Wien: Das Antlitz der Stadt in Bildern (Vienna: The Face of the City in Images), a book of photos published in 1941.56 Beginning with the Stefansdom, it includes images throughout Vienna’s illustrious history, highlighting Schönbrunn, buildings on the Ringstrasse, famous Baroque paintings in the Kunsthistorische Museum and so forth but conveniently leaves out the fin de siècle. There is one image showing Joseph Maria Olbrich’s Secession building, which would soon house exhibits of the Künstlerhaus and thus had ofcial approval, and mention is made of both Adolf Loos and Otto Wagner. Wagner’s reputation as an antisemite had kept Jewish students from taking his courses, which certainly helped him find favor in the Nazi period.57 Exception is made as well for the architect/designer Josef Hofmann, who received many commissions under the Nazis, including the 1939 Wiener Opernball and designs for the Haus der Wehrmacht. Prior to the Anschluss, Hofmann had been one of the founders of the Neue Werkbund Österreichs (New Austrian Work Federation), seen as a corrective replacement for the Jewish-led Austrian Werkbund, headed by Josef Frank. Hofmann efciently carried out the task of Aryanizing the Secession after the Anschluss and, for his eforts, not only received plum commissions but was also appointed as special commissioner for Leitung des Amts zur Hebung des Wiener Kunsthandwerks (Management of the Ofce for the Promotion of Viennese arts and crafts).58 (Despite Hofmann’s attempt to accommodate the regime, at least one ofcial Nazi memorandum complained of the architect’s judenfreundlich (friendliness to Jews).59 In contrast, none of the most famous of the Vienna 1900 painters—Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka—are included. The Modernist city is essentially reduced to a footnote. Ginhart, who had studied art history with Josef Stygowski at the University of Vienna, had an interest in the buildings and culture of Vienna that was not simply academic. A member of the NSDAP, in 1938, Ginhart was placed in charge of overseeing the furniture that had not yet been confiscated from the apartments of deported or fleeing Jews. He lectured on the links between art and race for the Wiener Gesellschaft für Rassenpflege (Viennese Society for the Conservation of Race).60 In The German Ostmark, a photo book published in Vienna for English-speaking readers to celebrate the Anschluss and boost tourism, of its 194 pages, 40 are devoted to Vienna.61 The 59 photos of Vienna include the National Library, the Karlskirche, the Vienna choir, the Vienna National Hospital, the Ringstrasse etc. but not a single photo devoted to any aspect of the fin de siècle. That chapter of cultural history is made entirely invisible. So it is also in Richard Suchenwirth’s Das Buch von der Deutschen Ostmark (1938), discussed in Chapter 1, which mentions the period only for the damage it did to the traditional culture of Vienna: Another serious reproach: Vienna was Jewified, while the German-speaking Austrian crown lands were afected to a much lesser extent by this plague. Liberalism had utterly failed the city in terms of racial purity. . . In all areas the Jews seized the lead. . . . When Arthur Schnitzler wrote his society plays, when Jewish authors were performed at the Burgtheater, when Jewish actors and actresses appeared on the German stage, an art institution raised up to the highest level, when the University of Vienna was swarming with Jewish Ph.Ds, was all this not an indication of a resentment against the old city and a desire to loosen ties to her?62

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Writing in the Kunst dem Volk, Karl E. Baumgärtel expressed a similar opinion on the crisis that had befallen the visual arts in the period. Baumgärtel had been afliated with the Social Democrats in the 1920s and had led a largely bohemian existence. By the early 1930s, he had come into the orbit of the antisemitic publisher Anton Fellner and began publishing several Nazi dailies in Oberdonau, becoming a member of the Reichskammer after the Anschluss.63 Baumgärtel described the “empty days around the turn-of-thecentury” as a time when “fashion prevailed over laws,” “when schools fought against each other or against tradition,” when the healthy and down to earth were overcome by “the shock of the lost war, the confusion of emotions and the influx of foreign elements into society.”64 While it was easy enough in some realms to just neglect fin-de-siècle culture as if it had never existed, at times, its legacy had to be dealt with. Before turning to the Klimt exhibit, it is worth noting that another large-scale cultural representation of Vienna 1900 appeared within months of the show. On April 16, 1943, the film Wien 1910 premiered in the city.65 The discourse around the film highlights the difcult task of celebrating Lueger, a man whom Hitler personally cited as a role model, yet someone who could also be understood as an embodiment of Christian Socialism and perhaps provoke Austrian separatism. Suggested by Goebbels as a story that would ratchet up antisemitism and directed by Emerich Walter Emo, the Wien-Film production stared Rudolf Forster as Mayor Karl Lueger.66 In the film, Lueger functions as a hero against the noxious forces of the fin de siècle: Jews, the Emperor’s court and unfettered capitalism. The film is set in the final days of Lueger’s life, in March of 1910, his death hastened by (Jewish) socialist Victor Adler. To his good fortune, however, Georg Ritter von Schönerer is in town. (Schönerer was a far-right politician in Vienna and member of parliament in the final decades of the 19th century; his radical pan-German nationalism and his virulent antisemitism had a profound impact on the young Hitler.)67 United in their antisemitism, the two men are shown to respect each other, but Schönerer wants revolution and to move faster in “curing” the city. While Lueger’s first priority is his Austrian base, it is Schönerer who advocates for

Figure 8.3 Poster for Wien 1910, directed by E.W. Emo, Wien-Film, 1940–41, p. 224, figs. 210 and 210A. Source: The Gillespie Collection, Australia.

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the Reich and is thus subtly portrayed as the better man. In addition, Lueger’s Christian Socialism made the film deeply problematic for many Viennese Nazis, who rejected it outright. According to Gernot Heiss, the film never went on to play in the Ostmark but opened in Berlin in August, where it reached nearly 20 million people and became the 10th most popular film in the Reich that year.68 The reception of the film is instructive. Goebbels took it as a personal afront that groups of Viennese Nazis rejected the film, not wishing to celebrate a figure (Lueger) whom they did not see as closely enough aligned with their worldview. They were hesitant to celebrate a Christian Socialist politician who was able to maneuver skillfully within the Imperial government. This is made clear in a diary entry by Goebbels: I . . . discussed the critical case of the Lueger film with Gauleiter Schirach. In Vienna there is a radical political clique that wants to destroy this film. I won’t let this happen. The film must be made and then we can decide whether corrections must be made or whether the whole thing should be changed.69 Portrayals of the period had to be carefully controlled; the fin de siècle could not be depicted in a positive manner. Goebbels saw the film as sufciently critical of the time period: This film shows once again the desolate condition in which the Habsburg monarchy found itself before the World War. It’s no wonder the Central Powers lost the World War; it would have been a true miracle if they had won it.70 But in the end, the forces aligned against the film prevailed; despite Hitler’s expressed admiration for Lueger, the milieu in which he operated was seen as so fundamentally tainted that factions in Vienna preferred to erase it altogether. And as we shall see, by the spring of 1943, Baldur von Schirach was in no position to make waves; in contrast to earlier times, he was now determined “to stop any form of Austrian particularism.”71 If Vienna was not ready to receive their most well-known fin-de-siecle politician with open arms, von Schirach was not willing to give up on Vienna’s most celebrated fin-de-siecle artist, Gustav Klimt. In the important exhibit he planned for him, Klimt would need to be rewritten as an artist who lived in Vienna 1900 but whose art was largely estranged from it. Reimaging Klimt Before delving into how the artist was reframed for the large Künstlerhaus exhibit devoted to him, we might well wonder: why Klimt? As we have seen, he was not the only artist that Baldur von Schirach embraced but whom others had regarded as degenerate.72 As the work of scholars such as Jonathan Petropoulos and Pamela Potter have explored, what art was acceptable to Nazi ofcials varied greatly by region and by individual taste and was never as cleanly drawn as earlier supposed.73 In both the earlier Künstlerhaus exhibits we have examined, artists whose styles might be seen as Modern, even radically so, were included and lauded.74 Moreover, a significant number of the artists included in both shows had their artistic origins in styles very close to Klimt’s and had actively participated in the Secession decades earlier (and many may well have known Klimt personally).75

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Certainly, of the three Austrian painters associated with the fin de siècle—Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka—Klimt was by far the easiest to make agreeable to an audience skeptical of Modern style. Compared to that of the slightly younger generation of Viennese artists, Klimt’s work was more traditionally pleasing and showed an ability to draw the human figure in an academic style, even if he quickly abandoned it. Kokoschka was the only artist of the three who was alive and was the very embodiment of entartete for the Nazis.76 The art of Egon Schiele was far darker and more raw than the works within Klimt’s oeuvre. Yet even his art was not entirely of limits in the Viennese context, as indicated by an article written in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the artist’s death,77 as we will explore in the following chapter. In this homage to Schiele’s work, the anonymous author adopts what we will see as a common strategy for appropriating an art often derided as decadent. Nor was von Schirach alone in his admiration for Klimt’s work in the Viennese context. As the expropriation in 1939 of the five Klimts in the Bloch-Bauer palais reveals, a number of collectors (and thieves) hoped to hold on to these works, several of which made their way, through illegal trade, into the collection of the Österreichische National Galerie (Belvedere) under the directorship of the Nazi art historian Bruno Grimschitz.78 That Klimt’s works were proudly displayed in the museum makes clear that, at least in Vienna, his works were highly esteemed. What made them fit for display? Elsewhere, I have argued that it is not difcult to find afnities between some of the thematic threads of Gustav Klimt’s paintings and the wider cultural heroes and motifs cherished in Nazi circles.79 Such afnities are not the result of any connection, intended or not, between Klimt and any proto-Nazi or antisemitic individuals or ideas. Far from it. While the artist was notoriously circumspect about his private life, leaving behind no major writings on his personal relationships or intimate thoughts, many of his professional and social contacts were Jewish, including many members of his innermost circle, such as Fritz Waerndorfer and Emil and Berta Zuckerkandl. His career is unthinkable without the close support of the moneyed Jewish elite of Vienna, including families such as the Gallias, the Lederers and the Bloch-Bauers. So often were Klimt’s patrons Jewish that the artist himself was sometimes mistakenly assumed to be Jewish and was said by critics to reflect a “gôut juif.”80 At least in the case of Adele Bloch-Bauer, Klimt consciously played up the exotic, “Eastern” beauty of his Jewish sitter, both in her 1907 portrait (Figure 6.38) and in the Judith and Holofernes of 1903, which likely represents her.81 Socially, economically and intellectually, Klimt was part of many circles of patrons, friends and fellow artistic travelers who were Jews. Links between Klimt’s works and certain figures and concepts of Nazi admiration lay in a shared cultural heritage, albeit one distorted and carefully selected to fit the National Socialist Weltanschauung. In his study of the cultural discourse in the Völkischer Beobachter, David Dennis has shown how the words and works of Germanic artists and thinkers such as Beethoven, Goethe, Nietzsche and Mozart were twisted, edited and taken out of context to accord with a Nazi vision.82 By focusing on certain aspects of an artist’s oeuvre or explaining away other contradictory elements, such figures might come to seem National Socialist avant-la-lettre. While figures like Richard Wagner may prove the exception, figures from Shakespeare to Schopenhauer were retrofitted in Nazi dress, interpreted in ways unthinkable to earlier generations. Martin Schwab makes a similar argument for the ways in which Friedrich Nietzsche was “spun” and promoted by the Nazis, asking the pointed question: “What finally about the fact that ideas and

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attitudes attributed to Nietzsche are part of the intellectual background shared by Nietzsche and the Nazis and need not be appropriated from Nietzsche, or are not influences of Nietzsche?”83 We cannot blame the philosopher for his political use by the Nazis, who constructed the Nietzsche they sought. It is not altogether surprising that Klimt’s philosophically weighty paintings appealed to the Nazis; the German writers and thinkers he drew from were also part of the Nazi canon. In his Nuda Veritas (1899), Klimt inscribed a passage from Friedrich Schiller onto the top of the canvas: “If you cannot please everyone with your actions and your art, satisfy only the few. To please everyone is bad.”84 Such sentiments were a clear reproach to those who had criticized Klimt for his esoteric works. Klimt again drew from Schiller in his Beethoven frieze, ending the narrative with a reference (through Beethoven) to Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.”85 In their reading of Schiller, writers in the Völkisher Beobachter instead highlighted his “need to fight for national freedom” and his statements condemning the French Revolution.86 Arnold Schopenhauer, too, came in for praise by the Nazis, who stressed the antisemitic statements in his oeuvre and hailed him as “the first genuine völkishe

Figure 8.4 Gustav Klimt, Nuda Veritas, 1899, oil on canvas, 252 × 55.2 cm, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna. Source: HIP/Art Resource, NY

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Figure 8.5 Gustav Klimt, detail from Beethoven Frieze, 1902, gold, casein, graphite and paint, 7′1″ × 112′, Secession building. Source: Courtesy of Künstlerhaus Archive, Vienna.

Figure 8.6 Gustav Klimt, Philosophy, 1900–1907, oil on canvas. Destroyed. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

philosopher.” Thus, the Schopenhauerian Weltanschauung that pervades many of Klimt’s works, notably the deeply pessimistic interlinking of the newborn and the dying in works like Philosophy for the University of Vienna (1899–1907) or Death and Life (1915),87 rendered him a fellow traveler down the road of German philosophical tradition.88

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Figure 8.7 Gustav Klimt, Pallas Athena, 1898, oil and canvas on inlay, 75 × 75 cm, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien. Source: HIP/Art Resource, NY.

As noted earlier, Nietzsche’s writings, shorn of contradictory elements, could and were used as a lineage for Nazi ideology. While much in Nazi thought is directly opposed to the classical tradition, Nietzsche’s celebration of a darker, Archaic Greek past, one inspired by the Dionysiac and instinctive, animated rituals and events such as the Nazi party rallies held in the dark of night.89 Klimt’s classicism, too, has far less in common with Winkelmann’s enlightened classical past (embraced by late 18th-century Habsburg culture) than with the strange style and motifs of the Archaic period, an interest he arrived at through Nietzsche’s writings.90 This is the case, for example, with the glacial mood that prevails in his image of a cold-blooded Pallas Athena and the stark designs of the Beethoven Frieze. Perhaps it is Klimt’s creation of the Beethoven Frieze that most attracted Nazi figures, who upheld the musician as one of the greatest artists of all time. The frieze was created for the 14th Secession exhibit, which also included a statue of the composer by Max Klinger. Wrapping around the upper border of the gallery, the work traced the victory of idealism over materialism, culminating in the final image of a flattened, stylized chorus of figures in gold and an embracing nude couple, meant to represent a “kiss to the whole world.” The imagery referenced Schiller’s poetry and its inspiration for Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” in his Ninth Symphony. At the opening of the exhibit on April 15, 1902, Gustav Mahler conducted a string quartet playing the symphony for the guests in attendance.91 Beethoven eclipsed even Richard Wagner as the favored classical composer of the Nazi party; his works were played more often at Nazi events than those of any other musician. Even before the Nazi seizure of power in 1927, on the 100th anniversary of Beethoven’s death, the VB hailed the composer for embodying the “will of German creation” (and would even insist later that he was blue eyed, despite accounts to the contrary).92 Moreover, the Ninth Symphony occupied a very special place in the Nazi canon; it was chosen for important party events more frequently than any work, remaining the

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favorite piece of party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg.93 During the first two nights after the Nazis seizure of power, on January 29 and 30, 1933, the orchestra of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur played the Ninth Symphony with the audience joining in to sing the “Ode to Joy.” Goebbels ordered a performance of the piece once again when Hitler claimed a victory on the Eastern front on April 19, 1942.94 The song was often the highlight of performances by the Vienna Philharmonic during “culture week celebrations” held in the city.95 In particular, the idealized, rescuing knight in the frieze chosen for the cover of the Klimt exhibit (Figure 8.5) must surely have resonated in 1943. The notion of a protoFührer figure as medieval knight already appears in the writings of Schönerer and would be used later for depictions of Hitler, most notably in the painting by Hubert Lanzinger entitled Der Bannerträger (The Standard Bearer) (1935).96 Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer has noted that the figure references the “Messias militans,” as well as Parsifal.97 If Klimt’s underlying interpretations were altogether diferent from the Nazis’, we must acknowledge that he worshipped at the same cultural altar as many of the figures who would rise to prominence in the cultural establishment of the Third Reich. Despite Klimt’s embodiment of the (despised) fin de siècle, his art could be turned to their aim and even made to illustrate their prevailing theories on art. But to do so took a great deal of work and a lot of expunging. There was much in Klimt’s art that celebrated things anathema to National Socialism: libertarian sexuality and decidedly “unhealthy”-looking sylphs and studio models, the adamant individualism of the artist and his refusal to work for the greater public, the eclectic mix of Eastern and Western inspiration, the compelling commitment to Modernism, the decadence of a waning Empire and, of course, the inspiration and support of so many Jewish patrons and subjects. Gustav Klimt Ausstellung In 1943 Baldur von Schirach organized the most impressive exhibition of Gustav Klimt’s ever held.98 Never again would a retrospective of Klimt’s art be so complete. The show was open to the public from February 7 to March 7, 1943, and was visited by 24,000 people.99 It ran concurrently with the Junge Kunst im Deutschen Reich, which was closed prematurely by orders from Berlin and was an unqualified disaster for von Schirach.100 In many ways, a large-scale exhibit of Klimt’s work was also quite a risk-taking venture, as the artist could easily be seen as a figure of Viennese separatism. Moreover, although the show was planned far earlier, it opened only days after the disastrous surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, which had turned attention firmly to the front. Sophie Lillie believes the show functioned in part as a salve to the wounded national morale: “The primary intention of the show was to raise the morale of the Viennese through a public display of greatness in the cultural sphere.”101 The show was inspired by the 1942 publication of Emil Pirchan’s monograph, Gustav Klimt: Ein Künstler aus Wien.102 In March of that year, Walter Thomas wrote a letter to Pirchan commending him on his book; the letter remains in the Künstlerhaus archives of the show.103 Pirchan (1884–1957) was a stage designer who had studied at the Academy of Visual Arts and with architect Otto Wagner, working in a largely Secessionist

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Figure 8.8 Invitation to opening of Gustav Klimt Ausstellung, February 7, 1943, Künstlerhaus, Friedrichstraße. Source: Courtesy of Künstlerhaus Archive, Vienna. Künstlerhaus, Friedrichstraße (former Secession).

style. During the Nazi period, Pirchan published many art historical works in Vienna, including a monograph on Hans Makart and no fewer than eight articles for Heinrich Hofmann’s luxury art historical magazine, Kunst dem Volk.104 As we explore later in this chapter, the monograph was crucial to the interpretation of Klimt both in the exhibit and in the press surrounding it. Just as Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild was meant to evoke earlier exhibits on the theme, the 1943 show recalled the 1928 Klimt Gedächtnis Ausstellung (Klimt Memorial Exhibit) held at the Secession building on the tenth anniversary of his death.105 Bruno Grimschitz, director of the Österreichische National Galerie (Belvedere) from 1938 to 1945, and painter Carl Moll worked on both the earlier and later shows. (Both men, too, revealed an early allegiance to the Nazis and remained committed to them.106 Journalist Hubertus Czernin referred to Grimschitz as “one of the major actors in the Aryanization of Viennese art collections.”)107 The 1928 Ausstellungskommite also included the Jewish socialist Dr. Julius Tandler, as well as the Jewish journalist and art critic Berta Zuckerkandl.108 Seventy-six of Klimt’s paintings had been hung in six rooms, with a seventh room devoted to his drawings.109 The latter show contained many of the same works, totaling 67 paintings and 100 drawings, occupying four rooms as well as the hallway.110 The rooms mixed together landscapes, allegorical works and portraits. Paintings of various sizes, in simple, identical frames, were hung on the white walls of the gallery in a Modernist style with minimalist labeling (on which, more later in this chapter). The display was quite similar to the design principles used in the Berge und Menschen exhibit as well, both ultimately deriving from the innovations of the early Secession. It was highly reminiscent of the aesthetic in high Modernist museums, even today. The minimalist frames—hung from wires, well spaced on white walls—would not be out of place in the Modernist rooms today in New York’s Museum of Modern Art or the Leopold Gallery. The curating of the show had been carried out again by Grimschitz, who was invited to work on the show in August of 1942.111 Which Gustav Klimt was on display? The show was remarkable for its full range of works from Klimt’s oeuvre, from early studies for state commissions to numerous

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Figure 8.9 Photo of installation, Gustav Klimt Ausstellung, 1943. Künstlerhaus, Friedrichstrasse. Source: Courtesy of Künstlerhaus Archive, Vienna.

allegorical paintings to many of his most well-known portraits. (The discourse and reviews would focus rather heavily on the allegorical works, for reasons which will become clear.) The first room held the three University paintings as well as The Kiss (1907) and several landscapes. Room 3 held the decorative works and murals, including the studies for the Stoclet frieze and the Beethoven frieze. Perhaps because of its decorative nature, The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (Figure 6.38) was placed in this latter room as well.112 Many of the early works were grouped in one room, including The Auditorium of the Burgtheater (1898), The Portrait of Josef Lewinsky (1895), Portrait of Klimt’s Mother (1897), Portrait of Frau Knips (1898), Schubert at the Piano (1895) and Music (for Nikolaus Dumba) (1895). Both Watersnakes (1904) and Portrait of Emile Flöge (1902) were placed in this room as well. In the Ver Sacrum room were the drawings, along with Dame mit schwarzem Hut (1910). Other works included the Pallas Athena (1898) (Figure 8.7), Nuda Veritas (1899) (Figure 8.4) and Danae (1907) as well as the portraits of Fritza Riedler (1906) and Margaret Stonborough Wittgenstein (1905) (Fig. 8.10). The works had been borrowed from public and private collections, including the Österreichische National Galerie, Staatlichen Kunstgewerbe Museum and the Staatlichen Graphischen Sammlung Albertina. The catalogue also gave thanks “as well to all private collectors.” But many of those private collectors were hardly in a position to bask in the acknowledgment; they had fled with their lives, had been deported or were already dead. Indeed, one-third of the works in the exhibit had been expropriated from Jewish families, including several that now hung in public institutions.113 In addition to the five works looted from the Bloch-Bauer family, the show included 12 Klimts from his most important collectors, the Jewish Lederer family, whose entire property had been confiscated during the Anschluss.114 Thus, the first act of cultural erasure was to obscure the real collectors and patrons of Klimt’s paintings, writing out the history of the commissions, the original conditions of display and the individuals who had nurtured and supported the works over decades. Some of the obfuscation surrounding the provenance of the works in the exhibit continues until the present day.115

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Figure 8.10 Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Margaret Stonborough Wittgenstein, 1905, oil on canvas, 179.8 × 90.5 cm, Neue Pinakothek/Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlungen, Munich, Germany. Source: Art Resource, NY.

The difculty of including many portraits depicting Jewish sitters was “solved” by simply stripping the works of their real titles and references to specific individuals. Like acts of damnatio memoriae,116 with this act of erasure the works ceased, in the cultural memory, to refer to concrete subjects. (This act of forgetting or repressing the presence of Jews was a practice so deeply embedded in everyday life under the Nazi regime that it could hardly have caused much conscious dissidence.) The Portrait of Margaret Stonborough Wittgenstein (1905) was transformed into a Damenbildnis in Weiss (Portrait of a Lady in White) (cat. 108) (Figure 8.10). Most famously, the sensuous and widely seen Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, illegally “traded” into the Österreichische National Galerie (Belvedere) became Damenbildnis mit Goldhintergrund (Female Portrait with a Gold Background) (Figure 6.38).117 In the texts related to the exhibition, the work would be written of as a “Goddess” and an icon, further severing it from the Jewish sitter who had inspired it. A thin catalogue was published to accompany the show, with a detail of the heroic knight from the Beethoven frieze appearing on the cover (Figure 8.9). “Der Reichsstatthalter in Wien” was acknowledged as the sponsor of the exhibit. Art historian Fritz Novotny (1903–1983), working under Grimschitz at the Österreichische

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Figure 8.11 Cover of exhibition catalogue, Gustav Klimt Ausstellung, Künstlerhaus, February 7 to March 7, 1943. Source: Frick Collection, New York.

Galerie, wrote the short catalogue essay, in which he argued for Klimt’s ability to transcend realism in favor of a powerful ornamental and decorative language. If Klimt was a realist, his symbolic weight and ornamental design always overshadowed mere materialism: “One can interpret all of Klimt’s late works as aiming toward one end: to abolish every contradiction between the actual content of the painting and the naturalistic means of representing it.”118 For Klimt, the real was Wirklichkeit eine Ideenwelt (Reality of a World of Ideas), not the mere shell of appearance. “As one of the founding rules of modern painting, his work serves as an undeniable example that the life of things represented must express themselves in artistic forms.”119 While this step away from realism was at odds with Hitler’s own views, it aligned closely with the program of von Schirach, who claimed the artist’s task was to find a deeper level of realism than that in nature alone, writing in 1941 that “even if art and nature have truth in common, their reality differs.”120 Such interpretation not only aligned Klimt with specifically German movements like Expressionism that aimed for an internal or underlying reality but also linked his aim with that of metaphysical German philosophy. Eschewing a chronological review of Klimt’s life and career, as well as interpretations of individual works, also allowed Novotny to avoid discussion of Klimt’s embrace and artistic support by the Habsburg State in the early phase of his career.121 Rather than a discussion of specific commissions or individuals within the Imperial bureaucracy or his many commissions from wealthy (and often Jewish) members of the fin-de-siècle cultural elite, Novotny focuses on Klimt’s ability to rise above material reality and the mundane in favor of capturing a more fixed and eternal essence. A far longer and more polemical text than that of Novotny’s brief catalogue essay, however, helped shape the way in which Klimt was interpreted in 1943. As noted, Emil Pirchan’s 1942 monograph on the artist had deeply impressed von Schirach, who called upon him to help formulate the show. If there were any doubts about Klimt as a founding member of the Secession, whose brazen nudes, Jewish patrons and embrace of fin-desiècle currents might make him seem a less-than-ideal artistic hero for National Socialism, Pirchan’s book put such doubts to rest. The artist who emerges from his book is both deeply inscribed within German culture and profoundly völkisch. The turn-of-the-century

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Vienna in which the artist lived is no verjudet metropolis but a blooming, restorative garden. In his portrayal of Klimt, Pirchan clung closely to the ofcially accepted criteria for celebrated artists, shoring up his Aryan heritage, his peasant roots and his lofty aims. He appears as an artist open to a new and fresh aesthetic, no doubt appealing to von Schirach’s desire to be aesthetically forward, while his distinct Viennese lineage plays into the Reichsstatthalter’s sense of artistic superiority. A focus on the more “philosophical” Klimt is evident from the very first page. Entire chapters are devoted to the more lofty allegorical works, including one for each of the University paintings, as well as the Beethoven frieze. This emphasis on a mystical, antimaterialist bent also does double duty in tying him to a Germanic sensibility. To that end, each chapter begins with a quotation from an important German philosopher, poet or artist, among them Friedrich Schiller, the brothers Grimm, Arthur Schopenhauer, Arnold Böcklin (of Swiss origin), Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Albrecht Dürer, Caspar David Friedrich and Max Klinger. Thus, Klimt’s art will not be seen in opposition to older traditions but as the continuation of a Northern spirit.122 If Klimt is a member of Deutschtum, Pirchan is equally committed to stressing his Viennese heritage, and this rests, above all, on his blood. The first page of the book shows the Klimt Stammbaum (family tree), tracing both sides back to his grandparents. There can be no question of Klimt’s racial inheritance (despite his close contacts, entirely neglected in the book, to Jewish circles in Vienna). The first chapter, Das Klimt Kind, devoted to Klimt’s childhood, shows the artist’s instinctive ties to the landscape of his birth and establishes the völkishe roots of his family. His mother, a “Wiener Mädel,” stems from a family of peasants. Pirchan notes that “she was probably an opera singer,” likely to tie her further to the city of Vienna. Despite the fact that his father, Ernst Klimt, was known to have come from Bohemia, Pirchan quickly dispenses with this problem: “Klimt is sich kain behmisches Nam” (“Klimt is not a Bohemian name”),123 he writes in Viennese dialect, suggesting a Swedish origin and thus, a safely Aryan lineage. In his “typisches Altwiener Haus,” his parents “spoke with him in the melodic dialect heard in popular folks songs.”124 It is not only Klimt’s Blut but his Boden that is profoundly Viennese. We meet the artist as a child who, having cut himself on a glass splinter and now recovering in bed, begins to draw, inspired by the blooming fields where he comes of age. “Indeed, Baumgarten, at that time a village in the western suburbs of Vienna, took its name seriously.”125 The best days of his childhood are spent running through the Wienerwald with his brothers. If Klimt’s youth was spent in close proximity to a throbbing city filled with foreign-born immigrants, it is certainly not apparent in the text, where “Vienna” signifies a fragrant and lush village. Even when on vacation in the Alpenlands and the Salzkammergut, Klimt sees in them only “a larger Viennese garden.” The artist’s ties to the soil could not be more deeply rooted: “To find peace after all the sensual sensations of the big city, Klimt reconnected to his peasant blood by returning to the orchards of his childhood.”126 In taking his artistic sustenance from his native soil, Klimt is paralleled with quintessentially Austrian artists like Ferdinand Waldmüller—an artist who held a special place as one of Hitler’s favorites—whose art arose from the spirit of the people and its particular region.127 This reading of Klimt also reflected the views of the show’s curator, Grimschitz. Klimt was the very last artist included in his Maler der Ostmark im 19 Jahrhundert (1940), in which Grimschitz attributed Klimt’s special qualities to “the uniqueness of his Viennese Heimat.”128 So, too, this quality matched the Volksverbundenheit (popular character) continually attributed to Ostmark artists in the popular and academic art writings of the time.129

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Pirchan follows Klimt through his days at the Kunstgewerbeschule and his early projects with the Künstler Compagnie, formed with his brother Ernst and artist Franz Matsch on the Ringstrasse. In contrast to other writers, Pirchan does not take the opportunity to deride the Imperial commissions. Nor does the late Habsburg artist Hans Makart create a problem for him, for the author had already cleared his name with a monograph in 1942. Very much like Klimt, Makart is hailed as pure in his blood and in his folkish connection to the people (rather ludicrous in light of the painter’s courtly style portraits): “Makart was indeed blood of her [Austria’s] blood, which always received fresh currents from the Alps, and so he struck the same notes, he was so easy to understand, and so popular as few artists of his day.”130 So, too, had Grimschitz given Makart the ofcial stamp and the royal treatment, with his own Gedächtnis Ausstellung in Salzburg in the summer of 1940.131 Makart’s portraits of Jewish sitters, too, had been “undone,” in that case not by changing their titles and labels but by simply omitting the images altogether, no matter how crucial to Makart’s oeuvre.132 In Pirchan’s telling, Klimt’s time at the Secession is hardly marked by radicalness or by the artist’s absolute liberty. While “young and fresh,” the union of like-minded artists is seen as a latter-day variant of the “neudeutsch-religiös-pathetischen” Nazarene brotherhood.133 Like the Nazarenes, a group of Romantic painters working in early 19thcentury Vienna to recommit art to Christianity, the Secessionists were put into a tradition of outsiders who placed their art in service to an anti-materialist and idealist program. Moreover, only three of Klimt’s fellow Secessionists are ever mentioned throughout the book: Josef Hofmann, Alfred Roller and Rudolf Alt. As noted, Hofmann was embraced by the Nazi party and designed both private and public works for high-ranking members. Roller was personally called by Hitler to design the stage sets for the Wagner festivals at Bayreuth. Hitler remained enamored of the streetscapes of Alt, which he had emulated as a young art student in Vienna.134 If the Secession embodied the fin-de-siècle city, this was certainly not the case in Pirchan’s pages.135 Throughout the monograph, an emphasis on Klimt’s works dedicated to musical themes conveys both his Viennese spirit and his elevated aspirations. Discussing Klimt’s Music (For Nikolaus Dumba), Pirchan writes: “‘Schubert!’ Truly a revelation of Wienertums, scarcely could it be more intimate, enchanting, amiable or mellifluous.”136 Continuing with his praise for Schubert, he quotes the writer and critic Hermann Bahr, even going so far as to reference the banished term Austria: “This silence, this gentleness, this radiance within bourgeois modesty—that is our Austrian Vienna.”137 Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, too, is hailed as an expression of a quintessentially Viennese sensibility, lauded for expressing “the true Viennese tradition in theme and execution,” and compared to the “refrain of a melancholy Altwiener song.”138 The beauty and charm of the women who appear in Klimt’s allegorical works also manifest a decidedly Viennese character (a concept that had been given full reign the year before in the exhibit on Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild). Klimt’s paintings are recognized by the “jaunty Viennese maidens” written in dialect—“feschen Weaner Maderln”—to emphasize their local and common origins.139 “It is here in and around Vienna that I am happiest in the world,” notes Klimt, “and nowhere are the women so loving, as in the Vienna of beautiful women!”140 The scandalous and frank sexuality that led to controversies over Klimt’s art in the society of his day is here celebrated as an instinctive life force: “It is astonishing how this clearly sexual artist could also become entirely naïve, when he immersed himself in the soul of a child.”141 Klimt’s brazen image of his

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Figure 8.12 Gustav Klimt, Hope I, 1903, oil on canvas, 189 × 67 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Source: Austrian Archives/Scala/Art Resource, NY.

pregnant, unwed studio model, Hope I (1903), expresses the Nazi glorification of fertility above bourgeois modesty: In his painting Fertility, he shows a mother awaiting her child, whose growing life harbors the eternal, secret Mystery. He attempts to represent something Holy and exalted with religious seriousness as no one before had dared. He only shakes his head regrettably as one casts malignant suspicions and misinterpretations on his pure mind and pure intentions.142 The usual title of the painting Hope I is rendered by Pirchan as Fruchtbarkeit (Fertility). The accusations of decadence and pornography levelled against Klimt in his day are dismissed by Pirchan as the product of the viewer’s own cynicism and further place him in the company of his fellow countrymen: “[S]o it was with Makart, with Schubert, with Beethoven, with Grillparzer, with Waldmüller, so was it also with Klimt.”143 In Pirchan’s eyes, Klimt was even capable of translating the classical spirit, albeit an Archaic, Dionysiac one, into a Viennese idiom. Classical goddesses in his painting are

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transformed into Viennese Mädeln: “Even the Persian Salome and the Judith of legend are, like the antique Goddesses, taken down from the high pedestals of their centuries, and become flesh of his flesh, blood of his Viennese blood.”144 Behind the chilly countenance of his Pallas Athena (Figure 8.7), we can glimpse the gray eyes of the Viennese maiden.145 Rather than a Viennese (or German) exterior housing a classical soul (as in many artistic visions produced in the Third Reich, such as Leni Riefenstahl’s film Olympiad), Klimt’s work elevates the Viennese.146 His classical exteriors shelter Viennese spirits. While Klimt was an embodiment of Viennese culture, Pirchan made him no less an inheritor of the German tradition. His metaphysical bent was best seen in the three University paintings, which were displayed in the first room, to which Pirchan paid enormous attention. They are described in a poetic, Schopenhauerian language: for example, in this description of Philosophy (Figure 8.6): In a great vision, a shadowy torrent emerges, figures above one another, confused, crowded together, brooding, sunk in thought, desperate and hopeful, a human Mystery, full of vague mysticism before the dark and starry firmament.147 Throughout the text, Pirchan stresses the allegorical works and the deeper mysteries of life and death to which they allude. While such works are complex and cosmic, as befitting a Germanic artist, they are also part of a lauded cultural heritage and not the product of an unfathomable “modernity.” Pirchan notes: “Today, from a clarifying distance of forty years, we do not find ‘Medicine’ as ‘uber-modern’ and incomprehensible as it appeared to the overexcited judgment of his contemporaries.”148 Klimt’s status as a legitimate heir of the Northern tradition is also conveyed by his talent as a draughtsman. (We should bear in mind that the German, the Germanic and the Northern were often conflated.)149 From the woodcuts of Martin Shoengauer to the etchings of Rembrandt, linear aptitude was understood as one of the most enduring traits of the Germanic artist.150 Reviewing Die grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung for the Viennese journal Kunst dem Volk in 1939, Gert Adriani noted: Again and again, it is notable of German art that its most renowned artists impart their key messages in graphic works. Since the highpoint of the Germanic age, the polyphony of line is one of the most enduring characteristics of German art sensibility. The old Germanic feel for ornamental interlace lives on in the pen drawings of the old Masters.151 Pirchan makes much of Klimt’s “ornamental line” and devotes a separate chapter to his line drawings. Calling him the “greatest draftsman of his time,” Pirchan claimed that “one can literally feel, in these drawings, the steady heartbeat of the Old Masters who worked in a linear language.”152 So, too, the Künstlerhaus exhibit devoted a special room to the artist’s many drawings. Most difcult of all must have been finding a way to deal with Klimt’s famous portraits that would not celebrate the (Jewish) sitters or the upper-bourgeois and late Habsburg culture they reflected. How did Pirchan negotiate the portraits, especially Klimt’s bestknown portrait of the Jewish Adele Bloch-Bauer? (Figure 6.38). Pirchan got around this difculty by discussing the works as genre scenes, turning away from the inspiration of distinct individuals to depicting them as types, as in the following passage: Female portraits! Grateful love songs to the enchanting beauty of Viennese women! Still immature, then chastely budding, developing virgins, blooming young virgins,

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seductive half-virgins, elegant, well-groomed society women and the knowing, voluptuous Woman he portrayed without judgment . . . down to the depths of their souls.153 Such analysis was the equivalent of the generic labels—Woman in White—that many of the portraits now bore. The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (referred to in his text only as “ein Damen porträt”) is removed from the sphere of portraiture altogether to become an icon, a goddess rather than a real woman. Pirchan’s discussion of the work, citing the descriptions of other authors, is worth quoting at length: When recently, in the winter of 1941, the XIX Gallery in Vienna (Belvedere) newly acquired, through exchange, a portrait of a lady, encased in an aureole of gleaming, reflecting, impasto-patterned gold, people no longer stood profanely before it, but were astonished in the presence of this genuine Klimt. L. Springschitz wrote, “[P]erhaps his most unique and consequential portrait: a head, shimmering above richly ornamented gold vestments, nearly drowns in all the splendor and yet retains its power, a miracle that Klimt pulls of only by virtue of the soulfulness of his composition.” And in Heinrich Neumayer we read “The female portrait in the Belvedere has lost all attachment to nature, the golden ornament of the dress detached from everyday life; a goddess stares at us, not with aloofness, as in the solemn sanctity of the gold mosaics in the Dome of Ravenna, but with a hidden sensuality, like something unleashed from the ceremonial tales of Wilde’s Salome.”154 In Pirchan’s reading, the work is not that of a flesh-and-blood Jewess but of a mythic, timeless icon. The identity of the sitter poses no issue, and Klimt avoids the pitfalls, criticized by Moissl in the 1942 schöne Wiener show, of falling victim to the vanity of Jewish patrons.155 An idealist, connected solidly to German artists and philosophers as well as Austrian musicians and painters, Pirchan’s Klimt was innovative and young but no rebel without a cause. The revolutionary spirit that had spurred Gustav Klimt to form the Secession and to break once again in 1905, the spirit that linked Klimt with his contemporaries in finde-siècle Vienna in so many domains is here reduced to his rebellion against materialism and rationality. Klimt was no stylistic pioneer, no sudden trailblazer, no insurgent of a new art, as it seemed then, but rather a great, ingenious force of continuity and of conclusion, the last branch of the autumnal tree of a civilization which stood at the border of two centuries: He nourishes the artistic development of the old Austrian cultural soil, from the contemplative Romanticism of Waldmüller and Schwind to the pompous surface of the Renaissance peacock Makart.156 Pirchan’s monograph provided the framework through which to view Klimt for the 1943 exhibit. His society portraits were emblems of Viennese womanhood (perhaps explaining why the portraits were not hung together or chronologically arranged but were shown side by side with allegories); his landscapes were testament to his love of Heimat; hallmarks of Imperial culture, like Auditorium of the Burgtheater and frescos for public buildings on the Ringstrasse, were not so much testament to Habsburg power as celebrations of the quintessential spirit of Vienna. It was exactly what von Schirach

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needed, a show that would proclaim his city’s preeminence while clothing Klimt in the mantle of the Germanic artist. The Klimt put on display both suited Nationalist Socialist ideology and, simultaneously, carried forward von Schirach’s aim of glamorizing Vienna. The artist had become the man of the hour: “And to the merry future we raise our glasses full of new wine, jubilantly toasting to one another: Heil the Hero Klimt!”157 Press and Reviews In contrast to the simultaneous and problematic Junge Kunst im Deutschen Reich, the Klimt exhibit ran its full course and received praise from all quarters. The reviews were laudatory and echoed the themes of the show and of Pirchan’s monograph, unsurprising given Shirach’s close association with the exhibit and the general ban on “art criticism.” As with the other shows we have examined, attention to, and announcement of, the exhibit began to appear on a regular basis a few weeks before the show commenced, calling attention to the 80th birthday and the 25th anniversary of the artist’s death.158 Coverage was wide, including not only most of the Viennese dailies but also leading German newspapers such as the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and the Frankfurter Zeitung.159 The exhibit was covered in the Vienna edition of the Völkischer Beobachter, on both February 7 and 8.160 Many of the reviews contained little more than descriptions of the show’s contents and tended to focus on the same selections. The lion’s share of attention went to the University paintings, and many focused on the typically “Viennese” early works, such as the Portrait of Sonja Knips (1898), the Auditorium of the Burgtheater (1898), Shubert at the Piano (1895), Music (for Nikolaus Dumba) (1895) and the frescoes for the Kunsthistorische Museum staircase (1890).161 Thus the narrative of Klimt as a “metaphysical” painter of allegories, as one tied deeply to the musical tradition of the city, was solidly carried over into the reviews. All the reviews praised Klimt as the great master of Viennese painting (“this monumental painter,”162 “in the great Viennese tradition”163), the artist who carried the traditions of Vienna into the 20th century. As in Pirchan’s monograph, Klimt is hailed for turning his back on a stale and empty tradition of realism, forging a new metaphysical path: “Klimt set down an entirely new road with his monumental allegories.”164 Likewise, anything “cutting edge” or modern in Klimt was balanced by his “eternal” qualities and his “imperishable beauty.”165 In the Znaimer Tagblatt, Klimt was seen as an artist of “Bewirklichkeit” (suprareality) and “an ever increasing power of stylization”166 while the Volks-Zeitung championed his art, “freed from the imitation of reality.”167 Art historian Gustav Künstler, in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, closely echoed the discourse of the exhibit in the works he highlighted and the emphasis on Klimt’s metaphysical and Germanic aspects.168 There would seem to have been a strong professional and possibly personal link between Künstler and Novotny, the author of the 1943 catalogue. (The latter wrote the homage appearing on the occasion of Künstler’s death in the Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte.)169 Künstler’s career continued into the 1970s and covered a vast range of artists, including Old Masters and contemporary Viennese Modernists such as Adolf Loos and Egon Schiele. There is no evidence in this review, however, of Künstler’s admiration for Modernism, and his interest in Klimt’s “Germanness” links him closely to the arc of the reviews, despite his later and broader interests. For Künstler it was the “ornamental” and “purely aesthetic” qualities that allowed Klimt to raise material reality above the mundane.170 Here again, the ornamental nature of his work

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was a method to transpose objects and images into something timeless, hierarchical. While Künstler discussed the landscapes and Damenbildnisse, he clearly sees the University paintings, along with both the Stoclet frieze and the Beethoven frieze as the essence of Klimt’s production. Ultimately, Klimt’s style is tied to the purity of his blood: “The basic feature of Klimt’s artistic personality is his racial authenticity; he is not just a Viennese by birth.”171 While lauding Klimt’s use of gold and silver, Adolf Theodor Schwarz, writing in the Znaimer Tagblatt, neglected to mention the Adele Bloch-Bauer portrait, ofering as an example only the “famous Kiss.”172 Only the review of Robert Prosl, a Viennese-born theater and opera critic and journalist for the Neuigkeits Weltblatt, made specific mention of the Damenbildnis mit Goldhinter (Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I).173 Even with their newly entjudet titles, mention of works depicting Jewish sitters was usually avoided. One of the few writers to mention the Dame in Gold was Heinrich Neumayer, writing in the Völkisher Beobachter. Neumayer wrote frequently on Expressionism and would author an article on Schiele for the Viennese VB later in the year (see Chapter 9).174 While referring to the image of Bloch-Bauer as a portrait, Neumayer followed Pirchan’s strategy of treating it as a religious image, transforming it essentially into yet another allegorical work: “[H]e lifts the spectral image into the lush dream world, where women live as Goddesses.”175 For Neumayer, as for Pirchan, Klimt is the introduction not to entartete modern art but to the twilight of the previous century. “Klimt’s art is a harvest, not a sowing.”176 And while other artists, like Waldmüller and Makart, embody their era, Gustav Klimt’s art is “Absage an das Gewesene” (“a cancellation of the past”). Canceling the Past/Erasing the Fin de Siècle Two weeks before the start of the Klimt exhibit at the Künstlerhaus, the Neues Wiener Tagblatt devoted a full-page spread to the artist. Written by Carl Moll, an ardent Nazi supporter who had once been a close colleague of Klimt’s and president of the Secession, it was a first-hand reminiscence of the artist.177 “Meine Erinnerungen an Gustav Klimt” is a direct transposition of a living, personal memory into a cultural or public memory in the form of a newspaper feature.

Figure 8.13 Carl Moll, “Meine Erinnerungen an Gustav Klimt” (My Reminiscences of Gustav Klimt) Neues Wiener Tagblatt, January 24, 1943, p. 3.

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The text focuses on Klimt’s life and character, the man who took his breakfast every morning at the Cafe Tivoli while going home to his mother and sister in the evening. Klimt is portrayed as an innocent who speaks in heavy Viennese dialect and gets lost during his travels in Italy (“Weil niemand da war und i mi da net auskenn”). With his University paintings, Klimt is the subject of misreading and scorn, not by the volk but by the intelligentsia, the press and the faculty of the University. He is unfazed by the charges of pornography levelled at him. The only other Secession colleague who appears in the account is Josef Hofmann. While praising Klimt’s landscapes of the time, Moll makes no mention at all of the artist’s portraits. Nor does he discuss his own formerly close relationship with his stepsonin-law Gustav Mahler (he was the stepfather of Alma Mahler) or the playwright Max Reinhardt, both Jews. Along with Klimt, Moll was an intimate friend of Josef Hofmann and Kolo Moser, with whom he founded the Wiener Werkstätte, alongside the (Jewish) financier Fritz Wärndorfer.178 During the Anschluss, Moll turned his back completely on his former Jewish friends and patrons, even the Gallias, who had been his biggest financial supporters and who had made him godfather to their daughters.179 Moll was an open supporter of the Nazis and fully embraced them, as did his daughter Maria and her husband, prominent Nazi Richard Eberstaller. When the regime collapsed in 1945, the three true believers entered into a suicide pact; Eberstaller shot Moll, his wife and then himself. Moll left a note: “I fall asleep unrepentant, I have had all beautiful things life had to ofer.”180 The personal reminiscence by Moll raises an important issue in regard to the 1943 Klimt exhibit. It was one thing to “rewrite” or “retrofit” a centuries-old artist such as Albrecht Dürer or Caspar David Friedrich to fit with National Socialist approval. But it was quite another thing to do so for an artist who was a contemporary, perhaps even a mentor or friend to many who attended the exhibit. Many people who came to the show had living memories of the period and culture on display or had heard about it firsthand from parents and grandparents. To what extent, if any, were such personal memories evoked by the show? As with images that subtly recalled the Jewess in the 1942 schöne Wienerinnen show, did these images by Klimt, created under such diferent conditions, give rise to cognitive or emotional dissonance? Did any visitors recall seeing them on the villa walls of a Jewish friend or colleague, a person whose history no longer existed? Did they resonate with a spark of memory for the time and place in which they were created, the heady mood under which they came into being? Who among the visitors had first seen the works on the walls of the Secession building, when the structure symbolized all that was new and radical and exotic and liberating? And surely, among those attending were those who knew that those women in white and gold had once had names and that their faces were not those of remote goddesses but of real women whose very existence could no longer be publicly acknowledged. The 1943 Klimt exhibit utilized various forms of erasure, including the simple neglect of facts and features that contested the historical myths under construction. But Dirk Rupnow reminds us that even acts of commemoration and preservation—certainly something that applies to a retrospective exhibit—might also be acts of erasure: “It may nonetheless be asserted that the complementary phenomenon to physical annihilation does not have to be forgetting, but can be museum memory instead.”181 Indeed, one can create extinction by placing something in a museum; actual life stops where its display and enactment begin. We should understand von Schirach’s Klimt

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retrospective as a vivid example of how cultural memory might replace collective memory, of how institutional memory might serve to overwrite personal recollection. The Klimt exhibit celebrated the achievements of an artist and an era while banishing from consciousness many of the key figures—the writers and defenders, the patrons and sitters—who had helped shape it. Such acts of omission always reach back and forward simultaneously, as Edward Casey notes: “[P]ublic memory is both attached to a past . . . and acts to ensure a future of further remembering of that same event.”182 While individuals take their memories with them when they pass, cultural memory may live as long as its use dictates. But if the 1943 show can be seen as an attempt to re-envision the fin de siècle, it was not an entirely successful venture for everyone. Prominent art historian of the Ostmark Karl Oettinger183 still had difculty reconciling Klimt’s greatness with the period in which he had lived; ultimately, even the artist was tainted by the culture in which he produced. Turn-of-the-century Vienna was too much to overcome; it was not a continuation but a caesura in Ostmark culture. Writing in Das Wienerische in der bildenden Kunst (Viennese Elements in the Visual Arts) (1944), Oettinger warned against assimilating the period into the narrative: It is already evident to us why we should call into question the art of 1900 as valid historical testimony of the Viennese. .  .  . Its patrons were, and thus its art was, an expression of the Culture of Money (Geldkultur), of the latter jaded financial generation. Certainly, the portraits of Klimt, leader of the Secession, reflect a locally inflected Jugendstil style, which dominated Europe. But Anton Faistauer, the great Salzburg painter, has seen clearly when he notes that Klimt owed his erotic and highly refined, Oriental play of forms to Budapest and Constantinople.184 The terms Oriental and Geldkultur were fairly transparent references to the Jewish nouveau-riche who had so dominated the art of the period. The foreign and Jewish taste had ultimately subsumed even the Viennese blood of Klimt: “In service to a thin, international strata of wealth and decadent taste, testimony of the alienation of the Metropolis from above and below, even the Viennese birth of Klimt was unable to express itself.”185 In a fascinating manner, Oettlinger’s quote disparages nearly all the things erased in the Künstlerhaus exhibits we have examined in this study: the city (Metropolis), the “wealth and decadent taste” (a reference to portraits of Jewesses like Adele Bloch-Bauer) and the whole phenomenon of fin-de-siècle culture. His condemnation of Klimt shows that while Vienna 1900 had been suppressed, it had not been entirely repressed. Beneath the rewritings of exhibits and texts survived a palimpsest of the culture that had been destroyed. The 1943 show had done its best to remove Klimt from the fin de siècle but had not entirely succeeded in removing the fin de siècle from Klimt’s works. Resurrecting the Fin de Siècle Writing about Vienna 1900, Michael Burri notes: Every reading of this period [Imperial Vienna] is, in some sense, a creative mythmaking, though the specific configuration of the myth is shaped by individual contingencies, local factors, and above all, the need for Austria to reinvent itself for the present.186

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Burri reminds us that this period continues to be useful and to be reshaped to fit the needs of an ever-changing Austrian identity. For it cannot be denied and, indeed, is richly ironic that the same period repressed in Nazi discourse has been used, in turn, to repress Austria’s Nazi past. Following the war, public attitudes toward and use of the late Imperial period of Vienna, in particular of Vienna 1900, swung entirely in the other direction. Scholars of the last two decades have shown how the period was recouped and refitted in order to distance Austria from the darker era of the Anschluss.187 Nostalgia for a glittering, intoxicating turn of the century diverted attention away from grappling with its more recent past. The multicultural spirit and Jewish contributions of fin-de-siècle Vienna seem to contest the shameful city that had embraced Hitler with such open arms.188 Heidemarie Uhl refers to Vienna 1900 as a “Gedächtnisortes (lieu de memoire)” and points to the early 1980s as its locus, marked by the publication of Carl Schorske’s Vienna Fin de Siècle (1979) and exhibits such as Traum und Realität at the Vienna Künslerhaus in 1985.189 Matthew Fink, too, notes that “Today’s city of Vienna is the epitome of the lieu de memoire” and cites the late 1980s as the starting point for the image of Vienna as “Weltstadt.”190 As any recent visitor to Vienna can attest, the touristic focus on Vienna 1900 is matched only by the equally ubiquitous presence of Mozart’s Vienna. Katherine Arens draws a distinction between what she sees as the immediate post-war use of the (invented) Habsburg past to legitimize Austria and wipe away its sins and a later (“third”) generation that uses it to other ends: namely, to participate as a nation on the world stage. While the post-war generation, still traumatized by the Nazi era, aimed to “correct” the historical view of the Habsburg past, the following generation moved beyond post-memory into ritualizing and memorializing Vienna 1900, turning it into an “empty social form.” (In the terminology used throughout my study, we might characterize it as a move from individual and collective memory to one of cultural or public memory.) Examples of this latter use are museum exhibits such as the Kaiserin Elisabeth: In einem Wald von Träumen at the Hermes-Villa in 1999, as well as books and worldwide hit musicals like Elisabeth (1992). Arens sees the contemporary references to Habsburg culture as distinct from earlier nostalgia and not about Austrian history, but rather about contemporary individuals’ images or desires: “[T]hey do not celebrate the past, they deploy its images in the present and perhaps a future, and bond a community to it.” In both cases, the past is rewritten to serve the present. I believe this distinction may not be so clear cut and would argue instead for Duncan Bell’s use of historic myth, which can contain both functions, even simultaneously.191 The shift may have less to do with a shift away from the trauma of post-memory than with the Postmodern acknowledgment that there is no singular Habsburg history and that using the past efectively may be more important than any attempt to “get it right.”192 The continual reshaping of the period reveals the enduring power of cultural erasure and memory to impact the present and its continual metamorphosis. The same decades reviled for being modern and Jewish would come to be fetishized and promoted to draw attention away from the Nazi past. The image of Vienna 1900 that emerged from the writings of Carl Schorske, a city where, in the words of Michael P. Steinberg, “every intellectual is continuously talking with every other intellectual, as if Viennese culture were the glorious, delayed result of a three-century cafeine surfeit,” was so intoxicating that it pulled viewers and readers straight from one fin de siècle to another, bypassing the troublesome periods in between.193 Writing of the catalogue essay for the mammoth Traum und Wirklichkeit exhibit held in 1985 at the Wien Künslerhaus, Finch argues that,

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[By] mobilizing and promoting the well-worked symbol of Vienna 1900 Zilk’s text spans the chasm of ofcial amnesia regarding the Nazi years and reaches a more positively regarded period of Austrian history, one not requiring Austrians to engage in moral self- examination or questions of guilt. It was an historical moment presented as having nothing to do with 1938–45.194 To focus on Vienna 1900 was to reclaim its links to Jewish culture without acknowledging its destruction. Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, stripped of her name and deprived of her provenance, has now become one of the most singular icons of the victory of memory and of Jewish Vienna. With the mention of Jewish Vienna, we are brought back to where we began the chapter. The 1943 Klimt exhibit was not only a chance to celebrate a distinctly Viennese cultural figure but also a chance to eface the Vienna 1900 that so troubled the Nazi regime. The show was a great boost to Baldur von Schirach, a grand efort to salvage the beauty and art of fin-de-siècle Vienna without the Jewish contribution (just as the schöne Wiener exhibit recouped the glamor and style of the Viennese Jewess while entirely obliterating her presence). This discussion brings us right back to Bettauer and Scheicher for what was the Klimt exhibit’s narrative if not one that carried out the fantasy of a Vienna 1900 without Jews? In the Künstlerhaus show and its accompanying texts, Vienna was a garden, not a metropolis, the art produced within it was young and new, free of the questioning and doubt attached to modern art. If Scheicher and Bettauer projected this fantasy forward, the precise opposite occurred in the exhibit, which projected a judenfrei Vienna back into the turn of the century. In contrast to those living in Nazi Vienna, for whom it was real, for antisemites at the turn of the century, the concept of the city without Jews was a wish fulfillment, a revenge fantasy. I wish to end by proposing Bettauer’s novel as wish fulfillment of a very diferent sort, one that many of us might harbor. For in the final scenes of Bettauer’s novel, the banished Jews return, if not to celebration, at least to relief. They take up again where life left of. In a way Bettauer could never have intended, his final pages therefore express a fantasy: a wish that the last Jewish community chased from Vienna might still return, that it might still exist, whole and waiting, safe somewhere beyond our memories. Notes 1. Rupnow, “Ihr müßt sein,” 33. 2. Josef Scheicher, Aus dem Jahre 1920. Ein Traum (St. Pölten: Verlag Gregora, 1900). Scheicher was a prominent supporter of Christian Socialism and a virulent antisemite. For a brief introduction to the novel, see Silverman, Becoming Austrians, 76–77 and Scott Spector, “Modernism without Jews: A Counter-Historical Argument,” Modernism/Modernity 13, no. 4 (November 2006): 615–633; For Lueger, see p. 151. 3. Hugo Bettauer, Die Stadt ohne Juden (Vienna: Gloriette Verlag, 1922). The book is available online through Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35569/35569-h/35569-h. htm. On Bettauer’s murder, see Silverman, “Courts of Injustice: Four Trials, Three Murders, Two Jews,” in Becoming Austrians, 28–65; Paley, Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis, 102–106. 4. Some of the material and ideas in this chapter were taken up in the following article: Laura Morowitz, “Reviled, Repressed, Resurrected: Vienna 1900 in the Nazi Imaginary,” Austrian History Yearbook (2022): 1–21. 5. Bettauer, Die Stadt ohne Juden, 13. 6. As has often been noted, writing on Klimt has become an ever-growing cottage industry, and books now exist on nearly every aspect of Klimt’s life and art. For some recent comprehensive studies of Klimt, see the catalogues published on the occasion of his 150th birthday, summarized in Jan Van Nimmen, “Klimt Year in Vienna: Part One,” Nineteenth Century

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7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Erasing the Fin de Siècle Art Worldwide 11, no. 3 (Autumn 2012) and Jan Van Nimmen, “Klimt Year in Vienna: Part Two,” Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide 12, no. 1 (Spring 2013). On Klimt and Modernity, see Colin B. Bailey, Gustav Klimt: Modernism in the Making (Abrams/Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2001). Jeroen Van Heerde, “The Habsburg State and Gustav Klimt: Scenes from a Fruitful Relationship,” in Klimt’s Women, eds. Tobias G. Natter and Gerbert Frodl (New Haven/ London: Yale University Press, 2001), 18–24; “Who Paid the Piper: The Art of Patronage in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna,” March 8 to May 26, 2007, Galerie St. Etienne, https://www.gseart. com/exhibitions-essay/1018. Van Heerde, “The Habsburg State and Gustav Klimt,” 19. Van Heerde, “The Habsburg State and Gustav Klimt,” 20. Heiss, “Pan Germans.” Kozuchowski, The Afterlife of Austria Hungary, 94. Othmar Krainz, Aufruf gegen Habsburg. Revolution in drei Jahrhunderten (Leipzig: Heilingsche Verlaganstatt, 1938); Karl Itzinger, Nie wieder Habsburg! Habsburger in der Geschichte der Deutschen (Munich: Ludendorf, 1936); Alfred Rapp, Die Habsburger: die Tragödie eines halben Jahrtausends deutscher Geschichte (Stuttgart: Franckh, 1936). Gottfried Zarnow, Gekrönt-entehrt! Europas Schicksal, Habsburgs Schuld. Das Problem des XX Jahrhunderts (Bern: Buchverlag, 1937). Gottfried Zarnow, Verbündet-Verraten! Habsburgs Weg von Berlin nach Paris (Zürich: Albert Nauck et Cie, 1936). Van Dyke, Franz Radziwill, 83. Van Dyke notes that Zarnow may also have been suspect for his hesitancy to condemn Jewish Germans. Zarnow, Verbündet-Verraten, vii. Zarnow, Verbündet-Verraten, x. Itzinger, Nie wieder Habsburg!, 4–5. Itzinger’s fiction was placed on a list of forbidden works by the occupying Soviets after the war. Only in 2012 was his Nazi past publicly revealed. Hannes Koch, “Karl Itzinger—Heimatdichter und Nationalsozialist,” and Christian Schacherreiter, “Nationalsozialistische Ideologie in Karl Itzingers Bauernkriegstrilogie,” in Der Bundschuh: Heimatkundliches aus dem Inn- und Hausruckviertel (Ried im Innkreis: Museum Innviertel, 2012), 97–105; 106–109. Rapp’s other books focused on arguing for the Germanic roots of the Alsace, as part of the Nazi annexation of the region into Gau Baden-Elsass (Gau Oberrhern) in 1940. Rapp, Die Habsburger, 256. Kozuchowski, The Afterlife of Austria-Hungary, 80. Rapp, Die Habsburger, 263. Passages from Mein Kampf quoted and translated in Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 107; 251. James Longo, Hitler and the Habsburgs: The Fuhrer’s Vendetta Against the Austrian Royals (New York: Diversion, 2018). Hofmann, Wie die Ostmark ihre Befreiung erlebte, 14. The earlier centuries of Habsburg rule saw a great deal of ofcially mandated antisemitism, persecution and deportation. See, for example, Dean Phillip Bell, Sacred Communities: Jewish and Christian Identities in Fifteenth-Century Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Bruce Paley, “The Historical Roots,” in From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 13–26. I thank Megan Brandow-Faller for bringing this issue to my attention. Robert S. Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Josef (Littmann Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006); Paley, From Prejudice, 22–25. Körber, Rassesieg, 28. Dassanowsky, Screening Transcendence, 122. See Chapter 4. Hüttner. For an earlier discussion of the Tendenzfilme, see p. 88. Following the definition of Duncan Bell, “Mythscapes.” The term comes from Körber, Rassesieg, 9. On the issue of Jewish patronage, see p. 158. Hardly coincidental, the very high Jewish population of Vienna in the 1920s corresponds with the first attempts to exempt Jews from Austrian citizenship on the basis of race and

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38.

39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50.

51. 52.

53. 54.

55. 56. 57.

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marks the first use of the term Rasse in this context in Austrian law; Understanding Multiculturalism, 125; Paley, 81, reports the same figures. On Jews in fin-de-siècle Vienna, see Marsha L. Rosenblitt, The Jews of Vienna: 1867–1914 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983); Michael John Wistrich, “Migration in Austria: An Overview of the 1920s to the 2000s,” in Understanding Multiculturalism, 122–157; Paley, “Austria’s Jews on the Eve of the Great War,” chapter four, From Prejudice. Unruly Masses: The Other Side of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, eds. Wolfgang Maderthanser and Lutz Musner (New York: Berghahn, 2008). The classic essay on Lueger is Carl Schorske, “Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio,” in Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna; Richard Geehr, Karl Lueger: Mayor of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991). There are surprisingly few recognized sources on Hitler’s early years in Vienna. By far the best is Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna. The period is also covered briefly by Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (New York/London: W.W. Norton and Co., 1998). A less cited source is J. Sydney Jones, Hitler in Vienna: 1907–1913: Clues to the Future (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002). Hamann, “Political Role Models,” in Apprentice, 236–303. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 74. See Chapter 4, “Erasing the City.” Körber, Rassesieg, 9. Körber, Rassesieg, 16. I thank Tim Corbett for pointing out the translation of the Hebrew lettering. Körber, Rassesieg, 289. For example in writing, see Abigail E. Gillman, Viennese Jewish Modernism: Freud, Hofmannsthal, Beer-Hofmann, and Schnitzler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009) and in music, Quasi una fantasia: Juden in die Musikstadt Wien, eds. Leon Botstein and Werner Hanak (Vienna: Wolke Verlag, 2003). For a good overview of the debates, see Hillary Hope Herzog, introduction in Vienna is Diferent: Jewish Writers in Vienna from the Fin de Siècle to the Present (New York: Berghahn, 2011). Lisa Silverman provides an overview of the recent and varied scholarly attempts to focus on Jewish agency in Central European culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Lisa Silverman, “Revealing Jews: Culture and Visibility in Modern Central Europe,” Shofar 36, no. 1 (2018): 134–160; for another overview of the topic, see Steven Beller, introduction in Rethinking Vienna 1900 (New York: Berghahn, 2001). Leora Auslander explores both the appeal and the limitations of Modernism for Jews in the Weimar Republic: Leora Auslander, “The Boundaries of Jewishness, or When is a Cultural Practice Jewish?” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 8, no. 1 (March 2009): 47–64. Other scholars studying Jewish identity in Vienna included Ivar Oxaal, Marsha Rozenblit and Gerhard Botz. Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Steven Beller, “‘The Jews Belongs in the Cofeehouse’: Jews, Central Europe and Modernity,” in The Viennese Café and Fin-de-Siècle Culture, eds. Charlotte Ashby, Tag Gronberg and Simon Shaw-Miller (New York: Berghahn, 2013); Elana Shapira, Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture and Design in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2016); Elana Shapira, “Imaging the Jew: A Clash of Civilizations,” in Facing the Modern, 155–171. This is the case in music, for example, with Modernist figures such as Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Berg. Beller attributes this connection to what he terms “Jewish consciousness,” an admittedly thorny argument. See “Melancholy Journeys to the Past: The Films of Ruth Beckermann,” in Krylova, The Long Shadow of the Past, 25–48. The narrative quote is translated in the chapter by Beckermann: “Freud, Schnitzler, Schönberg. Das Wien der Jahrhundertwende ist modern . . . Seit der Ausstellung über ‘entartete Kunst’; wurden hier nicht mehr so viele Juden gezeigt. Jetzt, auf einmal, gehören sie dazu.” Krylova, The Long Shadow of the Past, 42. Spector, “Modernism without Jews,” 616. Karl Ginhart, Wien: Das Antlitz der Stadt in Bildern (Vienna: Wilhelm Frick Verlag, 1941). Ulrike Krippner and Iris Meder, “Anna Plischke and Helene Wolf: Designing Gardens in Early Twentieth-Century Austria,” in Women, Modernity and Landscape Architecture, ed. Sonja Dümpelmann and John Beardsley (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 100, note. 1.

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58. E.F. Sekler, Josef Hofmann: The Architectural Work, trans. John Maas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). For a thorough discussion of Hofmann’s relation to the Nazis, see Shapira, “Our Great Josef Hofmann.” 59. K. Pokorny-Nagel, “Hofmann (Hofmann), Josef Franz Maria (1870–1956), Architekt und Kunsthandwerker,” Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon ab 1815, https://www.biographien.ac.at/oebl/oebl_H/Hofmann_Josef-Franz-Maria_1870_1956.xml, accessed December 14, 2018. 60. Ginhart became a member of the Federal Monuments Ofce in the 1920s and joined the illegal Nazi party from 1930–32, renewing his membership after the Anschluss. His Nazi past proved no obstacle in his career, for which he was awarded the Österreichische Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst in 1960. Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie, eds. Walther Killy and Rudolf Vierhaus, vol. 4 (Munich: K.G. Saur Verlag GmbH & Co, 1996), 11. On Ginhart’s activities during the NS period, see Susanne Heim, Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945, vol 2, Deutsches Reich 1938–August 1939 (Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2009), 212–213. 61. The German Ostmark (Vienna: Carl Gerold’s Sohn, undated). 62. Suchenwirth, Das Buch von der Deutschen Ostmark, 145–146. On Suchenwirth’s Nazi activities, see note 80, chapter two. 63. On Baumgärtel, see Bauer and Gradwohl-Schlacher, Literatur in Österreich 1938–1945, vol. 3, 130–135. 64. Baumgärtel, 1940: 40. 65. I am grateful to William Gillespie of germanfilms.org for his very stimulating and helpful email conversation about the film. 66. Richard Geehr, Karl Lueger: Mayor of Fin de Siècle Vienna (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), 316–320; Gernot Heiss, “‘Wien 1910’—Ein NS-Film zu Lueger und Schönerer,” in Politische Gewalt und Machtausübung im 20. Jahrhundert: Zeitgeschichte, Zeitgeschehen und Kontroversen, ed. Heinrich Berger et al. (Vienna: Böhlau, 2011), https://doi.org/10.7767/ boehlau.9783205791720.153. The film was originally entitled Der Bürgermeister von Wien: Ein Film aus dem Wien der Rothschildzeit. During production, it was also referred to as Schönerer-Lueger. 67. On von Schönerer, see Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 236–253. 68. That number is reported by Joseph Garncarz, Begeisterte Zuschauer—Die Macht des Kinopublikums in der NS-Diktatur (Cologne: Herbert von Halem Verlag, 2021). I am grateful to film scholar William Gillespie for making me aware of this. 69. Goebbels quoted and translated in Geehr, Karl Lueger, 31. 70. Goebbel’s diary entry of May 14, 1942, cited in Heiss (translation Morowitz). 71. “Die stimmt mit den Bestrebungen des neuen Gauleiters, Reichsjugendführer Baldur von Schirach (1941) jede Art von österreichischem Partikularismus zu unterbinden.” Das Wiener Film im Dritten Reich. Wien Film, ed. Walter Fritz (Vienna: Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Filmwissenschaft, Kommunikations und Medienforschung, 1988). 72. For example, Emil Nolde and Kathé Kollwitz. See Chapter 9. 73. Petropoulos, Art under Hitler; Potter, Art of Suppression. 74. These would include, for example, Josef Dobrowsky and Stephanie Hollenstein. 75. See the early works of Hans Frank, Theodor Klotz-Dürrenbach, Alfred Gerstenbrand, Ferdinand Andri etc. 76. See his portrait in response to the label: Oskar Kokoschka, Self Portrait as Degenerate Artist, 1937, National Gallery of Scotland. On the artist in relation to the Degenerate Art exhibits, see Ernst Ploil, “The ‘Entartete Kunst’ Exhibits in Austria,” in Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art, 128–135. 77. Neues Wiener Tagblatt, November 2, 1943: 2. See Chapter 9. 78. For the full history of the expropriation of the works, see Anne-Marie O’Connor, The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (New York: Knopf, 2012); Lillie and Gaugush, Portrait of Adele; Mayer, “Bruno Grimschitz und die Österreichische Galerie.” On Grimschitz, see page 163. 79. Morowitz, “Heil the Hero Klimt.” 80. Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 28.

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81. Tobias G, Natter, Franz Smola and Peter Weinhäupl, Klimt: Up Close and Personal (Vienna: Christian Brandstatter/Leopold Museum, 2012); Tobias G. Natter, et al., Klimt and the Women of Vienna’s Golden Age (Munich: Prestel, 2016); Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 28. Shapira makes a somewhat similar argument that Klimt “exposed stereotypes” in his images of Jews. Shapira, “Imaging the Jew.” 82. David Dennis, Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 83. Martin Schwab, “Selected Afnities: Nietzsche and the Nazis,” in Nazi Germany and the Humanities: How German Academics Embraced Nazism, eds. Wolfgang Bialas and Anson Rabinbach (London: Oneworld, 2007). 84. The lines are from Schiller’s “Die zwei Tugendwege” (1795): “Kannst du nicht allen gefallen durch deine Tat und dein Kunstwerk, mach es wenigen recht: Vielen gefallen ist schlimm.” For a sustained reading of the philosophical roots of the painting, see Kevin C. Karnes, “Wagner, Klimt and the Metaphysics of Creativity in fin-de-siècle Vienna,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 63, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 647–497. 85. See Stephan Koja, Gustav Klimt: The Beethoven Frieze and the Controversy Over the Freedom of Art (London/New York: Prestel Publishing, 2007). 86. Quirin Engesser, “Friedrich Schiller: eine Deutsche Tragödie,” Völkischer Beobachter, November 10, 1934; H. Krause, “Schiller, ein Fahrer zum Neuen Reich,” Völkischer Beobachter, May 8, 1930; Dennis, Inhumanities. 87. Gustav Klimt, Death and Life, 1915, oil on canvas, Leopold Museum, Vienna. 88. Dennis, Inhumanities, 76–77; 100–101; Alice Strobl, “The Faculty Paintings and Sketches for Medicine and Philosophy,” in Klimt, ed. Alfred Weidinger (Munich: Prestel, 2007), 41–56; Peter Vergo, “The ‘Klimt Afair’—The University Paintings,” in Art in Vienna: 1898–1918. Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele and Their Contemporaries (London: Phaidon Press, 1993), 49–62. 89. On the discussion of Nietzsche in the Völkischer Beobachter, see Dennis, 128; 133; 250–261; Schwab. On Klimt’s fascination for Greek myth, see Dennis, “Blinded by the Light,” in Inhumanities. Dennis argues that Nazi ideology was primarily engaged in a “Dionysian” antiquity. On the link between neoclassicism and racial cleansing, see Michaud, Cult, 145–150. 90. Lisa Florman, “Gustav Klimt and the Precedent of Ancient Greece,” The Art Bulletin 72, no. 2 (June 1990): Florman asserts (p. 310) that Klimt believed “Nietzsche’s assertion that Germanic culture could only be revived by an art that was the equivalent of tragedies born of Archaic Greece.” 91. The frieze pays homage not only to Beethoven and Schiller but also to Wagner, who interpreted the musical piece. See Koja, Gustav Klimt: The Beethoven Frieze. My thanks to Megan Brandow-Faller for clarifying Mahler’s role here. 92. Dennis, “Blinded by the Light,” 31; 374–376; “Ludwig van Beethoven,” Völkischer Beobachter, March 26, 1927, 1. 93. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 228; Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 145. 94. Dennis, “Blinded by the Light,” 420. 95. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 145. This was the case, for example in the celebrations held in October of 1938. 96. The painting has been held in the US Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC, since the end of the war. 97. She notes: “The Golden Knight is the yearned for ‘Messias militans,’ an exemplar of manhood purged of the forces of darkness during the age of the Holy Ghost and awaited in the coming epoch” and calls Klimt’s Knight a cross “between the ‘German Michael’ and ‘Parsifal.’” Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer, “Sodom and Gomorrah Updated: Gustav Klimt’s Image of Woman and of the Foreign,” in Klimt: The Collection of the Wien Museum, ex. cat. (Vienna: Hatje Kantz, 2012), 36–37. 98. On the exhibit, see Morowitz, “‘Heil the Hero.’” Discussion of the exhibit is nearly absent in the Klimt literature. For the only exceptions, see Sophie Lillie, “Die Gustav Klimt Ausstellung von 1943,” in Bogner, Die Wiener Künstlerhaus, 335–341; Sophie Lillie, “To Each Age a Klimt of its Own: Gustav Klimt between Politics and Society,” in Klimt: The Collection of the Wien Museum, 43. The exhibition Ohne Klimt: Gustav Klimt und das Künstlerhaus, Künstlerhaus, Vienna, July 6 to September 23, 2012, included as part of its installation a group of documents and photographs of the 1943 retrospective housed in the institution’s archives.

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99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

115.

116. 117.

118. 119. 120.

121.

Erasing the Fin de Siècle The only other discussion of the exhibit is that of art historian Monica Strauss, who wrote a blog entry chronicling the fate of the Lederer family works that were exhibited in the 1943 show. Monica Strauss, “Klimt’s Last Retrospective,” The Jewish Daily Forward, November 7, 2007, http://forward.com/articles/11974/klimt-s-last-retrospective-/. Aichelburg, “Verzeichnis der Ausstellungen 1868–1910,” 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/ausstellungen/verzeichnis/. See Chapter 7. “Vorrangige Absicht war es, die Moral der Wiener Bevölkerung zu heben, und zwar durch die ofensive Zurschaustellung kultureller Grosse,” Lillie, Die Gustav Klimt Ausstellung, 336. Emil Pirchan, Gustav Klimt: Ein Künstler aus Wien (Vienna/Leipzig: Verlag Wallishauser, 1942). Letter from Walter Thomas to Emil Pirchan, dated March 8, 1942. Klimt Ausstellung 1943 Folder, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. “Emil Pirchan,” Kulturportal West-Ost, http://kulturportal-west-ost.eu/biographies/ pirchan-emil-2. For the contents of the exhibit, see Ausstellung der Vereinigung bildender Künstler Wiener Secession: Klimt Gedächtnis-Ausstellung, 27 Juni 1928–31 Juli 1928. The comparison between the exhibit displays is pointed out by Lillie, “To each age a Klimt,” 44. Mayer, “Bruno Grimschitz und die Österreichische Galerie”; Schedlmayer,“Zeitung Kunst dem Volk,” 25–28. “[D]er Hauptakteure bei der ‘Arisierung’ der Wiener Kunstsammlungen,” Czernin quoted in Schedlmayer, “Zeitung Kunst dem Volk,” 27. Other members of the committee included Josef Hofmann, Professor Anton Hanak, Julius Lindner, Hofrat professor Alfred Roller and architect Fritz Zeyman. Lillie, “Die Gustav Klimt Ausstellung,” 336. The layout was described in the catalogue. Gustav Klimt Ausstellung 1943: Ausstellungshaus Friedrichstraße, ehemalige Secession, Februar 7 bis März 7, 1943 (Vienna: Chwalas Druck, 1943). Letter of March 8, 1942, from Walther Thomas to Bruno Grimschitz. Klimt Ausstellung 1943 Folder, Künstlerhaus Wien, Archives, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv. Information on the hanging of the room is found in the review of the exhibition written by Robert Prosl in the Neuigkeits Weltblatt February 9, 1943, 3. Lillie, “To Each Age a Klimt,” 44. The Bloch-Bauer works are The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1 (1907), The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912), Appletrees (1912), Birch Trees (1903) and Houses at Unterach am Attersee (1916). For a thorough discussion of the works and their appropriation, see Lillie and Gaugusch, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. See, for example, the controversies surrounding some of the works in the Leopold Collection and those in the Klimt Foundation. Georgina Prodhan, “Vienna Museum Director Quits in Nazi-Looted Art Row,” Arts, October 3, 2013,https://www.reuters.com/article/us-austriamuseum/vienna-museum-director-quits-in-nazi-looted-art-row-idUSBRE99T12720131030; “Austria Criticized for Restituting Klimt Painting to Wrong Family,” Artforum, November 16, 2018, https://www.artforum.com/news/austria-criticized-for-restituting-klimt-painting-towrong-family-77591. I am making reference here to the tradition, under the Ancient Romans but practiced in many civilizations, of removing any reference, record or image of an individual after their death in order to punish them. For a good recounting of the trials and tribulations of the painting, see O’Connor, The Lady in Gold. The first to point out these erasures was the late Czech journalist Hubertus Czernin, Die Falschung: Die Fall Bloch-Bauer und das Werk Gustav Klimts (Vienna: Czernin Verlag, 2006). In the 1928 exhibition, the portrait was number 61 and listed as Bildnis der Frau Bloch Bauer. Novotny, Gustav Klimt Ausstellung, unpaginated. Novotny, Gustav Klimt Ausstellung, unpaginated. Baldur von Schirach, “Kunst und Wirklichkeit,” in Koralle: Wochenschrift für Unterhaltung, Wissen, Lebensfreude, no. 45 (November 9, 1941): 1086–1088. Cited in Eric Michaud, The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany, 95. Also see Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 200. Von Schirach took up the same ideas in his text, Zwei Reden zur deutschen Kunst (Weimar: Ges. d. Bibliophilen, 1941). Van Heerde, “The Habsburg State and Gustav Klimt: Scenes from a Fruitful Relationship.”

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122. Susan Krüger Sass, “Nordische Kunst: Die Bedeutung des Begrifes während des Nationalsozialismus,” in Kunstgeschichte im Dritten Reich, eds. Olaf Peterson, Ruth Heftrig and Barbara Schellewald (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 224–244. 123. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 13. 124. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 15. 125. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 12. 126. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 67. 127. Schwarz, Birgit, “Hitler’s Museum,” in Die Fotoalben Gemäldegalerie Linz (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2004). 128. Bruno Grimschitz, Maler der Ostmark der 19th Jahrhunderts (Wien: Verlag Anton Schroll, 1940), 18. 129. See Schedlmayer, “Die Zeitung Kunst dem Volk,” 152–159. 130. Pirchan, Hans Makart, 31. 131. Grimschitz, Hans Makart. 132. This issue is discussed in Chapter 6. 133. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 32. 134. On Hitler’s artistic interests while he lived in Vienna, see Haman, Hitler’s Vienna; Spotts, “The Failed Painter,” 123–137. 135. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 46, reproduces an image that Klimt dedicated to Alt: Klimt’s Widmungsblatt für Rudolf Alt, 1900. 136. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 35. 137. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 38. 138. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 38. 139. “Feschen Weaner Maderln,” Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 99. 140. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 67. 141. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 66. 142. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 66–67. 143. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 57. 144. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 66. 145. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 66. 146. Michael MacKenzie, “From Athens to Berlin: The 1936 Olympics and Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia,” Critical Inquiry 29 (Winter 2003); Johann Chapoutot, Greeks, Romans, Germans: How the Nazis Usurped Europe’s Classical Past, trans. Richard R. Nybakken (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016). 147. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 41. 148. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 53. 149. See Sedlmayer, “Zuschreibungen an das ‘Deutsche,’ ‘Germanische’ und ‘Nordische’ in “Die Zeitschrift Kunst dem Volk.” 150. James Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1985); Sedlmayer, “Die Zeitschrift Kunst dem Volk,” 71–77. 151. Gert Adriani, “Die grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung,” Kunst dem Volk 8 (1939): 45. 152. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 72. 153. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 64. 154. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 65. 155. See Chapter 6. 156. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 92. 157. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, 99. 158. “Drei interessante Ausstellungen in Wien,” Znaimer Tagblatt, January 28, 1943, 4; Neuigkeits Welt Blatt, February 5, 1943, 3. 159. Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Berlin, February 14, 1943; Frankfurter Zeitung, February 25, 1943; München Zeitung, February 7, 1943. 160. Heinrich Neumayer, “Gustav Klimt: Zum 25. Todestag des Wieners Malers,” Völkischer Beobachter, February 7, 1943, 4. Heinrich Neumayer, “Die Klimt Ausstellung in Wien,” Völkischer Beobachter, February 8, 1943. 161. These were the only works mentioned in the reviews appearing in the Znaimer Tagblatt, February 8, 1943, 3; Neuigkeits Welt Blatt, February 9, 1943, 3; Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung, February 8, 1943, 4; Kleine Blatte, February 8, 1943: 5. 162. “Dieses Monumentalmalers” Adolf Bassaraba, Volks-Zeitung, February 9, 1943, 2.

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163. Adolf Theodor Schwarz, “Die Gustav Klimt Ausstellung,” Znaimer Tagblatt, February 8, 1943, 3. 164. “[S]chlug Klimt mit seinen monumental Allegorien . . . einen völlig neuen Weg.” Schwarz, “Die Gustav Klimt Ausstellung”: 3. “‘Bahnbrechend,” “von der alten Tradition losgelöst.” Robert Prosl, “Junge Kunst von einst,” Neuigkeits Weltblatt, February 9, 1943, 3. 165. Schwarz, “Die Gustav Klimt Ausstellung,” 3. 166. “Die Gustav Klimt Ausstellung” noted that Klimt’s work was one of “Überwirklichkeit” and “die ständig wachsende Kraft der Stilisierung.” Schwarz, “Die Gustav Klimt Ausstellung,” 3. 167. Bassaraba, Volks-Zeitung, 2. 168. Gustav Künstler, “Gustav Klimt,” Neues Wiener Tagblatt, February 8, 1943, 2–3. 169. Fritz Novotny, “Gustav Künstler,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 28, no. 1 (1975): 7–8, https://doi.org/10.7767/wjk.1975.28.1.7. 170. Künstler, “Gustav Klimt,” 2, writes of Klimt’s “Loslösung vom Charakter des Wirklichkeitsabbildes.” 171. Künstler, “Gustav Klimt,” 3. 172. Schwarz, “Die Gustav Klimt Ausstellung,” 3. 173. Prosl, “Junge Kunst,” 3. Prosl was also one of the only reviewers to mention the portrait of Emile Flöge and Waters Snakes along with the more commonly noted pieces. “Robert Maria Prosl,” Österreichisches Musiklexikon Online, https://www.musiklexikon.ac.at/ml/musik_P/ Prosl_Robert.xml, accessed July 30, 2004. 174. Like several of the other critics we have examined, Neumayer was also a theater and music critic and, like them, his career continued long into the post-war period. Felix Czeike, “Heinrich Neumayer,” Historisches Lexikon Wien, vol. 4 (Vienna: Verlag Kremayr & Scheriau, 1995). 175. Neumayer, “Die Klimt Ausstellung in Wien,” 4. 176. Neumayer, “Die Klimt Ausstellung in Wien,” 4. 177. Carl Moll, “Meine Erinnerungen an Gustav Klimt: Aus dem Leben und Schafen des Meisters der Sezession,” Neues Wiener Tagblatt, January 24, 1943, 3. 178. Gerbert Frodl and Tobias Natter, Carl Moll (1861–1945), exhibition catalogue (Vienna: Österreichischen Galerie Belvedere/Salzburg: Verlag Galerie Welz, 1998). 179. Tim Bonyhady, Good Living Street: Portrait of a Patron Family, Vienna 1900 (New York: Pantheon Books), 245, 180. Bert van der Waal van Dijk, “Carl Julius Rudolf Moll (1861–1945),” Gustav-Mahler.eu, https://www.gustav-mahler.eu/index.php/familie/115-generation-5b/338-carl-julius-rudolfmoll-1861-1945. 181. Rupnow, “Ihr müßt sein,” 33. 182. Edward S. Casey, “Public Memory in Place and Time,” in Framing Public Memory, ed. Kendall R. Phillips (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 17–44. 183. On Oettinger, see “Die Ostmark in der populärwissenschaftlichen Kunstgeschichtsschreibung: Bruno Grimschitz, Karl Oettinger” in Schedlmayer, “Die Zeitschrift ‘Kunst dem Volk,’” 140–150. 184. Karl Oettinger, Das Wienerische in der bildenden Kunst (Salzburg: Müller Verlag, 1948), 44. According to Sedlmayer, “Die Zeitschrift‚ Kunst dem Volk,” the manuscript was written in 1944. 185. Oettinger, Das Wienerische, 44. 186. Michael Burri, “Review of Katherine Arens, Belle Necropolis,” Journal of Austrian Studies 49, nos. 3–4 (Fall/Winter 2016): 157; for a nuanced and rich discussion of the issues surrounding the historiography of Vienna 1900 versus Vienna fin de siècle, see Steven Beller, “Fin de fin-de-siècle.” 187. Ritter, “Austria and the Struggle for Germany Identity,” 113; Arens, chapter three, “The Persistence of Mitteleuropa in Memory”; Czaplicka, “Emigrants and Exiles,” 12. 188. As Beller so cogently put it: “The problem was that, when the cultural and intellectual achievement of Vienna 1900 was looked at more closely, it really took a great deal of energy not to notice that a truly remarkable number of the people involved, especially in the more intellectual and literary fields, were indeed Jewish or of Jewish descent.” Beller, “Fin de fin de siècle,” 54–55. 189. Heidemarie Uhl, “Wien um 1900: das making of eines Gedächtnisortes,” in Imaging Vienna, ed. Monika Sommer, Marcus Graser and Ursula Prutsch (Vienna: Turia and Kant, 2006), 47. “Traum und Wirklichkeit: Wien 1870–1930” was held from March 28 to October 6, 1985, and brought in 622,000 visitors.

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190. Matthew Finch, “Ofcial History, Private Memories: ‘Vienna 1900’ as Lieu de Mémoire,” Central Europe 2, no. 2 (2004): 111. 191. See Bell, “Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology and National Identity.” 192. In this arena, scholarship on Medievalism is paradigmatic. In fact, the whole separation of scholarship on the Middle Ages (Medieval studies) and scholarship on the use of the Middle Ages (Medievalism) provides a telling model. See, for example, the collected volumes of Studies in Medievalism, eds. Karl Fugelso and Richard Utz, International Society for the Study of Medievalism. 193. Michael P. Steinberg, “Jewish Identity and Intellectuality in Fin-de-Siecle Austria: Suggestions for a Historical Discourse,” New German Critique 43 (1988), Special Issue on Austria, 9. 194. Finch, “Ofcial History, Private Memories,” 119.

9

The Fall of Vienna and the Fate of the Künstlerhaus

The fate of the Künstlerhaus was tightly interwoven with the progress of the war and with the overall destructions carried out under Nazi rule. How did the institution and the city of Vienna fare in the final years of the Nazi regime and in the immediate post-war period? After the defeat at Stalingrad, in the late winter and spring of 1943, the mood in Vienna had considerably darkened. Despite the sophisticated Klimt exhibit hanging in the Secession building, the “carefree” city of elegance and pleasure no longer existed; orders were given to shut down all shops selling flowers, candy, toys, jewelry and other luxuries. The Vienna fashion houses, which von Schirach had fought so hard to open, shut their doors as well.1 While the Jewish population had been driven from the city, thousands of foreign laborers had been brought in for manpower in the factories and industries. In the factories, they would be joined by POW and conscripted laborers. Refugees, mostly from the bombed-out areas of the Ruhr, streamed into the city, much to the resentment of their Ostmark brethren. In his addresses and speeches Reichsstatthalter von Schirach extorted workers to increase their labor in order to make up for the shortages of materials and manpower. Yet, remarkably, especially given the scandal and displeasure caused by the Junge Kunst im Deutschen Reich show,2 the city not only persisted in mounting art exhibits but also continued to celebrate artists who were anathema to the Altreich. Hanns Blaschke, who had served as Vienna’s first mayor after the Anschluss, held the role of Vizebürgermeister of culture for the city once again in the spring of 1943.3 According to Wladimir Aichelburg, Blaschke had hoped to mount two shows at the Künstlerhaus that May: one would be a memorial exhibit dedicated to the co-founder of the Wiener Werkstätte, Kolomon Moser (1868–1918), the other to the artist Egon Schiele. Given both the extreme stylization of Moser’s art and his close professional and personal relationships with the fin-de-siècle Jewish elite, it is hardly surprising that this show did not come to pass. Schiele’s raw and highly distorted treatment of the human figure would seem to place him squarely in the entartete category, yet remarkably, a laudatory article on the artist appeared as late as November 1943 (as we discuss later in this chapter). Nevertheless, he was certainly a strange artist for Blaschke to choose for a large-scale exhibit. The shows were ultimately waylaid by the sculptor Ferdinand Opitz, a Künstlerhaus member and member of the NSDAP, who argued in his capacity as Referent der Reichskammer that the shows would never receive approval from the Reichskulturkammer.4 Although not carried out, the shows give us insight into a continuing challenge to the ofcial Berlin arts policy.

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Nevertheless, the Künstlerhaus forged on with numerous shows, mounting four separate exhibits in their annual spring display. In the summer, they held a memorial exhibit dedicated to two recently deceased artists who had belonged to the Secession during Klimt’s tenure there: Friedrich König (1857–1941) und Fritz von Radler (1876–1942). Outside the walls of the building, life grew ever grimmer. Rations were cut back further, and a campaign to reuse and recycle nearly everything—“Neues aus Altern”—pretended to make up for the severe shortage of goods available.5 Arrests for work stoppages and insubordination increased by nearly 25 percent, and every day, “anti-Nazis” were openly executed in Josefstadt, contributing to the terror and misery of large swaths of the public.6 Bukey notes that arrests in the Ostmark rose from close to 8,000 in the spring of 1943 to over 13,000 by fall of 1944, with 80 percent of the prisoners foreign workers.7 By June of 1943, a wide net of 49 concentration camps spread throughout the Ostmark, with the comings and goings of inmates visible to the wider populace. While there was no coordinated insurrection, historians largely agree that resentment against the Altreich had reached a fever pitch. Still loyal to their “Führer,” many ordinary Viennese nevertheless began to foster a returning sense of “Austrian patriotism.”8 It is hardly surprising, given the prevailing mood, as well as the overthrow of Benito Mussolini and surrender of Italy to the Allies in the summer of 1943, that AngloAmerican intelligence placed hope in the possibility of an Austrian revolt. The Moscow Declaration should be understood, in part, as a response to such belief, although no such insurrection came to pass.9 At the third Moscow Conference, held to discuss the Allies’ unified determination to completely crush Germany (and to aid US/Soviet relations), the US, UK, Soviet Union and China drew up the four-part declaration on October 30, 1943. The third part dealt with the “Declaration on Austria”: it declared the Anschluss null and void and declared that a free Austria would be immediately established upon the fall of the Nazi regime. Although the declaration held Austria in part responsible for “participation in the war on the side of Hitlerite Germany,” it also portrayed it as the first country “to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression.”10 The declaration set the terms for the Austrian evasion of responsibility and the Opfermyth that would remain in play for the next 45 years. The myth would serve not only Austria but also Western liberal democracies for most of the remainder of the 20th century. If the declaration was intended to lead Austria to renounce her eforts on the part of the greater Reich, it did not succeed on that count, even amidst ever-worsening conditions. The following month, one newspaper declared that Vienna’s food and beer was now the worst in greater Germany; even potatoes were in short supply. But even with empty stomachs, the Viennese continued to fill opera houses and theaters.11 Cultural policy continued to occupy the powerful; in November Blauensteiner condemned two portraits by fellow Künstlerhaus artist Josef Dobrowsky for containing “degenerate” elements.12 Yet astonishingly, the Viennese artist Egon Schiele—denounced as degenerate in the Altreich—received two separate newspaper tributes on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his death. On November 2, 1943 an anonymous article on Schiele appeared in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt.13 The article focused on a work entitled Landschaft mit drei Bäumen, whose description most closely corresponds to Autumn Trees, 1911, now in a private collection. In tone and substance, the article is highly reminiscent of the texts on Schiele written by his devoted patron, collector and champion, Arthur Roessler.14 Roessler’s classification as a Mischling under the Nuremberg laws may explain why his authorship does not appear.

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Roessler’s racial status also resulted in his having works and possessions confiscated, including a trove of letters from the painter Rudolf von Alt, stolen from Roessler at the direction of Leopold Blauensteiner.15 The NWT article celebrates Schiele as a landscape artist in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich and other Northern Romantics; his bare, twisted trees reflected a melancholy sensibility. What is astonishing is not only the embrace of an artist with a view of mankind as “decadent” and unheroic as Schiele’s but also the despairing mood of the article: “Unspeakable pain underlies the form, a pain so sincere it renounces even the slightest relief of hope.”16 Is it going too far to read into the article a kind of war-weariness, a resentment for the suferings of a war brought on by the Piefkes that could hardly be openly expressed? Just as strange is Heinrich Neumayer’s essay on Schiele, which appeared the next day in the Völkischer Beobachter. The rawness and distortion of Schiele’s work is explained by Neumayer as a reaction to WWI.17 His women give a “demonic picture of a dark, dying time.”18 Rather than deny the Entartung of Shiele’s art, Neumayer portrays it as the only honest response to a time period of suffering and immorality, a degeneration resulting from empathy and genius, in contrast to other degenerates: A time that has become completely insecure through social redistribution, through material hardship, through criminally acquired wealth, through the devaluation of all values, is also at the mercy of the criminals in art.19 How do we explain this lauding of decadence as a form of truth and the support of Schiele’s art in 1943? Although she does not take up Schiele’s embrace in this period, Kimberly Smith’s research on the interpretation of the artist’s landscapes in the early 20th century surely points the way toward an answer.20 Smith reveals the way in which Schiele’s landscapes and townscapes were solidly connected to ideas on the Gemeinschaft, the volk and spirituality, as well as to writers like Julius Langbehn and Karl Ernst Osthaus, ideas that later found a warm reception within National Socialist circles. It is easy to see how his landscapes, which Smith notes show only the Austrian countryside and never contain signs of modernity, would have appealed to Ostmark Nazis, as would Schiele’s written musings such as: “Old German blood flows through my veins and I often feel the spirit of my ancestors within.”21 As with Klimt, there were elements of Schiele’s art and interests that could be retrofitted to allow an embrace of his work within Nazi ideology. Clearly much more work still needs to be done on the reception of Schiele in Nazi Vienna. By 1943, of course, the degenerates against whom Neumayer railed had largely been “removed” from Vienna. At the start of the year, 7,989 Jews, nearly all of them mischlings, remained in the city; by December their numbers had been reduced by about 1,500, to 6,259. In the following year, 1944, about another 1,000 Jews would be deported.22 The chaos and deprivation that engulfed the city did not disrupt eforts to make it judenfrei. In 1944, to the catalogue of miseries were added allied bombings.23 Evacuations of women and children began in February. Bukey sums up the mood of the city: “With the introduction of the seventy-two hour work week, the intensification of Gestapo terror, the acceleration of Allied bombing and the ominous approach of the Red Army, there was little talk of victory or resistance.”24 Only with the declaration of total war by Goebbels on August 24 did Vienna really cease its cultural program; all theaters, variety shows and cabarets finally shut their doors.25 The artistic life that had served to “normalize” and

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uplift the mood could operate no longer. Exhibits at the Künstlerhaus only now came to an end. Thanks to painstaking research by Aichelburg, as well as Oliver Rathkolb and Rosemarie Bergstaller, we know the fate of the individual Künstlerhaus members, as well as the activities of the organization. In total, seventy-nine members, as well as an additional twenty people who served as sponsors and supporters of the Künstlerhaus, had been ejected on the grounds of racial laws. Forty-two individuals had gone into exile or been deported, with five of them murdered.26 And what of those left? Two hundred fifty seven artists, among them painters, sculptors and architects, remained afliated to the Künstlerhaus. Among them, forty-seven had joined the Nazi party. (Among those included in this study are Andri, Angerhofer, Blauensteiner, Böttger, Dachauer, Hans Frank, Janesch, Klotz-Dürrenbach, Stoitzner and Streit.)27 Sixty-five had voluntarily fled Vienna. Some were already caught up in the war efort: forty-five architects were employed on war plans, and thirty-five members were serving in the Wehrmacht. That left one hundred fifteen members in the city, very few of whom could be mobilized in the eforts of total warfare. The thirty-one teachers and civil servants were exempted, as were the two Hungarians and one Dane. There were few able-bodied among those left: forty-eight members were over 65 years of age, nine were classified as disabled or ill, another five acutely ill. That left nineteen members only, whom Eisenmenger pledged to service within weeks after the declaration of total war.28 On September 15, Eisenmenger wrote to von Schirach, assuring him that the members would serve in any chosen capacity: As chairman of the Gesellschaft der bildenden Künstler Wiens, Künstlerhaus, I hereby notify you of the decision by the board. We confirm our ardent willingness to serve the Führer and the Fatherland to the best of our ability in the decisive phase of the struggle for survival of our nation. As the Reich representative for total war has called for all members of the public to contribute, we artists do not hesitate to answer this call. We are willing together to make our energy and ofces available to assist in arming our heroes at the front in accordance with our capabilities, insofar as we cannot be used as soldiers.”29 Beginning on December 14, 1944, the premises of the Künstlerhaus began to be used as an armaments factory for the electrical engineering company of Cyrus Rittler. The remaining members, along with their wives, reported to work there, including Janesh, Dobrowsky, Zeitleissen, Streit, Hans Frank and future Künstlerhaus president Karl Maria May.30 Throughout 1944 and 1945, bombs fell on the homes and studios of the members. The former Secession building, which now housed not only the armaments factory but also ofces for government propaganda and a print studio, served as a bomb shelter, with up to 200 people crowding into its cellars. In February of 1945, a bomb fell onto the building itself, shattering the famous golden dome.31 Less than two months later, the grounds around the building would be taken over by the Red Army. Within days of the fall of the Nazi regime, eforts began to disband the RkBk, replacing it with a new group, the Berufsvereinigung der bildenden Künstler Österreichs.32 One day before the declaration of the Second Republic, on April 26, 1945, Karl Maria May was elected the president of the Künstlerhaus.33 One of his first gestures at the “restored” institution was to welcome back all the exiled members. Among those lucky enough to have survived, few Jewish members were keen to take up his call. In summer,

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eforts to “denazify” the Künstlerhaus began, with seven members “stricken from the books” for their NSDAP afliation, including Janesh, Blauensteiner, Streit, Stoizner and Böttger. Three weeks later, another thirty members were removed.34 All but one would be declared “denazified” and reinstated between 1947 and 1950.35 On December 7, the Künstlerhaus was ofcially separated from the Secession, and the annual Christmas show resumed. Many of the artists would go on to have very successful careers, their biographies often conveniently glossing over the years 1938 to 1945, with perhaps mention of an ofcial prize or impressive professorship during this “quiet” interval. Notes 1. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 221. On conditions in Vienna, see Bukey, “Between Stalingrad and the Moscow Declarations,” in Hitler’s Austria, 186–209. 2. On the exhibit, see Chapter 7. 3. On Blaschke, see Chapter 2. 4 Aichelburg, “Ausstellungen,” Wladimir Aichelberg 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/ausstellungen/; Auf Linie, 42. 5. Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 79; 265–266. 6. Bukey, “Between Stalingrad and the Moscow Declarations,” 188; 205. 7. Bukey, “Between Stalingrad and the Moscow Declarations,” 205. 8. Bukey, “Between Stalingrad and the Moscow Declarations,” 192–193; 205. On the events of 1944, see “Post-War planning for Austria,” Chapter three in Rolf Steininger, Austria, Germany and the Cold War: From the Anschluss to the State Treaty: 1938–1955 (New York/ London: Berghahn Books, 2008), 25–42. 9. On this, see Bukey, “Between Stalingrad and the Moscow Declarations,” 207–209. On the Moscow Declaration, see Robert Keyserling, Austria in World War II: An Anglo-American Dilemma (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 123–156. 10. For the full text of the Moscow Declaration, see “Moscow Conference October, 1943 Joint Four Nation Declaration,” http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1943/431000a.html. The Declaration on Austria reads in full: “The governments of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States of America are agreed that Austria, the first free country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression, shall be liberated from German domination. They regard the annexation imposed upon Austria by Germany on March 15, 1938, as null and void. They consider themselves as in no way bound by any changes efected in Austria since that date. They declare that they wish to see re-established a free and independent Austria and thereby to open the way for the Austrian people themselves, as well as those neighboring states which will be faced with similar problems, to find that political and economic security which is the only basis for lasting peace. Austria is reminded, however, that she has a responsibility which she cannot evade, for participation in the war on the side of Hitlerite Germany, and that in the final settlement account will inevitably be taken of her own contribution to her liberation.” 11. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 233. 12. The portraits were of a “Professor Behn” and “Professor Grimschitz,” the current director of the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. Mayer, “Bruno Grimschitz,” NS Kunstraub in Österreich und die Folgen. 13. Anonymous, “Egon Schiele. Gestorben 31 Oktober 1918,” Neues Wiener Tagblatt, November 2, 1943, 2. For discussion of these issues around Schiele, see Laura Morowitz, “Art in Vienna 1900 or the Return of the Repressed,” in Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design, eds. Megan Brandow-Faller and Laura Morowitz (New York/London: Routledge, 2023), 37–39. 14. Arthur Roessler was an art critic and editor known for recognizing young talent. Schiele came under his support in 1909, whereupon Roessler introduced him to several future patrons. Between 1912 and 1923, Roessler published five books on Schiele, including reminiscences and a book on Schiele’s stay in prison. Egon Schiele & Arthur Roessler. Der Künstler und sein Förderer. Kunst und Networking im frühen 20. Jahrhundert, eds. Tobias G. Natter, Ursula Storch. Exhibit catalogue.

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15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

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Wien Museum, July 8 to October 10, 2004 (Hatje Cantz/Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004). For earlier discussion of Roessler, see above, p. 97. Fünfter Bericht des amtsführenden Stadtrates für Kultur und Wissenschaft über die gemäß dem Gemeinderatsbeschluss vom 29. April 1999 erfolgte Übereignung von Kunst- und Kulturgegenständen aus den Sammlungen der Museen der Stadt Wien sowie der Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, November 22, 2004. Section 2.3 Die Briefe Rudolf von Alts—ein Beispiel für nationalsozialistische Raub-Kulturpolitik, 39–54, https://www.wienmuseum.at/fileadmin/ user_upload/PDFs/Restitutionsbericht_2004.pdf, accessed July 24, 2019. “Unsäglicher Schmerz liegt der Gestaltung zugrunde, ein Schmerz, den in seiner Lauterkeit auch auf die geringste Linderung durch die Hofnung verzichtet.” Anonymous, “Egon Schiele,” 2. Heinrich Neumayer, “Egon Schiele zum Gedächtnis,” Völkischer Beobachter, November 4, 1943, 4. Neumayer, “Egon Schiele zum Gedächtnis,” 4. Neumayer, “Egon Schiele zum Gedächtnis,” 4. Kimberly A. Smith, Between Ruin and Renewal: Egon Schiele’s Landscapes (New Haven/ London: Yale University Press, 2004). Schiele, “Skizzen zu einem Selbstbildnis,” 1910, quoted in Smith, Between Ruin and Renewal, 114. Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl, 235. Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, 74–79. Bukey, “Between Stalingrad and the Moscow Declarations,” 214. Rebhann, Die braunen Jahre, 270. Rathkolb, “Der kultur-politische Kontext 1930–1960: Brücke, Kontinuitäten und Transformationen,” in Bogner and Kurdiovsky, Das Wiener Künstlerhaus, 138. Rosemarie Bergstaller has compiled a list of all the members subject to the Nazi racial laws. See Bergstaller in Bogner and Kurdiovsky, Das Wiener Künstlerhaus, 42–49. Bergstaller, Bogner and Kurdiovsky, Das Wiener Künstlerhaus, 148. Wladimir Aichelburg, “Kriegsheimwerkstätte,” Wladimir Aichelburg 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/mitglieder/kriegsheimwerkstaette/. Letter of September 15, 1944, from Eisenmenger to von Schirach, Künstlerhaus archive, Eisenmenger dossier. Quoted and translated in Christine Oertal, “Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger and His Safety Curtain,” Museum in Progress, https://www.mip.at/attachments/445. Wladimir Aichelburg, “Das Kriegsende 1945,” Wladimir Aichelburg 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/mitglieder/kriegsende-1945/. Wladimir Aichelburg, Das Wiener Künstlerhaus 1861–2001. Band 1: Die Künstlergenossenschaft und ihre Rivalen Secession und Hagenbund (Vienna: Österreichischer Kunst- und Kulturverlag, 2000), 440. Holzschuh and Plakolm-Forsthuber, Auf Linie, 313. The authors of Auf Linie note that May attempted to “whitewash” Eisenmenger in the immediate postwar years, 270. Wladimir Aichelburg, “Die Entnazifizierung 1945,” Wladimir Aichelburg 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/mitglieder/entna zifizierung-1945/Included among the stricken members were Janesh, Blauensteiner, Streit, Stoizner and Böttger. By 1954, for example, both Janesh and Streit, early Nazi party members, were given their own rooms in a large group exhibit. Frühjahrsausstellung im KH mit Jungen Gästen und Kollektionen A. Janesch, K.M. May, A. Riedel, R. Streit, A. Velim, H. Wulz. Künstlerhaus Wien, March 27 to May 1954. Janesh was given rooms 16 and 17, Streit room 14. The only member who was not accepted—although he was ofcially reinstated on May 30, 1952—was Ekke Olzberger. Having joined the Nazi party in 1933 and again in 1938, he was rejected from the party for being married to a Mischling. Olzberger divorced his Jewish wife in 1940 to regain his party membership but continued to have problems. Although the Künstlerhaus panel had insisted a special honorary council be held before Olzberger be reinstated, such council never took place. Wladimir Aichelburg, “Probleme der Entnazifizierung 1945–1952,” Wladimir Aichelburg 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/ kuenstlerhaus/mitglieder/probleme-der-entnazifizierung-1945-1952/.

10 Conclusion

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. —Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979)

Less than a year and a half after war’s end, from September 14 to December 26, 1946, the Künstlerhaus held a colossal exhibit devoted to memory. By then Vienna, like the rest of Austria, had been partitioned among four Allies—the Soviet Union, Britain, France and the US—and would remain so until the signing of the Austrian State Treaty on May 15, 1955, with the last troops leaving in October of that year.1 The Vienna ofensive had begun on April 3, 1945; with Soviet approval, Karl Renner and his cabinet had taken ofce on April 27 in the newly created Second Republic of Austria. (The American 11th Armored Division had crossed the border into Austria the day before.) The Secession building, where the Künstlerhaus had been headquartered throughout the war, fell within Soviet territory, with the tents of the Red Army camped in the open grassland next to the building.2 The mounting of a large-scale exhibit should not obscure the wretched state in which Vienna and the rest of Austria still found itself. The city lay in ruins, food rations had sharply declined (and would continue to plummet), and thousands of women unfortunate enough to live within the occupied Soviet zone had been the victims of violent rape by soldiers. The final months of 1946 were the start of a particularly brutal winter. The Cold War had begun, but the Marshall Plan—which would ultimately benefit Austria more than any other nation—still lay many months in the future.3 Although held on the premises of the Künstlerhaus, the colossal exhibit Niemals Vergessen!” (Never Forget!) was not the product of its members, nor was it really an art show.4 (In fact the members of the Künstlerhaus were rather concerned about the show impeding their opportunity to display and sell their works and finally settled for a small Christmas show overlapping the last weeks of the exhibit.)5 It had as its sponsors all four occupying nations, the municipality of Vienna and the leading political parties of the newly established Republic, the Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP), Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ) and Kommunistische Partei Österreichs (KPÖ). (Together, the first two parties had received 90 percent of the vote in the first free elections after the war.) The exhibit was intended to commemorate and inscribe into cultural memory the horrors of fascism. In Vienna alone, the show would be seen by 159,000 visitors (with another 100,00 later in Linz and Innsbruck). Led by poster artist and printmaker Victor Thema Slama, its abundant and profound themes would chronicle the heroes and the fallen in indelible manner. The exhibit was meant to serve as “Mahnung, Anklage und Verpflichtung” (Warning, Indictment and DOI: 10.4324/9781003353782-10

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Figure 10.1 Franz Blaha, installation photograph, Niemals Vergessen! exhibit, Künstlerhaus, Vienna, September 14, 1946. Source: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

Obligation), words written into the subtitle of the show’s catalogue. Yet in many ways, the exhibition was not the first but the last attempt for many years to complicate the notion of Austria as an Opfernation.6 The show functioned as a kind of last grasp at resisting erasure before the curtain of oblivion came down. Never Forget? The wide-scale destruction of property, the deportations and murders and exile that aficted the Künstlerhaus were, of course, echoed and multiplied in every domain of Viennese and Austrian life. The numbers are devastating. In the period covered by this book, 65,000 Jewish apartments and 33,000 businesses were “Aryanized,” many never returned to their rightful owners or heirs. In Vienna, 10 percent of all homes were destroyed. Along with the Secession building, bombs fell on the Stephansdom, the Burgtheater, the Belvedere and the Parliament. One hundred thirty-five bridges in Austria were demolished. Over 900,000 forced laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates were forced to work in the fields and factories of the Ostmark, often in the most brutal of conditions. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, including 250,000 soldiers and thousands more murdered, including 10,000 euthanized victims, 11,000 Roma and 25,000 political “enemies.” By the end of the war, 128,000 Austrian Jews had been deported and 65,000 murdered in camps, in ghettos and in fields. Devastating, too, is how little such murders impacted the public; Bukey notes that surveys conducted at the end of the war in Ostmark reveal little compassion for the Jews who had disappeared,

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even among many who knew their ultimate fate. Of the 10,694 Austrians convicted of war crimes between 1945 and 1948, only 43 were sentenced to death. It was against this mountain of death and destruction that Niemals Vergessen! took shape. In the face of this horror, the exhibit pledged both a fresh start and a commitment to remembering. Between 1945 and 1955, the city would hold 1,500 exhibits, some perhaps to document the past but many more to declare a new future.7 The research of Heidrun-Ulriche Wenzel has brought to light the motivations and strategies of the group responsible for organizing the exhibit, the Österreichischer Bundesverband ehemals politisch verfolgter Antifaschisten (The Austrian Union of Previously Persecuted Anti-Fascists), later referred to as Gemeinde Wien, Verwaltungsgruppe III (Vienna Local Community, Management Group III). In April and May of 1945, Major Miron Lewitas, a Soviet ofcer of culture, met with Viktor Matejka, who had been elected by the KPÖ to serve as city councilor of the Amt für Kultur und Volksbildung (Ofce of Culture and Public Education) and with a working group of artists, printmakers and writers. They began to map out the concept of an anti-fascist show, which would serve as a “geistige Entnazifizierung der Bevölkerung” (“spiritual and intellectual denazification of the general populace”).8 As the aim of the show stated: For with the victory of world democracies over fascism, it has by no means been defeated forever. The inevitable economic and social consequences of every war are the breeding ground for such aberrations, the consequences of which afect the whole world.9 As noted, Slama, a committed Social Democrat, was placed in charge of the show’s conception and direction. Spread out over 12 rooms, each dedicated to a diferent theme, such as “The Pillars of Fascism” and “Resistance,” the show contained an enormous number of documents and artworks including drawings, collages, paintings, photographs and murals and utilized not only painters, printmakers and architects but also electricians, carpenters, bricklayers etc. Posters and propaganda prints were the dominant media of the show. Dada-style collages alternated with Expressionist prints and Soviet-style posters.10 Works focused on both themes and individuals. Room III, “Faschismus ist Krieg—Faschismus ist Todt” (“Fascism is War—Fascism is Death”), contained the heads of 12 figures who, along with Hitler, had beaten the drums of war, including Baldur von Schirach, Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Joseph Goebbels.11 Room VI, “Judenverfolgung— Judenvernichtung” (“Persecution of the Jews—Destruction of the Jews”) was, tellingly, omitted from the first conception of the show. The genocidal murder of Europe’s Jews was originally to be treated alongside the killing of Poles, the mentally ill and the aged, as well as methods of the SS and discussion of the camps. Only in the middle of June was the notion of a separate room, dedicated to Jewish persecution, added into the show.12 (The tendency to subsume the sufering of the Jews within the larger sufering on the part of the Austrian population would become a common ideological strategy in textbooks, monuments and political discourse through the 1980s.)13 Taking place in a period still deeply war torn and raw with sufering, Niemals Vergessen! was highly problematic, despite the good intentions of many of its instigators and contributors. Failure to thoroughly grasp the racial—rather than political—evils of the Nazi regime was only one example of the show’s oversimplifications. The Ständestaat and Austrofascism were simply omitted in the historical accounts. Focusing on “Prussian Aggression” and the “German Fascistic Will for Destruction” or the “Insatiable

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fascistic juggernaut which devoured all nations” did little to force Austrians to confront their own complicity.14 The narrative made of fascism an external ideology imposed from outside; the image of cheering crowds on the Heldenplatz fit nowhere in this story. The crimes of National Socialism were writ large as political ideology and never brought down to the level of individual choices or responsibilities. The notion that the former Ostmärker had completely transformed in the 18 months since the end of the war, like the notion that one could be “denazified” in a matter of weeks, was nothing but fantasy. The exhibit could hardly have successfully wrestled with the complexities of the period under Nazi rule; Austria would avoid such a profound Vergangenheitsbewältigung for more than 40 years. Certainly holding such an exhibit in Vienna helped associate the city and, by extension, the Second Republic of Austria with the anti-fascist cause. The show thus contributed significantly to shaping the two prevailing post-war myths: that of Austria as Hitler’s first victim (Opfernation) and the idea of Austria’s clean start, devoid of Nazi ghosts (Stunde Null). The exhibition served, in fact, to perpetuate a mis-remembering, a kind of forgetting, that has only been dispelled in the past few decades.15 Although Matejka made a sincere efort to encourage repatriation, and some Künstlerhaus artists who had been in the camps returned, very few did. Jewish artists who were fortunate enough to have escaped annihilation seldom came back to Austria; their lives and careers were largely written out of Viennese art history. John Czaplika delineates the causes that kept the exiled artists from returning. They would have been returning to work side by side with many who had collaborated in persecution or in supporting a regime focused on their destruction. They had been utterly transformed into “foreigners,” no matter how they might once have been thought of as fellow Viennese. “And what was there to return to?” Czaplika asks. “Should the exiles have returned to help rebuild an Austria that had discarded their last traces?”16 Certainly the work of these exiles, like their lives and their histories, was forsaken by the remaining members of the Künstlerhaus. Equally forgotten were the less ethical choices and acts of those who remained. The exhibits held there between 1938 and 1945 helped construct an imaginary entity known as the Ostmark. Far more than a geographical region, Ostmark was a kind of quasi-national entity with a brilliant history and noble heritage, one in which Jews and undesirables had played no part. The landscape of the region was both deeply Germanic and redolent of local flavor. The constructed “memory” of the Ostmark required the forgetting, or erasure, of Vienna’s urban life, its Jewesses and its fin-de-siècle history. Ironically, in the post-war world, the exhibits that had functioned to erase these things were themselves subject to erasure. The 1943 Gustav Klimt exhibit met with both a physical and an art historical eradication.17 Following the show, most of the Klimt paintings expropriated from the Jewish Lederer family were moved for safekeeping to Schloss Immendorf, in the Lower Austrian countryside.18 Between May 8 and May 11, 1945, retreating Nazi troops planted explosives in the castle and set it aflame, destroying the 14 Klimt works, among them the most famous and prized of his oeuvre. Moreover, the very occurrence of the Klimt show was virtually buried. Despite mountains of literature on the artist, the 1943 retrospective was largely ignored for nearly 70 years. The appropriation of Klimt by a portion of the Nazi hierarchy hardly fit the narrative of a glittering artist from the multicultural fin de siècle. It spoiled the strategy of using Klimt and his circle to deflect from the Viennese history that followed. It summoned too many ghosts, treacherous terrain in a country that still had not dealt with its legacy. Both the exhibit itself

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and repression of the exhibit shows us how memory is deeply dependent on the cultural institutions that carry it. For the most part, art history largely ignored the other exhibits covered here, Berge und Menschen der Ostmark and Das schöne Wiener Frauenbild, preferring to focus on the more polemical ones like Das Ewige Jude. The assumption was that lacking “big name” artists, such exhibits were largely not worth looking at.19 At the same time, the works did not always fit the standard criteria for obvious “Nazi art”; the taste of the Vienna establishment and of von Schirach was more sophisticated and nuanced than might be assumed. I am not arguing here that the works had some great artistic merit but that they were not always transparently ideological and not always the image we have come to expect. In recent publications, Jonathan Petropoulos and Pamela Potter have raised a series of compelling questions in relation to the art ofcially sanctioned by the Nazi regime.20 Two recent groundbreaking exhibitions, held in Hamburg and Berlin, have also thoroughly questioned the received narrative on Modern artists under National Socialism and the strict wall thought to separate them.21 What do we do with artists whose works aren’t quite so easy to characterize? Can morally questionable people produce good art? Or can the art of decent people contribute to destruction? How do we process the art of the “true believers,” the members of the NSDAP, whose works might be more experimental and more interesting than those of their kinder colleagues? Are works of landscape and portraiture and architecture value laden, or is it only the way we interpret and use them? Can the same work serve diferent ends? I hope this book joins this discussion in arguing that works not specifically ideological—summer landscapes, glamorous portraits—could do heavy ideological work, sometimes precisely for their less explicit nature. To disappear hundreds of thousands of people, to wipe from consciousness the vibrant city in which they once lived, as well as the realms of art, fashion and culture in which they once traveled, was no easy feat. This study has examined the contributions of one institution toward that efort. The Künstlerhaus, like the many spheres of law, education and culture in the Third Reich, normalized and gave form to an Ostmark free of Jews, urbanity and lived history and a past entangled with a multicultural Empire and a radical fin de siècle. While some members of the Künstlerhaus, like the larger public who attended its shows, were card-carrying Nazis, the majority were not. Yet their images, too, helped the visitors accept a new vision, helped erase any lingering “afterimages” of things that could no longer be seen or that were forbidden from sight. These exhibitions held by the Künstlerhaus between 1939 and 1943 performed the most important of tasks in Nazi Vienna or, indeed, in any society engaging in mass murder. They helped people—some of them powerful, some of them cruel, but most of them ordinary—forget to remember. Notes 1. The divisions were as follows: US: Salzburg and Upper Austria south of the Danube; Soviet Union: Lower Austria, Burgenland and Mühlviertel area in Upper Austria, north of Danube; Britain: Styria, Carinthia, East Tyrol; France: Vorarlberg and North Tyrol. 2. There is a large and ever-growing literature on Austria from 1945 to 1955, in both English and German, as well as sources on the occupation in every region. See The Marshall Plan in Austria, eds. Günter Bishof, Anton Pelinka and Dieter Stiefel (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000); Contemporary Austrian Studies: The Marshall Plan in Austria, vol. 8, eds. Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka and Dieter Stiefel (New Orleans: Center Austria, 2016); Günter Bischof, Austria in the First Cold War, 1945–1955: The Leverage of the Weak (New York: St. Martin’s

Conclusion

3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

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Press, 1999). See also the works of Rolf Steininger, e. g., Austria, Germany and the Cold War: From the Anschluss to the State Treaty 1938–1955 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008). For a good summary of issues around Austrian national identity in the immediate post-war period, see Bushnell, “Austrian Identity and the Impediments of History,” in Polemical Austria, 166–192. For a lengthier analysis, see Utgaard, chapter 4, “Remembering and Forgetting the Allied Occupation, Rebuilding, and the State Treaty,” 121–158. On the fate of the Secession building under the Russian Army, see Wladimir Aichelburg, “Das Kriegsende 1945,” Wladimir Aichelburg 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/ kuenstlerhaus/mitglieder/kriegsende-1945/. Final details for the plan would be drawn up in late 1947. Günter Bischof, “Allied Plans and Policies for the Occupation of Austria, 1938–1955,” and Klaus Eisterer, “Austria under Allied Occupation,” in Austria in the Twentieth Century, eds. Rolf Steininger, Günter Bischof and Michael Gehler (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008), 162–189; 190–211; “1945.1946—The First Year,” Chapter four in Steininger, 43–54. Niemals vergessen! Große Antifaschistische Ausstellung. Künstlerhaus, Vienna. September 14 to December 26, 1946. See the catalogue, Niemals vergessen!—Ein Buch der Anklage, Mahnung und Verpflichtung (Vienna: Eigenverlag, 1946). For a complete analysis of the show, see Heidrun-Ulrich Wenzel, Vergessen? Niemals! Die antifaschistische Ausstellung im Wiener Künstlerhaus 1946 (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2018). The book was developed from her thesis, “Niemals vergessen: Die antifaschistische Ausstellung in Wiener Künstlerhaus 1946,” University of Vienna, 2012, http://othes.univie.ac.at/25143/1/2013-01-09_9808996.pdf. Wladimir Aichelburg, “Ausstellungen,” Wladimir Aichelburg 150 Jahre Künstlerhaus Wien 1861–2011, http://www.wladimir-aichelburg.at/kuenstlerhaus/ausstellungen/. For discussion of additional exhibits on Nazi crimes held in Austria in the immediate postwar period, see Béla Rásky, “No Silence, but Whispers: Postwar Exhibitions on Nazi Crimes and the Shoah in Austria, 1945–1949,” Journal of Holocaust Research 37 (2) (June 2023). Rásky includes a photography exhibition held slightly earlier at the Künstlerhaus, under the auspices of the French Information Services, “Pariser Widerstand und Befreiung. Künstlerhaus, 10–28 November 1945.” Wenzel, Vergessen? Niemals, 26. Wenzel, Vergessen? Niemals, 27–28. “Denn mit dem Sieg der Weltdemokratien über den Faschismus ist er keineswegs für immer besiegt worden. Unausbleibliche wirtschaftliche und soziale Folgen eines jeden Krieges sind der Nährboden für derartige Abirrungen, deren Folgeerscheinungen die ganze Welt betrefen.” Quoted in Wenzel, Vergessen? Niemals, 30. Rásky notes that Künstlerhaus member Günther Baszel, director of the Österreichisches Institut für Bildstatistik, helped determine the artistic vision of the show. The others included were Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Julius Streicher, Rudolf Hess, Robert Ley, Alfred Rosenberg, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring. See Wenzel, Vergessen? Niemals, 72–73. The suggestion was made by Dr. Leo C. Friedländer, Direktor des Kulturamts der Stadt Wien. Utgaard, “Remembering and Forgetting WWII, the Holocaust and the Resistance,” 90–120. “[D]er deutsch-faschistische Vernichtungswille”; “unersättliche faschistische Moloch, der alle Länder verschlang.” Such phrases come directly from the text of the exhibit. Bischof “Introduction” and Uhl, “The Politics of Memory: Austria’s Perception of the Second World War and the National Socialist Period”; On post-war myths, see Utgaard. Czaplika, “Emigrants and Exiles,” 5–6. On the issue of returning Jews, see Hope H. Herzog, “Jews and the Second Republic,” Chapter three in Vienna is Diferent. On these issues, see Morowitz, “Heil the Hero Klimt.” Monica Strauss, “Klimt’s Last Retrospective,” Forward, November 7, 2007, https://forward. com/culture/11974/klimt-s-last-retrospective-00746/. When the lesser-known artists included in these exhibits were given critical attention, the period of 1933 to 1945 was simply conveniently left out of their chronologies. This is the case with the exhibit on Anton Lutz held at the Belvedere in 1986 and the exhibit on Hans and Leo Frank, also held at the Belvedere in 1986. See the discussion of Lutz and Frank in Chapter 4 of this study.

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20. Potter, Art of Suppression; Petropoulos, Artists under Hitler. 21. Escape into Art? The Die Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period, Brücke-Museum, Berlin, April 14 to August 11, 2019, and Emile Nolde, A German Legend: The Artist During National Socialism, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, April 12 to September 15, 2019. Both works produced excellent catalogues. Aya Soika and Meike Hofmann, Escape into Art? The Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period (Munich: Hirmer, 2019); Bernhard Fulda, Christian Ring and Aya Soika, Nolde: The Artist During the Third Reich (Munich: Prestel, 2019). In these fascinating exhibits, the curators and scholars examine not only the conflicting interpretations and fates of these artists but also the post-war eforts to cleanse their reputations.

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Index

Note: Numbers in italics indicate a figure Aichelburg, Wladimir 34, 38n30, 77n99 Akademie der bildenden Künste 66, 74n23 Altmann, Maria 2 Altreich: Anschluss and 15; “cultural” bridge between Osmark and 34, 37; Ewige Juden exhibition 18; female imagery associated with 104; museums 3; Ostmark distinct from 19, 83; price of food and heating in 81; Vienna’s role in 20, 32; Schirach’s cultural challenge to 83, 84, 94; Ziegler 105 Altreich Germans see Piefkes Alt, Rudolf von 168, 188; Hitler’s admiration for 135n95 Altsdorfer, Albrecht 53 Amerling, Friedrich von 92, 109 Andri, Ferdinand 36, 131n8, 180n75 Angerhofer, Robert 36, 73n1, 189; Almabtrieb 41, 42 Anschluss 1–5, 31–37; 50-year anniversary of 2; Alpine highway attributed to 58; Alpine regions, promotion of prior to 61; Austrian Catholic Church’s embrace of 32; Austrian Nazi Party’s welcoming of 31; Blaschke as first mayor of Vienna after 186; blood and soil ideology of 56, 76n62; creation of Ostmark and 11–26; “cultural” 34; cultural erasure of 5, 10n45; Declaration on Austria and 187; Heldenplatz as reminder of 4; Imperial past, attitudes towards 148; Nazi rural policy and 51–52; peasant support of 6; reduction of unemployment brought by 81; tourism and 56–57, 155; Viennese art and theater, impact on 33–37, 41–45, 49 antisemitism: of Albert V and Maximillian I 149; Bettauer’s satirizing of 146; Degenerate Art exhibition 70, 142; Der Ewige Jude, exhibition 18; of Emil Nolde 70, 142; of Georg Schönerer 152; of Joseph Scheicher 146, 177n2; of Karl Lueger 13, 151, 156; Klimt in relationship to themes of 158–159 Antisemitismus der Welt in Wort und Bild (Körber) 72

Arendt, Benno von 124, 144 Aryanization 19, 31, 85; of Palais Lobkowitz 124; Reich Culture Chamber Laws and 36; of the Secession 155; of VbKO 120; of Wiener Frauenkunst 120 ‘Aryan paragraph’ 36 Assmann, Aleida ix, 3, 4, 25, 29n71, 71 Auschwitz 138n155 Austria: deletion of existence of 36, 71, 80; “separate,” idea of 80–82 Austrian and Viennese separatism 32, 80–86; cultural 80; spectre of, in 1942 141–142; war and 80–82; von Schirach and 82–86, 142 Austrian Werkbund see Frank, Josef; Werkbund Austrofascism 14, 36–37, 45, 53, 148; female imagery produced under 90; Nazi art propaganda within 73n10; negating or omitting the history of 150, 194; women and gender politics under 95, 102, 112, 131n5 Austro-Hungarian Empire 11, 12, 147, 149 Austro-Prussian War 11 Bacher, Rudolf 97, 134 Bahr, Hermann 168 Balser-Eberle, Vera 115 Balser, Edward 115 Bauer-Ehrlich, Bettina 49, 138n155 Beckermann, Ruth 9n38, 154 Beethoven Frieze (Klimt) 158, 160–169, 173 Beethoven, Ludwig van 158, 169; Nazi preference for works of 162; Ninth Symphony 81; Ode to Joy 159 Beller, Steven 8, 154 Berge und Menschen der Ostmark (Mountains and People of the Ostmark) (exhibition) 6, 41–73, 147, 163; reception of 63–64; renaming as Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark 66–67 Bernhard, Thomas 1, 7

212

Index

Berufsvereinigung der bildenden Künstler Österreichs 189 Berufsbeamtengesetz (Civil Service Act) 32 Bettauer, Hugo 146, 177 Beusenbauch, Artur: Elektrizitätswerke 53 Biedermeier period 14, 63, 90, 95, 107–110, 112–116, 135n95 Bischof, Günter ix, 4, 6n2, 9n40 Blaha, Franz: Niemals Vergessen! installation photo 193 Blaschke, Hanns 19–20, 33, 36–37, 47, 92, 142, 188 Blauensteiner, Leopold: Alt’s letters stolen at the direction of 188; Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark exhibition, involvement with 45, 47, 65, 68; Dobrowksy, condemnation of work by 187; Künstlerhaus leadership and presidency of 33–36; Moissl appointed press ofcer by 92; Nazi Party membership of 189–190 Blaue Reiter 66 Blau, Tina 120 Bloch-Bauer, Adele 129, 158; see also Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer Bloch-Bauer family 115; plunder of Klimt paintings of 147, 158, 164 blood and soil, ideology of see Blut und Boden Blut und Boden (blood and soil) 43, 45, 56, 63, 76n62 Böcklin, Arnold 167 Borchhardt-Birbaumer, Brigitte 162 Bormann, Martin 144 Böttger, Rudolf 49; Frau Helene Wenter 105; Holz 64, 75n50; Nazi party members depicted by 93; Nazi party membership of 93, 189–190 Bradaczeh, Maz: Kärntner Bäuerin 62 Brandow-Faller, Megan 78n114, 121, 135n94, 137n149, 181n91 Braun, Eva 121 Bruckmüller, Ernst 26n3 Brunner, Ferdinand 131n8; Verfallene Mühle bei Spital 53 Bund Deutscher Maler Österreichs (Union of German Painters of Austria) 35 Bund österreichischer Künstler 97 Bürckel, Josef 26, 32, 47; anonymous complaint about Piefkes received by 81; as being in charge of propaganda 28n46; Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark sponsored by 65; Mutterdienst (maternal duties), speech of 1940 regarding 118; plundering of Jewish property for personal use by 28n47; as Reichskommissar für die Wiedervereinigung Österreichs mit dem Deutschen Reich (Reich commissioner for the reunification of Austria with the

German Reich) 18–19; as Reichsstatthalter of Vienna 82; systematic robbery of Jewish wealth by 33–34; Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (the Central Ofce for Jewish Emigration) established by 72 Cassirer, Paul 134n72 Charlemont, Lilly 138n153 Cold War 10, 192 Confino, Alon 59–61 Corbett, Tim ix, 4, 179n47 Corinth, Louis 143 Cossmann, Alfred 49, 54–56, 74n27; Bauern aus dem Pinzgau (Peasants from Pinzgau) 55, 65; Ex Libris Leo Lippmann 55, 55; Kunst dem Volk, cover of 54 Cronen, Else 130 cultural erasure 3, 5, 10n45, 164–165, 176 Czaplicka, John 2, 8n13 Czedekowski, Jan Bodeslaw 114–115; Im Fenster 113, 114, 122 Dachau concentration camp 19, 149 Dachauer, Wilhelm 34, 36, 189; Harvest Time 77n95 Dafnger, Moritz Michael 107, 109, 110 Darré, Richard Walther 56 Dassanowsky, Robert von 116, 150 Degenerate Art exhibition 47, 69–70, 72, 154 “degenerate” art and artists 96, 99, 147, 187–188 Deutsche Zeichnungen der Jahrhundertwende exhibition 142–143 Die Pause see Pause, Die (journal) Dobrowsky, Josef 131n8 Dicker-Brandeis, Friedl 138n155 Die Liebe Augustin see Liebe Augustin, Die dirndl(n) 23, 24, 73, 88, 89, 110, 122 Dobrowsky, Josef 105, 131n8 Dollfuss, Engelbert 14, 31, 35, 43; murder of 57 Dorfabende 24 Dürer, Albrecht 167, 174 Eberstaller, Richard 174 Einstein, Albert 153, 153 Eisenmenger, Rudolf Hermann 24, 38n17, 46–47, 92–93, 189; curtain of 35, 39n40; Heimkehr der Ostmark II (Austria Returning to Its German Homeland) 22; as Künstlerhaus President 24, 35, 39n36; Rückkehr der Ostmark, Die (The Homecoming to Ostmark) and Gaben der Ostmark (Gifts of the Ostmark) 24; Vienna Rathaus frescos 24, 80; whitewashing of 191n33

Index Elida Kosmetikfirmen: “Das schönste deutsche Frauenporträt.” 96 Elida Portrait Contest 1928 95–117, 129 Elser, Fanny 114 Emo, Emerich Walter 150, 156 Ensor, James 142 erasure 1, 4; of the city 6, 41–73, 147; of the fin-de-siècle 146–177; of Habsburg Empire 15; of the Jewess 88–131, 147; of “the Jewish” 154; of Jews 80, 82, 146; of the modern 154; of nation of Austria 19, 25; see also cultural erasure Ewige Jude, Das exhibition 18, 196 Expressionism 6, 70–71, 119; Hollenstein 138n150; Pauser 99–100 Eybl, Franz: Wiener Aristokratin (Aristocratic Viennese Woman) 108 Faistauer, Anton 175 fin-de-siècle, erasure of 146–177 First Austrian Republic 5, 12–16, 21, 26, 43, 45, 49; Heimat in 60; tourism during 57 First World War 12 Flöge, Emile Louise 110, 130, 136n103, 164, 184n173 forgetting: annihilation and 174; Austrian identity 11; the city 71; the Jewish woman 130 Forster, Rudolf 156 Fossel, Marta Elisabet 48, 54, 56, 74n23: Bauersfrau von Murboden 48, 54, 62 Frank, Hans 18, 36, 48–49, 74n23, 131n8, 180n75, 197n19; Großglockner I 48; Mädchen mit Gitarre 112 Frank, Josef 155 Frank, Leo 197 Franz Ferdinand (Archduke) 149 Franz Joseph (Emperor) 147, 150–151 Frederick II: “Fredericianum” 149 Freud, Sigmund 11–12, 130, 153, 153; in Die papierene Brücke (The Paper Bridge) (film) 154 Frey, Max 93, 97–98, 125; Frau Portrait 98; Portrait of Frau G.F. 97–98, 98 Friedrich, Caspar David 167, 174, 189 Fuchs, Robert 93, 133n38 Führer, Erich 115 Führer: “ancestral homeland of,” Volk and 92–93; Christ 32; “Die Heimat des Führers” 69; Hess (Deputy) 18; Hitler 15, 22–24, 36, 83, 110, 149, 152; proto-figure of, medieval knight as 162 Reichsjugendführer 83 Führerinnen of women’s groups 122 Führermuseum 81, 86n19 Führerstadt 20 Furtwängler, Wilhelm 84, 115 Galerie Gurlitt, Berlin 96 Galerie Miethke 107

213

Galerie Neumann 107 Gallia family 74, 158, 174 Gedächtnisortes (lieu de memoire) 176 Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Gallery), Dresden 81 Gerngross, Alfred 131 Gerstenbrand, Alfred 101, 140n207, 180n75; Dame im gelben Abendkleid 130, 130; Kokotten Fraulein 101 Gesellschaft bildender Künstler Wiens 34, 82 Gestapo 59, 77n74, 84; Berlin 81 Gestapo Office for the Disposal of the Property of Jewish Emigrants (Verwertungsstelle für jüdisches Umzugsgut der Gestapo) (VUGESTA) 19, 28n55 Gewerbeförderungsdienst 66 ghettos see Jewish ghettos Ginhart, Karl 154–155, 180n60 Ginskey, Karl 97 Globocnik, Otto 31–32, 36 Gobelin Tapestries 35 Goebbels, Joseph: Andri singled out for praise by 73n11; art criticism banned by 64; Cossmann chosen as god-gifted artist by 55; decentralization of fashion industry by 125; Eisenmenger’s Gobelin Nibelung tapestry created for 35; Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) as brainchild of 69; Ewige Jude exhibition, opening of 18; GottbegnadetenListe (God-gifted list) compiled by 35; Heimat inaugurated by 68; Hitler’s attitude to Vienna transmitted to 151; Künstlerhaus funds pledged by 37; Schirach as enemy and rival of 82–84, 87n30, 89, 142, 144; view of Vienna as “mongrel” city 71; Wessely supported by 116; Wien 1910 (film) 156 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 158, 167 Gombrich, Ernst 154 Göring, Emma 121 Göring, Hermann 16, 93, 105, 197n11; Berge, Menschen und Wirtschaft der Ostmark exhibition, sponsorship by 65; Hanusch sculpture purchased by 93; Karinhalle, artworks acquired for 133n39; Makart retrospective sponsored by 105; Reichswerke Hermann Göring 53; seizure of power and Hitler’s commands communicated through 27n35 Grimme, Karl Maria 69 Grimschitz, Bruno: Aryanization of Viennese art collections by 163; as director of the Österreichische National Galerie 158, 163–168; effacement of Jewish women artists by 120, 138n156; Great Alpine Art Exhibition curated by 45; Makart retrospective organized by 105, 108; Novotny’s work under 165

214

Index

Gruber-Gleichenberg, Franz: Murkraftwerke Marnitz—Frohnleiten: Steirische Wasserkraft- und Elektrizitätswerke 53

Hollenstein, Stephanie 49, 138n150 Holzschuh, Ingrid 35, 38n20, 73n4, 77n99 Itzinger, Karl 148

Habsburg Empire 5, 11–15, 105, 109, 196; downfall of 142, 146–148; Grillparzer Week’s problematic references to 84; Klimt and the perfidy of 147–150; Österreich’s fall during 21; tourism and 57; Vienna as crown jewel of 43, 71; Vienna’s corruption and decay under 23; WWI, splintering under 57 Hadwiger, Anton 22, 27n32 Hagenbund 34, 45, 54, 97, 101 Hammer-Purgstall, Kleo (Clothilde) Frei frau (Baroness) 119 Hammer-Purgstall, Heinrich 119 Hampel, Siegmund 101; Portrait 101, 102 Hanusch, Margarete 93, 119 Harlfinger, Richard 49, 74n27 Haus der Deutschen Kunst 49 Haus der Mode 124 Heimat 6, 15, 45–46, 167, 171; Alpine landscape and 59–63; films 14; “Die Heimat des Führers” 69; history of concept 59; idealized images of 37; Nazi ideology of 43, 63; nomads without 62; regional 24; Volksgemeinschaft and 43 Heimatbücher 59 Heimatfilm 60 Heimatland 22 Heimatlose 62 Heimatmuseum 59, 67, 68, 71 Heimatphotographie 60 Heiss, Gernot 157 Heller, Gustav and Wilhelm 131 Hembo, J. A. 93, 133n34 Herz-Kestranek family 131 Hess, Rudolf 18 Hiebel, Hans H. 23 Himmler, Heinrich 49, 112, 197n11 Hitler, Adolf: Biedermeier idealized images of family life and 108; Lueger as hero to 151; Mein Kampf 16, 69, 82, 152, 153, 178n24; mother’s death from breast cancer 152; Munich, time in 151; view of Vienna as “mongrel” city 71; Vienna Academy of Fine Art, attempt to enter 151; Vienna, attitude to 151; Waldmüller as favorite artist of 167; Wessely supported by 116; von Schirach and 82 Hitler Jugend 6, 25, 83, 124 Hobsbawm, Eric 154 Hodler, Ferdinand 53 Hofmann, Heinrich 23, 50, 149, 155, 163 Hofmann, Josef 78n114, 124, 130, 139n176, 142, 168, 174 Hohenberg, Maximillian and Ernst 149

Jaeckel, Willy 96 Janesh 125, 136n106, 189–190, 191n34, 191n35 Jelinik, Elfriede 1, 9n38 Jewess: belle Juive, la, concept of 126, 128, 139n186; erasure of 88–131, 147 Jewish ghettos 80, 85, 144, 150, 193 Jewish Modernism 5, 154 Jugendstil style 74n11, 175 Junge Kunst im Dritten Reich (Young Art in the Third Reich) (exhibition) 143 Kalman, Dora 130 Kindermann, Heinz 23 “Kleideskarten gelten im ganzen Reich” 120 Kleo (Baroness) see Hammer-Purgstall, Kleo (Clothilde) Frei frau (Baroness) Klimt exhibition 1943 6, 85, 143, 146–177 Klimt-gruppe 35 Klimt, Gustav: Beethoven Frieze 158, 160–169, 173; Danae 164; “degeneracy” (presumed) of 6; Dobrowsky, influence on 53; female portraiture in Vienna and 105; female sitters 94; Fritza Riedler, portrait of 164; Gerstenbrand’s portrait of 130; Hampel as friend of 101; Hope I 169; illegitimate son of 115; Jewesses painted by 128–129; Kiss, The 164, 173; Nuda Veritas 158, 159, 164; Pallas Athena 160, 161, 164, 170; Philosophy 160; Portrait of Margaret Stonborough Wittgenstein 164–165, 165; special companion of 136n102; theft of paintings by 2; Vienna Secession led by 34; see also Flöge, Emile; Ucicky, Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 115, 128, 129, 164; as icon of memory and Jewish Vienna 177; as image of cosmopolitan Viennese Jewess 6, 158; as generic “Damen porträt” 171; Gerstenbrand’s Dame portrait’s potential evocation of 131; Neumayer’s review of 173; Oettinger’s disparagement of 175; Pirchan’s negotiation with Jewishness of 170–171; renaming as Damenbildnis mit Goldhintergrund (Female Portrait with a Gold Background) 165, 173 Klinger, Max 160, 167 Klinkosch, Hannah 105, 128 Klinkosch, Josef Carl 128 Klotz-Dürrenbach, Theodor 36, 125, 180n75; Bildnis Trude Klotz-Dürrenbach 126, 189 Klotz-Dürrenbach, Trude 125, 126

Index Koch, Franz 23 Kokotten Fraulein (Gerstenbrand) 101 Kokoschka, Oskar 70, 155, 158; Self Portrait as Degenerate Artist 180n76 Kollwitz, Kathe 143, 180n72 Kommunistische Partei Österreichs (KPÖ) 192 Körber, Robert 41, 72, 150, 152–154 Kraft durch Freude (Kdf) program 36, 47, 59 Kristallnacht 19, 32 Kunst dem Volk (art publication): Baumgärtel in 156; “Berge und Menschen der Ostmark” 64; Cossman in 54; Ostmarkische Kunst, decline on features on 141; Schedlmayer’s dissertation on 3; Strobl as editor of 50 Kunst dem Volk (attitude towards folk art): as distinct from Volkskunst 66 Kunstgewerber Museum, Wien 81, 164 Kunstgewerbeschule, Wien 54, 74n23, 130, 168 Künstler Compagnie 168 Künstler, Gustav 172–173 Künstlerhaus im Nationalsozialismus, Das (conference) 3 Künstlerhaus, Vienna (Wien): 1938–1939 31–37; absence of Jewess at 129, 131; Angerhofer 73n1; “Berge und Menschen der Ostmark: Zur Eröfnung der grossen Ausstellung im Wiener Künstlerhaus” 64; Bürckel’s charge of 82; Czedekowski 114; Degenerate Art exhibit 70; Dobrowsky 53, 106; Cossmann 54, 64; Eisenmenger as president 24; group exhibits 6; historical myths forged by 150; ideology under Nazi control 49; Janesh 136n106; judenfrei 120; Junge Kunst im Dritten Reich, (Young Art in the Third Reich) 143; Klimt retrospective 105, 147, 157, 170, 173, 175, 177; Kurzbauer’s sculpture by Hofmann at 116; Laske 77; Moissl as press ofcer 92; Neuböck 74n28; Olbrich 155; Patzelt 107; post-war, reprising theme of beautiful Wienerin 109–110; propaganda exhibits at 82; re-envisioning of rural life displayed at 41, 44–45; Reitterer 137n148; schöne Wiener Frauenbild (Beautiful Viennese Female Portraits), opening of 89; Streit 113; Traum und Wirklichkeit exhibition 154; women as sitters and contributors to 119–120; see also Eisenmenger; schöne Wiener Frauenbild (Beautiful Viennese Female Portraits) Lamm, Erich Albert 101, 134n72 Landesbauernschaften (regional farmer associations) 24 Lange, Friedrich 21; “Das deutsche Quadrat— einst und jetzt” 24

215

Lanzinger, Hubert: Der Bannerträger (The Standard Bearer) 162 Lederer family 158, 164, 182n98, 195 Lederer, Karl 86n6 Leitich, Anna Tizia 109–110, 135n96 Lesznai-Jaszi, Anna 138n155 Leichter, Käthe 103 Ley, Robert 125, 197n11 Liebe Augustin, Die 150 Lillie, Sophie ix, 2, 137n124, 162, 181n98 Leopold I 150 Leopold Gallery 163 Leopold, Josef 27 Leopold Museum 2 Leopoldstadt district 99, 146; as Jewish ghetto 150; Jews in neighborhoods of 151–152 Loos, Adolf 155, 172 Lueger, Karl 13, 69, 146, 151–152, 156 Luftwasse 75n52 Lutz, Anton 56, 76n60, 197n19 magic(al) realism 5, 10, 49, 52, 99 Makart, Hans 171; afnity for painting female performers 107; as embodiment of his era 173; Hannah Klinkosch, portrayals of 128–129; Jewish women depicted by 129, 168; Pirchan’s monograph on 163, 168–169; retrospective of works of 105, 108, 129 Manet 147 Markus, Winnie 114–115 Marshall Plan 192 Matejka, Viktor 194 Matsch, Franz 147, 168 Maximillian I 149 Mayer, August 36 Mayer, Monika ix, 38n31, 38n32, 77n99, 78n121 May, Karl Maria 125, 136n112; Bildness Frau 112, 113 memorial exhibition: Klimt 6, 143, 147, 154, 163; König 187; Moser 186; Radler 187 memorialization 4–5; of Vienna 176 memoricide 131 memory 174–175; autobiographical 71; collective 3–4, 12, 37, 100, 130, 175–176; constructed 195; constructed cultural 151; cultural 3–5, 17, 71, 80, 165, 175–176; cultural erasure and 3, 5, 176; fabricated cultural 21; extirpation of 26; functional 25, 79n140; Heimat and 59; historical 150; Holocaust 5; individual 80, 151; institutional 25, 79n140, 80, 150, 175, 196; living 4, 90, 173; living, oral, and individual 29n71; museum 174; Ostmark, constructed memory of 195; personal 173; post-memory 176; public 173; presence, absence, and

216

Index

90; struggle against forgetting 192; timeless national 59; victory of 177 memory-landscape 20 memory studies 4 Michelangelo 147 Mieris, Frans van: La Joueuse de théorbe 112 mills depicted in painting 53 Mischling 134n70, 187, 191n35 Miss Germany 1927 96 Moissl, Rudolf Alexander 91–93, 110, 171 Moll, Carl 163, 173–174 Modernism: American 95; birth of 147; Jewish 5, 153; Künstler’s admiration for 172; Nazi tolerance for 106; Paris 151; reactionary 54; see also Viennese Modernism Montez, Lola 114, 136n120 Moritz, Ewald 107, 148 Moser, Karl 130 Moser, Kolomon 174, 186 mothers and motherhood 119; idea of 93; Nazi glorification of 53, 89, 102; see also Mutterdienst (maternal duties) Mother’s Day 103 Mozart 158, 176 Mozart Week 84 Mühlmann, Kajetan 65 Muhr-Jordan, Else 110, 123, 130 Müller, C. O.: In der Loge 142 Müller, Jan-Werner 9n28, 28n56 Murnau, F.W. 150 Mussolini, Benito 14, 187 Mutterdienst (maternal duties) 118 Mutterliebe (film) 115 Mutterschutzwerk (League of Maternity Leave) 102, 103 Mutter und Kind, artistic representations of 45, 46, 79n132, 93 mythscapes 178 Nadler, Josef 23, 24 Neubacher, Hermann 19, 36, 47, 82, 86n20 Neuböck, Max 74n28, 121, 129, 138n165; Bildnis L. R. 122 Neue Berg 34, 81 Neue Frau 90, 113; embrace and rejection of 95–107 Neue Freie Presse 11, 109 Neue Hofberg 34 Neue Romantik 52 Neue Sachlichkeit 5, 41, 49, 54, 90, 95 “Neues aus Altern” 187 Neues Wiener Tagblatt 84, 120, 158, 172–173 Neue Werkbund Österreichs (New Austrian Work Federation) 155 Neumayer, Heinrich 171, 173, 184n174, 188 Niemals vergessen! exhibition 193, 193–196 Nietzsche 158–159 Nolde, Emil 70, 142, 180n72

Novotny, Fritz 165–166, 172 Nuremberg laws 187 Nuremberg trials 82, 87n53 Oettinger, Karl 175 Olbrich, Joseph Maria 82, 155 Opfernation, Austria as 1, 195 Österreich: Sein Land und Volk und Kultur 57 Österreichische Freiheitsbewegung (Austrian Liberation Movement) 80 Österreichische National Galerie 158, 163–166 Österreichische Reise- und Verkehrsnachrichten 57 Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) 192 Österreichische Volks-Zeitung 110 Ostmark: Anschluss and 12; Calligraphy of Ostmark 37; creation of 1, 6, 1–26; cultural creation of 19–26; Gaben der Ostmark 24–25 Gautleiter of 18; Heimkehr der Ostmark I and II (Eisenmenger) 22, 25, 35; Heimkehr der Ostmark ins Reich” (“Homecoming of the Ostmark”) 64, 141; Hitlers Sonderauftrag Ostmark (Schwarz) 2; looted artworks and 3; mountains and people of 41–73; “Ostmark” as term, forbidding of 141; political creation of 18–19; Rückkehr der Ostmark (The Homecoming to Ostmark) 24; ushering in 31–37; Vienna as city of 12; see also Berge und Menschen der Ostmark (Mountains and People of the Ostmark) (exhibition) Ostmarkische Kunst, creation of 141 Ostmärkischer prints and etchings (exhibition) 143 Otto Wagner Gedächtnisschau (exhibition) 143 Patzelt, Andreas 106–107; Bildnis einer jungen Wienerin (Image of a Young Viennese Woman) 106 Pause, Die (journal) 64, 69, 83, 104 Pauser, Sergius 49, 93, 99–101, 106, 125; Bildnis meine Frau Anny (Portrait of My Wife Anny) 100, 100–2, 122; Frau (Dr. Beck) 99; Girl with Red Hat 123 Piefkes 32, 81, 141, 188 Pinder, Wilhelm 82 Pirchan, Emil 162–163, 166–173 plebiscite 16–17 Poland: deportation of Viennese Jews to 80; invasion of 81 Pollak, as heroic Jewish name 72 Porsche, Ferdinand 93 Potsdam Agreement 35 Pötsch, Igo 47, 52, 64 Pregartbauer, Lois 119 Preussen 81, 141 Prosl, Robert 173 putsch of 1934 33; July Putsch 14

Index Radler, Fritz von 187 Radziwill, Franz 10n53 Rapp, Alfred 148–149 Rathaus, Vienna (Wien) 24, 80, 144 Reichskleiderkarte (clothing rations card) 120, 138n157 Reich Youth Leader 143 Reichsbühnenbildner (Reich stage designer) 144 Reichskulturkammer für bildende Künste (Reich Culture Chamber for the Visual Arts)(RKbK) 33, 35, 93; disbanding and replacement of 189; Gast as head of 38n20; Kitt and 134n70 restitution laws of 1998, Austria 2 Revolutions of 1848 109 Reyl-Hanisch, Herbert von 53, 75n47 Richter, Franz 19 Riedler, Fritza 164 Riefenstahl, Leni: Olympiad (film) 170 Rilke, Rainer Maria 82 Ringstrasse 11, 34, 129, 147, 154–155, 168 RkbK see Reichskulturkammer für bildende Künste (Reich Culture Chamber for the Visual Arts) Roessler, Arthur 97, 99, 187–188, 190n14 Roller, Alfred 152, 168 Romanticism 49, 67, 171 Rothchild family 33; art collection of 81 Rüdiger, Wilhelm 143 Saar, Carl V.; Dame mit Rosen im Haar (Woman with Rose in Her Hair) 108 Salome 170–171 Salomé, Lou Andreas ix Salten or Schnitzler, Jewish 101 Schedlmayer, Christina 3 Scheicher, Joseph 146, 177, 177n2 Schiele, Egon 2, 143, 155, 158, 172–173, 186–188 Schiller, Friedrich 41, 158–159, 161, 167, 181n84 Schirach, Baldur von 6, 18, 38n17, 70, 189, 196; artistic liberalness of, calls to end 143; Austrian Biedermeier and 114; cultural politics and 80–85; European Youth Festival organized by 142; factory women visited by 118; fashion industry promoted by 124–125, 139n178, 186; glamorizing Vienna, aim of 172; Goebbel’s discussion of Lueger film (Wien 1910) with 156; Jubiläum der Wiener Kunst attended by 142; Klimt, view of role and cultural position of 147, 158, 171–172; Klimt, organization of exhibition of works of 162, 166, 174, 177; mass and celebrity culture of Vienna, support of 115–116; memoirs of 115; resistance or protest of Anschluss, orders to suppress 141; schöne

217

Wiener Frauenbild (Beautiful Viennese Female Portraits) and 89, 91, 93–95, 103, 105; separatism and 82–86, 142; wife Henrietta 149 Schnitzler, Arthur 11–12; Countess Mitzi 134n69; papierene Brücke, Die (The Paper Bridge) (film) 154; society plays of 155 Schönerer, Georg Ritter von 152, 156, 162 schönste österreichische Frauenporträt, Das (exhibition) 97 schönste Wiener Frauenbild, Das (exhibition) 90, 97–98, 103–104, 114, 147, 168 Schopenhauer, Arthur 158–159, 167, 170 Schorske, Carl 3, 11, 154–155, 176, 179n40 Schubert, [Franz] 92, 164, 168–170 Schuschnigg, Kurt 3, 14–17, 43 Schwab, Günther 21 Schwab, Martin 158 Schweiger, Hans 115, 125, 137n123; Bildnis der Schauspielerin Winnie Markus 115 Secession building 155, 186, 189, 192–193; Gesellschaft bildender Künstler Wiens in 82; Klimt retrospective 6; Russian army and 197n2 Secession Gallery 119 Secession, Prague 106 Secession, Vienna (Wiener Secession) 35, 45, 49, 97; 14th Secession Exhibit 160; avantgarde fashions of 130; Dobrowsky 53, 106; Frank 112; Gerstenbrand 130; Harlfinger 74n27; Hofmann (Josef) 174; Hofmann’s Aryanizing of 155; “Internationale Aktausstellung” 133n48; Kitt 134n70; Klimt 147, 157, 166, 168, 171, 173, 175; Klimt exhibit in Secession building 186; König 187; Künstlerhaus merging with 82; Künstlerhaus separated from 190; Moll 173; Olbrich 155; Radler 187; Roller 152; Wagner (Otto) 155; Walde 59 separatism, Austrian and Viennese see Austrian and Viennese separatism Seyss-Inquart, Arthur 16, 18, 20, 29, 33–34, 37, 47 shtetls 153 Siegfried, as heroic German name 72 Singabende 24 “Sissi und Schlag” 11 Slama, Victor Thema 192, 194 social forgetting 5 Sonderauftrag Linz (Special Commission Linz) 81 Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ) 192 Speer, Albert 49, 112, 135n87, 144 Spitzweg, Carl 135n95 Stadtbibliothek, Vienna (Wien) 143 Stadtmuseum, Vienna (Wien) 19, 143 Stalingrad, defeat at 141–144, 162, 186

218

Index

Ständestaat 45, 95, 102, 150, 194 Steiner, Lilly 138n155 Strauss, Richard 11, 115 Streicher, Julius 18, 197n11 Streit, Robert 36, 101, 125, 189, 190; Bildnis Frau Amsler 112, 113, 122; Hitler’s purchase of work by 136n112; as Nazi party member 134n70; Portrait of Paula Wessely 116, 117 Strobl, Karl Hans 49–50, 52, 61–62, 114 Stoitzner, Siegfried 36, 133n40, 189: Bildnis einer Wienerin (Portrait of a Woman) 94, 94 Stunde Null: Nazi ghosts 195; political myth of 1 Stuppäck, Hermann 20, 33, 38n17, 144 Stürmer, Der 18 Stygowski, Josef 155 Suchenwirth, Richard 22 synagogue 42, 153 Technisches Museum Wien 66 Third Reich 5, 15, 17, 19; agricultural minister 56; anti-Nazi demonstration 1938 32; artists in, three groups of 36; cinema of 150, 170; collective and cultural memory of, reshaping 37, 71; female fashioning in 88, 94; Führermuseum as centerpiece of 81; Hitler as political savior of 82; Ostmark, image of 71; portrait exhibition in 88, 94; Volkskunst 67; women as broodmares 103; Young Art in Third Reich exhibition 143, 162 Thomas, Walter 83–84 Tracht(en) 24, 63, 122; antisemitic discourses around 73n3; renewal of 110 Ucicky, Gustav 115; Heimkehr (film) 115, 137n127 VbKO see Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen der Reichsgaue der Ostmark Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen der Reichsgaue der Ostmark (VbKO) 119, 120, 135n94, 138 Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichische 96 Vergessen, Verschollen und Verdrängt (forgotten, lost and repressed) 2 verism 49 Vienna: cultural politics 6; erasure of 6; Nazi Vienna 1–6 Vienna NS Frauenschaft 110 Vienna Rathaus 24, 80, 144 Vienna Ringstrasse see Ringstrasse Viennese Cityscape (exhibition) 143 Viennese Drawings and Graphics (exhibition) 143 Viennese Modernism 53, 69, 71, 82, 151; Jews and 153, 154, 162

Viennese Portraits of Artists and Scientists (exhibition) 143 Volksgemeinschaft 6, 22, 43, 50, 59, 62, 65, 68 Völkisher Beobachter 18, 72, 143, 159, 173 Volkskunst 66–67 von Schirach see Schirach, Baldur von Vormärz period 107 Vormärz woman 109–110, 114 VUGESTA see Gestapo Ofce for the Disposal of the Property of Jewish Emigrants (Verwertungsstelle für jüdisches Umzugsgut der Gestapo) Wagner, Otto 155, 168; Otto Wagner Gedächtnisschau (exhibition) 142 Wagner, Richard 158, 162 Waldheim, Kurt 1–2 Waldmüller, Ferdinand Georg 92, 107, 109, 110, 169; Hitler’s admiration for 135n95, 167; Portrait of the Artist’s Wife 108; Son Ferdinand With Dog 136n110 Wärndorfer, Fritz 158, 174 Wayland, Nina 129 Werkstätte see Wiener Werkstätte Wessely, Paula 114–116, 117 Wien 1910 (film) 156 Wiener Modeamt 124 Wiener Rathaus see Rathaus Wiener Stadtbibliothek see Stadtbibliothek 143 Wiener Werkstätte 124, 174, 186 Wien Kunst und Kultur (exhibition) 143 Wien Stadtmuseum see Stadtmuseum 19, 143 Wien Künstlerhaus see Künstlerhaus Wilde, Oscar 171 Wilson [Woodrow] 13 Wittgenstein, Margaret Stonborough 164–165, 165 Wolfram, Aurel 84, 87n39 Working Association of German-Aryan Manufacturers of the Clothing Industry (Adefa) 123 Working Association of German Firms of the Weaving, Clothing and Leather Trades (Adebe) 123 Zarnow, Gottfried 148 Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (the Central Ofce for Jewish Emigration) 72 Zentralverband Österreichischer Künstler. 45 Ziegler, Adolf 6, 36, 70, 76, 105 Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie (Art Colony) 49, 53, 140n43 Zirner-Zwieback, Ella 130 Zuckerkandl. Emil and Berta 158 Zweig, Stefan ix, 16