R I C H A R D WAG N E R
DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NURNBERG
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ST EFA N BEN EDIK
BEATINGS AS POGROMS V I E N N A’ S H E L D E N P L A T Z S Q UA R E AS THE NUREMBERG FESTWIESE HOW WAGNER’S MEISTERSINGER WAS INTEGRATED INTO THE AUSTRIA’S FOUNDATIONAL MYTH AND HOW THAT LEGITIMIZED ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE. When Austria staged the end of the Allied occupation in 1955 as the seeming foundation of the state (actually established in 1945), the opening of the Vienna State Opera (besides the Burgtheater) was the most prominent opportunity to present itself. The fact that Karl Böhm as a famous former Nazi was the focus of attention was a clear signal to continue where Nazi cultural policy has left of, as historians have shown in the last decades. Böhm had been director of the Vienna State Opera, but was removed in 1945, a circumstance he neither concealed nor played down in his opening speech ten years later. Instead, he recast the new beginning as a continuation. In front of the microphones for the audience in the house and the radio stations, Böhm declared openly: “What’s more, I was inspired by the thought that back then, when this building fell victim to the WOLFGANG KOCH as BECKMESSER MICHAEL VOLLE as HANS SACHS
bombs, I stood at the head of this institution as its director. That it appears my very person thus creates a certain continuity leading from yesterday to today.” Besides the personal links, the event of Austrian self representation in 1955 was also marked by musical references to the past. The evening programme for the opening included Beethoven’s Fide lio, which had earlier been performed to celebrate the “Anschluss” of Austria to Nazi Germany in March 1938. But the first music heard in public in the new Haus am Ring was not from Fidelio. At the official celebration on the morning of the opening, Böhm followed two short pieces by Franz Schmidt and J. S. Bach by placing Wagner’s Meistersinger at the heart of the programme, concluding with Johann Strauss’s An der schönen blauen Donau. This Wagner-Strauss-Beethoven trinity reflects the three central fea-
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