Stairwell

The term ‘Nazi art’ refers to works and artists who were accepted, exhibited, and promoted by the regime during the Nazi era. In particular, this includes works and artists that were exhibited in the ‘Great German Art Exhibition’. Nazi art did not have a uniform artistic style.

Karlmann Müller was the district (Gau) officer for art education in the National Socialist Teachers’ League. Among other things, he was in charge of the school competition ‘Hilf mit’ (Help Out), in which pupils created artistic interpretations of Nazi propaganda. The aim of such projects was to indoctrinate children and young people with the ideology of the Nazi regime.

Rudolf Dimai was an art teacher at schools in Salzburg during the Nazi era. He was associated with the Künstlerhaus Salzburg. His works were exhibited there several times in both the 1930s and the 1940s. Rudolf Dimai was a soldier in the Wehrmacht and was held as a prisoner of war in the USA until 1946.

E. Anton ‘Tony’ Angerer was involved in several state-sponsored exhibitions during the Austrofascist era. Both in these exhibitions and in the publication, Salzburg, Its People, and Its Traditional Costumes, he conveyed the image of an indissoluble bond between the isolated rural population and their landscape. In 1937, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Austrian Order of Merit.

Heinrich Caesar Berann was a member of the SA. He created works of art that clearly reflect his enthusiasm for National Socialism. His painting To the Fallen of 1934 was presented to Adolf Hitler as a birthday gift in 1938. It depicts the body of a National Socialist, wrapped in a swastika banner, in his mother’s arms. Berann’s works were exhibited at the ‘Great German Art Exhibition’, where selected Nazi art was showcased.

Franz Donat was a Catholic priest and editor of the Salzburger Chronik, a Catholic-oriented newspaper with strongly antisemitic leanings. In the 1930s, its content was closely aligned with the Austrofascist state. In 1935, Franz Donat was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Austrian Order of Merit for outstanding service to the Austrofascist state.

The Alpinia mountaineering club had an ‘Aryan clause’ in its statutes from 1921 onward. This was an antisemitic measure that made it impossible for persons regarded as Jewish to join the club. From 1938 onward, Aryan clauses became an integral part of Nazi association structures in Salzburg.

Joseph Messner was already a firm believer in ‘Greater German cultural ideals’ (Ernst Hintermaier) before 1938 and enthusiastically welcomed the Anschluss of Austria. Even before that, he had been composing in line with the ‘anti-modern art aesthetic of National Socialism’ (Alexander Pinwinkler). In 1933, he spoke favourably of the exclusion of Jewish musicians from the cultural landscape of the National Socialist German Reich.

During the unofficial referendum on the Anschluss, which took place in the federal state of Salzburg in 1921 and preceded Austria’s later incorporation into the National Socialist German Reich, Karl Reisenbichler designed propaganda material promoting unification with Germany. In 1933, he joined the Salzburg Nazi Party and, from 1938, pursued a career in the Salzburg district (Gau) cultural office. There, he also assumed leadership positions.

Films played a central role in Nazi propaganda, as the then still relatively new institution of cinema attracted more and more audiences during the 1930s. As early as the spring of 1933, a restructuring of film culture began in the National Socialist German Reich, which made it impossible for Jewish filmmakers (with few exceptions) to be involved in productions. Feature films were not only shown in cinemas for entertainment, but increasingly contained propagandistic elements.

As early as the spring of 1933, Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, began reshaping the cultural landscape in line with Nazi ideology. Actors and actresses who were persecuted as Jewish by the Nazi leadership had to flee or risk being murdered. Many of the remaining actors and actresses allowed themselves to be used for Nazi propaganda purposes and were rewarded in 1944 with inclusion on the ‘Gottbegnadeten Liste’ (God-gifted List). After liberation in 1945, most of them continued their acting careers unhindered.

Ernst Marischka worked as a screenwriter during the Austrofascist era (1933–1938) and, following the Anschluss, as both a screenwriter and film director. He wrote scripts for operetta adaptations and light comedies. Marischka produced the film 7 Years Hard Luck (1940) for Ufa (Universum Film AG), which was owned by the Nazi state from 1937 to 1945.

From 1933 to 1945, the Berghof on the Obersalzberg was a centre of power of the Nazi dictatorship. After liberation from the Nazi regime in May 1945, the area became a holiday resort for American soldiers and their families. Only the Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle’s Nest) was open to the public. There, idyllic postcard images and illustrated books overshadowed the memory of the stays of Nazi perpetrators at this location.

Kurt Hoffmann worked as an assistant director in the 1930s and made his directorial debut in 1939. He directed feature films that, at first glance, appeared apolitical. The feature films made during the Second World War were primarily intended for entertainment, but were not free of Nazi ideology and propaganda. This also applies to Hoffmann’s films, such as Quax the Crash Pilot (1941), in which the hero only becomes a hero through iron discipline.

The ‘Law on Restrictions on Travel to the Republic of Austria’ was published in the Reich Law Gazette in May 1933. A fee of 1,000 Reichsmarks was imposed on travel to or through Austria. The aim was to put pressure on the Austrian government by damaging the economy, in particular the tourism industry. The so-called ‘small border traffic’ was not affected by the regulation. This meant that people who entered and left the country on the same day and lived near the border did not have to pay the fee.

Hans Sedlmayr joined the Nazi Party in 1930. After the party was banned in Austria in June 1933, he resigned his membership, though he requested that he ‘continue to be regarded as sympathetic to the party’. He came to an arrangement with the Austrofascist regime and received a professorship in art history at the University of Vienna in 1936. In 1938, he rejoined the Nazi Party and hailed the Anschluss of Austria as an ‘event of fundamental importance’. In 1939, he gave a lecture on urban planning in Vienna, in which he advocated the redevelopment of Leopoldstadt – a district inhabited primarily by Jewish people – into a ‘Hitlerstadt’ (Hitler city). He must have been aware that this plan would involve the deportation of Jews. Furthermore, in at least one lecture, he called for the denunciation of opponents of the regime.

During the Nazi era, forced labourers were used in Salzburg, for example, to build the Staatsbrücke bridge. They were also used to push ahead with infrastructure projects such as the Kaprun power station and the motorway, which got underway during the Nazi era. By 1945, almost one in four workers in what was then the Reichsgau was a forced labourer. Many of them died while working or as a result of the working conditions.

According to Maria von Trapp, the members of the chamber choir only found the courage to perform in public after they were invited by the Austrofascist chancellor Schuschnigg to give a concert at the Belvedere. In the following years, they gave several concerts in Austria and abroad. In Rome, in February 1938, they accepted an invitation from Benito Mussolini to give a private concert for him.

The conductor joined the Neustadt (Salzburg) branch of the Nazi Party as early as 8 April 1933. At that time, the Nazi Party was not yet banned in Austria. In the years leading up to the Anschluss, Karajan worked in Germany, where he became director of the opera and principal conductor of the Aachen City Theatre. Karajan thus made a conscious decision to pursue a career within the Nazi system. He also worked for the propaganda machinery of the Nazi regime and, among other things, conducted a concert for Hitler’s birthday.

The photographer worked in Salzburg from 1942 onward. In her works intended for public display, she adhered to the guidelines of Nazi propaganda in terms of both style and content. In other words, her photographs shifted the focus from the individual to the homogeneous group. She portrayed women as heroines, without showing any discernible suffering or authentic negative emotions.

According to contemporary sources, Tobi Reiser Sr. was already known as a ‘committed National Socialist’ as early as 1931. On 1 May 1933, he joined the Austrian Nazi Party. Six weeks later, the party was banned, making him an ‘illegal National Socialist’. In May 1938, he was appointed to the Customs and Traditions Department of the Nazi Cultural Office. Further positions in the cultural apparatus of the Nazi state followed. The Nazi system gave Reiser the opportunity to turn his passion into a profession.

This alpine flower is associated with Austria all over the world. The Hollywood film The Sound of Music has played a major role in this. Yet many decades earlier, the edelweiss had already become a symbol of mountaineering, courage, loyalty, and community. Around 1870, it became the symbol of the German and Austrian Alpine Club. Between 1918 and 1945, it was increasingly misused in mountaineering and popular culture as a symbol of ethnic German nationalist antisemitism and exclusion.

The Heimatwerk Salzburg was founded in December 1942. At that time, following the defeat at Stalingrad, the Nazi leadership was attempting to strengthen the ‘home front’. One component of this effort was the promotion of folk culture. The first managing director was Kuno Brandauer. After liberation from the Nazi regime, the Heimatwerk was banned. In 1946, it was re-established by the Salzburg state government and restructured. However, the new managing director was Tobi Reiser, whose career was closely linked to National Socialism.

The painter Grete Karasek, better known as Gretl Karasek, worked under Gertrud Pesendorfer at the Mittelstelle Deutsche Tracht (Coordinating Centre for German Traditional Dress) during the Nazi era. There, she created designs for dirndl dresses that conformed to the image promoted by Nazi ideology. The aim of the Nazi revival of traditional dress was to suggest, at public events and entirely in line with the ‘blood and soil’ ideology, an apparently unbreakable connection between clothing and ‘homeland’. Karasek was a member of the Nazi Party and the Nazi Cultural Commission.

Kuno Brandauer was already a board member of the Salzburg Antisemitic League in the early 1920s. He joined the local Nazi Party branch in Morzg in November 1931. In May 1933, as a state civil servant, he nevertheless took the ‘oath of office’ to the new Austrofascist government. As a well-known ‘illegal National Socialist’, several investigations were launched against him, all of which were dropped. Brandauer made a career for himself in the Nazi state and, by 1941, was earning five times the average income of the time. He was head of the Gauverband der Heimat- und Trachtenvereine im Reichsgau Salzburg (Gau Association of Local Heritage and Traditional Costume Societies in the Reichsgau of Salzburg). In this role, he gave lectures and produced publications. In 1942, he became managing director of the Salzburg Heimatwerk.

In June, Benno von Braitenberg, Salzburg’s chief of police, announced that, with immediate effect, Jews were forbidden to ‘wear traditional alpine costumes (whether authentic or imitation), such as lederhosen, Joppe jackets, dirndl dresses, white knee-high socks, Tyrolean hats, etc., in public’. This was one of the first steps toward the complete exclusion of Jewish people from society.

Franz Rehrl served as Governor of Salzburg starting in 1922. As a pupil and student, he was active in Catholic fraternities. In the early years of the Salzburg Festival, he stood by its Jewish co-founder, Max Reinhardt, who was subjected to repeated antisemitic attacks in the 1920s. Rehrl remained Governor of Salzburg during the Austrofascist era. Under his leadership, the Salzburg State Constitution was adapted to the Austrofascist state in September 1934. After the Anschluss, Rehrl was removed from office and imprisoned.

Gertrud Pesendorfer was the Nazi Reich commissioner for traditional costume work and, from March 1939, head of the Mittelstelle Deutsche Tracht (Coordinating Centre for German Traditional Dress) as well as acting director of the Museum of Tyrolean Folk Art. Shortly before the Anschluss, she published the book New German Peasant Costumes: Tyrol. The costume designs and ideals of the body presented in it corresponded to the ethnic-nationalist ideas of Nazi propaganda.

The Mittelstelle Deutsche Tracht (Coordinating Centre for German Traditional Dress) was an agency of the Nazi Women’s League based in Innsbruck. One of the agency’s tasks was to work towards a renewal of traditional costume in line with Nazi ideology. This included, for example, dirndls, which were kept simple and supposedly more practical and easier to wear. By dispensing with motifs such as floral patterns, etc., a form of standardisation was achieved in the field of traditional dress, emphasising the collective and relegating the individual to the background. It was also intended to develop traditional costumes for regions that previously had none, as well as to unite and bring into line various folklore organisations.

The 1935 Official Law Gazette of the State of Salzburg set out the regulations governing the introduction of a regional costume for men in Salzburg. The regional costume, or state suit, served as official attire for civil servants and other officials such as teachers or mayors. However, it was not reserved exclusively for them. On the contrary, it was expressly desired that as many Salzburg residents as possible wear the regional costume. A matching regional costume for women was developed to accompany the suit.

The Catholic organisation Bund Neuland is regarded as one of the ‘bridge-builders’ between the Catholic Church and Nazi ideology. In its publications of the 1930s, the association advocated a corporatist, anti-parliamentary, pan-German programme and adopted an openly antisemitic and German nationalist stance.

The publishing house, which specialises in music, was founded in Bonn in 1919 and initially published works for the Scout movement and the German Youth Movement. Following the National Socialists’ rise to power in Germany, the catalogue changed. It now included songbooks for the Hitler Youth and National Socialist propaganda. In Austrofascist Austria, warnings were issued against the sale of its new publications.