The Annexation of Anton Bruckner: Nazi Revisionism and the Politics of Appropriation

Abstract

The infamous photograph of 1937 in Regensburg (see Fig. 1) is difficult to forget: Adolf Hitler, in full Nazi military dress, stands gazing reverently at a marble bust of the Austrian composer. 1 This likeness, created by Adolf Rothenberger in a style consonant with National Socialist realism, is placed on a dark pedestal bordered in gold and topped with the Nazi seal, an eagle clutching the swastika. Bruckner had at long last joined the other luminaries of German culture in Regensburg's Valhalla, a marble replica of the Parthenon completed in 1841 under the direction of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and filled with images of German cultural heroes of the past. A central goal of the Bruckner occasion was the Austrian composer's elevation to the status of a full-fledged German composer brought into the embrace of the Third Reich, a step that no doubt foreshadowed--and helped prepare for--the AnschluJ3 of Austria eight months later.2 The Regensburg ceremony-which included speeches and remarks by Peter. Raabe (president of the Reichsmusikkammer), Max Auer (president of the Internationale Bruckner-Gesellschaft), Joseph Goebbels, and others-served as a centerpiece for various musicalpolitical events, including a series of concerts, a convention of the Internationale Bruckner-Gesellschaft, and a meeting of the Bavarian District Nazi Party Congress (see Fig. 2). Through the narrow lens of Bruckneriana, this celebration could be interpreted merely as an event capping the festivities of the previous year commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Bruckner's death. But from the wider perspective of Nazi political strategies of the late 1930s, this event should, more correctly, be recognized as a launching point. Beyond this Bruckner anniversary, 1936 marked a time when, according to Goebbels, the 'chains' of Versailles had finally been 'stripped off' ; Germany had once again become a formidable military