In my paper, I would like to discuss the tense relationship between the repression and after-effects of National Socialism, and in particular antisemitism, in connection with the use of music in public radio in Austria after 1945. At the center of the lecture are documentary features, which were broadcast either in radio or television around the anniversaries of key historical events for the founding of the Second Republic of Austria such as the end of the war in 1945 or the signing of the State Treaty in 1955. These broadcasts render a distinct Austrian identity through its history and its crises. Classical music has multifaceted functions in those broadcasts: It serves as a transition between the fragmented, diverse materials from which the features are built, and at the same time it is a reference to the country's past and an affirmation of its cultural achievements. In broadcasts from the 1950s, music is played precisely when the Nazi era and antisemitism are omitted on a verbal level, i.e. when they are tabooed. On the basis of this observation, I ask how the function and the repertoire of the music developed in documentary features in context of anniversaries of the republic throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. These questions must be asked not only against the backdrop of the identity-forming function of the topos “Musikland Österreich” (Kem, Between Musicology and Mythology, 2019; Nußbaumer, Musikstadt Wien, 2007 ; Szabó-Knotik, Musikland Österreich, 2004; Wagner,Musikland Österreich, 2006 u.a.), which has been examined in cultural studies, but also in connection with the well-documented “secondary antisemitism” in Austria after 1945, which continued to serve “as a common fundus” of Austrian society and was integrated into the victim narrative (Botz, Österreich und die NS-Vergangenheit, 1987; Grigat and Markl, Österreichische Normalität, 2013; Marin, Antisemitismus ohne Antisemiten, 1979 u.a.). The collectivizing, essentializing function can be identified as an implicit common denominator of the Musikland topos and antisemitism in Austria.

Elias Berner is musicologist and was awarded with the Fellowship for Anti-Semitism research at the Institute of Culture Studies of the OeAW. learn more 

Chair: Gerald Lamprecht, coordinator of the antisemitism research group at the Institute of Culture Studies of the OeAW. learn more