Der Standard, July 16, 2021
German original: https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000128214967/jedermanns-juden-festspielgeschichte-im-juedischen-museum-wien
The exhibition documents the resentful relationship with the founding figures of the Salzburg Festival in a multimedia format.
Vienna - with the morality play Jedermann and its catholic idea of redemption, artists from Jewish families laid the foundation for the Salzburg Festival in 1920. Along with many other Jewish intellectuals, director Max Reinhardt and poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal are considered the founders of the now 101-year-old festival. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary, the exhibition Jedermanns Juden at the Jewish Museum Vienna traces the history of the festival, which was confronted with anti-Semitism and abruptly collapsed with the capture by the Nazis in 1938.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Reinhardt was the Central European theatrical figure. It was his visionary large-scale theater that made the profession of directing meaningful in the first place. His and Hofmannsthal's comrades-in-arms included many other Jewish artists, such as stage designer Oscar Strnad, conductor Bruno Walter, as well as Philharmonic concertmaster Arnold Rosé. It was them who launched the Festival in the baroque and catholic city of Salzburg.
Resentment
The festival pioneers were accused of instrumentalizing catholic values. Resentment against Jews was (and still is) deeply rooted in Austria. In the early 1920s it rose to such an extent that students from the Borromäum Archbishop's boarding school protested at Residenzplatz on the afternoon of the Jedermann premiere.
Reinhardt and Co were disparagingly referred to as "Jewish summer visitors." Some also judged the archbishop's decision to open the Kollegienkirche for Das Salzburger Große Welttheater as a desecration.
The discriminatory relationship with the festival's protagonists, as well as their fatal dismantling by the Nazis beginning in 1938, is recalled in the exhibition Jedermanns Juden. Curated by Marcus G. Patka and Sabine Fellner, Max Reinhardt remains the central figure in several chapters of the show.
Great Film Documents
The historical movies open up new perspectives, such as explaining the importance of Reinhardt from an American point of view. For those who didn't know, Gregory Peck was one of Max Reinhardt's students in American exile.
The exhibition was created in cooperation with the Salzburg Museum, with which exhibits from the Salzburg Festival archive were shared fairly. The anniversary exhibition Großes Welttheater can be seen at the Salzburg Museum until the end of October, where the Jewish Museum has also designed a room (DER STANDARD reported).
For director Danielle Spera, the starting point for the exhibition at the Jewish Museum Vienna was the unrecognized Jewish part in the history of the festival, which is symbolized in Max Reinhardt's modest tomb in Westchester Hills Cemetery in New York.
No Welcome Signals
Many in Jewish artists living in exile didn’t receive any signals of being welcomed back to Austria. Moreover, crucial Jewish patrons, such as the Hellmann family, who generously sponsored the festival and whose members were murdered in concentration camps, were completely left to oblivion. The catalog published by Residenz-Verlag also provides information about these happenings. It contains the majority of the exhibits arranged in the show, such as historical scenic images, contemporary photographs, paintings, woodcuts, theater posters, stage sketches, portraits of actors, masks, and personal objects of Reinhardt, his imposing travel suitcase, or albums. Many pieces are on loan from Michael Heltau, who administers the estate of Reinhardt's widow Helene Thimig. (Margarete Affenzeller, 7/16/2021)