Pre-war
1914
Outbreak of the war
1915
1916
1917
1918
End of the war
Post-war

‘It’s Hugo’s damned duty not to die for the fatherland before I’ve got my Act III.’ – Richard Strauss and the First World War

In an exchange of letters, the composer Richard Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal (or in some cases Gerty, his wife) expressed their views on the First World War in a form which was sometimes ironic and sarcastic, sometimes patriotic. However, for Strauss what was most important was not so much commenting on contemporary events as the effect these had on his own personal state of mind.

On the day before the official beginning of the war Richard Strauss was worried about the whereabouts of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and tried to find this out from his home in Garmisch. ‘Poets’, Strauss commented, ‘really could be left at home when there is so much cannon fodder available elsewhere in the form of critics, producers with their own ideas, actors specializing in Molière, and so on.’ Strauss was in the middle of work on the third act of his opera Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow), which he completed in 1917, although it did not receive its first performance until after the war, as its subject made it seem unsuitable for wartime. Strauss’s reaction to this unwelcome disruption of his work was to wish: ‘May the devil take those damned Serbs!’ He was in a much better mood a few weeks later as a result of the ‘great victory’ of the German army at Metz on 20 August and the completion of his third act: ‘It’s Hugo’s damned duty not to die for the fatherland before I’ve got my third act, which, I hope, will lead to even more honour than a fine obituary in the Neue Freie Presse newspaper. At the same time he hopes that ‘this country and people’ – the phrase merges Germany and Austria – are only at the beginning of a great development and really must and will achieve hegemony over Europe’.

During the war Strauss swung between hopes of victory and fears for ‘dying Austria’. He increasingly condemned the war as such, not least because of the material restrictions it meant for art: ‘the Emperor is cutting the fees at the Court Opera House; the Duchess of Meiningen has sacked her orchestra; Reinhardt is performing Shakespeare; the theatre in Frankfurt is peforming Carmen, Mignon, Les contes d’Hoffmann  – who can make head or tail of the German people with their mixture of genius and lack of talent, heroism and servility. Towards the end of the war Strauss appealed to reason, which he felt could be promoted not least by the inherent ability of music to bring peoples together – presumably including his own music.

In the end Richard Strauss was among those who profited from the war, because the way in which the music business was largely restricted to performances of works by German and Austro-Hungarian composers meant that his works were among those that were given preference in theatre programmes. In 1915 he conducted the first performance of his Alpensinfonie (Alpine Symphony) in Dresden and in October 1916 a revised version of his opera Ariadne auf Naxos (Ariadne on Naxos) at the Court Opera in Vienna. Julius Korngold reported on the glamorous premiere in a highly positive way in a lengthy commentary:

One has to praise and praise again: the Court Opera has shown itself at its best. And the audience were also at their best, on a par with the work. They enjoyed this very unusual operatic music in its mature sweetness with great understanding and gave its creator a tumultuous ovation.

Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose) was also in great demand in German-language theatres, with 100 performances being given in Dresden alone between the premiere in 1911 and the end of the war.

Translation: Leigh Bailey

Bibliografie 

Freies Deutsches Hochstift / Frankfurter Goethe-Museum (Hrsg.): Österreichs Antwort. Hugo von Hofmannsthal im Ersten Weltkrieg, Frankfurt 2014. Unter: http://www.goethehaus-frankfurt.de/ausstellungen_veranstaltungen/ausstellungen/wechselausstellung/osterreichs-antwort-hugo-von-hofmannsthal-im-ersten-weltkrieg/140407-hofmthal-leseheft-12rz-web2.pdf (20.06.2014)

Korngold, Julius: Hofoperntheater. („Ariadne auf Naxos“), in: Neue Freie Presse vom 5.10.1916, 1-5

Schuh, Willi (Hrsg.): Strauss, Richard, Hofmannsthal, Hugo von: Briefwechsel, München 1990

 

Quotes:

all quotes from letters: Schuh, Willi (Hrsg.): Strauss, Richard, Hofmannsthal, Hugo von: Briefwechsel, München 1990 (Translation)

„One has to praise and praise again ...“: Korngold, Julius: Hofoperntheater. („Ariadne auf Naxos“), in: Neue Freie Presse vom 5.10.1916, 1-5 (Translation)

Contents related to this chapter

Aspects

  • Aspect

    War and art

    Many artists, intellectuals and writers welcomed the outbreak of the First World War. They saw it not as an apocalypse but as the opportunity for a change for the better. As such they joined in the patriotic fervour of the first weeks and months of the war. What motivated them not only to devote their artistic energies to the fatherland but also to take an active part in the fighting? How were anti-war sentiments articulated by artists? What other forms of relationship were there between art and warfare during and after the First World War?

Persons, Objects & Events

  • Object

    The role of the intellectual in the war

    The year 1914 brought about an incisive change in their private and professional lives of many intellectuals. Formerly international intellectual and artist circles collapsed, many intellectuals entered the war, voluntarily or not, and many of them failed to return.

  • Person

    Richard Strauss

    Performances in the German-speaking countries of compositions by Richard Strauss boomed during the First World War. In 1917, Strauss, together with Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Max Reinhardt, laid the basis for the Salzburg Festival.

  • Person

    Hugo von Hofmannsthal

    Very soon after the start of the war, the author Hugo von Hoffmannsthal attracted attention with his patriotic publications. In order to avoid military service, he had himself transferred to the Press Service of the War Welfare Office.