Oliver Rathkolb: Baldur von Schirach: ,Die Pompadour von Wien‘. Nationalsozialistische (Un-)Kulturpolitik in Wien
Lecture by Oliver Rathkolb, Professor of Modern History with special emphasis on contemporary history at the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. Welcome: Johan F. Hartle, Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
After a welcome by Rector Johan F. Hartle, historian Oliver Rathkolb will give a lecture on Baldur von Schirach, Reichsleiter and Gauleiter of Vienna, and his role in National Socialist cultural policy. The lecture will take place as the first public contribution to a scholarly examination of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna's dealings with its past, which has begun in current denials and awards of honorary memberships of the Academy.
As Reichsleiter and Gauleiter of Vienna, Adolf Hitler's former Reichsjugendführer Baldur von Schirach had perfidiously hidden his terror policies against Jews, "asocials" and Viennese Czechs behind a flurry display of subsidized art and cultural policies that appeared to contradict the Nazi mainstream even in matters of contemporary art.
Behind the metaphor of "Viennese culture," he cleverly revived the idea of cultural greatness held by many Viennese, and thus reinforced the acceptance of National Socialism until the end of the war. Even after 1945, the myth of Schirach as the "patron" of the Viennese cultural scene persisted against all facts.
In this lecture, Schirach's apparent cultural liberalism will be critically questioned against the background of the real National Socialist policy of oppression and persecution, and his contribution to the cultural victim doctrine of the Second Republic will be addressed.
Followed by discussion and get together.