A Prominent Nazi Artist Among the “Friends of steirischer herbst”

23.5.25 / Herwig G. Höller

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In this blog, steirischer herbst research fellow and journalist Herwig G. Höller shares his discoveries in the festival archive. They frequently reveal surprising connections between steirischer herbst and the world of—local as well as international—politics.

The name “Steirischer Herbst” (Styrian Autumn) was often understood to refer to Hans Kloepfer’s World War I poem “Steirischer Herbst 1916.” However, it could also be connected to an eponymous article in the Völkischer Beobachter of 31 October 1942, in which the poet urged Styrians to persevere in World War II. “Today,” Kloepfer wrote, “it’s about much more than the green homeland, today it’s about the whole Reich.” Yet, the festival was always seen as an attempt to overcome this problematic legacy.

The efforts by state cultural adviser Hanns Koren (Austrian People’s Party, or ÖVP) to force a cultural cooperation between Austria, Yugoslavia, and Italy certainly pointed in this direction. And, every autumn, backward-looking audiences were outraged by exhibitions and performances. At steirischer herbst ’88, for instance, Hans Haacke caused a major stir with a work currently honored in a Haacke retrospective at Vienna’s Belvedere 21: in Und ihr habt doch gesiegt (And Yet You Have Won), the German artist reconstructed—with critical comments—the “installation” the Nazi rulers had erected at Am Eisernen Tor on 25 July 1938 to commemorate their fallen comrades from the failed July Putsch of 1934.

What Haacke didn’t know: the designer of the “festive site” of 1938, Heinz Reichenfelser (1901–1969), was later involved in founding the first society connected to steirischer herbst. When, on 6 March 1969, the Association of Friends of steirischer herbst—tasked with obtaining subsidies—convened for the first time in Koren’s office, Reichenfelser was present according to the minutes. He stood in for industrialist Peter Reininghaus, who had appointed the leading Styrian Nazi artist—a party member since 1931—and talented designer as creative director of his brewery in 1953. It isn’t known what Reichenfelser said during the meeting; he died in November 1969.

Especially in the early years, further people whose pre-1945 activities would have merited a closer look participated in steirischer herbst. This applies in particular to the music and musicology program. The composer and first director of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Erich Marckhl (1902–1980), a Nazi party member since 1933, was on the program advisory board of the young festival until 1970. “It’s not my fault that in many cases I can see nothing but variations of blasphemy in the types of artworks supported here,” he wrote to state cultural adviser Kurt Jungwirth (ÖVP) in his resignation letter of 23 October 1970.

Ernst Ludwig Uray (1906–1988), an award-winning composer during the Third Reich, was on the board until 1971. He had headed the music department of the Nazi radio station Reichssender Wien after 1938 and held a similar position at regional broadcaster ORF Steiermark between 1946 and 1971. “Allow me to take your retirement and thus your departure from steirischer herbst’s program board advisory as an opportunity to thank you once again for your cooperation and contributions to the board since steirischer herbst was founded,” executive secretary Paul Kaufmann wrote to Uray on 16 March 1971.

Composer Franz Mixa (1902–1994), whose Sonnengesang was performed at steirischer herbst ’69, also had a Nazi past. Born in Vienna, Mixa had been a member of the Nazi party since 1932 and until 1938 was mostly active in Iceland. He was still in contact with the festival years later. In June 1988, director Peter Vujica congratulated the eighty-six-year-old composer on a “long-overdue award,” the Grand Decoration of Honor in Gold of the Province of Styria.

One also has to mention historian and civil servant Manfred Straka (1911–1990), a Nazi party member since 1933 and employee of Graz’s Südostdeutsches Institut, whose ethnonationalist research supplied ideas for the Nazis’ brutal Germanization policy in Lower Styria (Slovenia). At steirischer herbst ’71, Straka organized the symposium Der urbanisierte Mensch – zum Problem der Verstädterung (The Urbanized Human Being: On the Problem of Urbanization). And as part of the fringe program of steirischer herbst ’73, the workshop Die musikalische Volkskultur der Steiermark (The Musical Folk Culture of Styria) took place, featuring former leading Nazi folklorists such as Karl Haiding (1906–1985) and Richard Wolfram (1901–1995).

There is evidence of further connections. In May 1970, for instance, steirischer herbst’s press office tried in vain to contact a certain Heliodor Löschnigg (1895–?) at the right-wing Graz magazine Das Programm. In a rather unfriendly reply, editor-in-chief Kurt Kirmann, who had lost touch with Löschnigg, expressed his great surprise that the Styrian state—which he assumed organized the festival—knew nothing of Löschnigg’s poor health. Löschnigg, a model Nazi who had dedicated a “banner song” to Adolf Hitler in 1923 and first met his idol in 1926, had been head of the City of Graz’s cultural affairs department before 1945. In this function, he also appeared together with Kloepfer in 1939. As a composer, Löschnigg received a belated tribute in 2019, when the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (which Marckhl cofounded) released a recording of his setting of a poem by Bruno Ertler.