Expulsion of teachers and students in 1938

Just a few days after the Anschluss of Austria to Nazi Germany, the persecution and expulsion of teachers and students began at the mdw (then the State Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna). On 15 March 1938, the previous director was removed from office and the first teachers were removed from the premises. In the course of the ‘Nazi-ification’ of the Academy, about a third of the teaching staff lost their jobs and about 13 per cent of the students had to leave by the end of the summer semester of 1938 at the latest.

Two teachers – the pianist Erna Kremer and the writer and cultural historian Erwin Weill – and twelve students fell victim to the Shoah: Isydor Bernklau, Klara Birn, Edith Blau, Abraham Arje Ehrlich, Ida Friedmann, Renée Hait, Felicitas Pauline Ichheiser (nee Winter), Wilhelm Leiter, Otto Pollak, Karl Porges, Alfred Stein and Gerold Weisz.

Chronology of the expulsion

On 13 March 1938, an SS communications department was set up in the main building on Lothringerstraße, classes were suspended and only resumed towards the end of the month. Alfred Orel, the new head of the school from 15 March, issued the first leaves of absence to Jewish teachers on the day he took up office and began to survey the members of the teaching staff – both with regard to whether they themselves were of Jewish origin or married to a Jewish person, and with regard to their political views.

Alongside this scrutiny of teaching staff, a census of students was undertaken, with the religious denomination stated on registration as the only point of reference. Although Jewish students were still allowed to attend classes during the summer semester of 1938, many of them – not least because they were no longer able to pay their tuition fees – either resigned themselves or simply stopped attending the mdw, assuming that they were no longer welcome there.

On 15 October, the Ministry of the Interior and Cultural Affairs issued a decree banning the admission of Jewish students to teaching, and shortly afterwards (on 21 October), the Reich Minister for Science, Education and National Education decreed that so-called ‘Mischlinge’ (persons of mixed race) could only be enrolled under the proviso of revocation.

The last Jewish teachers retired at the end of November 1939. By then, the individuals in question had either been suspended or had already left the country.

Recommended Reading

Erwin Strouhal, Zur Verfolgung von Angehörigen der mdw* im Nationalsozialismus, in: Klingende Zeitgeschichte in Objekten. Die mdw* im Austrofaschismus, Nationalsozialismus und Postnazismus. Beiträge zur Ausstellung an der mdw – Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien), online at: https://repo.mdw.ac.at/klingende-zeitgeschichte/s/de/item/86