Herta Blaukopf’s career
Apart from and independent of the collaboration with her husband, the insights derived from archives and interviews purvey an impressive image of Herta Blaukopf as a productive, dedicated and outstandingly industrious academic, who attended to a great variety of professional activities in the course of her career. Taking everything into account, her life’s work corresponds to three overarching areas: science, journalism and literature. Holding a doctorate in German Philology, she strove to contribute to each of the fields. However, public recognition of her accomplishments varied considerably throughout the three different areas (cf. Chaker/Viehböck 2022a, b).
As far as Herta Blaukopf’s scientific and scholarly efforts are concerned, her success is beyond reproach. In over 120 academic publications, amongst which esteemed journals and anthologies can be found (see download option below), she did not only deal with topics belonging to German Philology such as theatre research and literary history, but also conducted socio-historic studies on the city of Vienna or shaped the scientific efforts surrounding Gustav Mahler’s life and work as an internationally acclaimed expert on the subject. In addition to her extensive publication output, she also curated exhibitions (e.g. in 1980, together with Emmy Hauswirth: photography exhibition for the Vienna State Opera), was consulted as an expert by renowned international media networks (e.g. in 1997: BBC-documentary “Great Composers: Mahler”) and organised as well as spoke at numerous national and international symposia.
Simultaneously, Herta Blaukopf worked as a journalist, devoting particularly the beginning of her professional career to the press. From 1948 until 1956, she wrote for the arts and leisure section of the Austrian newspaper “Der Abend” (cf. Blaukopf, K. 1998: 70), which used to be affiliated with the Communist Party. Throughout decades, she produced humorous texts for the Swiss satirical magazine “Nebelspalter” and published cultural essays in a wide range of journals and newspapers not only in Austria, but in other German-speaking countries as well (e.g. in “Die Weltwoche”, “Sonntag”, “Theaterdienst”, “Hifi-Stereophonie” etc.). From 1958 until 1964, Herta Blaukopf worked as an editor for various publishers, such as Universal Edition or Zsolnay (cf. Seiler 2018: 88). Besides her efforts in print journalism, she was also active in radio and television broadcasting.
In addition to her academic and journalistic publications, Herta Blaukopf left an extensive literary corpus, which, according to our current knowledge, has never been published. The collection amounts to approximately 40 texts pertaining to a great variety of genres, such as drama, poetry, short story, novel, radio play, dialogue or monologue.
Sources
Blaukopf, Kurt: Unterwegs zur Musiksoziologie: Auf der Suche nach Heimat und Standort, Graz/Wien 1998.
Chaker, Sarah/Viehböck, Raphaela: Herta und Kurt Blaukopf: Leben und Arbeiten in Symbiose. Presentation given at the award ceremony for the Herta and Kurt Blaukopf Award 2022 for outstanding dissertations at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, 8 June 2022. (= Chaker/Viehböck 2022a).
Chaker, Sarah/Viehböck, Raphaela: „Hertalein, ich muss dich da was fragen…“. Aktuelle Archiv- und Interviewbefunde zur Wissenschaftskooperation des Ehepaares Herta und Kurt Blaukopf, presentation given at the symposium (Wahl)Verwandtschaften. Gemeinschaftliches kulturelles Handeln of the research centre Musik und Gender Hannover, University of Music, Drama and Media Hannover, 9 July 2022. (= Chaker/Viehböck 2022b).
Rusmanis, Kriss (Reg.): Great Composers: Mahler, BBC-documentary, Great Britain 1997.
Seiler, Martin: Blaukopf, Herta, geb. Singer, in: Korotin, Ilse/Stupnicki, Nastasja (Hg.): Biografien bedeutender österreichischer Wissenschafterinnen, Wien 2018, S. 88-95.