In 2016, the association exil.arte was integrated into the mdw as the Exilarte Center for Banned Music. Exilarte is a place for the reception, preservation, and presentation of as well as research on those composers, performers, musicologists, and theatre artists who were branded as “degenerate” by the National Socialists and/or persecuted due to the racist Nuremberg Laws.

The early decades of the 20th century witnessed three waves of emigration from Europe, the first of which occurred prior to and during World War I. European artists thus played a role in shaping US film from the very beginning—and the studio system, which became a foundation of American film’s success story, was in fact largely created by émigrés.

An exhibition by the Exilarte Center for Banned Music at the mdw with a wide range of images, sheet music, and documents from Kreisler’s life as well as a simultaneously published catalogue will celebrate the ongoing Fritz Kreisler Memorial Year by highlighting aspects such as Kreisler’s family history, his period in Vienna, and his special knack for media relations.

Who doesn’t know them: Marta Eggerth and Jan Kiepura, the dream-couple of movies, opera, and operetta, the superstars of the mid-20th century. Their voices enthralled the masses, interwove multiple genres, and converted people to opera and operetta in an era where both were thought to have long been on their last legs.