Arnold Schönberg and summer retreat antisemitism in the Salzkammergut
Online memorial exhibition
Threat in his own house
Object #27
Threat in his own house
Alban Berg to Arnold Schönberg
28/30 June 1921
The Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
The news of Mattsee turbulences arrived in a letter (not preserved) from Trudi Schönberg to Erwin Ratz around 27 June; it was communicated at once in the Schönberg circle via Anton Webern to Alban Berg, who analyzed the situation as follows:
“I do not want to write about this in a letter, which could be lost. But the parallelism of the events is simply stunning:
1911*
Start of summer
Intensive work on Harmonielehre
Begun with severe
Toothaches, tooth extraction!
Threat in his own
House (the lunatic engineer)
Polnauer arrives
1921
Start of summer
Intensive work on Har[-]
monielehre II [recte: III] edition
the same
the Mattsee threats
Polnauer arrives“
* In summer 1911, a neighborhood conflict tinted with antisemitic overtones with the engineer Philipp Josef van Wouwermanns at Hietzinger Hauptstraße 113 led to Schönberg’s flight from Vienna.
Cf. Therese Muxeneder: Arnold Schönbergs Konfrontationen mit Antisemitismus (III), in: Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 16/2019. Edited by Eike Feß and Therese Muxeneder. Wien 2019, p. 165–254