The famed Vienna Philharmonic has acknowledged that many of its musicians were members of the Nazi party and that its director may have delivered a prestigious orchestra award to a Nazi war criminal two decades after the end of World War Two. The orchestra, which has come under fire for covering up its history, on Sunday published details for the first time about its conduct during the Nazi era, including biographies of Jewish members who were driven out and sent to death camps. Austria took until 1991, more than four decades after the war’s end, to formally acknowledge and voice regret for its central role in Hitler’s Third Reich and Holocaust. The Alpine republic will solemnly mark the 75th anniversary on Tuesday of its annexation by Nazi Germany, an event most Austrians at the time welcomed. The Vienna Philharmonic, one of the world’s premier orchestras, is most popularly known for its annual New Year’s Concert, a Strauss waltz extravaganza that is broadcast to an audience of more than 50 million people in 80 countries. Less well known is the fact that the concert originated as a propaganda instrument under Nazi rule in 1939. The orchestra rarely played the music of the Strauss family, known for the “Blue Danube” and numerous other waltzes, before this period.
