Abstract (eng)
Since the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938, the Landestheater (state theatre) Linz distinguishes itself as an NS-stage of special political reliability and submissiveness. Staff and repertoire are aligned to the new regime. As a reward, the Landestheater is granted huge financial benefits from the Sonderfonds L (special fund Linz), available for the cities’ upgrade as Führermetropole. Thus the theatre can afford architectonic and technical improvements and, beyond that, is given huge extrabudgetary sums for Führerausstattungen (scenographies of the Führer), concerning operas, musical comedies and dramas, which are considered and gladly accepted as personal gifts of Adolf Hitler.
This special financial and propagandistic position of the Landestheater Linz can be kept throughout all difficulties caused by the war, until total war restricts and finally stops the continuation of the theatre enterprise in the season of 1944/45. To this point, this paper, based on extensive research in archives and on contemporary literature and press, gives a documentation of all periods, which can be read as commentaries of the parallel decline and fall of the German Reich.
The history of the Linzer Landestheater between 1938 and 1945 is also the history of the ambivalent character of its impresario Ignaz Brantner, who had been holding this position before the national socialists’ advent to power in Austria and could easily resume it after the crash of the German Reich.