Salzburg: Program of the Salzburg Festival

On 4 May 1945 – four days before the war’s end – the US army liberated Salzburg. Early on they decided to revive the Salzburg Festival. The Information Service Branch of the US forces established its headquarters in Salzburg to coordinate this cultural renewal project. Heinrich Puthon was reinstalled as director of the Festival after a seven-year break. The scarcity in the post-war economy was only one difficulty the Festival faced. Another was that many prominent artists had been favourites of Nazi cultural policy or even part of the Nazi elite.

At the festival’s opening, the US general Mark Clark held his first public speech in Austria. The festival staged Hofmannsthal as well as Mozart. Six “Austrian evenings” were meant to help constitute a new Austrian identity. However, most of the visitors belonged to the US army.