In 1920, a year of hunger and hardship, a group of Austrians decided to start a music festival. World War I had just ended. The Habsburg empire had just disappeared, putting to an end a society that the writer Stefan Zweig once described as a "stabilized bourgeois world with its countless little securities, well palisaded on all sides" where "nothing unexpected ever occurred.
The Habsburg empire had just disappeared, putting to an end a society that the writer Stefan Zweig once described as a "stabilized bourgeois world with its countless little securities, well palisaded on all sides" where "nothing unexpected ever occurred. " Millions of young men had died in the trenches. The poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the director Max Reinhardt, the composer Richard Strauss and others nevertheless felt that this was exactly the moment to stage plays and conduct concerts.
The poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the director Max Reinhardt, the composer Richard Strauss and others nevertheless felt that this was exactly the moment to stage plays and conduct concerts. They hoped that their festival, in the words of Reinhardt, would 'repair the torn threads of our common European heritage'. They hoped it would lay the foundations for peace.