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Erich Schenk (5 May 1902 – 11 October 1974) was an Austrian musicologist and music historian.
Born in Salzburg (Austria-Hungary), Schenk studied at the Salzburg Mozarteum and then at the University of Munich, where he also received his doctorate in 1925.[1] His habilitation followed in 1930 at the University of Rostock,[1] and four years later he founded the Musicological Institute at that institution in 1934.[2] He remained director of Musicological Institute through 1940.[1]
After the retirement of Robert Lach in 1940, Schenk followed him as full professor at the Institute of Musicology at the University of Vienna. He was able to hold on even after the end of the National Socialist regime and was accepted into the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1946. In 1950 he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and in 1957 he was finally appointed Rector of the University of Vienna.
He gained his reputation as a musicologist as editor of the musicological series Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich (DTÖ)[3] and through his research on Viennese classical music and Baroque music.[4] Schenk received numerous honours for his services to musicological research, including the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria in 1952. He also received honorary doctorate from the universities of Brno and Rostock. In 1966 he received the Wilhelm Hartel Prize, in 1970 the Austrian Decoration of Honour for Science and Art, until he retired in 1971. Since 2003 the Mozart Society of Vienna has been awarding a new prize to young musicians under the name "Erich-Schenk-Preis".[5] This was decreed in her will by the musicologist's widow and replaces the interpretation prize previously awarded by the City of Vienna.
Schenk died in Vienna at age 72. His burial place is at the Salzburger Kommunalfriedhof.
It is undisputed that Schenk had a pronounced anti-Semitic attitude from the beginning of the 1930s and did not correct this until his death. This can be proven several times. For example, Schenk, a member of the National Socialist Teachers League[6] then of the National Socialist German Lecturers League, as lecturer and temporary employee for the Amt Rosenberg activities by providing information about former Jewish students of musicology[6] and worked closely with Herbert Gerigk and his Lexikon der Juden in der Musik.[7] Gerigk thanked Schenk warmly: "A close examination of the Viennese doctoral candidates [sic!] would probably reveal some more fat Jews" [8] Schenk had been exempted from military service because of his collaboration in Rosenberg's "Sonderstab Musik" and also contributed to Rosenberg's journal Musik im Kriege.[9]
In the biography of Johann Strauss II, published in 1940, which continues to be of great importance to Strauss research in musicological terms, every single Jew is meticulously identified and research findings on the proven pathologies of Johann Strauss are dismissed by Ernst Décsey (and which are undoubtedly based on the statements of Strauss' third wife Adele) as "autocratic interpretation" and "journalistic eloquence", which did not appear in Strauss's life picture, "[...] until after the World War the Jew Decsey set out to underpin it in terms of local and contemporary history [...]".[10]
A particularly inglorious chapter in Schenk's biography is his role in the expropriation of musicologist Guido Adler's private library after his death in 1941, which is presented here in detail because it is stereotypical for the behavior of National Socialist musicologists during National Socialism. For decades, Schenk deceived the public by claiming, in the article he wrote about himself in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, that he was the "Library before the access of the Nazi authorities".[11] It was not until 2000, when a manuscript of Gustav Mahler, which was part of the library, was to be auctioned at Sotheby's in Vienna, that the "Causa Schenk-Adler-Bibliothek" was examined more closely.
The librarian Yukiko Sakabe has 2004[12] and 2007[13] the state of knowledge is summarized. She speaks of the "confiscation of Guido Adler's library with the participation of university professor Erich Schenk":[13] "Immediately after Guido Adler's death, Schenk began to claim the library and also Adler's scientific estate for himself and for the Institute. Schenk informed the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and National Education in Berlin in a report dated 31 March 1941 about his unauthorized seizure of the library.
The expropriation took place in several steps:
A complaint against Schenk was only filed with the American occupying power after the war. At that time, Section Chief Otto Skrbensky in the Ministry of Education was in charge of the investigation. He denied all charges against Schenk. With regard to the confiscation of Adler's library, he said: "in itself, probably not against Professor Schenk, since it is in the interest of Austria that this library be preserved for our fatherland".[18] The expropriation, as an act of public welfare, seemed to Skrbensky unquestionably an appropriate measure. On 30 June 1952, Federal Minister Ernst Kolb wrote to Schenk: "After a thorough examination of the events at the time, the Federal Ministry recognized these accusations as incorrect and determined your correct behavior when the library was taken over by the musicological institute of the university in the sense of securing your assets".[19]
As Gösta Neuwirth In the early sixties, when he began work on Franz Schreker, he was dispatched by the Viennese Ordinary: "I don't associate myself with Jews".[20] A case against Schenk initiated for this purpose was discontinued in 1967 without result.
To the geschichtsklitternden Schenk's conduct also includes the fact that he verifiably corrected and re-coloured his writings written during National Socialism on the occasion of the new edition of his Selected Essays, Speeches and Lectures.[21]
