Nazi Forgery Recalled Through Palm Coast Temple Musical Presentation

In the early March 1941, Marriage register no. 60 (1761 – 1762) of the Cathedral Parish Office of Vienna, Austria’s St Stephen’s was officially removed and handed over to the Reichssippenamt (authority dealing with matters of nationality and race) in Berlin, the capital of the the German Third Reich established by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. The reason wasn’t immediately clear until the choir of Temple Beth Shalom in Palm Coast chose to present the operetta “The Waltz King” based on the music of one of Hitler’s favorite composers, Johann Strauss II.
When piano teacher and holocaust survivor Claire Soria brought the libretto to the Temple’s choir director and Moscow Conservatory of Music graduate Marina Lapina, they weren’t sure it was proper to present a Nazi favorite in the sanctuary of a local synagogue. Rabbi Merrill Shapiro sat down to do the research and discovered an interesting irregularity in the biographical history of the Strauss family, an irregularity meant to be covered by a forgery.
Adolf Hitler loved the music of the very Germanic Strauss and, when he was told of the possibility of Strauss’ being a Jew, the Nazi leader shot back with “I will be the decider of who is Jewish and who is not!”
As it turns out, the marriage records of St. Stephen’s Cathedral note the marriage, in 1761 of Johann Michael Strauss, the great-grandfather of the Waltz King who wrote the famous Blue Danube and Emperor Waltzes, was listed as “the worthy Johann Michael Strauss, in service with His Excellency Field Marshal Count von Roggendorf, a baptised Jew, single, born in Ofen, legitimate son of Wolf Strauss and his spouse Theresia, both Jewish!” Johann Strauss II, Hitler’s favorite, was not the pure Aryan ideal of the Nazi regime but rather part Jewish! This would have caused great embarrassment to a leader and a powerful political party dedicated to the destruction of all Jewish bloodlines in Europe.
So, the records were removed, photocopied and altered to eliminate any mention of the Strauss marriage and any mention of his Jewish ancestors. Even the table of contents was altered and then returned with the originals to the Austrian Cathedral. The forged photocopies were placed in the Parish office and the originals were hidden.
Hitler, who was of Austrian birth, personally liked Strauss' music and The Waltz King’s waltzes and operettas were embraced by the Nazi-run cultural apparatus of the Third Reich. In Austria, however, a lot of creative people and ordinary citizens who abhorred the Nazis and the occupying Germans, and who clung to their separate national identity, also embraced Strauss' work as their own, as a statement (veiled and subtle, as it had to be for their own safety) of their separateness from the Germans. Indeed, Strauss' music and the Imperial era that it evoked were a safe haven for the nationalists and anti-Nazis working quietly in the Austrian cities of Vienna and Salzburg. There was the odd, unspoken truth amid all of this, that the Strauss family was of Jewish descent -- in fact, when the Nazis marched in during the spring of 1938, descendants of the composer were protected from persecution by the timely, surreptitious creation of baptismal certificates, indicating conversions to Christianity generations earlier, which conveniently turned up in the public record.
The question of Johann Strauss II’s racial origins and religion is perhaps the most interesting of all, casting a sad and sombre cloud over his heritage given later events after his death in 1899 - and the horrific fate of some of his relatives in the 1930s. Those who assume he was indifferent to his Jewish origins are mistaken. In December 1887, he wrote to his brother-in-law Josef Simon: "I'm not at all sure any more to which religion I belong... although in my heart I am more Jewish than Protestant." These Jewish antecedents of Strauss became particularly problematical for the Nazis when they annexed Austria in 1938. Clearly the subjugation of the Austrian nation could not proceed smoothly if the most popular music of the country was suppressed on racial grounds. Besides, Hitler (who was Austrian himself) loved the music of Strauss. As with Franz Lehr (another Hitler favourite, whose wife, Sophie, was Jewish, but who was made an "honorary Aryan"), Johann Strauss II and his father (who composed the famous Radetzky March, practically a second national anthem in Austria) were to be protected.
What began as a question of whether a Nazi favorite’s music could be played in a local synagogue has come to reveal that the music of Johann Strauss, the :”Waltz King” was written by Strauss the Jew. The embarrassment of the Nazi Reich makes the music that much sweeter to the listeners who will gather at Temple Beth Shalom in Palm Coast at 4 p.m. Sunday, February 22nd. The event is part of a dinner theater afternoon, and the $15 tickets that include the musical and dinner are available to the public through the synagogue office at 386-445-3006.