HeimatIs Where the Heart Is; or, What Kind of Hungarian was Goldmark?

Abstract

On 2 January 1915, during the first winter of the First World War, the celebrated composer Carl Goldmark died in Vienna at the ripe old age of eighty-four. The Viennese press gave the story of his passing the kind of coverage that one would expect for a figure who was described as the “rector of Austrian music,” even its “epicenter.” The notice in the Neue Freie Presse was particularly striking in its imagery: “We, musical Vienna and the entire musical world, stand shaken around the funeral bier of the great composer and Austrian Carl Goldmark.” As the report goes on, the writer makes a clear reference to the growing war effort: “Many of our best and brightest must now die on the battlefield for the fatherland. Goldmark lived for his fatherland, and by creating art touched by the breadth of eternity, he honored the fatherland in his own way and greatly increased the cultural heritage of humanity.” Meanwhile, in the other great capital of the Dual Monarchy, the composer's death was covered very differently. To read the obituaries that appeared in Budapest is to be told that Hungary, not Austria, was Goldmark's fatherland. Here, in effect, both halves of the monarchy were fighting over the same man's legacy—the one, primarily on the basis of his Hungarian birth and childhood; the other, on the basis of his long residency in Austria and the central role he played in the musical culture of late Habsburg Vienna.