Page - 252 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

Evonne Levy252 problematischer als in anderen Ländern.48 Nach meiner Meinung wäre eine Minoritäten- recht die gerechteste Lösung. In this sole letter written in English (because of the censors?), Sedlmayr lays bare the roots and nature of his conservatism that drove him pres- ently to fascism as the only (imperfect) current choice to fight communism, the Jews, and “simi- lar movements,” to preserve religion, art, and a traditional life connected to the land. He says that this is the product of his family history and that he would gladly live on the land and study if he were able. Here Sedlmayr certainly distances himself from a conservatism that held fast to the failed monarchy (one can thus understand his view of the importance of Musil’s Mann ohne Eigenschaften) but also it seems from the estate-based revival proposed by the Ständestaat installed in May 1934 under the leadership of Engelbert Dollfuss. In spite of this expression of opposition by Sedlmayr to the “Stände,” his nostalgic support for the peasant, his anti- modernism (and anti-capitalism) correspond to Dolffuss’s platform to strengthen agriculture, the peasantry and Catholicism – all keys to the survival of the state.49 Later, in Verlust der Mitte, Sedlmayr would argue that the treatment of agri- cultural land offered up an example of the possi- bility of the repair of humanity: if the Americans, who had decimated agricultural lands through poor soil management to plant wheat in the 19th century could be turned back through a practical (not a Romantic) return to medieval practices life itself can cause men to turn about and retrace their steps. The hope is that an analogous process of self- healing can happen in the spiritual sphere.50 Given that Sedlmayr left the Nazi party in 1932 where does this place him politically in the fall of 1934, following the failed Revolution, the assassination of Dollfuss in July, and the outlaw- ing of the Nazi party he had already left? It is un- likely that he had been a Dollfuss supporter or a supporter of his successor, Kurt Schuschnigg.51 And although Sedlmayr had left the Nazi party (for reasons which remain unclear) and of course rejoined in 193852 it cannot be excluded that be- tween the lines he also refers to National Social- ism and believed in the party as the best solution for Austria. For the preservation of the peasantry and his anti-modernism also accords well with a strong and typical theme of the agrarian phi- losophy of National Socialism, the “life-spring of the Nordic race” with its ancient mystique of the soil.53 This letter really points to Sedlmayr’s dissatisfaction with the political options of the moment although his anti-Semitism, anti-com- munism, and his Catholicism remain constant. 48 On the ambiguous situation of the Austrian Jews before the Anschluß see B. F. Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecu- tion. A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism, Chapel Hill (NC) 1992, esp. pp. 268ff. 49 J. W. Miller, Engelbert Dollfuss and Austrian Agriculture, in: G. Bischof/A. Pelinka/A. Lassner (eds), The Dollffuss-Schuschnigg Era in Austria. A Reassessment, New Brunswick (N J) 2003, pp. 123–124. 50 Sedlmayr, Verlust der Mitte (cit. n. 3), p. 246; translation in idem, H. Sedlmayr, Art in Crisis. The Lost Center, trans. Brian Battershaw, Chicago 1958, p. 251. 51 Sedlmayr claims to have made “propaganda” against Schuschnigg at the university before 1938. Haiko, Hans Sedlmayr (cit. n. 2), p. 87. Further on Sedlmayr’s lack of sympathy for the Ständestaat see Aurenhammer, Zäsur oder Kontinuität (cit. n. 2), pp. 20–25. 52 According to his university Personalakten Sedlmayr was a member of the NSDAP in 1932. Ottenbacher, Kunst- geschichte in ihrer Zeit (cit. n. 2), p. 74. Sedlmayr’s Gauakten (Bundesministerium für Inneres) uniquely record the date he entered the party first as November 7, 1930. Archiv der Republik, Gauakten, Hans Sedlmayr, 27415, fol.4. Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna. He was known to have been an “Illegaler,” as a member of the party already early in 1938, although this was later officially denied since it appears that his second enrollment in the party was pre-dated. See Haiko, Hans Sedlmayr (cit. n. 2), p. 87. My thanks to Hans Aurenhammer for clarifying this point. 53 P. G. J. Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria, New York 1964, p. 310.