As a publicly accessible archive, the University's Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum documents current and historical activities of the Mozarteum University and proactively supports teaching, access to the arts, and research.
Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum
+43 676 88122 370
archiv@moz.ac.at
Paris-Lodron-Straße 9
5020 Salzburg
Opening hours
Mon-Fri from 9.00-11.00 a.m
The focus of the collection in the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum is on concerts and other events that have taken place at the Mozarteum University over the years. Thus, the majority of the materials collected and archived here are event programmes, photos, press reports, posters, folders and other documents. Since August 2015, the holdings of the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum have been successively entered into a digital archive information system. Thus, a comfortable search according to a wide variety of criteria is possible. An alumni database allows for searches of former students to be carried out according to name, subject, teacher or graduation year.
As part of a co-operation between the University Archive (Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum) and the Department of Fine Arts and Design, the digital data of the department's material archive was imported into the archive information system of the University Archive. Teachers and students of the Department of Fine Arts and Design can use the archive software's sophisticated research tools independently and create new directory units. A wide variety of material samples can now be found together with their metadata via a user-friendly keyword search. The new head of the material archive, Johanna Schwarz, is particularly pleased that students can now use the material archive even more easily for research projects.
Head of Department Patrick Schaudy emphasises the advantage of not only being able to call up information on a wide range of materials, but also being able to touch and feel material samples on site. This makes it possible to directly experience the haptic and visual properties as well as the characteristics of materials.
Education Minister Martin Polaschek also paid a brief visit to the Mozarteum University Archive on 19th January.
Archive director Susanne Prucher presented the legal historian with a copy of the book she published in 2021 on the Art Academy Organisation Act, which gave the former Mozarteum Art Academy a democratic structure and allowed it to become an art academy in 1970.
One of the treasures of the university archive was recently featured in a documentary film: The film Sound of Music, about the history of the Trapp family, is one of the most successful films of all time. What is not so well known is the fact that five of the family's ten children studied at the Mozarteum University Salzburg - then the state conservatory.
Agathe, Maria, Werner, Johanna and Martina received lessons in piano, violin, lute, cello, French horn and choral singing from 1930 to 1932. They were between 9 and 17 years old at the time. Maria Kutschera, Georg von Trapp's second wife (played by Julie Andrews in the film) also studied the lute for a semester in 1924/25.
Recently, a BBC film crew visited the Art ARCHIVE room at the Mozarteum University and filmed the original documents recording the enrolment at the Mozarteum of the Trapp family for a documentary about the Kanneh-Mason family, who represent the archetype of a successful musical family in Great Britain.
Archive manager Susanne Prucher used the enrolment records to relate various interesting details, such as the subjects, the teachers and also the grades in diligence, performance and behaviour of the individual Trapp children.
Saving our digital cultural heritage
The experts of the Art ARCHIVE Room of the Mozarteum University dealt intensively with the necessities and possibilities of digital archiving at a conference in Graz. This does not begin in the archive, but is based on well-coordinated workflows within an institution (records management).
Accordingly, "Records Management and Digital Archiving - Designing Spaces for Digital Transformation" was the theme of the spring conference of the specialist group of archivists at universities scholarly institutions of the Austrian archives association VÖA, which took place in Graz from 10 to 12 May.
The Kunst-ARCHIV room was able to contribute very well to the discussions on document management systems, file plans, e-mail archiving and digital long-term archiving and also received valuable impulses for future projects.
This year's conference was also marked by international exchange. Experts from the UK, Germany and Switzerland spoke and discussed with those from Austrian universities, the Austrian State Archives and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Keynote speakers Gianni Penzo Doria from the University of Insubria in Varese and Adrian Brown, Director of the Parliamentary Archives London, reported on their successful digital archiving projects.
Personal memories of an institution
Under the title "Universität Mozarteum - Erzählte Geschichte" (Mozarteum University - Narrated History), in-depth audio interviews have been conducted with former and current members of the university since 2012. The interest is in the interviewees' personal memories of the Mozarteum, of colleagues, of events, of special events as well as of everyday life, the building situation and more. With this oral history project, the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum strives to create a body of testimony that provides insight into the living history of the Mozarteum.
The goal is to collect memories, impressions and experiences, and to use personal narratives as sources for the history of the Mozarteum University Salzburg.
All interviews conducted as part of the project Universität Mozarteum - Erzählte Geschichte (Mozarteum University - Narrated History) are archived in the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum of the Mozarteum University. There, the recordings can be used by researchers as well as an interested public. The interviews are also archived by our cooperation partner MenschenLeben in the Austrian Media Library Vienna.
We would be pleased if you would make yourself available for an interview as part of the project Universität Mozarteum - Erzählte Geschichte! An informal contact meeting will be followed by an interview conducted by a member of our trained team. In the course of this, there is the opportunity to discuss your own memorabilia (photos, etc.).
CONTACT
Susanne Prucher
susanne.pruche@moz.ac.at
+43 676 88122 370
Over the course of several semesters, the team at Research Focus: Salzburg's Musical History conducted a project in which researchers created short profiles of significant actors in diverse areas of Salzburg's musical history, covering the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. The project was carried out by the Department for Musicolgy at the Mozarteum University.
Are the wishes for the Mozarteum still the same today as they were in the past? In a photo gallery, the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum displays a project of the Department of Fine Art and Design from the year 2006: in October 2006, the new main building of the Mozarteum University at Mirabellplatz 1 was re-opened, following a complete renovation. 17,000 citizens of Salzburg, as well as international guests, attended the open house day.
The Department for Fine Arts and Design Pedagogy asked the guests to record their wishes for the Mozarteum on a piece of paper and to be photographed with it.
Music school - conservatory - academy - college - university
Founded as a music school for training church musicians
The history of the Mozarteum University Salzburg begins in 1841: On the fiftieth anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's death, the music-loving citizens of Salzburg, with the support of the Prince-Archbishop Schwarzenberg, founded the "Dommusikverein und Mozarteum" as a conservatory for the cultivation of sophisticated church music. The cathedral music society wanted to train up young musicians to play during the services in Salzburg's churches, but also intended to organise concerts. Most of the society's members also worked as teachers at the associated music school.
The aims of the Mozarteum Music School can be found in the association's statutes. Section 3 (4) states ‘... to establish an institution for the preservation of music under the short name of “Mozarteum”, in which male pupils are to be trained in singing, declamation, playing instruments, practical basso continuo and composition. If the association's resources and other circumstances permit, the association will also endeavour to extend the lessons at the Mozarteum to the female sex, but in any case separately.’
First public music school in the Crown Lands
In 1880 the Mozarteum Public Music School was founded, ‘the only existing public music school in the Crown Lands’. One year later, the school was taken over by the International Mozarteum Foundation. In addition to the music school, this foundation managed an orchestra (later the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg) and a fund to support talented musicians in need. The student recitals, which became increasingly demanding, were important for Salzburg's musical life. The Salzburger Volksblatt wrote in December 1880 about the final examinations: ‘... In the three months of their work at the new Mozarteum, Director Hummel, Concertmaster Gerber and Concertmaster Walter have achieved truly surprising results and teaching successes that do them the greatest honour. ...’
Rising reputation as a conservatoire in the new building
In 1914 the Mozarteum received a new building, the ‘Mozarteum’, complete with its Great Hall, at Schwarzstraße 26. This new home for the university was built between 1910 and 1914 by the Munich architect Richard Berndl in the Art Nouveau style, and inaugurated on 14th September 1914 by Archbishop Dr. Kaltner. The Mozarteum now began to style itself as a public conservatoire. This was not opposed by the Ministry, the justification for which was based on the following reasoning: ‘... the Mozarteum is undoubtedly facing a new development now that its relocation to the new Mozarthaus is imminent. A series of measures taken recently (such as the appointment of its own school inspector, the appointment of Kammersängerin Pollini from Munich as a teacher of opera singing, the reorganisation of the curriculum, etc.) show the serious endeavour to raise the standard of the institution as much as possible...’ (K.K. Ministry for Culture and Education No. 20208)
K. u. k. Kammersängerin Lilly Lehmann, initiator of the Salzburg Mozart Festivals 1901-1910 and patron of the Mozarthaus in Schwarzstraße, offered private singing courses on the premises of the Mozarteum for the first time in the summer of 1916 and is thus regarded as the founder of the Mozarteum International Summer Academy. In 1917 Bernhard Paumgartner was appointed director of the Mozarteum. From the outset, his aim was to develop the Mozarteum into a school for music and the performing arts modelled on the institution in Vienna. In 1920, Paumgartner succeeded in incorporating a drama school into the Mozarteum; however, financial constraints meant that it could not be continued in the short term and only became a permanent part of the Mozarteum again in 1949. In 1920/21, Paumgartner established the ‘Mozarteum Opera’ in cooperation with the Salzburg State Theatre, which staged a total of 85 performances in the 1920/21 season. However, this effort was not sustainable in the long term, since it utilised all of the Mozarteum's personnel resources, and it was therefore not feasible to maintain opera operations at the Salzburg City Theatre.
State takeover in financial hardship
In 1922, the conservatory was nationalised after the financial situation after the First World War made it impossible for the International Mozarteum Foundation to be able to maintain the school. The Salzburger Volksblatt of 18th February 1922 reads: ‘The Mozarteum saved. The National Council accepts the motion of the Education Committee to nationalise the Mozarteum Conservatory. ...Member of the National Council Stessin emphasised that it was not just a question of renovating the ‘Mozarteum’, but of deciding the fundamental question of whether we will be able to preserve the old cultural assets beyond the needs of the day. The speaker described the plight of the Mozarteum and the sad material conditions of the teaching staff, whose salaries are often so low that a monthly salary is barely the equivalent of a pair of shoes...’
The artistic ability of the teachers was proven by their participation in the Salzburg Festival and later on successful trips abroad. Graduates were given important positions in prestigious orchestras and opera houses and teaching assignments at other music schools and conservatories.
First music academy in the German Reich
In 1939, the Mozarteum was transformed into the Staatliche Hochschule Mozarteum with the threefold structure: Music School for Youth and the People, Technical School, and College of Higher Education. On 23rd April 1941, the Mozarteum was the first music school ever to be awarded the title ‘Reichshochschule’ (Reich University) as part of the 100th anniversary celebrations of its existence. Elly Ney, Ludwig Hoelscher, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari and Heinrich Rehkemper, some of the most important artists of the time, who are controversial today due to their ideological views, were hired. In the course of the war, the teaching staff, administrative staff and students were either drafted into the Wehrmacht or conscripted into labour service. The Mozarteum building in Schwarzstraße was spared from the bombing and so some of the female students found a job in familiar surroundings: they continued to attend the Mozarteum in the last ‘school year’ of the Nazi era. However, rather than sitting at pianos, they sat at the sewing machines of a textile company important to the war effort. On 8th October 1945, the Mozarteum was the first Austrian higher education institution to reopen its doors. Bernhard Paumgartner was rehabilitated in November 1947 and reinstated as director.
International activities as an academy
In 1953, the Mozarteum became the ‘Mozarteum’ Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Salzburg. The legally consolidated status of the school and the increased commitment of the ministry enabled the Mozarteum to present itself confidently to the outside world and to gradually build itself up internally. The first exchange concerts were organised as early as the 1953/54 academic year.
In 1953 Bernhard Paumgartner and his deputy Eberhard Preussner were co-founders of the AEC, the Association Européenne des Conservatoires, Académies de Musique et Musikhochschulen. In 1956, the Ministry of Education organised the first international Mozart competition and entrusted the Salzburg Academy with its organisation. Many internationally successful artists received prizes from this competition, which is still organised by the Mozarteum University today. In 1961, the composer and pedagogue Carl Orff founded the ‘Orff Institute’ as a place for elementary music and dance education at the Mozarteum Academy, at the invitation of the current president Eberhard Preussner. In October 1963, the new institute was able to move into its own building near Salzburg's Frohnburg.
With the appointment of Bruno Gallée in 1962, training in stage and costume design was also established at the Mozarteum.
Democratic structure as a university
In 1970, the Mozarteum, like the three other Austrian art academies, became a higher education college through the Arts Colleges Organisation Act and was given a democratic constitution. In May 1971, the teaching staff elected Paul von Schilhawsky as the first rector, quickly followed by the overseeing committee, a new, democratically organised governing body of what was now the Mozarteum College. In 1976, the Department of Fine Arts was founded at the Mozarteum College, making it the only arts college in Austria to teach the three disciplines of music, dramatic arts and fine arts.
With the new Higher Education Act of 1980, it was decided to incorporate the ‘Seminar A’ for music education, which had been run at the Tyrolean Conservatory under the supervision of the Mozarteum since 1965, into the Mozarteum College as an additional department. In 1986, the Instrumental Music Education programme was added, and in 1987 the Institute for Folk Music was founded on the initiative of Josef Sulz.
Autonomy as an Arts University
On 1st October 1998, when the Federal Act on the Organisation of Universities of the Arts (KUOG) came into force, all previous Austrian arts colleges became universities of the arts and were thus placed on an equal footing with academic universities. The university bodies were now able to draw up their own statutes and organisational structure, thus giving their institution a stronger profile of its own. Since then, the Mozarteum has been able to make its own appointments and is autonomous in the appointment of professors. Since 2006, instrumental music education has also been offered at the Innsbruck location in co-operation with the Tyrolean State Conservatory. The location has also been strengthened by the fact that since the 2016/17 academic year it has also been possible to study for a teaching qualification in visual arts education. In 2018, Elisabeth Gutjahr was the first woman to be elected Rector of the Mozarteum University.
In her inaugural speech, she made the connection between the "Festakt" (ceremony) and the "Festung" (fortress): ‘... Let us be aware of the precious things this fortress protects: Young, highly talented people on the path to their vocation, students who have taken on a lot to get one of the coveted places at university, countless hours, days, years of preparation, but also hardship - in most cases, the families have invested a lot in training the development of their children's talents. It is also important to protect the intangible cultural heritage, a knowledge of meanings and contexts whose preservation depends on active care and communication - comparable to a language that is lost when it is no longer spoken. It is also important to protect the quiet notes, what is hidden between the lines, the individual in all its perfect imperfection.’
1) Self-conception / Legal basis
The Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum is the central archive of the Mozarteum University in the sense of § 3.2.3 of the federal law governing archives. The Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum documents the present and historical activities of the University Mozarteum and makes them publicly accessible. As a public institution, the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum supports teaching, development of the arts and research through the:
The Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum maintains active contact with national and international professional associations.
2) Archival records
Records are considered to be (but are not limited to) written documents, manuscripts, typescripts, correspondence, handwritten creative transcripts, sketches, files, deeds, account books, publications, registers, maps, plans, as well as visual, film and audio material, files or other information carriers in analogue or digital form. Documents worthy of archiving are those that make essential activities and business processes comprehensible and are of historical, artistic, political or legal significance for the Mozarteum University Salzburg because of their content or because of the persons involved. Documents from private sources (e.g. estates) will be kept as long as they have been handed over to the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum for safekeeping, have been classified as worthy of archiving by the archive or university management, and permanent archiving can be guaranteed.
3) Transfer of archival records
The organisational units of the Mozarteum University must transfer all records that have been classified as being of archival value to the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum no later than 10 years after the records have been closed. The handover is based on transfer lists, which are prepared by the offering unit according to the specifications of the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum. Organisational units of the Mozarteum University, which take care of the custody of their archive material themselves according to the decision of the Rectorate, are obliged to name a responsible operator and to provide the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum with a written overview of the existing documents as well as the conditions of use.
4) Use of the archive
The Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum is a reference archive. A consultation service is provided for archive users. The archive aims to provide an online research offer, as far is as possible. The archive material can be used by direct inspection, oral or written requests to the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum and request for reproductions (for a fee) from the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum. Archival records are generally subject to an archival hold period of 30 years or 30 years after the death of the individual(s) involved, except in the case of consent having been given by the individual(s) involved. Blocking periods do not apply to archival records that are intended for publication or have already been published. The statutory provisions, in particular the Federal Archives Act, the Copyright Act and the Data Protection Act, must be complied with. The detailed terms of use are set out in the user regulations.
Rektorat – Gesamtkollegium – Universitätskollegium – Senat – Universitätsbeirat – Gründungskonvent – Universitätsrat – Studiendekane – Studiendirektor*innen – Leiter*innen von Abteilungen, Instituten, Departments, der Internationalen Sommerakademie – Vorsitzende des AKG – Beauftragte des Rektorats
The following can be viewed in the archive on request:
1) Procedure and duty of care
The use of the archive material can take place through direct inspection, oral or written inquiries and requests for reproductions (for a fee) at the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum. The user must sign the user's book at each visit. The archive material is to be treated with the utmost care. In particular, it is not permitted to add notes, lines or signs to the archive material, to copy it or to alter it by any other means. No change may be made in the order and arrangement of the archival materials. Any disturbances in the order or other discrepancies, as well as any damage or missing parts found, must be brought to the immediate attention of the supervisor. When publishing contents or reproductions of the archive material, a complete citation of origin and source: "Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum/Universität Mozarteum Salzburg" must be given. In the event of publication, the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum of the Mozarteum University must be provided free of charge with a specimen copy of works written using archival materials of the Mozarteum University; this also applies to approved diploma and master's theses, dissertations and post-doctoral theses, even if they have not yet been published.
2) Protection periods
The archival records are released for inspection after expiration of the legal protection period of 30 years (§ 8 Abs.1 Bundesarchivgesetz). The date of the last processing marks the beginning of this protection period. Personal files (e.g. personnel files, minutes of meetings, disciplinary files, etc.) are made available with the written consent of the persons concerned or 50 years after the last processing operation. The publication of personal data in works (publications) is only permitted ten years after the death of the person concerned or the demise of the legal entity. If the year of death is unknown, this protection period ends 110 years after the birth of the person concerned (Section 11 (1) of the Federal Archives Act). A reduction of the protection period can only be granted in special cases within the framework of the legal possibilities (§ 8 para. 4 and 5 Federal Archives Act) and after review by the archive management.
3) Reproductions
The production of reproductions, printouts or electronic copies from data holdings of the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum requires a written agreement with the Kunst-ARCHIV-Raum. The exploitation rights of reproductions remain with the Mozarteum University Salzburg.
4) Liability
Users are liable for all damages caused by their fault to the archival materials of the Mozarteum University or to the rights of third parties in connection with the use of archival materials. The user bears sole responsibility for safeguarding the rights relevant to publication, in particular copyright and data protection rights. The Mozarteum University shall not be liable for any damage to the property of archive users or for any damage to health in connection with the use of archive material of the Mozarteum University.
5) Tariffs
Subject to other written agreements with the management of the Art ARCHIVE Room, the following tariffs apply:
The use of reproductions in unpublished publications such as bachelor, master and diploma theses, dissertations and post-doctoral theses is free of charge.
The use of reproductions (scans) for personal use is free of charge.
University employees and persons commissioned by the university may be exempted from the above rates.
