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29 July – 2 September

While Nazi acts of terrorism were already causing Austria to hold its breath and propaganda actions disrupted the opening of the Festival in 1933, the diary notes of Festival President Baron Puthon document the more dramatic developments of the year 1934.

In February, the uprising of the Republican Schutzbund (Defence League) against the authoritarian-fascist Dollfuss regime was crushed; on 1 May 1934, the new constitution of the ‘Ständestaat’ (Corporative State) came into force. In July 1934, Federal Chancellor Dollfuss was killed in a failed Nazi coup. During the struggles waged between Heimwehr (Home Guard) and Nazis, which also involved a death toll in Salzburg, the Jedermann/Everyman dress rehearsal took place.

A bomb attack had already been carried out in May during a meeting of the Heimwehr in the Festival Hall. ‘The suspected perpetrator of this deed is a former member of the Schutzbund who is said to have contacts with the Nazis’, reported the Salzburger Chronik.