Leben mit großen Umbrüchen: Der Wiener Erwin Ratz

In the organizer's words:

The exhibition on the Viennese music theorist Erwin Ratz (1898-1973) focuses on taking a look behind the scenes, bringing the driving force from the second row in front of the curtain and making him known to a wider public. At a young age, he attended Arnold Schönberg's composition seminar and musicology lectures at the University of Vienna with Guido Adler. From 1922 to 1923, he was secretary to Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus in Weimar. He had a lifelong friendship with the composers Anton Webern and Hanns Eisler. As a music theorist, Erwin Ratz wrote the book Einführung in die musikalische Formenlehre, which is still one of the standard works of analytical literature today. For over 30 years, he taught the theory of forms at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and passed on his profound knowledge to generations of composers and musicians. After the Second World War, he published the complete piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert as a Viennese Urtext edition and edited countless works by Hanns Eisler throughout his life. Furthermore, his lifelong commitment to the music of the Viennese School was reflected in his leading role in the Austrian section of the International Society for New Music (IGNM/ISCM). In 1955, Ratz also became the first president of the then newly founded International Gustav Mahler Society. Until his death, a large part of the new critical complete edition of Gustav Mahler's works was published there.
During the Nazi era, Erwin Ratz selflessly helped friends and acquaintances. He distributed food from his own bakery, hid people persecuted by the regime (so-called "U-Boats") in his apartment, hid banned manuscripts as well as valuable books and objects. In 2015, he was posthumously honored by the State of Israel as Righteous Among the Nations.