Frequently broadcasted over radio stations as examples of “German music,” the Blue Danube Waltz and the Radetzky March remained popular melodies during the Nazi era. While it was already uncomfortable for the regime that many of the librettists of Strauss’s operettas were Jewish, the revelation of the Waltz King's partial Jewish ancestry would have been highly inconvenient for Nazi leadership. The original parish register of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna with the marriage record of Johann Strauss’s great-grandfather Johann Michael Strauss to Rosalia Buschinin on February 11, 1762 was classified as top secret by the Nazi authorities. As noted by the then-pastor of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the reason behind this unprecedented action was that Johann Michael Strauss was “a baptized Jew.” The records book was locked away, and a copy was made in which the incriminating entry was simply deleted.
The Nuremberg Laws were the primary legal basis for the persecution of Jews under National Socialism. Since classification as “Jewish” was based on the religion of a person’s grandparents, countless individuals — even those who had long since renounced Judaism — were arbitrarily labeled as Jews. Apparently, in exceptional cases, the reverse was also possible: Johann Strauss’s Jewish family ties were “Aryanized.”
