Piano competitions in the FRG, GDR and Austria (1950-1990): On the influence of politico-cultural programmes on the development of institutional logics and gender-specific identity images during the Cold War

• Applicant: Dr. Bianca Schumann
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 558830830

The aim of the project is to research the influence of cultural policy programmes on cultural practices during the Cold War. Three international piano competitions, which were held regularly between 1950 and 1990 in German-speaking countries with heterogeneous political systems, serve as the subject of this study. These are the ARD Competition (Munich, FRG), the Bach Competition (Leipzig, GDR) and the Beethoven Competition (Vienna, Austria). The project explores the question of how the cultural policies of the occupying powers and the sovereign successor governments of the host countries influenced (1) the development of institutional logics and the resulting potential for action of the competitions and (2) the emergence of gender-specific images of identity, as disseminated in the respective local press about the competition participants. The choice of these specific focal points reveals the enormous scope of the cultural-political influence, which thus extends not only to the construction of the internal self-image of the competition institutions, but also to the external media perception of the pianists participating in these competitions. By illustrating the various implicit and explicit ideology-based value and norm systems at work internationally, the project makes an innovative contribution to the context-sensitive analysis of the cultural actions of institutions in the art and culture sector by indexing largely neglected archive holdings. At the same time, it continues the research into images of femininity and masculinity of pianists, taking into account the complex socio-political and cultural situation in German-speaking countries in the second half of the 20th century. The question of the roles played by the various political and ideological backgrounds in the establishment of these gender images is just as central to this analysis as the question of the significance of ‘physicality’ for the construction and constitution of gender identities in the context of performative practices. Thanks to its interdisciplinary orientation, the project thus critically develops both current music-sociological discourses on evaluation criteria in contexts of artistic practice and current research concerns of gender studies on the emergence, manifestation and transformation of identity images. In particular, by embedding these sub-perspectives in a project framework that aims to research the cultural-political and socio-cultural influences on the genesis and impact of the three competitions, the project addresses a desideratum that can be expected to have a strong interdisciplinary resonance.

• DFG Programme: WBP Fellowship
• International Connection: Austria
• Host: Professorin Dr. Melanie Unseld