In the Northeast district, a public space was named after the composer Richard Strauss (1864–1949) following a resolution by the City Council on January 26, 1956.

Richard Strauss was born on June 11, 1864, in Munich, the son of a professional musician. He attended school there between 1870 and 1882. At the same time, he received music lessons and began composing at an early age, while also taking composition lessons. In 1882, Strauss graduated from high school. He then studied philosophy, aesthetics, and art history at the University of Munich for two semesters. Between 1883 and 1885, Strauss embarked on a tour as a performer and subsequently became music director of the Meiningen Court Orchestra.

In 1886, Richard Strauss became third conductor at the Munich Court Opera. In the years that followed, he changed jobs several times while also working as a composer, primarily of operas and orchestral works, which he published and performed with increasing success. In the years leading up to 1905, he first gained recognition in German-speaking countries and, by the middle of the first decade of the new century, had achieved international fame. In 1889, he moved to Weimar, where he served as Kapellmeister at the Court Theater from 1889 to 1894. In 1894, Strauss conducted for the first time at the Bayreuth Festival and became First Court Kapellmeister in Munich. In 1898, he was appointed Kapellmeister of the Berlin Court Opera. In 1901, Strauss became chairman of the General German Music Association. In 1908, he was appointed General Music Director and Director of Concerts for the Court Orchestra in Berlin. In 1910, he received the Bavarian Order of Maximilian, followed by numerous other honors in the years that followed.

Strauss continued to be artistically productive during World War I, but left Berlin in 1918, the year of the revolution. In 1919, he was appointed director of the Vienna State Opera alongside Franz Schalk. From 1924 onward, Strauss worked as a freelance conductor and composer. By this time, he was already regarded as a “classic” and was highly esteemed both nationally and internationally. He was the most frequently performed composer in opera houses and on the radio, and his works were staged approximately 4,000 times in German opera houses between 1933 and 1942 alone.

At the beginning of Nazi rule in 1933, Strauss demonstrated his loyalty to the new Nazi leaders. For example, he was a signatory of the “Protest of the Richard Wagner City of Munich” from April 1933, which was directed against a speech given by Thomas Mann at the University of Munich. Mann had criticized the Nazis’ attempts to co-opt Richard Wagner, a stance that had been sharply attacked by the *Völkischer Beobachter*, among others.
At the same time, Strauss took over conducting engagements from Jewish colleagues in 1933. For example, he replaced Bruno Walter, who had canceled a performance at the Berlin Philharmonic due to severe threats from the Ministry of Propaganda. Strauss initially hesitated but ultimately accepted the engagement. The reasons for this behavior remain unclear to this day and range from support for the Berlin orchestra at Walter’s request to public endorsement of Nazi ideology.

Strauss acted in a similar manner in the case of the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, whom he replaced at the 1933 Bayreuth Festival. Toscanini had participated in a written protest against Hitler and called for an end to political and religious persecution, particularly of artists. After an exchange of letters with Hitler, who sought to dissuade him from canceling, Toscanini decided to relinquish the conducting post at Bayreuth.

Strauss also spoke positively about the Nazi regime in articles. His public appearances and statements during the early years of the “Third Reich” attracted widespread attention, which drew criticism, particularly from abroad. Within the Nazi regime itself, Strauss’s standing rose as he took on conducting engagements, which brought him personal advantages in the years that followed. In 1933, he was appointed honorary president of the Deutsche Musik-Premieren-Bühne, and in the same year he entered into negotiations with Propaganda Minister Goebbels regarding the presidency of the newly founded Reich Music Chamber.

In November 1933, Strauss was appointed president of the Reich Music Chamber, by then the most influential office in music policy in the German Reich. During his presidency, which lasted until 1935, it was decided, among other things, that “non-Aryans” would be denied admission to the Chamber, which severely limited their opportunities to perform and earn a living. Strauss, however, was no longer involved in the so-called “de-Jewification” of German cultural life, which was carried out beginning in 1935.

To express his gratitude for his appointment as president of the Reich Music Chamber, Strauss presented Propaganda Minister Goebbels with a song that was a reworking of the poem “Das Bächlein.”

In his thank-you speeches at the opening of the Reich Music Chamber’s first session in February 1934 and at the Chamber’s first Composers’ Day, Strauss also praised the National Socialists’ cultural policy. Strauss thus endorsed the cultural policies of the Nazi regime; he also supported the broader political developments of the “Third Reich” and maintained close personal ties with the new ruling elite. For example, following Hindenburg’s death in August 1934, he supported Hitler’s intention to merge the office of Reich Chancellor with that of Reich President, and he attended Hermann Göring’s wedding in 1935. Strauss presented the Reich Minister of Aviation with a handwritten copy of his opera “Arabella.” In 1934, Strauss was also awarded the prestigious Eagle Shield of the German Reich.

Strauss’s standing in the “Third Reich,” however, suffered a severe setback in the summer of 1935 due to the so-called Zweig Affair. Strauss had collaborated with the Jewish writer Stefan Zweig as librettist for his opera “Die schweigsame Frau” (The Silent Woman). When the opera was scheduled to premiere in 1935, a scandal erupted because Strauss insisted that Zweig be credited as the librettist on the promotional posters. As a result, Hitler and Goebbels canceled their attendance at the premiere at the last minute. Zweig had previously criticized Strauss for his close ties to the regime and called into question any further collaboration. Strauss replied to the writer in a letter in which he portrayed his involvement—including his role as president of the Reich Music Chamber—as apolitical and entirely in the spirit of furthering and safeguarding artistic standards. He also referred to the Nazi press outlets as “scribblers.” However, the composer’s letter never reached Zweig because it was intercepted by the Dresden Gestapo and forwarded to Goebbels via the Gau leadership. Goebbels was deeply outraged by Strauss’s remarks.

As a result, Goebbels pressured Strauss to resign from his position as president of the RMK. To the public, the resignation was presented—by mutual agreement—as being due to health reasons.

Although the narrative that Strauss served as RMK president “to prevent worse things from happening” was repeatedly invoked even in the postwar period, contemporary sources show that Strauss did indeed attempt to secure rehabilitation with the Nazi leadership. Strauss, for example, sought contact with Hitler. Hitler ignored these attempts, but—in consultation with Goebbels—he did not entirely abandon Strauss, especially since Strauss still enjoyed considerable artistic prestige.

Thus, on August 1, 1936, as part of the opening ceremony for the XIth Olympic Games in Berlin, Strauss was permitted to premiere his “Olympic Hymn,” which he had been commissioned to compose in 1932. This was followed by further activities of cultural-political significance in which Strauss was involved on behalf of the Nazi regime. Notable examples include his participation in the first Reich Music Festival in May 1938 and his 1940 composition, commissioned by the Ministry of Propaganda, to mark the 2,600th anniversary of the Japanese Empire.

The relationship between Strauss and Goebbels thus improved considerably again by the early 1940s.

Despite this rapprochement, tensions between the regime and Strauss flared up repeatedly. One trigger was the composer’s refusal to take in refugees and bomb victims in his 19-room villa, as ordered by the Garmisch district leadership of the NSDAP. In response, Hitler issued a directive in 1943 ordering all Nazi Party members in leadership positions to sever their ties with Strauss. The press was instructed to report only sparingly on the composer and his engagements. Furthermore, no publications were to appear in connection with his 80th birthday the following year.

The ambivalent relationship between Strauss and the Nazi leadership was also influenced by the fact that Strauss’s only son, Franz, was married to a Jewish woman. Franz Strauss had married his wife, Alice, in Vienna in 1924. After the National Socialists’ “seizure of power” in 1933, Alice Strauss and their children repeatedly suffered anti-Semitic attacks by the Nazis. However, Strauss’s good connections prevented his daughter-in-law and grandchildren from being persecuted. In 1938, he thanked Heinz Tietjen, the General Director of the Prussian State Theaters, for his willingness to intercede on behalf of his family with Hermann Göring.

Nevertheless, Strauss’s family remained under threat from racial persecution. His daughter-in-law Alice was under house arrest in Garmisch. His grandson Richard was taunted by classmates as a “Jew.” On November 10, 1938, the SA picked up Alice Strauss at her father-in-law’s house. Alice and Franz Strauss were arrested and interrogated by the Vienna Gestapo in the winter of 1943–44. It was not until March 1945 that the family received a telegram confirming that the Bavarian state government had decided not to deport Alice Strauss to a labor camp. Indeed, Richard Strauss’s prominence provided protection for his family.

After 1945, however, Richard Strauss described the threats to his family merely as “silly incidents.”

Strauss himself had repeatedly espoused anti-Semitic views and stereotypes since his youth. This is evident, for example, in letters to Cosima Wagner. A letter to the composer Hans Sommer also reveals Strauss’s racist or “völkisch” anti-Semitism.

Strauss’s biographer Dietrich Kroncke, who has studied the composer’s attitudes toward Judaism in depth, characterizes Strauss as a “salon anti-Semite” who adopted anti-Semitic positions depending on the occasion and his audience. In doing so, Strauss distinguished between “the Jews” in general and his personal acquaintances, friends, and family members.

Strauss would make anti-Semitic remarks whenever he was either in conflict with Jewish colleagues—such as Bruno Walter—or whenever topics revolved around “the Jews” in a general context.

It should be noted that Strauss made a large number of antisemitic remarks in letters throughout his life. This was particularly true during his youth. Strauss echoed the derogatory phrases common at the end of the 19th century, especially in letters to his father.

Strauss continued to compose and conduct even during the war. In 1942, he received the City of Vienna’s Beethoven Prize, endowed by Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach. In August 1944, Strauss was placed on the Propaganda Ministry’s “List of the Divinely Gifted,” and even on the “Special List of Irreplaceable Musicians.” Aside from Strauss, only Hans Pfitzner and Wilhelm Furtwängler were honored with this distinction.

After the war, Strauss, whose health had deteriorated, lived in Switzerland for a time. In his denazification proceedings, he was initially classified in Group 1 (“Principal Offender”), but was exonerated in the 1948 appeal proceedings. After his final performances in Munich in the summer of 1949, he died on September 8, 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

The Historical Expert Commission, appointed in 2020 by resolution of the City Council to review traffic areas, buildings, and facilities in the state capital of Wiesbaden recommended renaming Richard-Strauss-Straße due to Strauss’s presidency of the Reich Chamber of Music, a position that made him an official who actively supported the Nazi state. Through public speeches, he provided moral support to the Nazi regime and publicly articulated Nazi ideology. Strauss benefited both materially and immaterially from the cultural policies of the “Third Reich” through the awards and prize money he received, as well as through his performance at the 1936 Olympic Games.

At its meeting on September 4, 2024, the responsible Wiesbaden-Nordost Local Advisory Council decided to contextualize Richard-Strauss-Straße, thereby not following the recommendation of the Historical Expert Commission. The decision was implemented by a resolution of the municipal council on March 24, 2026.