The story of the Salzburg festival that inspired Edinburgh

The Salzburger Festspiele, founded after the First World War, was set up to reunite old enemies through their love of performing arts. William Cook tells its tale

This is the first year since 2019 that foreigners can attend without restriction (Kolarik/SF)

Here on the leafy outskirts of Salzburg, in the shadow of its rugged castle, there is a building that changed the course of European culture, and inspired the Edinburgh Festival, the biggest arts festival in the world.

Film buffs will recognise Schloss Leopoldskron as the von Trapp residence in The Sound of Music, but the most significant event in the history of this palatial house occurred at the end of the First World War, when it was bought by Austrian impresario Max Reinhardt. It was here that Reinhardt hatched the idea for the Salzburger Festspiele, an international festival designed to reunite old enemies through their shared love of the performing arts. Reinhardt described this pioneering project as “the first work of peace.”

Reinhardt’s scheme was so successful that it’s since been copied throughout the world, most notably in Edinburgh after the Second World War. In Edinburgh as in Salzburg, the aim was to bring together former foes after years of bloody conflict, as performers and spectators, to celebrate their common heritage in a place where they could also let their hair down. Today Edinburgh is the behemoth, but Salzburg was the prototype, and its colourful, stormy history mirrors the triumphs and calamities of the last century.