Czettel’s career was violently redirected by the rise of Nazism. Because he was Jewish, he was ostracised from professional life in Germany in 1933 and returned to Austria, where he continued designing for the Theater in der Josefstadt, the Vienna State Opera, the Burgtheater, and the Salzburg Festival. He also taught at Vienna’s Max Reinhardt Seminar from 1935 until 1938. The Anschluss in March 1938 brought the Nazi regime to Austria, forcing Czettel to flee once again. He reached London, where he had previously worked at the London Palladium, and designed costumes for Gabriel Pascal’s lavish 1938 film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Later that year he emigrated to the United States, teaching at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research and designing Broadway operettas including Rosalinda, the American title for Die Fledermaus, in 1942, and Helen Goes to Troy in 1944. On 5 March 1949, one week before his fifty-fourth birthday, Czettel died by suicide in New York. The surviving account records the persecution, repeated displacement, and destruction of his European career, but does not establish a single definitive cause for his suicide.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1930s–1940s
The Anschluss Exile of a Jewish Costume Designer—and His Final Curtain in New York
Ladislaus Czettel / 1930s–1940s
Czettel’s career was violently redirected by the rise of Nazism. Because he was Jewish, he was ostracised from professional life in Germany in 1933 and returned to Austria, where he continued designing for the Theater in der Josefstadt, the Vienna State Opera, the Burgtheater, and the Salzburg Festival. He also taught at Vienna’s Max Reinhardt Seminar from 1935 until 1938. The Anschluss in March 1938 brought the Nazi regime to Austria, forcing Czettel to flee once again. He reached London, where he had previously worked at the London Palladium, and designed costumes for Gabriel Pascal’s lavish 1938 film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Later that year he emigrated to the United States, teaching at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research and designing Broadway operettas including Rosalinda, the American title for Die Fledermaus, in 1942, and Helen Goes to Troy in 1944. On 5 March 1949, one week before his fifty-fourth birthday, Czettel died by suicide in New York. The surviving account records the persecution, repeated displacement, and destruction of his European career, but does not establish a single definitive cause for his suicide.
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