Grave of honour of Austrian composer Wilhelm Kienzl

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Grave of honour of Austrian composer Wilhelm Kienzl (1857-1941) at the Vienna Central Cemetery. Wilhelm Kienzl travelled throughout Europe after his doctorate as a pianist and conductor. In 1883 he became director of the Deutsche Oper in Amsterdam, in 1886 he took over the direction of the Styrian Music Society. In 1894 he wrote his third and most famous opera Der Evangelimann. In 1920 he composed the melody to a poem written by Dr. Karl Renner, “Deutschösterreich, du herrliches Land”, which was considered the unofficial national anthem of the First Austrian Republic until 1929. Along with Engelbert Humperdinck and Siegfried Wagner, the composers of fairy-tale operas, Wilhelm Kienzl is the most important opera creator of the romantic Wagner succession.