Sektionschef Dr. Egon Hilbert

Egon Hilbert was born in Vienna. After completing elementary school, he attended the humanistic grammar school in Vienna's 13th district. He was drafted in 1917 before completing his A-levels and took part in the First World War. Immediately after the end of the war, he graduated and enrolled in law at the University of Vienna in 1919. He obtained his doctorate in 1924, completed his court and legal practice and joined the police force as a lawyer.

In addition, Egon Hilbert studied musicology. In 1929, he moved to the press office of the police department. In 1934 he was transferred to the Federal Chancellery Federal Press Service and in 1935 he became press attaché at the Austrian embassy in Prague, where he was primarily entrusted with cultural policy tasks. He worked closely with Walter Adam and Hans Sidonius von Becker.

As the Dachau concentration camp was cleared for the SS at short notice due to the start of the Second World War, he was sent to the Flossenbürg concentration camp on September 27, 1939 and from there back to the Dachau concentration camp on March 2, 1940. He remained in the concentration camp until liberation on 29 April 1945. His time in prison and in the concentration camps severely affected his health.

After liberation by the Americans, Egon Hilbert was rehabilitated, became provisional director of the Salzburg State Theatre and as such was responsible for the reorganization of the Salzburg Festival. In November 1945, he was appointed director of the Federal Theater Administration in Vienna. Between 1945 and 1953, he was head of the Austrian Federal Theater Administration and also rebuilt it to world fame. During this time, he was promoted to the position of section head.

From 1954 to 1959, Egon Hilbert was director of the newly founded Austrian Cultural Institute in Rome, from 1959 to 1963 he was artistic director of the Vienna Festival and from June 9, 1963, as successor to Walter Erich Schäfer, he was director of the Vienna State Opera together with Herbert von Karajan (with whom he held the first decisive working meeting on June 16, 1963). After the Karajan crisis in 1963 and his dissolution, he became sole director on September 1, 1964.

On January 18, 1968, after months of intrigue against Egon Hilbert by the federal theater administration and the State Opera, his de facto resignation was announced. In the tug-of-war over his dismissal and succession, Egon Hilbert, whose health had been affected not least by his imprisonment, signed an agreement according to which he was to take a leave of absence from February 1, 1968 until his contract expired in 1970. On the evening of the same day, as he was about to get into the official car in front of his house in Vienna-Penzing to take him to the State Opera, he collapsed with a heart attack. During the interval of Don Giovanni, his vice-director (and later successor), Heinrich Reif-Gintl, informs the audience of Egon Hilbert's death and holds a minute's silence. He was married twice and had one child.