Edition Vol. 6 (incls Victor-Marsch & Nilfluthen, Walzer)

Josef Strauss chose a festival concert in Vienna's Volksgarten to premiere a march dedicated to the youngest brother of Emperor Franz Josef, Archduke Ludwig Victor (1842-1919). The premiere of the march was planned for 13 May 1863, that is, two days before the 21st birthday of the then virtually unknown third son of the proud Archduchess Sophie and her spouse, Archduke Franz Carl. The young man seems to have behaved himself suitably in the family circle, as witnessed by the copious correspondence addressed to the latter by Empress Elisabeth, who had been disappointed with the Vienna imperial court (above all with her mother-in-law Sophie). Later, he seems to have developed a less affable personality. He was reputed to be an eccentric, to whom one could not entrust important tasks. Historians passed deprecatory judgements on him: "He was shady, malicious, and scheming. Finally, after an incident in a Vienna bathhouse, from which he is said to have escaped with a slap on the wrist, the emperor banished him to Salzburg, where he died in the Castle of Klesheim in 1919." (Franz Herre: Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, Cologne, 1978).

However, all that lay farther in the future, and the Victor-Marsch, which was soon forgotten, was not premiered in May 1863 but - as it is recorded both in the composer's as well as in horn-player Franz Sabay's notes - on 12 June, in the Vienna Volksgarten. The work was published in July 1863.