A former head of Vienna's prestigious Philharmonic Orchestra was a member of Nazi Germany's elite paramilitary SS and collaborated with the secret police, while half of its musicians were members of the Nazi party, historians said Sunday, according to an AFP report.

Helmut Wobisch, a member of the Nazi party since 1933 when it was still illegal in Austria, was the orchestra's managing director between 1954 and 1968 even though he had been dismissed at the end of World War II because of his ties to the Nazi regime.