Alice Heart Summer

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The pianists Alice Herz-Sommer (left) and Luiza Borac in London in 2010

Alice Herz-Sommer (born November 26, 1903 in Prague , Austria-Hungary ; died February 23, 2014 in London ) was an originally Austrian, German-speaking pianist and music teacher from Prague who later took on Israeli citizenship . She was a survivor of the Theresienstadt concentration camp , where she had given over 100 concerts.

Life

Youth in Prague

Alice Herz-Sommer was born in 1903 in Prague with her twin sister Marianne. As the daughter of Jewish, German-speaking parents, the factory owner couple Sofie and Friedrich Herz, she grew up in an environment of an enlightened and liberal bourgeoisie .

The girl discovered his love for music at an early age. Alice sat in front of the piano for the first time at the age of three and took piano lessons at the age of five. She also learned several foreign languages. Well-known scientists, such as Sigmund Freud , as well as musicians, actors and writers such as Franz Werfel and Franz Kafka , who was like an older brother to Alice and often went for walks with her , frequented her parents' house in Prague . Kafka was a friend of her brother-in-law, the journalist, writer and philosopher Felix Weltsch . Kafka, Weltsch, the journalist Oskar Baum and the writer, translator and composer Max Brod met every Sunday to talk about current affairs and politics and to read to each other what they had written during the week. Ten-year-old Alice was often allowed to come along. Her parents were also close friends with Gustav Mahler's parents.

“I also got to know Franz Werfel. In one of his novels he wrote: One must forgive humanity for all sins if a Beethoven came out. And he's right. "

After the First World War , at the age of sixteen, she became the youngest member of the German Music Academy in Prague. She became a student of the German pianist Conrad Ansorge . Just a few years later she was one of the most famous pianists in town and by the early 1930s she was also known as a pianist in the rest of Europe. When Alice Herz-Sommer played to the Austrian-Jewish pianist and composer Artur Schnabel in order to become his master class student, the latter turned it down, because he could not teach her anything, either technically or musically.

In 1931 she married the violinist Leopold Sommer. The two had their son Raphael in 1937. When the German Wehrmacht occupied Prague in March 1939, the persecution of the Jewish citizens began there too . Some acquaintances, friends and relatives like her sister Irma and her brother-in-law Felix Weltsch and Max Brod were able to flee on the last train on March 14, 1939. Alice Herz-Sommer was banned from public appearances due to her Jewish origins. In Prague, as in numerous other cities occupied by the Nazis, a lively house concert life developed out of necessity. Alice and her friend Edith Kraus , also a pianist, organized and played many such house concerts.

Due to the increasing oppression of the Jewish population and other minorities, the friends Alice Herz-Sommer and Edith Kraus could no longer visit each other after dark because they lived too far apart and the Jews in the city were forbidden to go after 8 p.m. still to be on the road. Thus, mostly friends from the immediate neighborhood were invited. The composer, conductor and pianist Viktor Ullmann came to Herz-Sommer . She was able to finance the family's livelihood by taking piano lessons. However, the German occupation made this more difficult every day, because Jews were no longer allowed to teach non-Jews. Thus many Jews were deprived of their last livelihood. Nevertheless, Herz-Sommer disregarded the regulations and continued to teach.

“Everything was forbidden, you could hardly go shopping anywhere, no longer take the tram. We weren't allowed to go to a park. We went to a Jewish cemetery with our children so they could get a better breath. "

In 1942 the National Socialists deported their sick, 72-year-old mother. The mother, like Alice's husband Leopold later, perished in a concentration camp. Herz-Sommer then fell into depression. She had a formative experience walking through the streets of Prague:

“An inner voice came to mind, which even after 80 years I can still remember exactly where this happened in Prague. This voice said to me: Now only you can help yourself, not the man, not the doctor, not the child. And at that moment I knew I had to the 24 Etudes of Chopin playing. These etudes are the greatest requirement of every pianist. They are like Goethe's Faust or Shakespeare's Hamlet. Magnificent compositions. I ran home, and from that moment on I practiced for hours and hours until we were deported. "

A year later she had made the studies ready for concert. In 1943 Alice Herz-Sommer was deported.

“On the evening before the deportation, Czech 'friends' of ours came to our house and packed up what was not nailed down. Until now I can't understand that. A Nazi named Hermann lived above us. He too came and said , 'I wish you will come back alive. I've listened to them for hours, I admire you and your persistence and this wonderful music. Thank you.' The German said that. "

The Sommer family was held in a large hall for three days. With thousands of mattresses and the marches in the open air, Alice realized what was in store for the family. She, her husband and her six-year-old son were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp .

Theresienstadt

In June 1940, the National Socialists began to turn Theresienstadt into a concentration camp . On June 10, 1940, they set up a Gestapo prison in the Small Fortress , in which around 32,000 Czech opposition members, members of the resistance against the occupation and prisoners of war were imprisoned by 1945.

In November 1941, a collection and transit camp for the Jewish population of Bohemia and Moravia was set up in the garrison town. On February 16, 1942, the urban community was dissolved, the local population had to leave the city and in the following years Jews from Germany and other European countries came to what the Nazis called the “old age ghetto” alongside local Jews.

In order to simulate a normal life with satisfied residents for the public, to conceal the misanthropic ideology of the Nazis and to deceive the international public about the goals associated with the “ final solution to the Jewish question ”, the SS temporarily allowed a cultural life organized by the camp inmates themselves.

“We had to play because the Red Cross came three times a year, because the Germans wanted to show that the Jews in Theresienstadt are doing very well. It was propaganda by the Germans. "

During the day Alice Herz-Sommer and her friend Edith Kraus had to split mica with a small knife. Viewing windows for stoves were made from the material.

"If the material wasn't the same weight in the evening, you could be shot."

She played in a world of hunger, suffering and death. Her son Raphael was one of the leading actors in the children's opera Brundibár by the composer Hans Krása fifty times . Among other things, the prisoners played, largely without scores , from memory Beethoven , Bach , Czech composers and Chopin's 24 etudes. Every half hour the concert pianists of the camp took turns to practice on the piano of the camp in a room. On some days up to four concerts were scheduled. The names of the musicians disappeared from the transport lists that led to other extermination camps. When asked how Herz-Sommer managed to endure life in the concentration camp, she replied:

“There is only one word to explain it: the music. The music is a charm. We played everything by heart. The etudes, the Beethoven sonatas, Schubert, everything. In the town hall for 150 people, old, desperate, sick, starved people. They lived from the music, the music was the food. They would have died long ago if they hadn't come. And so do we. "

Her husband, Leopold Sommer, was taken to Auschwitz concentration camp at the end of September 1944 , then to Buchenwald concentration camp , followed by Flossenbürg concentration camp . He died of typhus in the Dachau concentration camp shortly before the liberation in 1945 . Alice and her son Raphael, one of only 130 surviving children, survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Her husband saved her and their child Raphael's life by warning them not to do anything voluntarily before they were taken away.

“One evening my husband came and told me that the next day a thousand men would be sent away in a transport. And that he was among them. He took my word of honor from me not to do anything voluntarily when he's gone. The day after his transport there was another transport with the motto: Women follow men. Many women have volunteered. They never met the men, they were killed. I would have reported immediately without his warning. "

End of war and post-war period

On May 8, 1945, the Red Army liberated the Theresienstadt concentration camp. In the end, the “Jewish model settlement” fulfilled three tasks. It was a transit camp, it was used for the extermination of people and at times for propaganda.

"The result? Let's say a god was there or is there, he created good and bad at the same time. The bad is there to get better. "

After the liberation, Alice Herz-Sommer saw herself and other Jewish fellow citizens exposed to Czech anti-Semitism this time, and she suffered from Stalinist terror and Czech nationalism in post-war Czechoslovakia . In a climate of political oppression, fear and distrust reigned in society at the time. In 1947 she emigrated with her son to live with her twin sister and friends, who had been able to escape to Palestine as early as the 1930s, in Jerusalem , a year before the state of Israel came into being.

Herz-Sommer taught at the Jerusalem Conservatory and worked as a music teacher. She was a founding member of the Academy in Jerusalem . Her friend Edith Kraus was a founding member of the Academy in Tel Aviv. On Sundays, Alice visited her sister Irma, wife of her good friend Felix Weltsch , who lived in her neighborhood in Jerusalem. The friends Kraus and Herz-Sommer had both lost a large part of their families and had to see their husbands being deported to Auschwitz.

From their time in Prague and in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, they were personally acquainted with Viktor Ullmann , Pavel Haas , Gideon Klein , Hans Krása and Karel Reiner . Viktor Ullmann held both pianists in high regard. He dedicated his 4th Sonata to Alice Herz-Sommer; Edith Kraus played the world premiere of the 6th piano sonata in Theresienstadt.

Herz-Sommer was also friends with the chief judge of the Nuremberg Trials , with whom she played the piano four hands. Thanks to him, she was able to watch the trial of one of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust , Adolf Eichmann . Alice Herz-Sommer felt pity for him and not hate.

In 1986 Alice Herz-Sommer moved to live with her son Raphael Sommer (* June 21, 1937 - November 26, 2001) and his family in London. He was a cellist, conductor and member of the Solomon Trio. From 1993, when she met the violinist Tony Strong, she also practiced new pieces, including a. by Debussy , Poulenc and Ravel . She met him to play twice a month. Until she was 92, she mastered her entire repertoire by heart. After both of her forefingers became stiff, she rehearsed some of the pieces with an eight-finger system. The music had a special meaning for her until the end:

“People don't need food, they just need content. And that can be the music. Not painting and not Goethe with Shakespeare, because music makes us forget. Then time no longer exists. You hear, and especially in a difficult situation you are enchanted, in another, in a better, more hopeful world. "

2013 was documentary - short film entitled The Lady in Number 6 published in the Herz-Sommer talks about her life and her love of music. The film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 2014 .

Alice Herz-Sommer died in London in February 2014 at the age of 110.

literature

Movies

  • From hell to paradise or Chopin saved me ; Documentary by Michael Teutsch with Alice Herz-Sommer. Germany. 2005. 73 min ( IMDb ). Recorded in London.
  • The pianist from Theresienstadt . Film by Inga Wolfram . First broadcast March 23, 2005. 45 min. Documentation. WDR , 2005. (Alice Herz-Sommer talks about her life, her concerts and her fate, the days in the ghetto, the loss of her husband and the fear for her child. But she knows that life is beautiful too. She looks cheerful and relaxed.)
  • Alice Herz Sommer - Everything is a Present. Film by Christopher Nupen, Germany 2010, 54 min. Language: English; Subtitles: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese
  • The Lady in Number 6 is an US-American - Canadian - British documentary - short film from the year 2013. Directed by Malcolm Clarke .

Web links

Interviews

Photographs

Video and sound recordings

Additional information

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b Alice Herz-Sommer, Who Found Peace in Chopin Amid Holocaust, Dies at 110 Margalit Fox, New York Times , February 27, 2014
  2. ^ A b Melissa Müller , Reinhard Piechocki : Alice Herz-Sommer - "A Garden of Eden in the Middle of Hell" . Droemer, Munich 2006; New edition ibid. 2011, ISBN 978-3-426-78515-7 .
  3. ↑ a b c Elmar Krekeler: Alice Herz-Sommer, larger-than-life optimist. September 18, 2006 (Alice Herz-Sommer in an interview with Der Welt )
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Johannes Honsell, Oliver Das Gupta: Music was the food.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. September 20, 2006 (Alice Herz-Sommer in an interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.sueddeutsche.de  
  5. ↑ Encounter with women of the century. ( Memento from October 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Article about Alice Herz Sommer and Edith, in: Neue Musikzeitung. Regensburg 2004, March. ISSN  0171-0095
  6. ^ Anne Przybyla: One is only happy in old age. November 29, 2003 (Alice Herz-Sommer in an interview with taz )
  7. ↑ Alice Sommer Individual Biography. Article Exilarchiv.de
personal data
SURNAME Heart summer, Alice
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Summer, Alice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli pianist
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 2014
Place of death London