Alma Rosé

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Alma Rosé (born November 3, 1906 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died April 5, 1944 in the Auschwitz concentration camp ) was an Austrian violinist . After her deportation to the concentration camp, she directed the so-called Girls Orchestra of Auschwitz .

family

Alma Rosé was born as the daughter of Arnold Rosé (1863–1946) and his wife Justine Mahler (1868–1938) into a family of musicians. Her father was first concertmaster of the Vienna Court Opera for 57 years and - with interruptions - the Vienna Philharmonic and head of the world-famous Rosé Quartet . Her uncle was the composer Gustav Mahler , her godmother was Alma Mahler-Werfel , after whom she got her first name. In this family environment, Alma Rosé was trained as a violinist by her father.

job

In 1920 Rosé appeared for the first time as a soloist in Bad Ischl , in 1926 she made her debut at the Wiener Musikverein with members of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra under the direction of her father. In 1927 she performed with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and her father on the radio ( RAVAG ). In May 1929 she made her only record in Vienna; it is the double concerto in D minor BWV 1043 by Johann Sebastian Bach .

In 1930 she married the Czech Váša Příhoda (1900–1960), who is considered one of the greatest violin virtuosos of the 20th century and with whom she successfully completed concert tours. The witnesses were Arnold Rosé and Franz Werfel . She lived with her husband near Prague until the divorce in 1935, and in 1936 she returned to her parents in Vienna. Subsequent accusations that Příhoda had separated from his wife out of opportunism because of the anti-Jewish legislation of the National Socialists proved untenable; his second wife was also Jewish.

In the meantime, Rosé reached the temporary high point of her career: In 1932 she founded the ladies' orchestra Die Wiener Walzermädeln , an ensemble that attracted attention due to its high musical level and with which she went on concert tours throughout Europe. Anny Kux , a close friend of Alma, became concert master. In the period from 1934 to 1938, Rosé held several solidarity concerts abroad in protest against Nazi rule in Germany .

persecution

Escape

After successfully on 12 March 1938 "annexation" of Austria to the Third Reich , the Ladies Orchestra was established in July 1938 by the Reich Chamber of Culture resolved. With the help of the financial support organized by Carl Flesch , Alma Rosé managed to flee to London on March 24, 1939 and her father on May 2, 1939 . Her brother Alfred (1902–1975) was able to flee to Canada, but her uncle Eduard Rosé (1859–1943) was later deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and murdered there.

In July 1939 Rosé gave one of her last concerts in freedom: In London she appeared as a member of the Rosé Quartet at a concert organized by the Musicians Group of the Austrian Circle on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of Haydn's death .

In November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II , she flew to Amsterdam for a concert , where she went into hiding after the occupation by the German Wehrmacht in May 1940. Between January 1941 and August 1942, Rosé gave illegal house concerts, especially in the Netherlands, together with the Hungarian pianist Géza Frid . She entered into a marriage of convenience with the Dutch engineer Constant August van Leeuwen Boomkamp because she believed she was protected by an “Aryan” name.

After the deportations of Dutch Jews began, she informed Carl Flesch in a letter dated August 7, 1942 that she was leaving the Netherlands and fled to France. In December 1942 she was arrested in Dijon by the German occupation police deployed there and interned in the Drancy assembly camp. On July 18, 1943, Rosé was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp (main camp) .

Auschwitz

On July 20, 1943, Rosé arrived at the concentration camp , was given prisoner number 50381 and was assigned to experimental block 10. There she was recognized by the Dutch woman Ima van Esso, who before her deportation at home in Amsterdam had already made music with the artist in private. Ima van Esso talked about it with the block elder, the Slovak Jewess Magda Hellinger, who then organized a violin in the effects warehouse. Rosé played on it in the evenings when the SS guards had left the block for the prisoners. Soon afterwards she was transferred to the women's camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau and assigned by the notorious superintendent Maria Mandl as director of the orchestra of female prisoners (girls' orchestra) she had created . Although it consisted mostly of amateur musicians and only a small part of professional musicians, Rosé formed an ensemble that ensured the survival of some people in the camp. For the ensemble she orchestrated a. a. Frédéric Chopin's Etude opus 10.3 . Members also included accordionist Esther Bejarano , cellist Anita Lasker, and singer and pianist Fania Fénelon , who survived the Holocaust.

On April 2, 1944, Rosé conducted the orchestra for the last time; on April 5, she died of the effects of an unexplained illness, possibly poisoning, which was accompanied by a high fever for days. There are suspicions that she had poisoned herself, or she was jealous of prisoner functionaries been poisoned.

Quote

" Gustav Mahler stood at her cradle, Josef Mengele at her bier ."

- Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

Commemoration

Alma-Rosé-Park in Vienna
Honorary grave of the parents with Alma Rosé's name inscription

Since there is no separate grave for Alma Rosé , there is an inscription on the grave of her parents dedicated to honor in the Grinzinger Friedhof (group 20, row 5, no. 6) with the daughter's name and life data.

In 1969 the Alma-Rosé-Gasse in Vienna-Favoriten (10th district) was named after her. The Alma-Rosé-Park was opened in Vienna-Floridsdorf (21st district) in April 2020.

With the opening of the House of Austrian History , the central area in the grand staircase of the New Castle was renamed Alma-Rosé-Plateau . This is the middle of this building - it connects the so-called "Hitler balcony" with the rooms of the collection of old musical instruments .

exhibition

literature

Web links

Commons : Alma Rosé  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Published on His Master's Voice , ES 663/65 (78 rpm). This recording was also released on CD in 2003 ( Master of the Bow, POL-1007-2).
  2. ↑ a b Margita Schwalbová u. a .: Váša Příhoda, Arnold and Alma Rosé. Retrieved June 24, 2011 (quoted by Wolfgang Wendel).
  3. ↑ Hans-Joachim Lang : The women of Block 10. Medical experiments in Auschwitz . Hamburg 2011, p. 202-205 .
  4. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz . Ullstein, Munich and Frankfurt a. M. 1980, p. 153 .
  5. ↑ Krystyna Żywulska : Dance, girls… . Munich 1988, p. 235.
  6. ↑ The Girls Orchestra of Auschwitz, Hessischer Rundfunk, accessed on April 14, 2019.
  7. ^ Alma-Rosé-Park. City of Vienna, accessed on August 27, 2020 .
  8. ↑ hdgö - House of Austrian History. Retrieved March 15, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Friedegard Hürter on info-net-music ; accessed on January 31, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Rosé, Alma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alma Příhoda-Rosé
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian violinist
DATE OF BIRTH November 3, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 5, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp