Ellen Epstein

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Ellen Epstein (born September 28, 1898 in Breslau ; † after October 21, 1942 near Riga , Reichskommissariat Ostland ) was a German pianist and victim of the Holocaust .

Life

Ellen Epstein was the daughter of the Justice Council Salomon Epstein (1848–1909) and Minna, geb. Grünfeld (1864–1942). Epstein attended the Lyceum in Katowice . After her father's death, she moved with her mother and sister Margot to Innsbrucker Strasse 5 in Schöneberg . Margot Epstein later worked as a journalist for the Berliner Tageblatt, among others . From 1915 she attended a painting course with Eugen Spiro , but then began to study piano from 1918, with Artur Schnabel , Bruno Eisner , Egon Petri , Rudolf Maria Breithaupt and Erwin Lendvai as teachers. In 1920 she made her first tour in Poland. After completing her training, she performed not only in Berlin, but also in Breslau, Danzig, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Königsberg, Leipzig, Mannheim and Munich. She also played with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and performed Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto in Cologne in 1924 under Hermann Abendroth's baton . She accompanied the violinists Stefan Frenkel and Max Wolfsthal and the singer Wilhelm Guttmann . In November 1927 she gave concerts with Leon Theremin and also experimented with Oskar Vierling . Two concert tours to England in May and November 1933 are known, where she also presented works by Grete von Zieritz and Paul Höffer .

Ellen Epstein: Ernst Kunwald . Silhouette. Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , September 11, 1931
Ellen Epstein: Wilhelm Furtwängler . Signed silhouette. Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , May 29, 1931

She frequented the musical avant-garde of the twenties and premiered works by Norbert von Hannenheim , Ernst-Lothar von Knorr , Heinz Tiessen and Kurt Weill . She was a member of the International Society for New Music (IGNM) . Epstein has also taught at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory since 1926 at the latest . She was friends with the doctor Felix Abraham . She made silhouettes of the musicians she met and offered them to the press for printing, but a planned book edition was not realized.

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , Epstein could no longer give concerts in Germany; in August 1935 she was expelled from the Reich Chamber of Music , which in fact meant a professional ban . Her private piano lessons were also cut to non-Aryans for racist reasons. Her name appeared in the anti-Semitic encyclopedias by Girschner and Trienes (1937), Brückner and Rock (1938) and in Herbert Gerigks Lexicon of Jews in Music . After her appearance in London in November 1933, she only had one appearance in June 1938 at a Jewish cultural event in Berlin, where she played works by Sándor Jemnitz , Karl Wiener and Sergei Prokofjew in the clubhouse of the Jewish Women's Association on Marburger Strasse .

Thousands of other Jews, Epstein was used for forced labor by the National Socialist authorities , their job was at the company "Scherb und Schwer KG" in Berlin-Weißensee .

Her mother died in Berlin in early 1942. In October 1942, Ellen Epstein was with her sister from the freight station Putlitzstraße with. "21 Berlin Osttransport " deported . In Riga 81 men were selected , most of the deportees, however, 878 people immediately upon arrival on 22 October 1942 at the Forest of Biķernieki of Latvian auxiliary troops of the SS shot; among them also the boy Gert Rosenthal (born 1932), the younger brother of Hans Rosenthal . The exact circumstances of Epstein's death are not known. Her estate in Berlin was also wiped out. Her cousin Hans Hirschel was hidden in her apartment and saved by Maria Countess von Maltzan .

In 2009, a new road in Berlin-Moabit was named after Ellen Epstein on the site of the former freight station from which the Riga transport started.

literature

  • Herbert Henck : Norbert von Hannenheim. The search for the Transylvanian composer and his work . Kompost-Verlag, Deinstedt 2007, pp. 235-237
  • Erich Hermann Müller von Azow: German Musicians Lexicon . Wilhelm Limpert-Verlag, Dresden 1929
  • Walter Grünfeld: Looking back. In memory of Dr. Walter Grünfeld 1908–1988 . Philipp Brothers AG, 1989/90 (Walter Grünfeld is a cousin)

Web links

Commons : Ellen Epstein  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Herbert Henck: Ellen Epstein (1898–1942) , 2007
  2. ^ Walter Trienes: Jews in Music . In: Otto Girschner: Repetitorium der Musikgeschichte , Musikverlag PJ Tonger, Cologne 1937
  3. ↑ Christa Maria Rock, Hans Brückner: Judaism and Music. With d. ABC jew. u. non-Aryan music enthusiast . Brückner-Verlag, Munich 1938
  4. ↑ Ellen Epstein, pianist, music teacher . In: Theophil Stengel, Herbert Gerigk: Lexicon of Jews in Music , 1940, Col. 63
  5. ^ Margot Epstein , at Yad Vashem
  6. ^ Leonard Gross: The last Jews in Berlin . Carroll and Graf, New York 1999
  7. ↑ Ellen-Epstein-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
personal data
SURNAME Epstein, Ellen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pianist and victim of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH after October 21, 1942
Place of death near Riga , Reichskommissariat Ostland