Franzi Ascher-Nash

Franzi Ascher-Nash (born November 28, 1910 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died September 1, 1991 in Lancaster (Pennsylvania) ) was an Austrian-American music critic.

Life

Franziska Ascher-Nash was the daughter of Luise Frankl and the operetta composer Leo Ascher . She attended a humanistic girls' high school and began to study singing at the Vienna State Academy for Singing and Art. In 1933 she received her first engagement for supporting roles and as an understudy at the Volksoper in Vienna. Problems with her voice forced her to give up her career aspirations and resorted to writing.

Rudolf Kalmar published some of her short stories in the Viennese daily newspaper Der Tag , other newspapers, The Hour and the New Free Press , also printed smaller articles. She received orders from the US film company United Artists to translate film dialogues.

After Austria's annexation in 1938, her father was arrested during the Night of the Reichspogrom and was only released on condition that the Ascher family leave the German Reich within two weeks. Leo Ascher's brother was murdered by the National Socialists. Franzi Ascher fled with the family via Switzerland and France to the USA, whose citizenship she received in 1944.

Ascher continued to write in German in the USA. In 1939/40 she wrote four radio plays on behalf of the German American Writers' Association (GAWA). From 1941 until the cessation of the newspaper in 1949, she wrote music reviews for the Neue Volkszeitung on a regular basis, which she continued from 1955 to 1959 in the Sunday paper of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung . She got by with various odd jobs, including as an interviewer for an opinion research institute.

She published her first book in 1948 under the title “Bilderbuch aus der Fremde”. Since 1954 she was a member of the music faculty of the New School for Social Research and worked as a lecturer for music history. There she held a seminar on "History and Development of Opera" and one on "History and Development of Song". Ascher became a member of B'nai B'rith in 1956 . In 1959 she married the former banker Edgar Nash (1893–1965), who had also fled Vienna in 1938.

On behalf of Fordham University in New York, she produced the radio program "The Story of the Art Song". She also gave seminars with musical examples at the Donnell and Lincoln Center Libraries in New York between 1970 and 1973 and worked as a visiting professor at the Manhattan School of Music .

In the 1980s, Ascher-Nash moved to Millersville , Pennsylvania . She donated a "Leo Ascher Award" to Millersville State College . Her estate and that of her father are in the "Ganser Library of Millersville University".

Fonts (selection)

• Picture book from abroad . Vienna: Wiener Verlag, 1948
• Poems of a life . Darmstadt: Bläschke, 1976
• Recent essays, 1974–1975 . Saarbrücken: Literary Union, 1976
• The real perspective of my life . Cincinnati: Publishing House of the Association of German-Language Authors in America, 1978
• Run, run, resume ... The common thread of an autobiography . Unpublished manuscript

literature

• Hertha Hanus: Ascher-Nash, Franzi. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 31–35.
• John Spalek (ed.): German-language literature in exile since 1933. Vol 4. bibliographies. Writer, journalist and literary critic in the United States: Part 1 A-G . Bern: Francke, 1994 ISBN 3-907820-47-9 , pp. 100-103
• Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 37

Web links

• Literature by and about Franzi Ascher-Nash in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Franzi Ascher-Nash in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Annika Ueffing:  Franzi Ascher-Nash in the dictionary of persecuted musicians of the Nazi era (LexM)