Simon Pullman

Simon Pullman (born February 15, 1890 in Warsaw , Russian Empire ; died August 1942 in the Treblinka extermination camp ) was a Polish violinist , orchestra founder, conductor and teacher of violin , viola and chamber music .

Life

Born in Warsaw, Simon Pullman received his musical training first with Heinrich Heller and then at the Conservatory in St. Petersburg with Leopold von Auer (1905–1909). From 1910 he himself worked as a violin teacher in Warsaw, but in 1913 he continued his studies with Martin Pierre Marsick at the Paris Conservatory. From 1905 he gave concerts in Poland, Russia and finally also in France. After returning to his hometown, Pullman made a name for himself as the founder and director of a chamber orchestra (1915–1920) and a string quartet .

In 1921 he moved to Vienna, where he taught violin, viola and chamber music at the New Vienna Conservatory , the latter with particular success. His students included the siblings Galimir , Richard Goldner and Theo Salzman .

In 1931, Pullman finally founded his own chamber orchestra again, in which some of his students found opportunities to experience and perform. With this he played more or less regularly concerts in the spring season, the programs of which mostly included a juxtaposition of old and new, including some world premieres. The Pullman orchestra made special appearances as accompaniment for Bronisław Huberman in two joint concerts with Erika Morini at the beginning of May 1935 or at Huberman's farewell concert in Vienna before an extensive world tour in February 1937.

After the reorganization of the orchestra in mid-1937 - at the beginning of February 1938 - there was only one concert. When the National Socialists came to power in Vienna in March 1938, Simon Pullman, who had resigned from the Jewish Community in 1928, also lost his position at the New Vienna Conservatory.

Forced to emigrate, he first fled to Paris, but a visit to Warsaw in the summer of 1939 was fatal for him and his wife. Surprised by the attack by German troops on Poland, both were imprisoned there after the Warsaw Ghetto was established by the National Socialists. In addition to the orchestra founders Marian Neuteich and Adam Furmanski, he was in charge of the Jewish Symphonic Orchestra and a chamber orchestra from the beginning of 1941 and was soon considered one of the most important musicians in the ghetto. But the concerts of the symphony orchestra came to an abrupt end in April 1942 with a performance ban. On July 22, 1942, the ghetto was largely cleared and within a few weeks around 400,000 people were deported to extermination camps, including the musicians of the symphony orchestra and Simon Pullman and his wife to the Treblinka extermination camp .

Pullman's musical legacy can be found above all in his students Felix Galimir and Richard Goldner , whose founding Musica Viva Orchestra in Australia (1945) was initially dedicated directly to the former teacher and friend.

Remarks

1. ↑ according to other information in the literature also 1897

literature

• Leon Tadeusz Blaszczyk: Dyrygenci polscy i obcy w Polsce dzialajacy w XIX i XX wieku . Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, Kraków 1964.
• Marian Fuks: Muzyka ocalona. Judaica polskie . Wydawn, RTV, Warszawa 1989.
• Josef Reitler : 25 years of the New Vienna Conservatory 1909–1934 . New Vienna Conservatory, Vienna 1934.
• Shirli Gilbert: Music in the Holocaust. Confronting life in the Nazi ghettos and camps . Clarendon Press, Oxford 2005.
• Marcel Reich-Ranicki : My life . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1999.
• Regina Thumser: Displaced Musicians: Fates and Networks in Exile 1933–1945 . Univ. Diss., Self-published, Salzburg 1998.
• Michael Shmith, David Colville (eds.): Musica Viva Australia. The First Fifty Years . Playbill Pty. Ltd., Sydney 1996.

Web links

• Simon Pullman in the Lexicon of Persecuted Musicians of the Nazi Era (LexM)