Walter Arlen

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Walter Arlen (born 31 July 1920 in Vienna as Walter Aptowitzer ) is an Austrian and American music critic , music teacher and composer .

Life

Walter Arlen was born on July 31, 1920 as Walter Aptowitzer in Vienna- Ottakring and grew up in the department store founded by his maternal grandparents in 1890, Leopold and Regine Dichter ("Kaufhaus Dichter" in Brunnengasse 40, then a lively market street in the proletarian district), where he had his own room with a piano. His grandfather discovered Walter's musical talent and, on the advice of the musicologist Otto Erich Deutsch (1883–1976), had the boy given piano lessons. Walter made friends with his school colleague Paul Hamburger , whose knowledge of music and joint visits to the opera had a strong influence on him.

After the so-called “ Anschluss ” in 1938, SA men broke into the department store and the apartment and took their father to a collection camp on Karajangasse. Walter Arlen watched Jews having to clean streets in Vienna with toothbrushes. In the course of the " Aryanization ", both the department store and the apartment and the family's assets (around 450,000 Reichsmarks) were expropriated and passed into the possession of the Nazis. From then on, the family lived in a boarding house, the mother also temporarily in a sanatorium because she was suicidal. The father was temporarily released, but then deported to the Dachau concentration camp and then to the Buchenwald concentration camp . Walter Arlen left Vienna on March 14, 1939, the guarantee of an aunt living in Chicago enabled him to enter the USA .

While his parents and his five years younger sister Edith, who later became Arlen Wachtel, were able to flee to London - Walter's father Michael Aptowitzer had been released after two months in the Buchenwald concentration camp and the family had emigrated with a visa obtained from Walter before his departure - Walter arrived in 1939 to relatives in Chicago, where he spent most of World War II . He first worked in a fur trade, then in a chemical factory. Since he was unable to compose, he fell into depression ; On the advice of a psychoanalyst, he looked for a teacher and studied with Leo Sowerby , subsequently won a study visit as "composer in residence" with Roy Harris and stayed with him for four years.

After the war, he moved to Santa Monica to study at the University of California, Los Angeles . He was soon recommended to work as a music critic for the Los Angeles Times ; he also studied with Lukas Foss . Since he found the existence as a music critic incompatible with the activity as a composer, he taught at various local colleges and universities until he was invited to set up a music department at Loyola Marymount University and head it himself. In 1986 he spontaneously set some poems by St. John of the Cross ; from then on he composed again until he went blind due to macular degeneration around 2000.

He took over the artistic direction of the American Academy of Arts in Verona , Italy. He was musical advisor for the José Iturbi International Piano Competition in Valencia , Spain.

Arlen donated his bequest to the music collection of the Vienna Library in the City Hall , with his own compositions mainly for voice and piano, correspondence from Jean Sibelius and Charles Haubiel , and a collection of photos relating to his family.

In 2020 he received honorary citizenship of the Bad Sauerbrunn community .

Family origin

Maternal:

About Walter Arlen's maternal grandparents, Leopold and Regine Dichter, his cousin Ernest Dichter (1907–1991; born Ernst Dichter) was the decorator of the 48 shop windows of the family's department store before he became the “advertising guru” and millionaire who achieved worldwide fame had for its legendary gasoline advertising slogan “ Put a Tiger in your Tank! ”(German:“ Pack the tiger in the tank! ”), As well as its market psychological theses, which“ Presidents, kings and captains of industry from all over the world followed ”.

About Hanna Doppler, born poet and sister of grandfather Leopold, who emigrated from Vienna to Chicago in 1891, he is related to the Pritzker family of lawyers and entrepreneurs:

Hanna's daughter Fanny (cousin of Walter Arlen's mother) married the lawyer Abram Nicholas Pritzker "Abe" Pritzker (1896–1986), founder of the Hyatt hotel chain (1957). Their son Jay Pritzker (1922–1999) together with his wife Marian (“Cindy”) initiated the Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 1979 .

Walter Arlen is also related through Abe Pritzker's sons Robert Alan (1926–2011) and Donald Nicholas (1932–1972) with Abe's grandchildren Jennifer N. Pritzker (born 1950; daughter of Robert; entrepreneur and officer in the US Army and first transgender billionaire), Penny Pritzker (* 1959; daughter of Donald; entrepreneur and former Secretary of Commerce under US President Barack Obama ) and JB Pritzker (* 1965; son of Donald; businessman and Democratic governor of the state of Illinois ).

Paternal side:

In an artist portrait in July 2020, Arlen told about his ancestors on his father's side:

“During the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, it was a legal requirement that in addition to the Jewish ceremony, a marriage also had to be concluded before the competent registry office. My paternal grandfather was called Wolf Preis; he married Hanna Aptowitzer according to the Jewish rite, but they were not civilly married. However: the children of a couple not married in this way were considered illegitimate, and this insult was entered on the birth certificate. So my grandmother should actually have been called Hanna Preis, my father Michael Preis and I Walter Preis. The archives of the Vienna Israelitische Kultusgemeinde contain tens of thousands of such cases because most Jews avoided the additional non-religious ceremony. The name Aptowitzer probably comes from an area east of Dresden or from the area around Tarnopol in Galicia "

His grandmother's nephew was "Professor Victor (Avigdor) Aptowitzer (1871–1942), rector of the Vienna Israelite-Theological Institute for Rabbinical Training from 1923 to 1938 and one of the great Bible scholars of his time".

Arlen points out that the name Aptowitzer appears in Soma Morgenstern's novel Idyll in Exile , which is believed to have originated in the mid-1930s.

Works

See list of works in: exil.arte. International database of artistic bequests.

Awards

Movie

  • 2002: The siblings Walter Arlen and Edith Arlen (1925–2012). Interview in the series Displaced. Jews from Burgenland in an interview about the book of the same name, 2004.
  • 2018: The first century of Walter Arlen. Documentary. Production: Plaesion Film, Vision e. U., Director / by: Stephanus Domanig, Composition: Walter Arlen. AT / US 2018, 94 min (91 min according to the press booklet), German / English with German subtitles. First performance: Viennale 2018.
  • 2020: The city without Jews , new film music for the restored version of the silent film.

literature

  • Alfred Lang, Barbara Tobler, Gert Tschögl (Eds.): Displaced. Memories of Burgenland Jews. With a foreword by Fred Sinowatz . Mandelbaum, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-85476-115-5 , pp. 419-439.
  • Christoph Irrgeher: Not escaped emotionally. Walter Arlen: Expelled by the Nazi regime, now celebrated as a composer in Vienna. In: Wiener Zeitung , August 17, 2010 ( Article online. In: Austria-Forum .)
  • Evelyn Adunka, Gabriele Anderl: Jewish life in the Vienna suburbs - Ottakring and Hernals. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-85476-389-5 (new edition 2020).
  • Thomas Trenkler : "I will never forget the blood on the white snow". The 97-year-old composer and music critic Walter Arlen on his happy childhood in the Wiener Warenhaus Dichter, the “Anschluss”, the Reichspogromnacht on November 9, 1938 - and his flight to Chicago in March 1939. Interview on the occasion of the anniversary of the November pogroms 2017. In: Kurier . September 9, 2017. ( Article online. In: kurier.at. )
  • Moritz Aisslinger, Stephan Lebert : Walter Arlen: "Oh, the Thomas Mann!" The composer and critic Walter Arlen is one of the last living witnesses of a great epoch. The Manns, the Feuchtwangers, the Mahlers - he knew all the exiles in Los Angeles. Now at nearly a hundred, he looks back on his youth under the Nazis and his life in free America. (With a sketch of the Californian artist village . ) In: Die Zeit , No. 28/2020, July 2, 2020, pp. 13–15. ( Article online. In: zeit.de, Bezahlschranke.)
  • Walter Arlen: The voice of a Viennese composer from exile. Artist portrait (with quotes from Walter Arlen). In: magazine. Top stories, events and artist portraits from the world of Gramola, July 15, 2020. ( Article online. In: Gramola.at. )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the biographical information see also Adonka Evelyn and Anderl Gabriele: Jüdisches Leben in der Wiener Vorstadt. Ottakring and Hernals. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-85476-389-5 , pp. 102–106, as well as in the artist portrait in the magazine von Gramola, July 2020 (see #Literature ).
  2. ↑ For the above see the booklet accompanying the CD Walter Arlen: It works differently, published in the series “exilarte” by Gramola 98946/47.
  3. ↑ a b Archive reports of the town hall correspondence , accessed on July 28, 2020:
  4. ↑ Music as a memory. Martin Arlen. A discussion concert. Walter Arlen in conversation with: Michael Kerbler. Matinee in the Vienna Volkstheater on November 6th, 2011, together with the Austrian Parliament , the City of Vienna and exil.arte. ( Event flyer (PDF; 890 kB). In: Parliament's website, accessed on July 28, 2020.) At the same time: In conversation. Series in Ö1 , broadcast on November 10, 2011.
  5. ↑ a b Bad Sauerbrunn: honorary citizenship for 100-year-olds. Retrieved August 5, 2020 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e artist portrait in the magazine of Gramola, July 2020 (see #Literature ).
  7. ^ Pritzker family - American business family. Entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica as amended on December 22, 2010, accessed on July 28, 2020.
  8. ^ Composer Walter Arlen, short biography and list of works. In: exil.arte. International database of artistic bequests. University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna , exil.arte Center for Persecuted Music of the mdw (publisher) , undated , accessed on July 28, 2020.
  9. ↑ Composer and music critic Walter Arlen honored in parliament Arlen: Art has reconciled me with Austria. In: APA-OTS - dispatch of parliamentary correspondence, October 13, 2008, accessed on July 28, 2020.
  10. ↑ List of decorations awarded for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 to April 2012. In: 10542 / AB XXIV. GP - Inquiry response, p. 1829 (PDF; 6.9 MB).
  11. ↑ Golden Town Hall Man for Walter Arlen at the Ottakring “Networking Cocktail”. In: APA-OTS broadcast of the SPÖ Vienna City Hall Club, May 8, 2015, accessed on July 28, 2020.
  12. ^ The siblings Walter Arlen and Edith Arlen (1925–2012). Video from the Burgenland Research Association (BFG) on vimeo.com , 11:14 min, uploaded around 2014, accessed on July 28, 2020.
  13. ^ The first century of Walter Arlen. As well as: Press release (PDF) In: Website of the film distributor filmdelights, accessed on July 28, 2020: “Walter Arlen is now almost 100 years old - and the whole of the last century will come true again in his stories and in his music. From the 'blue light of the last tram' in Vienna to the golden sunsets in Los Angeles. "
  14. ↑ Features: The First Century of Walter Arlen. In: Website of the Viennale, 2018, accessed on July 28, 2020.
  15. ^ Brigitta Maczek: Ottakring & Hernals. Jewish life in the Vienna suburbs. In: brunnenviertler. Interest group of merchants Brunnenviertel in Neulerchenfeld (ed.), December 2013 edition, pp. 10–11. ( Full text online at Yumpu.com, accessed July 28, 2020.)
personal data
SURNAME Arlen, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aptowitzer, Walter (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian and American music critic, music teacher and composer, expellee from National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna