William Hilsley

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William Hilsley , born William Josef Hildesheimer (born December 15, 1911 in London ; died January 12, 2003 at Beverweerd Castle in Werkhoven in the province of Utrecht , Netherlands ) was a German-British composer , musician and music teacher . He grew up in Germany, then emigrated to the Netherlands, where he continued to live after his internment in Germany. He is best known for his works composed and performed in the internment camps.

Life

School time and studies in Germany

William (Billy) Hilsley, the name under which he is remembered as a musician and composer to this day, was born in 1911 in London as William Josef Hildesheimer. His Jewish parents, who divorced shortly after his birth, were Adolf Hildesheimer (born 1860) and his wife Frida (1875–1952), née Heimann. At least the son Kurt, born in 1901, still comes from the marriage.

In 1914 Frida Hildesheimer left England with her sons Kurt and William and moved to Berlin. Here William later attended the Hohenzollern grammar school, where he also enjoyed the Quaker diet during the inflationary years and thus had his “first and life-changing encounter with the Quakers”. Another “life changing” encounter also took place during these years. Wolfgang Frommel “got to know the 13-year-old Billy and his mother Frida Hildesheimer through their friends and actors Paul and Lotte Bildt in Berlin”. Frommel wrote about this in a letter to his parents on February 17, 1924: “This year I am almost every day with little Billi Hildesheimer, work with him in French and experience the most unheard of human miracles.” William Hilsley was living with his mother in Bavaria at the time Quarter of Berlin where many prominent Jews lived. “The mother had studied with one of Liszt's students; People from the Stefan-George circle or the Minister of Culture Becker came and went in and out of the house. ”“ Frida loved her son and his tutor Wolfgang [Frommel] with the same vehemence and devotion. ” Friedrich W. Buri , who was with us for some time in 1937 Frida Hildesheimer lived and wrote that she was a sought-after English teacher: “She gave private lessons and courses for small groups of Jewish people who wanted to leave Germany as soon as possible to emigrate to a country where they would have to speak English. Frida's crash courses were famous in the west of Berlin, they were crowded with more students than they could accommodate. "

From then on, the life paths of Wolfgang Frommel and William Hilsley were closely linked, so closely that their relationship is often compared with those within the George circle : “In addition, Gothein u. F. a bund. Circle around you, which resembled George's in its approach (with Achim and Hasso Akermann, Cyril Hildesheimer and others). "

Hilsley first left Berlin and attended the Schloss Salem school , where he graduated from high school in 1930. He then returned to Berlin and studied at the State Academy for Church and School Music . Hilsley was now firmly integrated into the circle around Wolfgang Frommel, who lived with Frida Hildesheimer in 1934, and was one of Frommel's constant companions. The friendship with Adolf Wongtschowski ('Buri', 1919–1999) must also have arisen during this time, because “alongside Billy Hildesheimer, whom he [Frommel] still taught as a tutor in the 1920s, Buri was the most attentive Jewish pupil of that time ".

Years in Eerde

The 91-year-old music teacher Billy Hilsley, who was still "revered by his former students in 2002," left Germany in 1935 and went to the Quaker School in Eerde as a music teacher . How this came about can be seen in the estate of Hildegard Feidel-Mertz in the German Exile Archive. There is a transcript of a tape interview with William Hilsley from March 30, 1981. Among other things, he tells how Eva Warburg put him in Eerde, with whose sister Ingrid he went to school in Salem. Eva's and Ingrid's younger sister Noni was a student in Eerde. Her cousin, Max A. Warburg, was a teacher there.

Hilsley arrived in Eerde on January 28, 1935, and what Katharina Petersen , the headmistress at the time, was able to offer him wasn't amazing: No salary, but pocket money, a room of his own, food and laundry. [..] We have a piano and a grand piano. [..] How the school will survive financially is quite uncertain, but if you have the courage to join us, please do. The young refugee from Nazi Germany stayed.

In 1962 Katharina Petersen still remembers Billy Hilsley with a lot of enthusiasm:

“And then one day a very young, slim, tall man stood there whose face showed that he had matured mentally and spiritually beyond his years. That was Billy. We held him tight. And what a wonderful sourdough we had won with him for the sometimes tough school dough. How did he loosen up everyday life, how varied did he introduce the school week on Mondays, what highlights were the festivals he designed! Young as he was, with no experience in schools - he held his place with ease right from the start next to such talented directors as Kurt Neuse and Max Warburg were. [..] O noble music, o dear teacher Billy! "

Eerde Castle, formerly the seat of the Eerde Quaker School

Katharina Petersen resigned the school administration in 1938 and returned to Germany. Her successor as headmaster was Kurt Neuse, but he was only provisionally and this provisional status was never changed. Hans A. Schmitt, formerly a student in Eerde himself and later a German-American historian, suspects what could have been the reason for this:

"One reason may have been his conflict with Dutch Friends resulting from development that began with the arrival of William Hilsley. This talented teacher had a number of friends who belonged to the circle of the poet Stefan George , a group noted not only for its elitist views but also its homoerotic preferences. Some of these men, notably the peripatetic poet Wolfgang Frommel, visited Eerde, and in Frommel's case attracted some of the older students to their brilliant lectures. Piet Kappers and his Dutch confreres had nightmares of Eerde becoming a hangout for homosexual intelletuals, and Kappers asked Kurt Neuse to forbid Frommel access to school grounds. Neuse refused, holding that an individual's sexual preferences, as long as they did not involve students, were his own business. "

Thanks to Kurt Neuse's attitude, Billy Hilsley had two more years until fears of war susperseded fears of moral contamination . He continued to develop his gift, "music is not the game will be, but to teach so that serious and thorough work has been done, both for domestic use as for concerts, at which guests were invited, as for the small chamber works to to whom amateur musicians, piano and violin players from the surrounding area were magnetically drawn to him. The most beautiful thing was that in addition to the aesthetic aspects of his music-making and teaching, healing powers were also released. He found out what was in the boys and girls, stimulated them, restored self-confidence where they had been destroyed. "

Buri describes the work of his friend Hilsley ("Cyril") no less impressed and impressive:

“Cyril felt like the uncrowned king of the castle. Although he did not live much more spacious in his cellar than I did in the attic, all the threads of the Parzen came together in his hermitage . Here he planned and designed the serious hours of fire and cheerful celebrations, which not only formed the fixed climaxes for adults and schoolchildren, according to which the fleeing time was structured; The face of the castle community was also determined by Cyril's activities for visitors from outside. "

Internment period

After the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940, Hilsley, Frommel and Buri tried to flee from Scheveningen to England. They rejected the plan and went into hiding in Amsterdam, where Frommel expressed thoughts of suicide. After the friends had talked him out of this, they went back to Eerde. The British citizen William Hilsley was arrested here on July 25, 1940. He later described it as follows:

"V. WH brought from the bandstand. Rad after O. Baroness v. P. in the anteroom. Arrested by the mayor. Telephone with Buri. Cell at Marechaussée. Police cell. Buri with suitcases late in the evening. "

Hilsley was first interned in the Dutch camp Schoorl before he was transferred to a civilian internment camp in the German Reich together with other British non-combatants. This camp was located in Tost in Upper Silesia, where it remained until the spring of 1942. At the same time as he was interned there, the writer PG Wodehouse , of whom the saying has been passed down in this context: "If this is Upper Silesia, one wonders what Lower Silesia must be ..."

Hilsley, who traced his musical influences back to his school days in Salem, began his "career" as a camp musician initially with the performance of classical music. After a violent argument with other inmates, he then tried other things: pantomimes, fairy tale performances with music and costumes, cabaret, musicals. He saw it as his task to bring the other internees into a happy mood through music. And he began to compose.

His status as a civil internee granted him a certain protection and also greater freedom of movement. The camp was monitored by aid organizations from neutral countries and the prisoners were encouraged to develop leisure activities including a variety of educational, theatrical, and musical programs . Hilsley made good use of the possibilities and played the piano regularly. He built a flourishing music scene with other internees in four different camps. Since Hilsley was adept at various aspects of musical production and staging, he immediately became involved in preparing concerts and staged cabaret shows.

Relatively humane conditions seem to have prevailed in camp Tost, which Hilsley attributes primarily to the camp commandant, Lieutenant Colonel Buchert, “a man with a good German mentality who somehow still existed. He was a real gentleman. ”The next episode told by Hilsley is:“ In the Tost camp we didn't have an instrument at first. The lieutenant colonel suggested buying or renting instruments in the nearby town of Gleiwitz . I don't know how it was paid for. We had to give up our money and instead got storage money , ten a week. Maybe it was this collected money that paid for the wing. The Germans were happy that we wanted to give musical performances. Most of all, they wanted the camp's affairs to be calm and smooth. There should be no revolt. So the lieutenant colonel took me to Gleiwitz in his car. He had to do some shopping for himself too, so at one point I was alone in his car. I could have gone away. I didn't have a passport, but at least I spoke German fluently. I would have come a long way. Still, I stayed in the car. The lieutenant colonel was such a decent person, almost a friend, I was obliged to him. "

The story of this further progress: “The first wing that came was not good, it was tuned to a height that was unusable for us. I sent it back and we got another one. That was the central instrument for our performances. We had a good cellist who had brought his instrument to the camp, an oboist, singer, actor, dancer. We got music paper through the YMCA , which inspected all internment camps. ”The work of the YMCA was of immense importance to Hilsley and his fellow inmates.

It is also thanks to the YMCA and its colleague Henry Söderberg that Hilsley's musical commitment was able to develop in the camp and that his music became known "beyond the barbed wire" and was preserved for posterity.

In mid-1942 Hilsley was transferred from Tost to Kreuzburg (Upper Silesia) as an internee of the Jewish faith . “In June 1942 the time had come. All Jews and half-Jews had to go to the Kreuzburg camp, thirty kilometers north of Auschwitz. It so happened that all pianists were Jews, and that meant the end of musical life for Tost. In Kreuzburg we were just busy with Ghost Train , a large production for which I had composed the piano music, when one day our friends from Tost stood outside the barbed wire and asked if they could join us in the camp. They were all non-Jews, but they wanted to be with us. As a result, Kreuzburg was immediately no longer a Jewish camp. We also performed Ghost Train in another camp, Lamsdorf , a camp for British military prisoners. We were brought there by the camp administration. After the performance we went back to our own camp. ”In a letter dated July 26, 1944 to the nurse Noni Warburg, who lives in Sweden and a former student from Eerde, Hilsley reports about this unusual excursion to another prison camp:

“We had three very interesting weeks at the POW Camp, played our Ghost Train every evening in front of about 700 with great success and gave a series of classically easy concerts. As you can imagine, the camp [Lamsdorf] is huge and you feel much freer there than in our 'rabbit hole', but the living conditions in the barracks there are very different from those in our buildings here. You can find people from all parts of the Empire there, and some barracks, such as those of the Greeks, South Africans and Palestinians, are worth seeing. They have excellent 'spirit' and almost all of them look healthy and not malnourished. "

In gratitude for the non-Jewish prisoners who had come voluntarily to Kreuzburg and offered him as Jews greater protection, and as a Christmas Hilsley composed Missa for a male choir without instrumental accompaniment. For Patrick Henry this piece is a jewel that is completely different from any kind of music that was composed in a German camp during the war. It clarifies Hilsley's exquisite musical rhetoric, which cannot be assigned to a particular time or a particular national, ethnic or religious style. But the most unlikely event for the time was still pending, a radio broadcast, recorded by Swedish Radio for its internationally broadcast program 'From behind Barbed Wire', which documented life in prisoner of war and civilian internment camps by means of recorded musical performances. For a broadcast from Kreuzburg in July 1944, William Hilsley and fellow inmate Geoffrey Lewis Navada performed an African-American spiritual: 'Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt's land. Tell old Pharaoh to let my people go! ' Hilsley himself accentuates the memory a little differently: “The representative of the YMCA had taken the score of my fantasy for oboe to Sweden. One day I got a clipp of newspaper announcing a radio broadcast of my imagination. I handed the clipping over to the camp commandant at the time. It wasn't Buchert, he was already gone. At first he was against it, saying I couldn't hear that, but later I was called to the officers' department. 'Number 180, come here' it sounded. We found Radio Stockholm just as the power went out shortly before the broadcast. Air raid. It usually takes a long time. Half a minute later the lights blinked again. My oboe fantasy came from the speakers. A nice achievement, but played a little too slowly. "

After the evacuation of the Kreuzburg camp on January 19, 1945 and a dangerous train journey through war-torn Germany which was still exposed to air raids, Hilsey and his comrades reached the internment camp in Spittal an der Drau on January 29, 1945 . In a letter dated February 5, 1945 to his Swedish friend Noni Warburg, he joked about this move from Kreuzburg to Spittal: “Yes Noni, now your thoughts have to look for me in another part of Europe. 'Be an internal and see the world!' “On May 2nd, rumors grew in Spittal that the war was coming to an end, and on May 3rd, 1945 the liberation took place:

"3. May: Go to the ballroom at 6 in the morning, play Beethoven Andante op. 10 and two chorales, read Psalm 103 and Stern. - Meanwhile there is morning roll call that I don't know about, everyone stands for 1/2 hour because someone is missing! Fetched by the sergeant major. - The guards are all still standing (for our protection); the whole headquarters are still here. Tins are issued unopened. A Swiss arrives as a representative of the protecting power and tells us that we are not allowed to leave the camp until the occupation army is here. Our commandant hands over the camp to a sergeant major from the west camp. He says that he has English guards for our camp in case the German guards leave. Doctor Hayn takes over the management of our camp. We are therefore subject to the engl. Military authorities. In the camp, everything is proceeding properly with still restrained joy. We expect the americans. Tanks every hour. Radio sets are brought into the camp. It's all very incomprehensible.
4th of May: We get our money, papers, documents and - passports back. We get a wireless-set for our room, we hear the BBC We hear armies in Holland have capitulated! Tommies from the Westlager here to guard the camp. Strict disciplinary orders from Cpt. Hayn, but nevertheless quite a number drunk. "

Henry Söderberg, who had meanwhile come to the Spittal camp and also witnessed its liberation there by the 8th British Army, met Hilsley again there and remembers:

“During the last hectic and chaotic weeks of the war I suddenly found myself among the crew of the former Silesian Kreuzburg camp, now far deep down in the Austrian Alps in the town of Spittal an the border to Italy! Here I met William [Hilsley] again. I became a voluntary inmate in his camp. I could stay inside the camp and witness its liberation by the 8th British Army during the first week of May 1945. Those days were exciting - to say the least. But William and his music-making friends, in spite of the chaos and unrest all around, continued to play and sing for us. They were a constant source of inspiration and encouragement to their fellow prisoners in the midst of a dissolving world on the verge of recreation. I said good-bye to William and his internment friends in Rome in the middle of May, then thinking we should never meet again. The ex-prisoners were soon repatriated to their home countries. "

Hilsley's break with the past years is marked by his change of language. From May 4th, all further diary entries until arriving in Scotland and boarding the night train from Glasgow to London on June 11th 1945 were made in English. He later summed up his time in the Tost and Kreuzburg camps: “Some called our camp a paradise. Compared to a concentration camp, it might seem that way. We had cigarettes from the Red Cross packs and good coffee with which we bribed the guards. Sometimes we were drunk on the homemade plum brandy, an idea of ​​the older internees who had gained more experience in the First World War. And we had instruments, we had materials to build a theater stage. But we were held captive behind barbed wire. There were those who committed suicide. The food was just enough not to die, and it was really far too little for big eaters. "

Late years

Beverweerd Castle

After the war he returned to the Netherlands. He changed his name to Hilsley because it seemed more appropriate for international tours. Hilsley traveled around Europe and North America as a pianist with Kurt Jooss' ballet for two years and then returned to the Netherlands. During this time I also met old friends from the circle around Wolfgang Frommel, as Friedrich W. Buri reports (who continues to call him "Cyril"):

“The journey with the ballet Jooss through German cities should soon lead him to dance performances in Amsterdam. In Germany, Cyril accompanied the ballets in an English uniform, but in Holland, and later on the tour through America, he sat at the piano in tails. So we saw him again: the whole Amsterdam charity moved across Holland from performance to performance. In particular, we never skipped the shocking ballet 'The Green Table', although we never tired of rewarding the two accompanying pianists with long, loud applause in the full house. "

Hilsley taught again from 1947 on at the school in Eerde and from 1959 on at the international school Beverweerd , one of the two successor institutions of the Quaker School Eerde . After the school closed in 1997, he remained the last resident of Beverweerd Castle and continued to live in the tower room that he had moved into in 1959. He called it: “An ideal living space for a musician.” He owned a Steinway grand piano, which he could buy from the 10,000 marks in compensation that he had received after the Second World War as reparation for 5 years of storage.

Hilsley directed the Dutch premiere of Benjamin Britten's Let’s Make an Opera , and the result was his most important work, the Cantata Seasons , which he visited at the time in the internment camps at the request of Henry Söderberg , who, as a member of the Swedish YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association), visited him and had supported her artistic activity, composed for the fiftieth anniversary of the YMCA Singing Association in 1992. In the text written by Hilsley's friend Ian Gulliford, winter stands for captivity in war, spring for liberation, summer for the abundance of life and love, and autumn for devotion to God. Hilsley and Söderberg met again for the first time in 45 years at this festival. For both of them, a circle of friendship that was never broken closed, and Söderberg sums it up with deep impressions:

"Looking back over those years and recalling the sights of masses of people who were then in circulation - Soldiers, prisoners and refugees - and thinking of the cruel death which many of them met when the Nazis rolled over Europe, I have always regarded it as a miracle that my Jewish friend William could live through those years without being touched or painted by the Germans. The same fate experienced many other prisoners of Jewish background. [..] What saved those people was not any feeling of special mercy from the side of the Germans. These survivors simply had the right passports and belonged to nations which in their turn honored the Geneva Agreement. "

Hilsley recorded life in the camps in a diary that was first published in 1988 under the title When joy and pain. Reminiscences was published. It was an edited version, expanded by later memories, the so-called "Trevignano version". When Hilsley looked for this in his files in order to prepare a new edition of the diary, “the yellowed pages of the original version came to light, which were difficult to read, but conveyed the impression of authenticity through their telegram style, their immediacy and patina. [..] The German musicologist Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Osthoff advised us to publish the original version of the diary, free of all later ingredients, and we followed this advice. ”In 1998 Hilsley himself described the difference between the two publications as follows:“ I wrote a revised version in 1987 in Trevignano. If you compare the two versions, it becomes immediately clear that nothing was written in the original version that could have caused the prisoner great trouble if discovered. So I avoided describing the screeching tone on arrival at Schnoorl camp, the scornful removal of passports, the humiliating 'you' in the address, the commands: open suitcase, shut up, there is order here; Pocket knives, pens, sharp objects, striking weapons, alcohol, onions are strictly prohibited. It also fit into the plan of humiliation that all internees were not allowed to wear their own clothing when they were transported to Germany: the uniform clothing made it easier to keep the herd together. ”In 1999 the diary appeared in a German and a Dutch edition, along with a CD with historical recordings of Hilsley's compositions during the war.

In old age he still appeared in public events. On October 12, 2000, he took part in a talk concert in Berlin. "On Sunday morning [17. June 2001] William Hilsley (Billy Hildesheimer), a ninety-year-old Jewish music teacher from the circle around Wolfgang Frommel and the magazine CASTRUM PELLEGRINI (Amsterdam), told of his life and especially of his time in German internment camps from 1940 to 1945. “And in May 2003 took he, at the age of ninety-one, took part in the fourth meeting of the "Eerde Very Old Pupils (EVOPA)". William Hilsley died on January 12, 2003 in Beverweerd Castle.

Sexual abuse

The fact that William Hilsley was homosexual, as mentioned above, was known at the Quaker School in Eerde , as was the fact that there was a group of male adolescents at the school who were oriented towards Stefan George . Wolfgang Frommel as a self-proclaimed descendant of George was also a welcome guest at this school. The fact that the headmaster at the time accepted all of this as a question of personal sexual inclination sounds liberal, but in retrospect it can only be viewed as a trivialization - not least against the background of several new publications. They do not relate directly to Hilsley's pre-war activity in Eerde, but they do demonstrate the continuity of the sexual assaults he committed during his post-war activity in Eerde and then at Beverweerde Castle. Joke Haverkorn has already drawn attention to Hilsley's sexual misconduct at the school in Eerde she attended between 1949 and 1953 in her book distant memories of W. It became even clearer in a time interview at the end of May 2018.

“Billy Hilsley was a great, much admired music teacher and composer. Actually it was similar to the Odenwald School , only with him it was about music and poetry. I was a girl, thank goodness, but my friends, who were reasonably pretty, got drawn in. The music was especially dangerous for us young people in his concerts: If you were involved with an instrument or as a singer, you were intoxicated by it, and at the same time seduced. The combination was very clever. This music teacher was much more careless than Frommel, he made many young people very unhappy. I experienced that in close proximity. "

Haverkorn leaves no doubt that the boys “chosen” by Hilsley were not willing to have sex with him voluntarily, and then describes the interaction between Wolfgang Frommel and Hilsley:

“The boys were chosen, me too, a couple of women should be part of it. As a girl, I was of course not abused by the music teacher. Frommel came to school and looked at Hilsley's selection. Wolfgang Frommel was always on the lookout for beautiful, young people everywhere. For his ideal goal of a community, his dream state to succeed Stefan George - but of course that was also for his pleasure. "

This was not hidden at school: In school circles, Hilsley's living room in the castle was considered “a room shrouded in legends. It was said that wild orgies were celebrated there with wine, candles and boys. ”But“ when there was unrest at the school in those years because of signs of this supposedly inexpressible 'friendship', I was told by my father, who was now on the board of the school , because some of my friends supposedly got near this dangerous love, I had no idea what it was. I shook off his annoying questions. ”Haverkorn's father was apparently satisfied with his daughter's evasive answer, because she did not report that he or anyone in charge of the school had followed up the matter. Another chance to protect children from abuse was wasted, Hilsley stayed alone in Eerde for many years to continue his criminal activities under the mask of a friendly music teacher.

New allegations against Hilsley came to light through two publications that appeared in Vrij Nederland magazine in 2017 and 2018 . The allegation of sexual abuse was initially raised by the Dutchman Frank Ligtvoet, former cultural attaché in New York, who described himself as a victim of abuse by the Frommel Circle and also referred to sexual assault by Hilsley. The two journalists Harm Ede Botje and Sander Donkers used this article and added their own research to it. Ligtvoet's accusation culminates in the claim that older men began sexual abuse, pederasty , of boys and young men under the guise of pedagogical eros - disguised by an ideology adopted from the George circle . The central idea was that the older friend had to awaken the divine in the younger, whereby this "awakening" did not exclude sexual acts.

“Most of the men in the Frommel district were heterosexual. In their early years they were 'discovered' by Frommel, or by friends of Frommel, or by friends of friends of Frommel, then brought up erotically with the Star of the Covenant - or shall we now say 'prepared' - and finally inaugurated. What this initiation meant depended on the sexual orientation or preference of the older friend. It could be just a kiss. Frommel preferred the sexual variant and - as far as could be ascertained - had always practiced it himself. As can be seen from various sources, Frommel had every kind of sexuality: with most of the people in his immediate environment - men and women of all ages - he had relationships or at least slept with them, desired or undesired. "

Both Ligtvoet as well as Botje and Donkers report several cases in which the relationships between the older man and a boy came about with the tolerance of the parents or even initiated by them (mostly the fathers who had already undergone such "upbringing" themselves) had been. "The stories of parents as confidantes are among the hardest: Flattered to participate in the aura of an alleged cultural elite, they approved of the abuse of their own child." This knowledge must also be assumed in the case of Hilsley's mother, who, as described above, lived in an artistically and intellectually shaped Berlin milieu, loved Frommel himself, and left her then thirteen-year-old son to him. In what form Frommel Die Fackel (so Frommel's best-known poem, which can also be read as a “manual”, for the application of which there are many examples in the two Vrij Nederland articles: The duty of every “consecrated” to have his own “disciple "And instruct them in the secrets. Or as Ligtvoet describes it in reference to George:" The Georgian educational model emerged in a circle through the so-called Maximin experience: the older friend had to awaken the divine in the younger. ") To Hilsley and A little later passed on to Buri is not known, only Frommel's crush on the boy. It was Frommel who put the two of them at the Eerde Quaker School , where they both immersed themselves in a circle of like-minded people and Hilsley, according to Buri, became a puller. Ligtvoet assumes that Hilsley not only acted as the celebrated young music teacher in Eerde, but also as a sexual sex offender who found his first victims here:

“Hilsley, who even after his death in 2003 still enjoys a good reputation as a teacher in Beverweerd, had already produced sacrifices while teaching at the Eerde boarding school in Ommen, where he taught from 1935. At Hilsley's invitation, Frommel was always present in Eerde. The school soon became a 'fish pond' for Frommel's circle: the first generation of Frommelians during and after the war consisted largely of pupils and former pupils from Eerde. "

Ligtvoet writes that he himself had contact with two Hilsley victims from his time in Eerde, but they could not or would no longer speak publicly about their experiences, and he mentions a third victim who is said to have committed suicide.

Ligtvoet quotes a then eleven-year-old boy who was abused in the international school Beverweerd by the already seventy-year-old Hilsley, and also reports on other adults, teachers, who molested boys there. One of these teachers was still teaching at a boarding school in 2017. Further cases of Hilsley's attacks can also be found in Botje and Donkers, who use the example of the former Beverweerd student Paul Vissers to give an insight into Hilsley's systematic approach to addicts. Visser was thirteen when he started school. In the introductory phase, he was invited and harassed by Hilsley in his tower room. Sex came later, but then regularly. “The visits to the tower room were regular, and there was real sex, during which he was also penetrated by the teacher . Soon a third person came into play, a former Beverweerd student who was a younger friend of Hilsley's when he was in school. At Hilsley's insistence, 23-year-old Marnix had returned to school to work as a 'housefather'. He also turned out to be an abuser of Visser. "

Botje and Donkers also describe a particularly unpleasant case that shows how Hilsley's “dark shadow” could have an impact across generations without being perceived as such by those affected. They tell of a boy whom they named Lodewijk in their article. His parents sent him on vacation to Italy in the mid-1970s - to see Hilsley and an English teacher he was friends with. Lodewijk's father was closely connected to Hilsley, he had “named his son by the middle name after the man who had 'consecrated' him at the time, whom he regarded as his spiritual father, William Hilsley. Lodewijk was brought up with the idea that there is a difference between ordinary people and the 'friends' of the castrum ”. He accepted an education to be a “chosen one”, which was forced by George readings, and ultimately also the journey to the south. So far, apart from kisses, there had been no other intimacies between Loudewijk and his “educator”, the English teacher. That changed after a visit to St. Peter's Basilica . “I really had sex with these teachers that same afternoon. That made me a 'friend', that was my reward. It was festively celebrated with champagne. I got a little rabbit statue because that was the symbol of the phallus . And then, to my horror, I discovered that it didn't stop immediately, but that it had to happen every day. ”Lodewijk then lived in the Castrum district in Amsterdam for seven years and still had sex with several men. The fact that he was able to get out of this environment late was explained by the Stockholm Syndrome . “I was a part of it and thought it was okay. Castrum was my identity. I identified myself with the attacker. By thinking a lot about men, I tried to make them sexually attractive, even though I knew deep down that it was impossible. "

Hilsley passed away with great esteem. In 2017, Frank Ligtvoet sums up the abuse committed against him and many other boys under the guise of educational eros : “The erotic upbringing, which was the starting point for everything, did me, like my fellow sufferers, a lot of damage. For 30 years I've struggled to get rid of what happened to me in just over 10 years. That's two thirds of my life. And my husband's. ”In addition, Joke Haverkorn:

“In the 1950s, we were much 'minors' at that age than the adolescents are today. Today young people are much more mature and can defend themselves better. One of the consequences could be the destruction of a developing sexual identity in boys, especially if they were heterosexual. The sex wasn't voluntary, but was imposed by an authority that had guided you. As a 14- or 15-year-old you couldn't handle it. "

Works

Music (selection)

William Hilsley composed among other things in the Kreuzburg internment camp

  • The Turning World piano four-handed suite
  • the Fantasy Dance Pieces for oboe (or violin) and viola
  • the Fantasy On a provençal Christmas Carol for oboe and string quartet
  • the Mass Missa for male choir
  • What is floating and lasting for a mixed choir

After the war:

  • the cantata Seasons for soprano, baritone, choir and orchestra

Publications

  • When joy and pain develop. Reminiscences. Internationale School Beverweerd, Werkhoven, 1988. (There is no German evidence for this book in WorldCat.)
  • Music behind the barbed wire. Diary of an interned musician 1940–1945. Ulrich Bornemann, Karlhans Kluncker, Rénald Ruiter (eds.). Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 1999, ISBN 3-932981-48-0 . (There is also a CD with the title Music Behind the Barbed Wire for this book .)
  • Experience as a civilian internee under the Nazi regime. Compiled by Gottfried Eberle. in: mr-Mitteilungen, No. 39, musica reanimata. Association for the rediscovery of Nazi persecuted composers and their works V., Berlin, 2001, pp. 1-7.
  • Place of residence, emigration, exile: a contemporary witness reports from 1911 to 2001. Stichting Kasteelconcerten Beverweerd, Utrecht 2001, ISBN 90-806818-1-4 .

Sound carrier

Works by William Hilsley have been published on the following CDs:

  • Vocal and instrumental music . This CD from 1996 brings together six pieces by William Hilsley: On a provençal christmas carol , Fantasy for oboe, violin [2], viola and violoncello, Wilt heden nu treden , improvisation for piano, Missa , Mass for male choir, Seasons , Stundenweiser , Verwehendes and what remains
  • KZ Musik - Encyclopedia of Music Composed in Concentration Camps (1933–1945) , Vol. 10, contains pieces by William Hilsley, 6 Songs for Baritone and Piano and The Turning World , in addition to pieces by other composers

An excerpt from a historical performance of The Turning World can be heard on the Internet (with Dutch introduction).

In the piano duo with Günther Louegk, William Hilsley recorded parts from The Green Table by Kurt Jooss , with whom he was personally acquainted.

literature

  • Berthold Hegner: The international Quaker School Eerde - a school meeting 60 years after the school closed. In: Exil, Volume 22, 2002, Issue 2, pp. 73–77
  • Patrick Henry: Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis. The Catholic University of America Press, Washington DC 2014, ISBN 978-0-8132-2589-0 . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Claus Victor Bock : Wolfgang Frommel in his letters to his parents 1920–1959. Castrum Peregrini Presse, Amsterdam, 1997, ISBN 90-6034-098-1 and ISBN 978-3-8353-0373-7
  • Claus Victor Bock: In hiding among friends. A report. Amsterdam 1942-1945. Castrum-Peregrini-Presse, Amsterdam, several editions, ISBN 90-6034-053-1 . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Günter Baumann: Poetry as a way of life. Wolfgang Frommel between George-Kreis and Castrum Peregrini. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-8260-1112-0 .
  • Peter Budde: Katharina Petersen and the Quaker School Eerde. A documentary collage. In: Monika Lehmann, Hermann Schnorbach (ed.): Enlightenment as a learning process. Festschrift for Hildegard Feidel-Mertz. dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-7638-0186-3 , pp. 86-101.
  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Estate in the German Exile Archive
  • Hans A. Schmitt: Quaker Efforts to Rescue Children from Nazi Education and Discrimination: The International Quakerschool Eerde. In: Quaker History, Vol. 85, No. 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 45-57.
  • Hans A. Schmitt: Quakers and Nazis. Inner light in outer darkness. University of Missouri Press, Columbia / London 1997, ISBN 0-8262-1134-8 .
  • Marita Keilson-Lauritz : Centaurs love: sideways of love for men in the 20th century. Männerschwarm Verlag, Hamburg, 2013, ISBN 978-3-86300-143-8 . ( limited preview in Google Book search)
  • Nick Strimple: Choral Music in the Twentieth Century. Amadeus Press, 2005, ISBN 1-57467-074-3 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  • Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. WF a reminder report. Edited and with an afterword by Stephan C. Bischoff. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86650-068-6 . (The title is borrowed from the poem Die Fackel by Wolfgang Frommel.)
  • In memoriam William Hilsley. In: mr-Mitteilungen, No. 47, musica reanimata. Association for the rediscovery of Nazi persecuted composers and their works V., Berlin 2003, pp. 22-23.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "After the war I heard from my mother that my name should actually have been Josef Ben Mendel Hallevi." (Quoted from Monic Slingerland: De oorlog achter de vleugel )
  2. ↑ The family environment referred to here was largely reconstructed from genealogical databases. After that it would be possible that the marriage of Adolf and Frida Hildesheimer also had other children. In addition to Kurt, the daughters Meta (1894–1898) and Else are also mentioned. Kurt Hildesheimer is mentioned by Wolfgang Frommel , for example in a letter dated September 15, 1925 from Wijk-aan-Zee: “I had a nice evening at the zoo with Billi - another with Lotte Bildt. Thanks to Kurt Hildesheimer at the American consulate, the passport question was dealt with quickly. On Sunday, August 30th, I arrived in Enschede with the poet Peter Endt. ”(Claus Victor Bock: Wolfgang Frommel in his letters to his parents 1920–1959, p. 56). A reference to this activity of Kurt Hildesheimer in the American consulate can also be found in The News-Herald from Franklin ( Pennsylvania ) of April 28, 1924, p. 8, where it says: “About 160 firms are manufacturing radio appartus in Germany, reports Kurt Hildesheimer, clerk to the American commercial .attache in Berlin. ”The“ Billi ”mentioned in the letter from Wolfgang Frommel is William Hilsley, which we will come back to later.
    Hilsley apparently owed his British citizenship, which was of great use to Hilsley during his internment in the 1940s, to his father, who, unlike his wife, had accepted it, Hilsley said in an interview of March 30, 1981, which is in the estate by Hildegard Feidel-Mertz (see literature). In the introduction to William Hilsley: Music behind the Barbed Wire , p. 9, the change of his citizenship is brought up in connection with his move to the Netherlands: “His birth in London entitled him to take on English citizenship. So he received an English passport and was initially safe as a Jew in Holland. ”It is unclear how close the ties between the German-Jewish Hildesheimer family and the Quakers were.
  3. ^ J. Harts: Heren en Vrouwen van Beverweerd en Odijk. P. 12. In other sources it is said, however, that he was already born into a Quaker family.
  4. ^ Claus Victor Bock: Wolfgang Frommel in his letters to the parents 1920-1959. P. 199.
  5. ^ Claus Victor Bock: Wolfgang Frommel in his letters to the parents 1920-1959. P. 49.
  6. ^ Biographical note on William Hilsley: Experiences as a civilian internee under the Nazi regime. P. 1.
  7. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 70.
  8. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 79. Frida Hildesheimer emigrated to London in 1939 and saw the outbreak of war in Switzerland, where she was visiting her other son and his family. After the war she lived with William Hilsley in Eerde, where she died in 1952. See William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. P. 23 (note 13)
  9. ↑ Frommel, Wolfgang. In: Killy Literature Lexicon . Authors and works from the German-speaking cultural area. Volume 4: Fri-Hap. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-021389-8 , p. 62 ( limited preview in the Google book search. The name "Cyril" was given to Hildesheimer / Hilsley goes back to Frommel).
  10. ↑ That must have been 1925, because in the article by Monic Slingerland: De oorlog achter de vleugel he says that he went to Salem when he was fourteen.
  11. ↑ The placement in Salem was apparently carried out by Wolfgang Frommel: Biographical note on William Hilsley: Experiences as a civilian interned under the Nazi regime. S. 1. The friendship between Hilsley and Hellmut Becker also stems from their school days in Salem . (William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. P. 49, note 53.
  12. ^ Günter Baumann: Poetry as a way of life , p. 198.
  13. ↑ Günter Baumann, p. 198.
  14. ↑ On the life and fate of Adolf Wongtschowski / Friedrich W. Buri compare: Untergetaucht um aufzaufuchen . “Although in Frommel's circle of friends newly invented names were often 'awarded', the name 'Buri' comes from the Jewish, but rather German-national youth movement group to which 'Buri' and his brother Kurt Wongtschowski (known as 'Arco') belonged in Frankfurt ; Wolfgang Frommel met Buri, who was 14 years old at the time, in this youth group [..]. ”( Marita Keilson-Lauritz : Kentaurenliebe. p. 137, note 2.)
  15. ↑ Günter Baumann, p. 244.
  16. ^ Berthold Hegner: The international Quaker school Eerde. P. 73.
  17. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Estate in the German Exile Archive
  18. ^ Quotes from Hans A. Schmitt: Quakers and Nazis. P. 83.
  19. ↑ Katharina Petersen, quoted from Peter Budde: Katharina Petersen and the Quäkerschule Eerde. Pp. 95-96.
  20. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Quaker Efforts to Rescue Children from Nazi Education and Discrimination. P. 52.
  21. ↑ Whether Neuse is right when he defends individual sexual preferences of teachers as long as they do not affect students is questionable from today's perspective. The cases of abuse at the Odenwald School , which led to its bankruptcy in 2016, show how, under the guise of “pedagogical eros”, a “quasi-intimate teacher-student relationship” was created that ensured “that the true structures of rule between teachers and students were blurred ”(interview with Oskar Negt in the Frankfurter Rundschau of March 18, 2010, pp. 20-21). The headline above the interview reads: "You closed your eyes - and wanted it". It is difficult to judge what Neuse knew. What is certain, however, is that not only Hilsley and his friend Buri cultivated their “individual's sexual preferences” on Eerde, but also their “foster father” Wolfgang Frommel, who often gave lectures at school and was friends with other teachers (Otto and Edith Reckendorf) , had a homosexual relationship with at least one student, Claus Victor Bock . The following scene takes place in the house of the Reckendorf couple, with whom Frommel stayed in April 1941 during a visit to the Quaker School in Eerde: “We went up to the steep study that the landlord had left the guest with. On the wall made of wooden slats hung the skins of snakes: motionless, forms already stripped off. We faced each other, no one spoke. I was determined to face this solemn, directed look at me. I felt how he penetrated me, now inquiring, now demanding. I remembered the snakes and how they shed their skin. Did I see two eyes or one? I looked for the field between the eyes. Then Wolfgang's face changed its expression. Strange features seemed to take hold of him, and then mine too. A new, much older face loomed eerily close in front of me. Was there anyone else in the room? Was there a third with us when our lips met and the spark jumped into me as a witness? What I had experienced was a victory, but also an obligation, and that could not be interpreted, only realized. "(Claus Victor Bock: Untergetaucht unter Freunde. Pp. 14-15.)
  22. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt, p. 52.
  23. ↑ Katharina Petersen, quoted from Peter Budde: Katharina Petersen and the Quäkerschule Eerde. P. 96.
  24. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 98.
  25. ^ William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. S. 16. 'WH' is Werner Hermanns, the successor of Kurt Neuse as headmaster, 'O.' stands for the place Ommen, to which Eerde Castle belonged, and the Baroness v. P was Mrs. van Pallandt, the wife of the owner of Schloss Eerde.
  26. ↑ The reference to Schoorl comes from Hilsley in the article by Monic Slingerland: De oorlog achter de vleugel. Claus Victor Bock also reports in Hidden Among Friends (p. 13) that Wolfgang Frommel visited Hilsley there.
  27. ↑ Toszek (Tost) is mostly only associated with the NKVD camp Toszek from 1945 on the Internet and in the two Wikipedia articles . On the POW camps: List page there are several entries that show that camps existed in Tost as early as 1940.
  28. ↑ If this is Upper Silesia, one wonders what Lower Silesia must be like… , quoted from a review of PG Wodehouse: A Life in Letters.
  29. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Monic Slingerland: De oorlog achter de vleugel
  30. ^ A b c Patrick Henry: Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis. P. 330.
  31. ↑ Which, however, was also due to the international political framework, which guaranteed internees from Western European countries better protection than, for example, Russian prisoners of war. The German camps for internees from Western European countries and the Commonwealth were allowed to be inspected by two international organizations: the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) / International Red Cross Committee (IRCC) and the Christian Association of Young People (YMCA) / Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) . The basis for this were the rules of the Geneva Convention of 1929 regarding treatment of POWs, a matter of reciprocity. Prisoners kept by nations which had not ratified the Geneva Convention, mainly the Sovjet Union and Japan, could not benefit from the work of international organizations, neither could Russian and political prisoners in Hitler's Germany including those in 'concentration' camps. But Germany was a party to the Convention; work among POWs and civilian internees was allowed. (Henry Söderberg: My Friend William Who Made Music Behind Barbed Wire. In: William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. P. 107)
    The diary entries of the cook Franz H. show how extremely different the conditions in the camps were for Soviet prisoners of war. , who describes how Soviet prisoners of war were treated in transit camp 150 in Dubowitzi near Staraya Russa : “13. October 1941. The prisoners die like flies. The cemetery has been moved. 12 prisoners were dead again this morning. Better dead than prisoner. October 18. M. knocked 2-3 prisoners down again. People who have little to say in their lives discover their talent here to play the ruthless gentleman. How will it be later, everything is taking revenge. October 31. Fate and tragedies continue on. The cold determines that more and more people die. This morning there are over 30 dead there. Again they [the prisoners of war] stand cold in front of the gate and wait for items of clothing that the dead no longer need. You strip them naked. Patient like animals, indifferent and, as one thinks, without any emotion, they accept life. M. said that when he was buried an allegedly dead man moved, he was kicked on the body and the like. Throat that he choked. Otherwise it would have had to be carried back again. November 5th. 50 were dead again this morning. The dead lie around like mice. January 26, 1942. The prisoners whom we have selected for further transport live in the most primitive way. 200 are already dead. Terrible scenes take place there. They eat each other up. One finds dead people who are missing a piece of thigh. Even the brain is eaten. If only I were out of here. ”(Klaus Michael Mallmann, Volker Rieß and Wolfram Pyta (eds.): German East 1939–1945. The Weltanschauung war in photos and texts. WBG Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-534-16023 -1 , p. 164.)
  32. ↑ There are different details about the name. In William Hilsley: Experiences as a Civil Internee under the Nazi Regime , p. 3, Lieutenant Colonel Puchelt is mentioned instead of Lieutenant Colonel Buchert.
  33. ↑ His work was appreciated by the American author J. Frank Diggs, who was interned in Germany himself: The Welcome Swede. Vantage Press, New York 1988, ISBN 0-533-07818-0 .
  34. ↑ Monic Slingerland: De oorlog achter de vleugel For the story of the voluntary transfer of non-Jewish prisoners from Tost to the Kreuzburg camp, see also: Patrick Henry: Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis. P. 330.
  35. ^ William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. P. 102.
  36. ^ Patrick Henry: Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis. Pp. 330-331. See also: Nick Strimple: Choral Music in the Twentieth Century. Pp. 43-44.
  37. ^ William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. P. 103.
  38. ^ William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. Pp. 82-83.
  39. ^ Henry Söderberg: My Friend William Who Made Music Behind Barbed Wire. In: William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. Pp. 108-109.
  40. ↑ This also applies to his correspondence. His letters to Noni Warburg from the time before the liberation of the camp are written in German, then in English. This may also have something to do with the fact that he did not want to offend British or American offices with German notes or letters.
  41. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 186.
  42. ^ In memoriam William Hilsley. P. 23.
  43. ^ Henry Söderberg: My Friend William Who Made Music Behind Barbed Wire. In: William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. P. 109.
  44. ^ Rénald Ruiter, chairman of the Kasteelconcerten Beverweerd foundation, in his foreword to William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. P. 7.
  45. ↑ Quoted from the foreword to William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. P. 7.
  46. ^ William Hilsley: Experiences as a civilian interned under the Nazi regime. P. 7.
  47. ↑ Summer meeting of the Mindener Kreis from June 14 to 17, 2001 in Halberstadt ( Memento from June 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  48. ^ Berthold Hegner: The international Quaker school Eerde. P. 73.
  49. ↑ Compare in particular the section Quäkerschule Eerde # Is it all just a question of “Individual's sexual preferences”?
  50. ↑ a b c Joke Haverkorn van Rijsewijk: "It was an incessant drama".
  51. ^ Joke Haverkorn van Rijswijk: Removed memories of W. P. 18.
  52. ↑ Joke Haverkorn van Rijswijk: Distant memories of W. P. 15-16.
  53. ^ Frank Ligtvoet: In de schaduw van de meester.
  54. ↑ a b Harm Ede Botje, Sander Donkers: Kindermisbruik within the kringen van kunstgenootschap Castrum Peregrini.
  55. ↑ Both articles are only available in Dutch. Julia Encke gives a good overview of her in her FAS article from May 13, 2018: Abuse in the name of Stefan Georges .
  56. ↑ Frank Ligtvoet: In de schaduw van de meester : In de kring van Frommel de meeste men were heteroseksueel. In hun jonge jaren zij door Frommel, of door vrienden van Frommel, of door vrienden van vrienden van Frommel were 'ontdekt', vervolgens erotically opgevoed - of zouden wij nu zeggen groomed - met Der Stern des Bundes en tenslotte geïnitieerd. What the initiative inhield hung van de seksuele geaardheid of seksuele voorkeur van de oudere vriend af. Het kon bij een kus blijven. Frommel pousseerde de seksuele variant en had die - voor zover dat is na te gaan - ook steeds zelf gepraktiseerd. Frommel - blijkt uit verschillende bronnen - pousseerde trouwens elke vorm van seksualiteit: met de meeste mensen in zijn directe omgeving - mannen en vrouwen van elke leeftijd - had hij wel verhoudingen gehad of had er tenminste gevraagd of ongevraagd mee geslapen.
  57. ↑ Julia Encke: Abuse in the name of Georges.
  58. ↑ Frank Ligtvoet: In de schaduw van de meester : Het Georgiaanse opvoedingsmodel kreeg zijn vorm door wat in de Kreis de Maximin Erlebnis zou gaan heten: de oudere vriend moest het goddelijke in de jongere opwekken.
  59. ↑ Frank Ligtvoet: In de schaduw van de meester : Hilsley, who ook na zijn dood in 2003 nog altijd een weldige reputatie heeft als leraar op Beverweerd, had al eerder slachtoffers made tijdens zijn leraarschap op de kostschool Eerde in Ommen, waar35 h lesgaf. Frommel was op uitnodiging van Hilsley een voortdurende aanwezigheid op Eerde. The school is spoedig een 'visvijver' voor Frommels kring: de first generation Frommelianen van tijdens en na de oorlog bestond voor het overgrote deel uit scholieren en oud-scholieren van Eerde.
  60. ^ Frank Ligtvoet: In de schaduw van de meester.
  61. ^ Harm Ede Botje, Sander Donkers: Kindermisbruik within the kringen van kunstgenootschap Castrum Peregrini. The bezoeken aan de torenkamer are regular, en het kwam tot real seks, waarbij hij ook door de leraar will be penetreerd. Al snel kwam he een derde in het spel, een voormalig Leerling van Beverweerd who was in zijn schooljaren Hilsley's jongere vriend was. The 23-year-old Marnix was op aandringen van Hilsley teruggekomen naar de school that he works as 'huisvader'. Ook hij ontpopte zich tot een misbruiker van Visser.
  62. ↑ Quoted from Harm Ede Botje and Sander Donkers: Kindermisbruik binnen de kringen van kunstgenootschap Castrum Peregrini . Ik hoorde er helemaal bij, vond dat ik het went voor mekaar had. Castrum was my identity. Ik identificeerde me met de agressor. Door maar veel aan mannen te think, sample earth ik ze ook seksueel aantrekkelijk te gaan vinden, al wist ik diep vanbinnen dat dat onmogelijk was.
  63. ↑ Frank Ligtvoet: In de schaduw van de meester : De erotic opvoeding die het uitgangspunt van alles was, heeft me, net als mijn lotgenoten, veel kwaad gedaan. Ik ben me al dertig jaar moeizaam aan het ontdoen van wat me in iets meer dan tien jaar is overkomen. Dat is twee derde van mijn leven. En dat van mijn man.
personal data
SURNAME Hilsley, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hildesheimer, William Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British composer, musician and music teacher
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 2003
Place of death Beverweerd Castle , Werkhoven (Bunnik) , Netherlands