Letters Home
Letters Written by a
Young Jewish-Austrian
Musician Killed in World War 1
Translated from the German
by Thomas Dorsett
Kavitha Press, Baltimore 2015 50 pages $10.00
This is what I wrote on the back cover of the book: "The letters reveal a man who, despite his many successes, remained down-to-earth and without a hint of snobbery. After working on this project, I feel that I now have a friend who lived over a century ago; I am pleased to have that privilege."
Also on the back cover is the assessment of Dr. Ray Sprenkle, a composer and professor of musicology at the Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute: "This collection of letters should interest not only musicians and historians, but readers in general. Walter Schwarz comes across as a splendid product of European culture prior to the Great War. The translation is very good, and Dorsett's commentary provides excellent background information."
The back cover also includes the view of Dr. Armin Mruck, Professor Emeritus at Towson University: "The letters bring to life this very talented musician, his family, and the social and political milieu of Central Europe at that time. It is well worth reading."
Walter Schwarz (1886-1914) comes across in these letters as an extraordinary human being, a gifted, successful musician, well liked by people from all classes. His death at twenty-seven during the battle of Grodek, a few months after he received the post of first conductor at a major orchestra, is emblematic of the twentieth century carnage that began with the Great War.
Background
How did I get to translate the letters? Walter was the oldest of ten children; after one of his sisters, Ida, died in a Jewish home for the aged, her son, Hans Heimer, came into possession of the letters as part of his inheritance. She had never mentioned them to him or to anybody else during her lifetime. Hans and I wrote several articles for an English magazine, and eventually began to correspond with each other. When he sent me a copy of the letters, I immediately realized their worth not only as a historic document but also as a portrait of a very winsome personality.
Walter knew how to put his life in order; I confess that I am rather disorganized. The letters languished in my computer for a decade; now, a century after Word War I, I rediscovered them. I always knew they had to appear in print. If not now, when?
Walter Schwarz (1886-1914)
Walter Schwarz was the oldest of ten children. His father, Viktor Schwarz, was a successful businessman; he eventually became the senior director of the largest department store in Innsbruck, Austria. The family was thus upper middle-class. Walter's mother, Rosa, the "Mama," was a musically gifted woman and a dedicated mother to all of her children. I suspect she was especially close to Walter; most of the letters were addressed to her. Viktor died in 1909, when Walter was only 23. Upon his father's death, Walter assumed a fatherly role for his siblings--mostly from afar by means of letters, since Walter was already a professional musician at this time, engaged as an assistant conductor at the municipal theater of Bonn, Germany.
Rosa was, I assume, a good amateur musician, but nothing more than that. Besides her, no one seemed to have musical talent in the family. (The piano, however, had a central role in the Schwarz family. In those days, there were few bourgeois homes without a piano, just as there are virtually no homes without an electronic entertainment system today.) Walter took to the piano, and, during high school, practiced as much as he could. He was soon able to play entire scores of operas; he loved Wagner, and would often entertain the family by playing a opera score on the piano, pausing here and there to explain the plot.
His father, as one might suspect, wanted him to be trained for the family business; Walter received a diploma from a business college in 1905. He soon realized, however, that music was his true vocation. He attended the Academy of Music in Munich; he must have done very well there, for upon graduation he found no difficulty in finding employment. He started as a choir coach for the municipal theater of Stuttgart, then at Karlsruhe. (A municipal theater in Germany, called a Stadttheater, is where operas are performed.) His career continued to advance. He became a conductor at Düsseldorf and then at Bonn. He mentions that the director beamed with joy after reading the reviews of one of his performances. He also had a reputation as an accompanist; he, from time to time, accompanied first-rate singers during concerts in Berlin and elsewhere.
A fateful encounter occurred in 1905 during military training. A soldier called him a "Jewish swine," after which Walter struck him. This incident resulted in a court marshal; Walter was demoted to private without any prospect of advancement. That anti-Semitism was involved here is not to be doubted. As a result of the court marshal, he entered World War 1, despite his great aversion to the military, as a private. although his younger brothers were already officers. He died a few days after the war began during the horrible carnage of the Battle of Grodek.
A few months before his death, Walter secured a major position as first conductor at Bern, Switzerland. Before he was able to fully assume that coveted role, he was dead.
The Letters
The book contains twenty-one letters, written from 1909 until 1914. I have annotated them all, explaining many of Walter's references to contemporary authors and to the music he performed.
What a winsome personality comes across in the letters! A gifted musician, successful at an early age; independent and savvy in career development; loving, dedicated to his family; responsible; literary, well-read; confident, a born leader, able to adjust to his new social situation without any hesitation; gregarious, down=to-earth without a trace of snobbery-and yes, pedantic at times, and, artistically speaking, certainly not avant garde, Walter Schwarz deserves to be remembered, no doubt about that.
The letters, addressed mostly to his mother and sometimes to his siblings, were never meant to be read by anyone outside the family. They thus provide an important, intimate portrait of life in a well-to-do Jewish family in Austria (then Austria-Hungary) before the Great War. There is also a disadvantage. A large part of the letters deals with rather mundane issues of family life--Walter assumed the role of ersatz-father at age 23, when his father, Viktor Schwarz, died. Walter, however, took care to write well, and even when he's exhorting a sibling to do better--sometimes sternly, but always lovingly--the letters are historically important. What did many families do at a time when there was no TV, mobile phones or computers? (There is no evidence that the Schwarz family owned a car or a telephone.) What did they do? They read. They conversed. They wrote letters. They made music. They spent a good deal of time outdoors. Few would like to return to those times, but in our age when technology is often used in a very unbalanced way, the letters reveal how much has been lost.
Walter was the genius of the family. This combined with the fact that his humility prevented him from boasting about his career even to his family limited the amount of discussion of his musical career in the letters. We would have liked more details about his musical life, no doubt about that. But many references to his career are present, such as this excerpt from letter 14, dated March 13, 1910:
I turn to you now, full of joy and gratitude, after the most beautiful evening of my activity here. The difficult work proceeded almost effortlessly. All the many days and night that I dedicated to rehearsing Franz von Suppé's Boccaccio...all my efforts were amply rewarded....Nothing of this, however, can be compared to seeing my ability to conduct for the first time. The orchestra is an infinitely more beautiful and colorful instrument than the one I've been used to till now, the piano. To subordinate by my interpretation all the idiosyncrasies and views of the players, and yet to enable the musicians to forget that they are being led--this is my artistic ideal as a conductor. What I achieved at the first performance you can ascertain from the reviews, which the director, beaming with joy, showed to me today. The chorus that I directed was also quite proud.
Walter wasn't even twenty-four at the time!
Although we would have liked more, there are many such gems in the letters. I especially like the recounting of Walter and a professor of music sight-reading a difficult piece by Schubert for piano, four hands, to the delight of the guests at a dinner party.
The letters contain important historical references and glimpses into how life was then as well. With irony, he comments on an anti-Semitic boycott of the family store in a letter from 1909:
I am pleased to hear that those that oppose our business support us so well...It seems that these people are quite upright, because they treat us justly; perhaps they are not to blame that they have this spleen, since they have come into the world to be known as anti-Semites. They have to be something, since in Austria one isn't worth much unless one belongs to a party.
Prophetic words! This appears to have been an isolated incident. Very important to note, however, is what the letters lack: any sense of political involvement. Even as late as February 1914, the month of the last letter, Walter apparently was completely unaware of the gathering political storm that would soon sweep him from the earth. This lack of political engagement was typical of many educated persons of that time.
The sections quoted here are only a small sample of the many interesting passages contained in this book. Letters Home provides a fascinating portrait of a talented man thriving in the halcyon days of ante bellum Europe, immediately before its destruction in the Great War; they are a treasure. As Dr. Ray Sprenkle said, "These letters should interest not only musicians and historians, but readers in general." Of this I have no doubt.
I will never forget Walter Schwarz. He has become one of my best friends, even though he died more than a century ago. I have no doubt that the world would have heard a lot more from Walter Schwarz if his life hadn't been cut short by a senseless war. These letters are therefore also a warning. Walter's life was a blessing; his death was a crime. How many Walters are still being killed?
The book is available for ten dollars postpaid. Please let me know in the comment section if you're interested.
Letters Written by a
Young Jewish-Austrian
Musician Killed in World War 1
Translated from the German
by Thomas Dorsett
Kavitha Press, Baltimore 2015 50 pages $10.00
This is what I wrote on the back cover of the book: "The letters reveal a man who, despite his many successes, remained down-to-earth and without a hint of snobbery. After working on this project, I feel that I now have a friend who lived over a century ago; I am pleased to have that privilege."
Also on the back cover is the assessment of Dr. Ray Sprenkle, a composer and professor of musicology at the Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute: "This collection of letters should interest not only musicians and historians, but readers in general. Walter Schwarz comes across as a splendid product of European culture prior to the Great War. The translation is very good, and Dorsett's commentary provides excellent background information."
The back cover also includes the view of Dr. Armin Mruck, Professor Emeritus at Towson University: "The letters bring to life this very talented musician, his family, and the social and political milieu of Central Europe at that time. It is well worth reading."
Walter Schwarz (1886-1914) comes across in these letters as an extraordinary human being, a gifted, successful musician, well liked by people from all classes. His death at twenty-seven during the battle of Grodek, a few months after he received the post of first conductor at a major orchestra, is emblematic of the twentieth century carnage that began with the Great War.
Background
How did I get to translate the letters? Walter was the oldest of ten children; after one of his sisters, Ida, died in a Jewish home for the aged, her son, Hans Heimer, came into possession of the letters as part of his inheritance. She had never mentioned them to him or to anybody else during her lifetime. Hans and I wrote several articles for an English magazine, and eventually began to correspond with each other. When he sent me a copy of the letters, I immediately realized their worth not only as a historic document but also as a portrait of a very winsome personality.
Walter knew how to put his life in order; I confess that I am rather disorganized. The letters languished in my computer for a decade; now, a century after Word War I, I rediscovered them. I always knew they had to appear in print. If not now, when?
Walter Schwarz (1886-1914)
Walter Schwarz was the oldest of ten children. His father, Viktor Schwarz, was a successful businessman; he eventually became the senior director of the largest department store in Innsbruck, Austria. The family was thus upper middle-class. Walter's mother, Rosa, the "Mama," was a musically gifted woman and a dedicated mother to all of her children. I suspect she was especially close to Walter; most of the letters were addressed to her. Viktor died in 1909, when Walter was only 23. Upon his father's death, Walter assumed a fatherly role for his siblings--mostly from afar by means of letters, since Walter was already a professional musician at this time, engaged as an assistant conductor at the municipal theater of Bonn, Germany.
Rosa was, I assume, a good amateur musician, but nothing more than that. Besides her, no one seemed to have musical talent in the family. (The piano, however, had a central role in the Schwarz family. In those days, there were few bourgeois homes without a piano, just as there are virtually no homes without an electronic entertainment system today.) Walter took to the piano, and, during high school, practiced as much as he could. He was soon able to play entire scores of operas; he loved Wagner, and would often entertain the family by playing a opera score on the piano, pausing here and there to explain the plot.
His father, as one might suspect, wanted him to be trained for the family business; Walter received a diploma from a business college in 1905. He soon realized, however, that music was his true vocation. He attended the Academy of Music in Munich; he must have done very well there, for upon graduation he found no difficulty in finding employment. He started as a choir coach for the municipal theater of Stuttgart, then at Karlsruhe. (A municipal theater in Germany, called a Stadttheater, is where operas are performed.) His career continued to advance. He became a conductor at Düsseldorf and then at Bonn. He mentions that the director beamed with joy after reading the reviews of one of his performances. He also had a reputation as an accompanist; he, from time to time, accompanied first-rate singers during concerts in Berlin and elsewhere.
A fateful encounter occurred in 1905 during military training. A soldier called him a "Jewish swine," after which Walter struck him. This incident resulted in a court marshal; Walter was demoted to private without any prospect of advancement. That anti-Semitism was involved here is not to be doubted. As a result of the court marshal, he entered World War 1, despite his great aversion to the military, as a private. although his younger brothers were already officers. He died a few days after the war began during the horrible carnage of the Battle of Grodek.
A few months before his death, Walter secured a major position as first conductor at Bern, Switzerland. Before he was able to fully assume that coveted role, he was dead.
The Letters
The book contains twenty-one letters, written from 1909 until 1914. I have annotated them all, explaining many of Walter's references to contemporary authors and to the music he performed.
What a winsome personality comes across in the letters! A gifted musician, successful at an early age; independent and savvy in career development; loving, dedicated to his family; responsible; literary, well-read; confident, a born leader, able to adjust to his new social situation without any hesitation; gregarious, down=to-earth without a trace of snobbery-and yes, pedantic at times, and, artistically speaking, certainly not avant garde, Walter Schwarz deserves to be remembered, no doubt about that.
The letters, addressed mostly to his mother and sometimes to his siblings, were never meant to be read by anyone outside the family. They thus provide an important, intimate portrait of life in a well-to-do Jewish family in Austria (then Austria-Hungary) before the Great War. There is also a disadvantage. A large part of the letters deals with rather mundane issues of family life--Walter assumed the role of ersatz-father at age 23, when his father, Viktor Schwarz, died. Walter, however, took care to write well, and even when he's exhorting a sibling to do better--sometimes sternly, but always lovingly--the letters are historically important. What did many families do at a time when there was no TV, mobile phones or computers? (There is no evidence that the Schwarz family owned a car or a telephone.) What did they do? They read. They conversed. They wrote letters. They made music. They spent a good deal of time outdoors. Few would like to return to those times, but in our age when technology is often used in a very unbalanced way, the letters reveal how much has been lost.
Walter was the genius of the family. This combined with the fact that his humility prevented him from boasting about his career even to his family limited the amount of discussion of his musical career in the letters. We would have liked more details about his musical life, no doubt about that. But many references to his career are present, such as this excerpt from letter 14, dated March 13, 1910:
I turn to you now, full of joy and gratitude, after the most beautiful evening of my activity here. The difficult work proceeded almost effortlessly. All the many days and night that I dedicated to rehearsing Franz von Suppé's Boccaccio...all my efforts were amply rewarded....Nothing of this, however, can be compared to seeing my ability to conduct for the first time. The orchestra is an infinitely more beautiful and colorful instrument than the one I've been used to till now, the piano. To subordinate by my interpretation all the idiosyncrasies and views of the players, and yet to enable the musicians to forget that they are being led--this is my artistic ideal as a conductor. What I achieved at the first performance you can ascertain from the reviews, which the director, beaming with joy, showed to me today. The chorus that I directed was also quite proud.
Walter wasn't even twenty-four at the time!
Although we would have liked more, there are many such gems in the letters. I especially like the recounting of Walter and a professor of music sight-reading a difficult piece by Schubert for piano, four hands, to the delight of the guests at a dinner party.
The letters contain important historical references and glimpses into how life was then as well. With irony, he comments on an anti-Semitic boycott of the family store in a letter from 1909:
I am pleased to hear that those that oppose our business support us so well...It seems that these people are quite upright, because they treat us justly; perhaps they are not to blame that they have this spleen, since they have come into the world to be known as anti-Semites. They have to be something, since in Austria one isn't worth much unless one belongs to a party.
Prophetic words! This appears to have been an isolated incident. Very important to note, however, is what the letters lack: any sense of political involvement. Even as late as February 1914, the month of the last letter, Walter apparently was completely unaware of the gathering political storm that would soon sweep him from the earth. This lack of political engagement was typical of many educated persons of that time.
The sections quoted here are only a small sample of the many interesting passages contained in this book. Letters Home provides a fascinating portrait of a talented man thriving in the halcyon days of ante bellum Europe, immediately before its destruction in the Great War; they are a treasure. As Dr. Ray Sprenkle said, "These letters should interest not only musicians and historians, but readers in general." Of this I have no doubt.
I will never forget Walter Schwarz. He has become one of my best friends, even though he died more than a century ago. I have no doubt that the world would have heard a lot more from Walter Schwarz if his life hadn't been cut short by a senseless war. These letters are therefore also a warning. Walter's life was a blessing; his death was a crime. How many Walters are still being killed?
The book is available for ten dollars postpaid. Please let me know in the comment section if you're interested.
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