Alice's Piano

by Melissa Müller

  Irma was as moved by the performance as her mother. For many years the nineteen-year-old had been having lessons with the Czech piano teacher Václav Štěpán and she was an experienced player. “I am going to start immediately giving you lessons every Thursday afternoon if you promise to practice the piano for an hour after the housework.” That was her offer to the twins.

  Alice and Mizzi were diligent schoolchildren, and their mother set much store by good marks. Alice showed promise in the first four years of her elementary school; she liked local history, geography and history and had an appetite for books. In secondary school she discovered an affinity with the romantics, and Adalbert Stifter remained her favorite writer even after decades of exploring the literature of other countries. On the downside she never fathomed the mystery of arithmetic.

  “Is that what we want to do?”

  Alice responded to Irma’s rhetorical question with a jubilant cry. Mizzi’s “yes” was more muted.

  There were five days till their first lesson. The girls were to use the time to practice a song, literally to feel the keys, which they really liked. At the same time they were to seek out the accompanying melody with their left hands.

  Every day after lunch Alice ran to the piano. Mizzi practiced before dinner. After a few lessons it was already apparent that Alice was showing far more enthusiasm than her twin sister. Irma was more than satisfied with Alice’s performance, but she was critical of Mizzi, and in this the elder sister’s teaching abilities left something to be desired. She showed herself as impatient and short-tempered and after only a few weeks there was an explosion. Mizzi came away from her lesson in tears.

  “She rapped me twice across the knuckles,” she told her sister between sobs.

  “Why did she do that?” Alice wanted to know.

  “Because she was angry about the mistakes I made in the C minor scale. First she shouted at me, saying I had to start again at the beginning, and when I made a mistake again, she shouted at me even louder. Her angry face made me really nervous and I then played really badly yet again, so she hit me across the fingers with the pointer so hard that I could not play anymore.”

  “And then?” Alice asked incredulously.

  “Then I shouted back at her: ‘If you hit me again I won’t come to your lessons anymore.’” Mizzi’s voice became ever more agitated when she recounted the tragic story.

  “What happened then?”

  “Then Irma answered back: ‘Who is it who wants to learn the piano, me or you? Who is too lazy to practice, me or you? Who is not concentrating, me or you?’”

  “What happened then?”

  “I ran away. And I am not going back. She can shout at whoever she likes, but not at me,” Mizzi pouted.

  Neither Alice nor her mother could console Mizzi. From that moment onward she shunned the piano. She read a lot instead and soon discovered a talent for the stage. She performed and recited all through her childhood and youth with great energy and passion.

  Alice, on the other hand, could not get enough of the piano. She became used to practicing for two hours every day and very soon that had doubled to four. The joy of music, the recognition she received from her family, her first performance before the class—Alice had found her voice. After only a year and a half she had made such technical progress that she could perform with her brother Paul, who was esteemed a highly talented violinist for his age.

  * * *

  IN HER circle, Irma was known as “the lovely Herz.” The growing twins were keen to know who was paying her attention and who interested her. It was not just for her pretty face that men sought her company: the eldest Herz sister was a fascinating and impetuous personality who knew full well how to use her talents. She could be “very funny, witty even,” her later husband affirmed. “When she is in the mood, she is fun to be with, and even more so, she is a gripping raconteuse.”1

  Felix Weltsch was twenty-five years old and had studied law—“that rather vague bread-and-butter subject for young men who took an interest in everything”—at the then “imperial and royal” Karl Ferdinand University and he had already started working in the National and University Library when he met Irma. They were members of the same tennis club in the Crown Prince Rudolf Park.

  From occasional encounters on the court or in the clubhouse there soon came regular meetings. They played tennis together, sometimes mixed doubles too—as Alice recalls—against Felix Weltsch’s close friend Franz Kafka. They then promenaded through the park, along the banks of the Moldau or through the old city. Naturally Felix took his beloved home afterward and said goodbye to her at the door. At some stage Irma asked Felix up to the flat in order to introduce him to her parents, but she must have cleared it with her mother first.

  As well as his work, Weltsch immersed himself in philosophy and in 1911 acquired a second doctorate. He came from a family of cultured Prague merchants whose good name was known in the Herz household. Felix’s father Heinrich was the second generation of proprietors of the cloth merchants Salomon Weltsch & Söhne. Trading in the finest materials was done more for love than profit. They lived frugally.

  Sofie Herz was well aware of how much Felix Weltsch’s considered style, analytical mind and logical expression influenced her moody and often angry eldest daughter. Young love and mutual admiration did their bit; when Felix heard Irma play the piano he was clearly smitten. He was not, however, simply seduced by her charm. “Her piano playing was actually great,”2 wrote Felix Weltsch, who had particularly cultured parents and played the violin himself. His old friend Max Brod later happily remembered the “infinite joy” of their piano and violin duets. “It often makes you more blissfully happy to visit a friend than to go to a concert given by a great virtuoso, who, like a keen music-lover has mastered the violin and who, with a quick nod toward the piano, invites to take your place and make the sun radiate from powerfully beautiful melodies, like us two magicians.”3

  All Irma’s brothers and sisters got on with Felix, even Georg and Paul. Georg’s aimless enjoyment of life conflicted with Weltsch’s ambitions. Georg, and in later years Paul, attempted to fit in with their father’s business, but the all too fixed routine did not suit either man. They took their pleasures at night, and with constantly changing people.

  The closest relationship developed between the rising philosopher and Alice, however; he prized her enthusiasm and curiosity as much as he did her more valuable qualities, such as talent and stamina.

  When Irma was invited to Weltsch’s parental home in the Gemsengässchen in the old city, she often took her little sisters with her. Decades later Alice voiced her adoration for Luise and Heinrich Weltsch, for their warmth and hospitality and, not least, for their love of music. When Alice later started going to concerts every evening, she regularly met them both standing at the back. That was exceptional for older people: Friedrich and Sofie Herz would not have gone for health reasons: she suffered from thrombosis and he had heart problems. They never went to concerts and only occasionally bought tickets to the opera.

  Over the years Felix Weltsch became one of the most influential people in Alice’s life and the friendship between the two lasted over fifty-four years until his death. Scarcely anyone had as much call on her thinking, whether they were talking about the problems of everyday life or fundamental philosophical issues. It was probably through him—at first as a more or less attentive spectator and later as a more active debater—that she experienced firsthand the search for a new “Jewish identity.”

  Felix Weltsch was a convinced Zionist and in the course of the years he encouraged discussions in the Herz family which had been taboo until then. “How do individuals react to their Jewishness, above all to their consciousness of being a Jew?” Felix Weltsch asked and identified three separate groups:4 the first group who reacted negatively through flight—“He recognizes that he is Jewish, sees it as a misfortune and runs away.” Then there is the hysterical reaction: compensation—“He looks to distinguish h
imself, and frantically at that, somehow to make up for being a Jew … In short, they behave hysterically, seeking to hide or make good for something which makes him feel defamed or inferior.” And finally there is the creative reaction—Zionism: “He sees his Jewishness as a task, as an incentive to deeds and performance … The whole race should be creative.”

  In enlightened families like the Herzes they maintained only occasional observations of things that had been de rigueur in the old days. As Max Brod expressed it: “The only thing that finally remains for the Prague Jews is Seder night [at the start of Passover].”5 Kafka expressed himself in a similar way in his “Letter to His Father”: “As far as I can see it is nothing, just a joke, and not even a joke. You went to the synagogue four times a year, where you were at least closer to the indifferent than those who take it seriously and patiently perform their prayers as a formality … that was the synagogue. At home it was even poorer and limited to the first Seder night, which was more and more like a farce with fits of giggles, admittedly under the influence of the growing children.”6

  As a rule Friedrich Herz went to the synagogue once a year: on the Day of Atonement—Yom Kippur. Passover, the most intimate Jewish festival, was close to his heart and had to be properly celebrated in the family. On the other hand he allowed a modest Christmas celebration. Sofie Herz baked a stollen and Alice and Mizzi went to Midnight Mass with the maid. There was, however, never a Christmas tree in the flat.

  The whole family played their part in the preparations for Passover. Sofie started out days before, cleaning up according to the traditional rules. Three days before Passover everything that was chametz (leavened) had to be thrown out “if you want to completely follow the orders of the wise men”—as is ordained in the Pesach-Haggadah. Alice worked with her mother. Her grandmother took on the job of cleaning the vessels and dipped every pot, plate, glass and spoon in boiling hot water. From that moment onward until Seder night the tableware could not come into contact with anything leavened.

  The twins helped prepare the food for the Seder. Every year, while they did this, their grandmother explained to the children once again what the dishes symbolized. The roast bones recalled the sacrifice of the Passover lamb on the evening of the Flight out of Egypt; the hard-boiled egg symbolized mourning for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem; the bitter herbs—their grandmother generally interpreted this as horseradish—recalled the sufferings of the Jews in Egypt; the green herbs—generally parsley—represented the green leaves that the Hebrews used to sprinkle the blood of the Passover lamb on their doors. And they were termed the first fruits of the Promised Land.

  The twins had to mix so much cinnamon into the mash of apples, figs and nuts that it looked like the clay that the Israelites prepared when they were slaves to the Egyptians; then a bowl had to be filled with salty water to represent the sweat and tears that the slaves had shed in their captivity. In the middle of the Seder dish the three matzos had to be laid, the unleavened wheat-cakes, a remembrance of the last days before the Flight out of Egypt when the necessity for speed meant there was no time to bake sourdough loaves.

  On Seder night Friedrich Herz’s house was open to his friends and the poor. All went silent when the master of the house pronounced the dedicatory prayer, drank from the first beaker of wine and finally broke a matzo. He shared out half of it with the guests then together they lifted high the Seder dish: “This is the bread that our forefathers ate in Egypt. Whosoever hungers, let him come and eat. Whosoever is in need, let him come and celebrate Passover with us! This year we are here—next year in Eretz Israel! This year we are slaves—next year we are free men!”

  Now it was the task of the youngest person at table to bring in the Pesach-Haggadah and pose the question which the eldest would recognize—to read the text—the story of the flight out of Egypt. Alice and Mizzi read together: “Why is this night different to other nights?” and then would hand the book over to their father. “We were slaves to the Pharaoh in Egypt,” began Friedrich Herz, “but the eternal one, our God, led us away from there with his powerful hand and outstretched arm.” The paper smelled old and venerable.

  The Seder night ended with a number of songs. Their father’s full baritone sounded like a cantor. After the feast was over it was another year before anything happened in the household to recall the fact the parents were of Jewish descent.

  * * *

  ALTHOUGH FELIX WELTSCH was rather a restrained man, he had a quiet, dry wit and Irma could do wonderfully convincing imitations for the twins that perfectly evoked his voice and speech. The twins were encouraged by their talented sister and by Felix’s father, who was seen by his family as the master of the ad lib rhyme, to make up funny rhymes, too.

  Throughout 1912 Felix Weltsch used to turn up with Franz Kafka. The two men had noticed one another during religious instruction classes at the Altstadt Gymnasium but they had failed to become friends. They had a friend in common in Max Brod who in the end brought the two together when they were students. That was in around 1902. The friendship was slow to develop. After 1906 their relationship became deeper but it was only in 1912 that Kafka allowed the eighteen-month-younger Felix Weltsch to address him with the familiar pronoun “Du.” When Max Brod proved his disloyalty to Kafka’s notion of male friendship by planning to wed—he married in February 1913—Kafka and Weltsch formed what the former termed “a sort of brotherhood of bachelors.”7

  The insurance clerk Franz Kafka was beginning to publish his work. As far as Irma was concerned, his habit of constantly excusing himself prompted her to mock him, although she was more considerate with him than with others. Kafka was constantly apologizing: for lateness (he was always the last), for his presence, for his absence, for his reserve, or for participating in the discussion. You had the impression that he was excusing his very existence. The “apology-rigmarole,” as the twins called it between themselves, was one of the best of Irma’s cabaret-worthy acts. Kafka was tall and thin and from a distance could be mistaken for Felix Weltsch. When the twins saw him coming they called out to Irma: “It isn’t Felix but Franz, all over the place as ever but somehow getting here in one piece.”

  However, Kafka was never all over the place when he went swimming in the Moldau with Alice, Felix and Irma on hot summers’ days. They would go to the communal bath at the Charles Bridge or to the Civil Swimming School near the Kettensteg a little farther downstream. Kafka was a determined swimmer, struggling upstream not just for pleasure but to toughen himself up.

  Unusually for a girl of that time, Alice was fond of swimming and even at the age of five she and Mizzi had swum unaccompanied. Alice had a hard job persuading her sister to swim across the Moldau to win her proficiency badge. Mizzi was frightened, even though the instructor was alongside her in his boat.

  From Irma’s stories the girls learned about the two other authors who enjoyed “intimate bonds of friendship”8 with Kafka and Weltsch: Max Brod, then the best known of them, and Oskar Baum. It was Brod who would later call that generation of German-speaking Jewish avant-garde writers the “Prague Circle.” They would all be granted posthumous fame by their most illustrious member—Franz Kafka, who in fact participated least. For a long time Alice and Mizzi Herz dubbed the four “Irma’s four writers.”

  Very short as a result of a childhood disease, Brod had a pronounced stoop, but was both incredibly charming and an incorrigible ladies’ man, with a penchant for rather tall women. Irma did wickedly funny impersonations of his exaggerated courtship routine. Alice and Mizzi wanted to know how they should greet him when he knocked at the door. Their response didn’t take long: “Here comes our Max. He is the smallest, but as a charmer, he’s much the smartest.” Brod, however, never went to the Herz family home, and only met the girls in 1915, by which time Irma had married Felix Weltsch and they had moved to the Kirchengasse, around the corner from Irma’s parental home.

  The twins also met Oskar Baum at the Kirchengasse. Irma had told them that
Baum had had the use of only one eye since his early childhood, and that at the age of eleven he had been in a fight with some Czech schoolboys and had been totally blind ever since. At the Vienna School for the Blind, Baum received a diploma for his piano and organ playing, which impressed Alice as much as her sister’s account of his cheerful, lively nature and well-balanced character. Kafka told the Herz girls that “Oskar Baum lost his sight as a German, something that he never was and which he never recognized. Perhaps this is a sad metaphor for the so-called German Jews of Prague.”9 At the beginning they didn’t dare write comic verses about him, but then Mizzi had an idea: “When he comes then we will simply say—‘Blind is the chap, but sees full well, and knows to probe, and miss the trap.’”

  In the summer the Herz family went, together with maid and nanny, to the sleepy little village of Klanovice, half an hour by train from the center of Prague, where Friedrich Herz rented the upper floor of the same farmhouse every year. He did not allow himself holidays and took the train to Prague every day. One day Franz Kafka and Felix Weltsch were announced. As the maid had the day off Kafka sprang into action and together with the two girls explored the area around the village. It is one of Alice’s abiding memories. They were about eight at the time, and Alice took his right hand and Mizzi his left. Kafka walked quickly: like swimming, it was another form of exercise he had prescribed himself. For the sake of the children he slowed down, but not much. After they had gone a little way, which seemed horribly far to Alice and Mizzi, they rested on a bench and Kafka perched on a smooth milestone opposite. He began to tell the children stories about strange beasts which made the two girls roar with laughter, much to the writer’s delight.

  * * *

  “COME ON, children, it’s time to play.” By the time Alice was ten, it was a rare day when she and brother Paul, then not quite thirteen, did not rehearse together. Encouraged by their mother they performed their new pieces before bedtime. Sofie Herz liked this evening ritual. After the family dinner Friedrich retired to bed, while she herself sat on a bench by the stove and soaked up the heat from the pleasantly warm tiles while she encouraged them to make a start on one of her favorite pieces. Then she allowed herself to be surprised by what her little musicians had learned. They always had something new to show her.