Alice was soon able to make a new circle of friends, which was almost certainly due to her remarkable talent for listening and for giving people her time. “Isn’t life wonderful?” she often asks and her answer frequently ashames people whose destinies have been kinder to them than hers has been. “Yes, life is wonderful.” Whatever life threw at her, Alice accepted it.
Alice accepts new friendships when they are offered to her—as they often are—and is grateful. As she says, they are “wonderful in their way.” One such friendship started in 1993 when she was ninety years old and she met the young music journalist and violinist Tony Short at a conference on the extermination of the Jews. Since then they often play together: Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, the whole classical sonata repertory.
Even at a hundred Alice practiced the piano for three hours a day, went for walks, spoke to her friends, read every night and, three times a week, went to lectures at the University of the Third Age, studying the History of Judaism, French literature and philosophy. Her thirst for knowledge remained unquenched.
As she did every evening before she went to bed, Alice listened to classical music on the radio: she wanted to be awake to hear the clock strike twelve and announce the new day. Usually, she did not miss a single note of the concert, but on this evening, as she listened, she allowed her thoughts to drift.
Every day without pain was a gift, with every morning at the piano and every afternoon visitors from all over the world filling her with happiness. Perhaps, she thought, I have been favored and I will be able to end my days with a smile on my face, as a sign of my deepest gratitude for an intense and fulfilled life. Death did not frighten her; she had met it often enough and her bitterest experience had been only two years before.
* * *
IT WAS early on a November morning in 2001, a few days before Alice’s ninety-eighth birthday. She was just coming back from the swimming pool, where she swam two lengths every day, when she was surprised to see coming toward her Ariel, who had been living in Italy at that time. He accompanied her to the door of her flat, where his brother David and one of Raphael’s friends were waiting for her. Alice did not have any idea why they were there. She opened the door and asked them all to come in. They waited until Alice had sat down on the edge of her bed. Finally David said in a depressed, monotonous voice: “Raphael died yesterday.” There was silence. Alice sat there as if she had been turned to stone, her thoughts slipped into an unpleasant nothingness. But after a minute’s pause it was she who spoke first:
“Are you all OK?”
The silence returned.
“Did he have to suffer?”
Ariel shook his head. Then he finally found the strength to speak. From what he knew Raphael had not suffered. The doctors in Tel Aviv had tried to save him with an emergency operation but he did not come round from the anesthetic. He had had a heart attack while on a successful concert tour of Israel.
Alice had been filled with joy as she followed his recent new burst of musical activity. Raphael had played as a soloist with many great European orchestras in the late sixties and early seventies, under the batons of such well-known conductors as John Barbirolli, Antal Dorati, Lukas Foss, Charles Munch and Vladimir Ashkenazy. Over the years his solo performances had become rarer. She didn’t know if that was due to his teaching schedule and his role as conductor in a string ensemble in Manchester, or whether it had more to do with the seventies when the concert platform was increasingly dominated by more extrovert people whom the media took up for a while and then, just as quickly, dropped. Alice was well aware that Raphael avoided flamboyant behavior when he played and wanted every serious musician to play a subordinate role to the music. But at the beginning of the nineties, Raphael had become a member of the world-famous Solomon Trio and was performing again.
For three weeks Alice appeared to have weathered this latest cruel blow. She did not change her daily routine and went every morning early to the swimming pool, then played the piano for three hours, received her friends in the afternoon and in the evenings sought to distract herself by reading. But then she collapsed. She was mentally and physically shattered. She was diagnosed with a blocked intestine and had to have an operation, after which she drifted between life and death. Her grandson Ariel waited at her bedside the whole time, even spending the night on the floor of the ward. Slowly, very slowly, she recovered and as she did so, she told herself that Raphael had had a rich, fulfilled life and had been spared the miseries of old age.
* * *
HOW ODD it was, Alice thought, that in the night preceding her hundredth birthday she had had the same dream she had had many times since the end of the Second World War: arm in arm with her mother she was slowly marching behind her father’s coffin. Every time she had seen these images in the last six decades, however, she felt neither fear nor consternation; merely a feeling of closeness, security and warmth.
But why always this dream? It was a long time before she realized that she was more similar in character to her father than her mother. She had inherited his way of dealing with people, his extreme strength of will, his limitless ability to work. Was the dream meant to remind her of that? Or did she feel the warmth because at such times she felt nearer to her mother than she did normally?
On the morning of her hundredth birthday, as she does every morning, she cleared the kitchen table and put the cheese back in the fridge, where there was a huge pot of chicken soup. Every Monday Alice buys a chicken which the butcher has to chop into seven equal portions. She boils the chicken pieces to make soup, which is divided into seven portions—enough for her needs for an entire week. The soup derives its special flavor from the different vegetables she adds: celery, carrots, leeks, peas, onions and sometimes sweet corn too. For more than four decades Alice has enjoyed her soup ritual, and for minimum cost she manages to prepare her main meals for the entire week. She uses the time she saves for the things that seem more important to her: music, reading and friends.
After breakfast comes the daily routine. She tidies up the flat. First of all she rolls up the cushions and bedclothes in order to make a sort of sofa where she always sits when she has visitors. Then she washes the table and the lavatory and finally she pulls both chairs up to the table so that any visitors who come that afternoon can feel comfortable.
Years ago she had read a biography of Immanuel Kant. The citizens of the city of Königsberg (Kaliningrad), so they said, used to set their watches by the philosopher’s daily walk. Alice and the scholar have that in common. At half past nine on the dot she leaves her flat and walks for just enough time to be able to come in, take off her coat, change her shoes and begin practicing the piano at ten.
There was no exception on her hundredth birthday. At ten she sat down at the piano and began to play Johann Sebastian Bach’s twenty-four preludes. Until her ninety-second year she was able to play her entire piano repertoire, although she had not given a concert for years. Then she felt a stiffening of the index fingers of first her left and then her right hands; both fingers became completely stiff and stuck up in the air like hooks. After that she had to relearn a part of her repertoire according to an eight-finger system.
The only thing that made her break her routine that day were the calls from all over the world. The first person to congratulate her rang before her walk at around quarter past nine. It was her best friend Edith Kraus, calling from Jerusalem. Edith, at ninety, was in much worse health than Alice; she had not been able to play the piano for years. All sorts of memories of Israel arose as they talked. The years she spent there were the most important in her life, she thought, looking back on them. For the one time in her life she had felt she was making a genuine contribution to the construction of the state that would be a new home to so many threatened and distressed Jews. Even today the thought of it fills her with pride and satisfaction.
Since living in London Alice has given more thought to the Israeli situation. She thinks that it was a mistake not to give the Ara
bs equal rights from the beginning. Many conflicts might have been avoided had they talked rather than reverting to arms, and she is sure that more blood has been shed than was necessary. The result has created unnecessary hatred, which has upset her in recent years.
Although the telephone kept ringing, Alice found joy and peace in her morning piano playing even on this great day. Music has been her source of strength all her life, her religion, and her safe haven: “It is music,” her life has taught her over and over again, “that takes us to paradise.”
The Raphael Sommer Music Scholarship
This scholarship has been established by Raphael Sommer’s mother, Alice Herz-Sommer, and his widow, Geneviève Sommer, to remember Raphael Sommer’s name and work by providing bursaries for talented young string players to further their studies. The focus is in the field of chamber music performance which can be of such critical importance to developing musicians and where opportunities for advanced performance coaching and experience are generally rather limited after students leave the teaching institutions.
The scholarships are awarded during the annual “Festival de Musique de Chambre en Pays de Gex” founded by Raphael and Geneviève Sommer in 1988. The festival takes place each August/September in Ferney-Voltaire in France.
For further information, as well as donations and grants, please contact:
Geneviève Sommer
55 Quickswood
London NW3 3SA
e-mail: [email protected]
Notes
ONE: Twins
1. Peter Demetz, Prag in Schwarz und Gold, Munich 1998, 471.
TWO: Roots
1. Felix Weltsch, writings on the personality of his wife, Irma Weltsch, in Weltsch Papers, 94:72.8/1 (circa 1936), German Literature Archive, Marbach.
2. Ibid.
3. Max Brod, Streitbares Leben: Autobiographie, Munich 1960.
4. Felix Weltsch, Judenfrage und Zionismus. Eine Disputation, London 1929.
5. Brod, op. cit.
6. Quoted in Hans Tramer, “Die Dreivölkerstadt Prag” in Heiner Lichtenstein and Kurt Löwenstein, eds, Robert Weltsch zum siebzigsten Geburtstag, Tel Aviv 1961.
7. Franz Kafka to Grete Bloch, 19 February 1914, in Hans-Georg Koch, ed., Kafkas Briefe 1913–1914, Frankfurt am Main 2001.
8. Max Brod, Der Prager Kreis, Frankfurt am Main 1966.
9. Gustav Janouch, Gespräche mit Kafka: Erinnerungen und Aufzeichnungen, Frankfurt am Main 1968.
THREE: World War
1. Prager Tagblatt 5 August 1914.
2. Kafka to Grete Bloch, 19 February 1914, see Koch, op. cit.
3. Georg Herz to Felix Weltsch, 27 November 1916, in German Literature Archive, Marbach, D: Kafka, Weltsch, Sign. 22.11.1916.
4. Felix Weltsch to Franz Kafka, 6 February 1918, in German Literature Archive, Marbach, D: Kafka, Sign. 92.5:14/7.
5. Weltsch, op. cit., 1936.
6. Anthony Beaumont, Alexander Zemlinsky, Biographie, Vienna 2005, 402.
FOUR: Music
1. Walter Niemann, Meister des Klaviers. Die Pianisten der Gegenwart und der letzten Vergangenheit, Berlin 1921, 19.
2. Prager Tagblatt 1922, Piechocki Archive.
3. Louis Laber, “Zemlinsky auf dem Theater,” in Der Auftakt, 1921, 223.
4. Quoted in Beaumont, op. cit., 419.
5. Ibid., 407.
6. Niemann, op. cit., 25.
7. Niemann, Klavierlexikon, Leipzig 1918, 303.
8. Niemann, op. cit., 1921, 25.
9. Ibid.
10. Felix Weltsch to Friedrich and Sofie Herz, c. 1916, in German Literature Archive Marbach, D: Kafka, Weltsch, Sign.
11. Ibid., 1936.
12. Prager Abendblatt 1924, Piechocki Archive.
13. Česke Slova 1924, Piechocki Archive.
14. Prager Abendblatt 1924, Piechocki Archive.
15. Prager Tagblatt 1924. Piechocki Archive.
16. Selbstwehr, issue 1, 1 March 1907.
FIVE: Marriage
1. Niemann, op. cit., 1921, 259.
2. Peter Demetz, Rainer Maria Rilke Prager Jahre, Düsseldorf 1953.
SIX: Occupation
1. Brod, op. cit., 1960, 276.
2. Ibid., 273.
3. Ibid., 267.
4. Ibid., 269.
5. His name figures on documents from the Jewish community from 24 April 1942.
6. Guido Fischer, “Arthur Rubinstein—Ein Jahrhundertphänomen” in Pianonews—Magazin für Klavier und Flügel, 1999, 21.
7. Arthur Rubinstein, Mein glückliches Leben, Frankfurt am Main 1988, 630.
SEVEN: Theresienstadt
1. Hans-Günther Adler, Theresienstadt 1941–1945. Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft, Tübingen 1955, 61.
2. Jäckel, Longerich, Schoeps, ed., Enzyklopädie des Holocaust, Munich and Zurich 1998, Vol. II, 1159–60.
3. Adler, op. cit., 266.
4. Ibid., 64.
5. Ibid., 63.
6. Karel Lagus, “Vorspiel” in Theresienstadt, 1968, 11; Adler, op. cit., 16.
7. Adler, op. cit., 266.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 691.
10. Josef Polák, “Das Lager” in Theresienstadt, 1968, 56.
11. Adler, op. cit., 688.
12. Rudolf Franěk, “Brundibár” in Theresienstadt, 1968, 272–81.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.; Hannelore Brenner-Wonschick, Die Mädchen von Zimmer 28. Freundschaft, Hoffnung und Überleben in Theresienstadt, 2004, 173.
15. Milan Kuna, Musik an der Grenze des Lebens, Frankfurt am Main 1993; Brenner-Wonschick, op. cit., 182.
16. Adler, op. cit., 71–218; Lagus, op. cit., 10–21.
17. Polák, op. cit., 25.
18. Ibid., 26.
19. Ibid., 26–7.
20. Ibid., 27.
21. Adler, op. cit., 50.
EIGHT: Happiness
1. Kuna, op. cit., 239.
2. Joža Karas, Music in Terezin 1941–1945, New York 1985, 47–9.
3. Kuna, op. cit., 156–9.
4. Ibid., 239.
5. Karas, op. cit., 32, 50; Kuna, op. cit., 238, 317.
6. Ingo Schultz, Viktor Ullmann. 26 Kritiken über musikalische Veranstaltungen in Theresienstadt, with an introduction by Thomas Mandl, Hamburg 1993.
7. Irma Lauscherová, “Die Kinder von Theresienstadt” in Theresienstadt, 1968, 97.
8. Schultz, op. cit.
9. Hans Krása, Josef Stross, Gideon Klein, Pavel Libensky: “Kurzgefasster Abriss der Geschichte der Musik Theresienstadt, 1943,” in Ulrike Migdal, ed., Und die Musik spielt dazu, Munich and Zurich 1986, 164.
10. Günther Batel, Meisterwerke der Klaviermusik, Wiesbaden 1997, 85.
11. Karas, op. cit., 103–10.
12. Ibid.
13. Philipp Manes, Als ob’s ein Leben wär. Tatsachenbericht Theresienstadt 1942 bis 1944, ed. Ben Barkow and Klaus Geist, Berlin 2005, 137.
14. Erich Springer, “Gesundheitswesen in Theresienstadt” in Theresienstadt, 1968, 132.
15. Ibid., 126–35; Polák, 30; Adler, 151.
16. Polák, op. cit., 37.
17. Ibid.
18. Käthe Starke, Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt, Berlin 1975, 40.
19. Adler, 691.
20. Ibid.
21. Franěk, 277.
22. Ibid., 279.
23. Ibid.; Kuna, op. cit., 205.
24. Franěk, 276.
NINE: The Gates of Hell
1. Friedrich Niecks, Friedrich Chopin als Mensch und Musiker, Leipzig 1890, Vol. II, 274.
2. Schultz, 9–32; Verena Naegele, Viktor Ullmann, Komponieren in verlorener Zeit, Cologne 2002, 325.
3. Schultz, 61.
4. Ibid., 9.
5. Starke, 97, 101.
6. Adler, 7–8.
7. Foreword by Thomas Mandl to Schultz, op. cit.
8. Ibid.
9. Schultz, 61.
10. Tadeusz A. Zielinski, Chopin, sein Leben, sein Werk, seine Zeit, Bergisch Gladbach 1999, 328.
/> 11. Kuna, 238.
12. Ibid., 184.
13. Joachim Kaiser, Große Pianisten in unserer Zeit, Munich 1989, 217.
14. Kuna, 298.
15. Niecks, II, 275.
16. Zdenka Fantlová, “In der Ruhe liegt die Kraft” sagte mein Vater, Bonn 1999, 55.
17. Ibid., 68.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., 68–9.
20. Ibid., 171.
21. Karel Berman, “Erinnerungen,” in Theresienstadt, 1968, 255.
22. Ibid.
23. James Huneker, Chopin—der Mensch, der Künstler, Munich 1921, 130.
24. Ibid, 131.
25. Zielinski, 393.
26. Kuna, 296–300.
27. Ibid., 300.
28. Huneker, 131–2.
29. Interview with Thomas Mandl, 2 December 2003.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Raoul von Koczalski, Chopin—Betrachtungen, Skizzen, Analyzen, Cologne-Bayenthal 1936, 96.
34. Zielinsky, 393.
35. Huneker, 34.
36. Kuna, 215.
37. Ibid.
38. Jim Samson, Frédéric Chopin, Stuttgart 1985, 100.
39. Starke, 94.
40. Kuna, 196–204.
41. Ibid., 202–3.
42. Ibid.
43. Silke Bernd, “Zuzanna Rûžicková in Lebenswege von Musikerinnen im “Dritten Reich”; und im Exil, ed. Musikwissenschaftliches Institut der Universität Hamburg, Hamburg 2000, 370.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., 381.
46. Adler, 153.
47. Fantlová, 109.
TEN: Inferno
1. Brenner-Wonschick, 295.
2. Hans Hofer, “Der Film über Theresienstadt” in Theresienstadt, 1968, 194–9.
3. Adler, 179–81.
4. Eva Šormová, “Monographien über Kurt Gerron” in Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente, 1995, 249–57.
5. Franěk, 272–81; Kuna, 205–12.
6. Ančerl, “Musik in Theresienstadt” in Theresienstadt, 1968, 260–3.
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