In the Labyrinth of Identities Rediscovering Hans / Hanuš Winterberg by Michael Haas
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PORTRAIT In the Labyrinth of Identities Rediscovering Hans / Hanuš Winterberg by Michael Haas Boosey & Hawkes, he worked as a répétiteur in Brno (Brünn) Though not allowed to leave the Ghetto and Jablonec nad Nisou (Gablonz an der until June 3, on June 7 he returned to his in cooperation with Neiße). former apartment. Exilarte, present the composer’s rich, previously In the Czechoslovakian census of 1930, The Fröhlich & Winterberg factory, prop- unpublished work. Rudolf Winterberg registered his family erty of his father Rudolf and Rudolf’s as linguistically and culturally “Czech,” brother-in-law Hugo Fröhlich, had been due to a certain loyalty to then-President aryanized in 1940. Rudolf had died in hat does nationality say about a Masaryk. However, this was probably also 1932, while Hugo Fröhlich perished in composer? Stravinsky is credit- to avoid losing government contracts for Dachau in December 1940. Hans’ mother W ed with saying that a compos- the Fröhlich & Winterberg factory. On was shot in August 1942 in the Maly Tros- er should always have his passport in his May 3 of this same year, Hans Winterberg tinez extermination camp. pocket – that is, he should always be cer- married the German-Bohemian composer tain of his musical origins and positioning. Maria Maschat, a Roman Catholic and for- For an artist deeply anchored in the Rus- mer piano prodigy. On 3 April 1935, their sian tradition, this poses less of a problem daughter Ruth was born. When the Nazis than it does for one whose formative ex- occupied Prague in 1939, making it the periences came out of the cultural melting capital of the so-called Bohemian Protec- pot of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy – torate, the marriage between Maria and one whose identity is multiple in nature. Hans Winterberg was officially registered For Hans/Hanuš Winterberg, this multiple as a “mixed-race marriage.” In 1941, identity involved being musically rooted Maria and Ruth received German citizen- in the Bohemian-Moravian tradition, be- ship, and were registered as living apart ing close to the second Vienna School, from Hans Winterberg beginning in 1942. speaking better German than Czech, and The marriage was officially dissolved on being able to either avow or ignore his 2 December 1944 “under the terms of the Jewish identity until 1939, when ignoring Reich Marriage Act.” On 25 September it was no longer possible. Hans/Hanuš 1943, Winterberg was compelled to take Winterberg’s life and work offer a prime up forced labor. On 26 January 1945, he example of the fate of art and artists when was deported to the Theresienstadt ghet- politics demands clear-cut identities, and to. Due to his late arrival, he escaped the where ambivalence is the source of inspi- deportation of musicians in October 1944 ration and creativity. that sent Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas and Hans Krása to their deaths in Auschwitz. Winterberg was born in Prague on On 8 May 1945, he was liberated by So- 23 March 1901, the son of factory owner viet soldiers. During his imprisonment, Rudolf Winterberg and his wife Olga (née he composed the Theresienstadt Suite for Popper). He came from a Jewish family. piano. His father’s father Leopold (Löwi) Win- terberg was a rabbi and cantor in Aus- sig (Ústí nad Labem), and later the first uper S rabbi in Prague-Žižkov. Hans learned pi- on J ano with Terezie Goldschmidtova (born Thèrese Wallerstein; later murdered in Maly Trostinez in 1942), and later studied composition with Fidelio F. Finke and con- ducting with Alexander Zemlinsky at the German Academy of Music and Perform- ing Arts in Prague. In 1939/1940, he stud- orggreve | Priska Ketterer | | Priska Ketterer orggreve B ied composition with Alois Hába at the Prague State Conservatory, where Gideon Klein was a fellow student. In between his ll images: archive Peter Kreitmeir Peter ll images: archive Fotos: Marco Marco Fotos: A studies with Finke, Zemlinsky and Hába, BOOSEY & HAWKES | SPRING 2021 | 1 PORTRAIT But did he intend from the beginning the Má vlast symphonic cycle and operas “I have come to the conclusion to not return to Prague? Prague had such as Dali bor and Prodaná nevěsta (The that my grandfather Hans emerged from the war largely unscathed, Bartered Bride). For many Czechs, in- Winterberg was of course not a while a significant portion of Munich cluding the composers Pavel Haas, Erwin Sudeten German, but rather a had been razed to the ground. Winter- Schulhoff and Hans Krása, German was Jew of Prague. Hans Winterberg berg had lost virtually his entire family a language that said nothing about their never had reason or occasion to in the Shoah. For most survivors, a re- national identity. Some of the most sig- regard himself as ‘German.’ Why? turn or actual relocation to the country nificant German-language authors of the Three peoples, the Czech, the of the Nazi criminals was unthinkable. first half of the 20th century were from German and the Jewish, had lived Yet all the people Winterberg had been Prague, including Franz Werfel, Max alongside each other for centuries closest to in pre-war Prague were now Brod, Egon Erwin Kisch, Franz Kafka and in the Bohemian territories. All either dead or living in Germany. Appar- Rainer Maria Rilke. It would be absurd of Winterberg’s ancestors were ently, Czech acquaintances, pointing to to call these figures “Sudeten Germans.” exclusively Jews who had settled his German-language background, also However, this is what befell the Ger- along the oldest long-distance suggested that he move to Bavaria, as man-speaking composers Hans Winter- trade routes since the 11th century. he explained in a 1955 letter to his for- berg, Walter Süsskind, Hans Feiertag and I can establish this with certainty mer fellow student in Prague, composer Kurt Seidl – all of whom worked in Prague thanks to the genealogical work Heinrich Simbriger. (In 1966, Simbriger – in the Prague-based German-language done by Eric Randol Schoenberg, founded the Esslinger Music Archive music press of the 1930s. Feiertag’s case grandson of the composer of the Artists Guild, today deposited in in particular illustrates the term’s ab- Arnold Schoenberg. Thus, Hans the Sudeten German Music Institute struse and problematic nature, as he was Winterberg was explicitly not a (SMI), founded in Regensburg in 1990). a native of Vienna. As a portmanteau, the German (!) Jew. What connection In 1947, Winterberg arrived in Rieder- term “Sudeten German” was ultimately should Hans Winterberg have had au am Ammersee, where he lived near used for all German-speaking Czechs ex- with the German people, aside his daughter Ruth and her mother, who pelled from Czechoslovakia following the from language and culture? But in 1948 helped him obtain positions at Beneš decrees of 1945. he also had this connection to Bavarian Radio and the Richard Strauss Czech culture, which can certainly Conservatory. He subsequently remar- be heard in his musical work. He ried three times, but had no more chil- repeatedly professed an allegiance dren. His fourth wife, Luise-Maria Pfeif- to universalism as ‘a kind of er, a “Sudeten German,” already had an bridge between Western culture adult son, Christoph. (thus, also the German) and that Nationality? of the East’ (Sudetendeutsches What kind of back- Musiklexikon 2000).” Sudeten German or Czech or… ward, perverse Peter Kreitmeir idea is this? Defining the politically contaminated Due to the Beneš decrees expelling Ger- term “Sudeten German” is no simple HANS WINTERBERG man-Czechs from Czechoslovakia, Ma- task. The “Sudetenland’ referred to a ria and their daughter Ruth had to leave province in the north of Czechoslovakia the country in 1945. The marriage had after that country gained national inde- by then already fallen apart and thus, the pendence following World War I. The enforced divorce under Nazi law had be- grouping included portions of Moravia, come a reality. Bohemia and Silesia. The population was Winterberg belonged to the Ger- made up of Czech citizens who predom- man-speaking Jewish cultural elite in On 27 December 1945, they registered inantly spoke German. In 1938, this area Czechoslovakia during the interwar peri- their residence in Ammerland, south of was surrendered to Hitler’s Germany by od. As a student at both the Prague State Munich. In June 1946, Winterberg, who Chamberlain, Daladier and Mussolini Conservatory and the German Academy, was unaffected by the Beneš decrees in the so-called Munich Agreement. In he was influenced on the one hand by since his family had registered them- general, however, the term also referred the Bohemian-Moravian tradition. He is selves as “Czech” in 1930, applied for a to German speakers in all the border ar- indebted to Janáček especially in his use passport in order to retrieve manuscripts eas of Czechoslovakia. Just over 23% of folkloric elements, but above all in his that – or so he argued to the Czech au- of the total Czech population was Ger- fondness for polyrhythmic structures – a thorities – he had, in an effort to ensure man-speaking, including nearly all Czech characteristic that links him with Pavel their safekeeping, left with friends else- Jews. However, the German-speaking Haas, Hans Krása, Bohuslav Martinů and where in Europe. If it had been clear to Czech population also included Czech Erwin Schulhoff. On the other hand, he is the Czech authorities that Winterberg nationalists such as Bedřich Smetana also close to the Second Viennese School, wanted to immigrate to Germany, the (born Friedrich Smetana, 1824 – 1884), with this influence certainly transmitted passport and travel most likely would not who is still celebrated as a Czech nation- through Zemlinsky. He wrote about his have been approved.