Joseph Schmidt (1904-2004)

Joseph Schmidt (1904-2004) Jan Neckers 21 September 2004 This is not a biography of the Jewish tenor. Just some personal thoughts on a few interesting aspects. Those interested in a biographical article and an outstanding discography better purchase the June 2000 issue of The Record Collector where your servant and Hansfried Sieben devoted more than sixty small print pages to the tenor. Those able to read German can still buy Alfred Fasbind’s biography published at the Schweizer Verlagshaus in Zurich¨ 1992. It is still available in some German bookshops and maybe with the author himself (Rosenbergstrasse 16, 8630 Ruti,¨ Switzerland). So, what can I tell you that’s not in the article? Well, it is a pity Schmidt was not a Brit or an American or even a Frenchman. Nobody reading his biography can fail to muse on the many ordeals he lived through in his short life. (though of course he was not alone in this as millions of those unlucky generations born in Europe around 1900 would share his fate). And nobody reading it can fail to recognize an outstanding script for a magnificent movie or an outstanding series in the best Forsythe-tradition. Yes, the Germans produced a movie in 1958 which used the tenor’s singing voice but it belongs in the category ‘ought to be seen to be believed’. The makers succeeded in eliminating Schmidt’s personal tragedy completely as the actor playing the tenor measured at least some 35 centimetres more than the very small singer. (Forget the usual measure given of 1.55 m which is still 5 feet. Older people who really knew him gave him 1.45 m. in his shoes which means that maybe 1.42m. is correct) Though the movie doesn’t hide the fact that Schmidt was Jewish and suffered accordingly, there is not too much emphasis on that fact. And that’s where my first musing starts. Schmidt was born a Hungarian as the village of Davideny in the Bukovi- na belonged to the Hungarian part of the dual monarchy (Austria-Hungary) in 1904. The region was a real mixture of all kinds of people: Germans, Hun- garians, Rumanians, Ukrainians and lots of Jews. As a child Schmidt lived not far from the frontier with the Russian Empire and he must have heard the horror stories that made the rounds on the terrible pogroms taking place not far from his birth place. Moreover he must probably have seen refugees seeking asylum in the Austrian-Hungarian empire where racial tolerance was quite high. When he was ten he was a refugee himself when the Russian army 1 invaded the Bukovina at the start of the first World War. His family moved to Czernowitz (one of Stalin’s later conquests and now in the Ukraine) where Jews were very numerous. Two years later he was once again on the run. The Allies had promised heaven to the Rumanians and they declared war on the empire. The Schmidt-family fled to a refugee camp from which they only returned two years later. Finally Czernowitz and the whole Bukovina was given as a reward to Rumania. This would be Schmidt’s nationality for the rest of his short life and it would serve him well till 1942. Most people didn’t know his real nationality as he always stated his true colors: “Ich bin Jude” he wrote to fans who asked him for biographical details. His career took flight when he was engaged as a first tenor with Sender Berlin at a time when young radio German companies had still singers and actors under contract for regular (often once a week, or once a fortnight) broadcasts of opera, operetta or drama. (Radio only disbanded their companies at the end of the sixties). For four years he settled in Berlin and that’s where he made his reputation as a serious and splendid tenor in more than 40 roles which seldom competed with the three existing Berlin opera houses as radio concentrated most on unknown repertory. Some of those titles are still not very well-known like Dom Sébastien, Bank Ban, Der häusliche Krieg, Les évenements imprévus, Chanson de Fortunio, Cherevichki, Euryanthe etc. In Berlin his movie-career started and was cut off after the first film in which he starred. Those four years were his only time as an adult that he really had a home. After the Nazis came into power he moved to Vienna, though in reality he wandered mostly around Europe and the US, making three other movies and concertizing without ever taking a rest. That’s when his Rumani- an passport came in handy. Though Sender Berlin didn’t think one moment of continuing his contract after January 1933 he could still from time to time give a concert in Germany though later on these were officially restricted to Jewish audiences (a lot of Aryans profited from the occasion as well) With his passport he could enter and leave Germany without harassment. Living under the Nazis was another affair. After his second American tour he returned to Vienna in the spring of 1938 and with his by now extreme sensibility for political troubles he almost immediately left the country forever. Five days later the Austrians finally got their wish when they were once more part of the German Reich (a wish for self-determination that the Allies refused in 1919). Schmidt settled in Brussels. The countries where he had scored his biggest successes were definitely unhealthy for a very small guy with an easily recognizable Jewish physiognomy. His career petered out as he couldn’t decide what to do. Movie-making was impossible as he was not so fluent in other languages than Jiddish and German. Travelling became ever more arduous. There was another invita- tion from Sol Hurok to tour the States but in those years that would have meant an almost impossibility to stay in touch with his family he so dearly loved. In the end he mostly restricted himself to touring in Flanders and 2 the Netherlands where he felt at home, where he understood the language and sang and recorded rather well in it and where he would finally make his début in the opera in 1939 at The Munt in Brussels. His career would be limited to one role: Rodolfo and he would sing it in several Flemish and Walloon theatres. He himself talked of preparing Pagliacci but there is no trace that The Munt asked him to sing it. And he definitely didn’t sing in L’Africaine as legend has it at the moment the Germans invaded the Low Countries and France in May 1940. By that time there were two Joseph Schmidts. One was the polite, friendly but rather aloof tenor who didn’t mix easily with other people if they were not Jewish. And then there was the exuberant loquacious man always in for a joke on condition he was with his relatives or Jewish friends. It is still a mystery why this man who had twice proved that he could read the signs of the time better than most of his contemporaries was surprised by the German invasion. Stranger still that he remained in Brussels while at the same time 600000 Flemings and Walloons ran for their life as they feared a renewal of the horrendous German barba- risms of 1914 (5000 innocent civilians shot in a few weeks time). Schmidt was right in so far as the Germans behaved very correctly. Once more his Rumanian passport protected him. But still he got a horrible shock when he heard that the Germans had forced Rumania to hand over to Stalin that part of the country where his family lived (they had fled beforehand). Still his sensibility rightly told him not to trust the Germans more than neces- sary and in November 1940 he left for the unoccupied part of France. There he found quite a community of Jewish refugees where he felt at ease. They supported him financially as he had never cared for money which had be- en spent thriftily by his manager, his uncle Leo. Still he had fled to the wrong place. Vichy-France was virulently anti-Semitic and was not prone to announce anti-Jewish measures before the Germans even requested them. Schmidt tried in vain to give some concerts to earn some money and was pestered by French bureaucracy. In two years time he was only allowed to sing once. Like many Jews he finally realized that though Rumania was an ally of Germany, his passport wouldn’t protect him forever. He tried to get a visa for an American country, succeeded, was cheated out of it and had to stay in France. In August 1942 he realized he was living on borrowed time when one of the lesser known but most shamefully agreements between occupier and occupied came into being. In exchange for more police power in the whole of France the French police agreed to round up a first batch of 10000 non-French Jews and hand them over to the Germans who by that time had started their murders on an industrial scale. Schmidt borrowed some money and fled to Switzerland. Twice he was sent back but in October he succeeded. He was sent to a refugee camp (on his own, there were no guards as the Swiss needn’t be afraid that refugees would try to leave their country) and boarded a train. And then there‘s an almost unbelievable moment if one doesn’t know Schmidt’s psychology by then.

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