Paul Hermann (composer)

Pál Hermann or Paul Hermann or Pal Hermann was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 27 March 1902 and died in Poland in 1944, victim of the Holocaust. He was a cellist and composer.

Biography

Pál Hermann was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 27 March 1902 and came from a Jewish family. About his early childhood only an anecdote remains: he was only prepared to study for his piano lessons if for every etude he prepared, he would receive one cent. He studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music from 1915–1919 and developed close relationships, both musical and personal, with composers Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, violinist Zoltán Székely, and pianists Géza Frid and Lili Kraus to mention a few.

At the Franz Liszt Academy of Music he studies cello under Adolf Schiffer and composition first of all under Leò Weiner, who is also his teacher of chamber music. Already during his studies, Hermann is a frequent performer within and outside of the Liszt Academy and his virtuoso persona becomes apparent. He starts his international cello career at the age of 16, playing as a soloist in most prestigious music venues in Europe. His career as a cello soloist takes off and Hermann feels there is no need to finish his studies at the Liszt Academy, but remains in excellent rapport with all his teachers and colleagues.

Hermann taught cello and composition in the Berlin University of the Arts from 1929 to 1934. However, as the political climate in Berlin changed, most notably for Jews, and became more threatening, he decided to move first of all to Brussels from 1934–1937, and later to Paris from 1937 to 1939, and then on to the south of France. He was deported under the Vichy France Regime in February 1944 from Toulouse to the internment camp of Drancy, and on 15 May 1944 on he was sent on to the Baltic States on the Drancy Convoy 73, after which any sign of life ceases.

Personal Life

During the early years of his career, Hermann used to visit London for recitals and concerts and then would stay at the de Graaff-Bachiene family residence, patrons of the arts. A story about one of these stays survives in time. Hermann and his friend Szoltan Zekely had entertained a large company of people in the De Graaff household in London in 1928 - at the peak of their musical partnership - with a house recital. Later that evening, Pál had been the centre of attention during the after-concert soirée that followed and had jokingly started to dance with his own cello in his arms. The people applauded and he continued to spin and dance until he fell and his cello broke to pieces. To bring the evening to a happy ending was their host Jaap de Graaff, patron and protector of the arts, who decided to buy a prestigious Gagliano cello for Hermann.

On a visit to Holland around 1929, Jaap de Graaff suggested for his niece Ada Weevers, who lived in Amersfoort, to go and see Hermann perform in Amsterdam, and when they met, Ada and Hermann fell in love, bridging culture, nationality and religion. The young couple moved to Berlin in 1930, and they had a daughter Corrie Hermann in 1932.

Happiness was short lived as his Dutch wife Ada died after a drowning accident in the Norhtsea. Also, the political climate in Berlin for Jews in those years became more and more threatening, and he decided to hide his daughter with his non-Jewish sister-in-law in The Netherlands. Hermann moved on to work in Brussels from 1934–1937, and in Paris in 1937-1939, under a false name, and then moved to the south of France where he was well hidden in a farmhouse near Toulouse of the French branch of the Weevers family, where he composed three melodies for voice and piano (Ophélie, La Centure, Dormeuse) and a violin/cello sonata. The hauntingly beautiful composition of Ophélie, based on the character of Hamlet’s beloved Ophélie who drowns in a river, must have been inspired by the tragic drowning of Hermann’s wife. The peace and calm of the end of Hermann’s composition Ophélie suggests, to the listener, that he came to terms with destiny. He found the solitude of his hidden life on the farm hard to cope with, having lost his wife and far away from his daughter, and used to go out to Toulouse from time to time to teach and socialize, accepting the risk of being discovered by the Nazi police. During one such visit he was indeed picked up during a razzia and transported to the Drancy concentration camp in spring 1944. He was transported on the infamous Drancy Convoy 73 on 15 May 1944, after which further traces of Hermann are missing.

Hermann's daughter

Hermann managed to save the life of his daughter Corrie Hermann, who was just one year old when she was hidden with the Weevers family in Amersfoort, the Netherlands in 1933. In the 1930s, she has seen her father only on three or four brief occasions, when he managed to travel with false documents. Hopes to find her missing father after WW2 continued to live in her world, against better judgment, until in 2001 the French Government finally issued a certificate of presumed death. She was compensated financially in the years thereafter by several institutions for being orphaned during the French Vichy Government, and for the damage inflicted on her by the Shoah. Corrie Hermann has accomplished, nonetheless, a family life and an astonishing career in public health and politics, during which she has focused on issues such as abortion and smoking ban. She has raised four children. She has set up the Pál Hermann Foundation, which awards a prize to a young cellist every year through the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest.

Hermann's grandson

Paul van Gastel, Hermann's grandson, is a teacher and singer and gladly inserts Hermann's compositions in his musical programs, always telling the story of his granddad Pál. When Paul went to Budapest for the first time in 1988 to look for Pál’s traces, he went to the Liszt Academy and told his story. The general reaction of sympathy and respect from all the people he talked to, apart from sharing the Liszt Academy archives, showed a simple and sheer sense of solidarity that bridges religions and generations. They invited him to see a concert in the Budapest Opera that same night, and was offered a ticket by the performing cellist who had never met him nor his grandfather. He was presented to the conductor and orchestra as "the grandson of Pál Hermann" and there was no way he could pay for dinner or a drink! The sense of warmth and connection these people expressed to him somehow filled and continues to fill a gap in the life of Hermann's remaining family, as do the various Hermann scholarships.

References

• Paul Hermann (1902-1944)