One hundred years of cellotude continued:
Second part of
Chapter 1
A cello called Heinrich
Previous section: A railway family
The Sängerhaus (today Palais des Fetes) on a postcard sent in 1905. Source
Strasbourg in the Belle Epoque
At the beginning of 1901, 18-year-old musician Max Heinrich signed up with the infantry – voluntarily. Although military service was compulsory in theory, only half the male population coming of age was drafted. Entering as a voluntary recruit rather than being drafted had the advantage for the recruit that he could choose which branch of the military he wanted to join.
I’m not quite clear whether Max Heinrich had a musical role in the infantry from day one. His military record card notes promotions to the ranks of Gefreiter, Unteroffizier (both 1903), Sergeant (1906) and Hoboist (1908). Although Hoboist literally means oboe player, and we spent some time thinking that Max Heinrich must have played oboe, we later found out that all musicians in the infantry were given titles based on this word, from the Hilfshoboist through to the Stabshoboist, regardless of which instrument they were playing. In the cavalry they were all trumpeters and in the pioneer brigades they were hornists. Very weird. The only piece of evidence we have regarding his instrument is a tuba mouthpiece. Based on this, let’s assume that from 1908 onwards his main job in the infantry was playing the tuba. Until then he may have had to muddle through as a common or garden infanterist, not sure. Based on this assumption, I’ll come back to the hoboist life later.
On April 25 1901, Max Heinrich started his service in the infantry regiment No. 138 (IR138), which one year later acquired the regional name of Lower Alsatian regiment by decree from the emperor. The regiment was based in the Manteuffel barracks in Strasbourg, at the time an exemplary modern building quadrangle with all bells and whistles. Even today it is still presentable. Under the name Quartier Stirn it serves the French military as an army education facility. The bicolour facade in brick and sandstone was then the biggest (of many) barracks in Strasbourg, and the only one equipped to modern hygiene standards. It had been erected after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 and the annexation of Alsace Lorraine as part of a comprehensive urban development plan.
In a large-scale concept inspired by Haussmann’s reinvention of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s and executed from 1880 onwards, a new quarter shot up northeast of the historic town centre with large boulevards, a new central railway station, university buildings, administration, residential blocks, theatres and shops.
This quarter known as Neustadt (new town) became a complete new city designed to show of the capabilities of the empire – even though the central government shifted the burden of the costs for the works back to the city itself. The built surface area of Strasbourg tripled between 1871 and 1914, and the number of residents rose from 80,000 to 180,000. New arrivals included numerous civil servants, as well as lots of soldiers.
Postcard sent in 1917, showing the view across the Neustadt with the neogothic church (inspired by the Elisabethkirche in Marburg), towards the medieval core of the city with the gothic cathedral.
Source
When young Max Heinrich first arrived in Strasbourg in the spring of 1901, the Neustadt development was mostly completed, even some small parts remained unfinished even until 1914. As of 1900, the city had 151,041 residents. including 90,000 native to the Alsace-Lorraine region, 56,000 from the rest of the German Empire, and fewer than 4,000 from abroad. For the wide-eyed young recruit from the remote provincial town of Tangermünde, this modern model city must have been an impressive experience. We can imagine that he didn’t get bored in his spare time. There were cultural activities and entertainment aplenty. And he found his future wife.
Maria Pfersching hailed from Bruchsal on the other side of the river Rhein, so she had a much shorter route when she came to Strasbourg to train as a secretary. Both her parents came from families associated with the wine growing traditions in the area. Her father Heinrich Pfersching (1850-1905) was a cooper and her mother Mutter Barbara Klundt (1847-1886), who had died very young, was from a long line of wine growers at Godramstein, near Landau in the Palatinate. Two separate family vineyards in the area still trade under the family name, but the exact connection to Anna Barbara’s ancestry remains unresolved. Both parents had interesting migration stories in their background including emigration to the Odessa region and Huguenot ancestors (plus some more Huguenots) on the Klundt side, as well as lots of Swiss ancestors on the Pfersching side.
Portrat of Maria Pfersching undated. Taken by the atelier of Fritz Rühl, official court photographer of the King of Bavaria, at Landau (Pfalz) where Maria's maternal relatives, the Klundt clan lived.
Maria’s godfather (no idea who he was - maybe one of the Klundts?) had financed her training as a secretary at Strasbourg – presumably this opportunity would otherwise not have been within her reach. Her niece remembered stories from her childhood suggesting that Maria worked for „Professor Lederhose“ (professor Leather Trousers), which the children then found hilarious. In fact it is only one typo away from the truth.
At the medical faculty in Strasbourg we find the surgeon Georg Ledderhose (1855-1925), with just the doubled-up letter „d“ setting him apart from the word for a garment. Like Maria, he had arrived from the other side of the Rhine, coming to Strasbourg as a medical student and staying on as a professor until 1918. He even has a morbus Ledderhose to his name, a benign swelling in the sole of the foot.
We can even figure out where Maria and the professor worked. The official hospital for academics of the University is the Hopital Civil, which has a long and distinguished history going back to the Middle Ages. After several moves it was established in its current location in 1398, just south of the main island where you find the old town and cathedral. It evolved as a loose settlement with separate buildings for distinct functions, originally including a bakery and a wine cellar, and with the diversification and specialisation of medicine, each discipline had its own building. This principle was only abandoned in 2008, with a large new-built block designed to house everything.
During the German Empire, the Hopital Civil (then known as Bürgerhospital) became a showcase project like the Neustadt on the other side of the city. New buildings were erected for surgery (1881), psychiatry (1885), gynaecology and obstetrics (1887) and eye health (1891). Professor Ledderhose was a surgeon, so I assume that the surgery building from 1881 was their workplace, as the second surgery department was only opened in 1914. Sadly, the 1881 building is no longer there – it has been replaced with a car park.
To recap: Maria was working south of the old town in the hospitals quarter, while Max Heinrich was stationed north of the centre in the Neustadt. We don’t know how and why Maria from Baden and native Thuringian Max Heinrich found each other, but I suspect that music may have played a part, if only in the shape of dance events. Although we can’t prove any musical activity for Maria herself, we know that her half-brothers were musicians playing at local events like fairs, and there are several professional musicians among the offspring of her nieces.
Musical entertainment will have been plentiful in Strasbourg. In 1905, for instance, the city hosted the first Alsace-Lorraine Music Festival, which in the spirit of understanding between nations presented a programme alternating between German and French music. Highlights included works by César Franck and Gustave Charpentier, conducted by Camille Chevillard. The composers Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss came from Vienna and Berlin, respectively, to conduct their own works as well as those of Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner.
The event took place in the Sängerhaus (singers’ house), a very beautiful Art Nouveau venue which opened in 1903 as part of the Neustadt development (see the postcard above). It is now known as the Palais des Fetes and still hosts cultural events to this day. You can find it in rue Sellénick (named after the French musician Adolphe Sellenick (1826-1893)), just one block away from Max Heinrich’s barracks. Back then the street was unoriginally named “Beim Sängerhaus.” We could almost speculate that he and Maria witnessed the performances of some of those illustrious guest musicians.
From 1904/05 the Sängerhaus also hosted the regular subscription concerts of the city of Strasbourg led by Franz Stockhausen (1839-1926). The first season already featured stellar soloists including cellist Pablo Casals. I hereby decree that they must have heard Casals play – no excuses will be accepted.
I took up the trail of musical events in Strasbourg after I read in Simon Winder’s book „Germania“ that Strauss and Mahler had jointly performed Strauss’s freshly written Opera Salomé in a piano shop in Strasbourg in 1905 – just a factoid the author dropped without further details or references. I found out that the shop in question was Musikhaus Wolf, which in June 2020 was forced to close after 195 years in business. Press reports on the closure of the shop note that Strauss played his new oeuvre for Mahler, his young wife Alma and some baffled customers of the shop. Clearly impressed by this sneak preview, Mahler wanted to premiere the work at Vienna, but was blocked by the censors due to the content of the libretto based on Oscar Wilde’s work. The actual premiere then took place in December 1905 in Dresden.
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) also resided in Strasbourg after finishing school and until he took up working in Africa. Max Heinrich and Maria may well have heard him playing the organ and/or delivering a sermon in the St. Nicolas church where he held the Strasbourg sermons between 1898 and 1913. The church is south of the old town, near the Hopital Civil. Although he already had a habilitation (post-doctoral degree as qualification for a professorship) in theology and held a teaching position, Schweitzer chose to study medicine at Strasbourg from 1905 to 1913. He thus will have had things to do at the Hopital Civil. During his Strasbourg time, Schweitzer also made his name as an expert on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
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