One hundred years of cellotude continued:
Eighth part of
Chapter 1
A cello called Heinrich
Previous section: A civil servant at Elberfeld
Group portrait of Max Heinrich's quartet dated April 1927,
presumably taken by his son Richard, then 17.
An amateur string quartet
After another examination at the end of 1924, Max Heinrich was promoted to the rank of inspector at the city’s tax authority, which also meant a lifelong job guarantee as a Beamter (civil servant). With such a position and status one can relax and start a new hobby such as playing in a string quartet.
So I am guessing that at this point at the very latest, if not even after the end the military marches in 1920, he got involved in the string quartet. Young Richard had built his own camera and developed his own glass back negatives and prints. Three of his photos, one dated 1927 and the others undated, show the string quartet in a private home, with Max Heinrich playing the cello. At the viola, we have a white-haired man looking older than our 45-year-old cellist, with a wide-ranging white moustache. The two violinists by contrast, may be a bit younger than him, perhaps in their 30s. To this day we don’t know who the other members of the quartet were. However, we will have the opportunity to look at Max Heinrich’s circle of friends at a later stage. Conceivably, survivors of the quartet could be hiding among them.
On one of the photos (below), a bit of contrast enhancing and zooming in reveals the name of the composer they were playing. At the top end of the cover of their music it says in huge capital letters: “B R A H M S”. Further sleuthing is facilitated by the fact that Romantic composer Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) only ever released three string quartets, published between 1873 and 1876.
- Streichquartett Nr. 1 c-Moll op. 51/1 (1873)
- Streichquartett Nr. 2 a-Moll op. 51/2 (1873)
- Streichquartett Nr. 3 B-Dur op. 67 (1876)
The only photo we have of the quartet actually playing.
Note that at the time of the photo, this music was only half a century old, so comparable in its freshness to the music of the Beatles we still hear on the radio today. When the composer died, Max Heinrich was 14 years old.
I understand the composer spent some time messing around with the string quartet format and dismissed many attempts before he agreed to let the two quartets of opus 51 out into the world.
The 1980s guide to chamber music on my shelf thinks that the effort and delay was worthwhile as even the first of the quartets shows mature mastery of the format. The c minor quartet in particular is described as a favourite of quartet associations. The second, although also in a minor key, doesn’t lead us to dark depths of combative passion like the first, apparently. Sounds fun. The third shows the composer from a more relaxed, happy side. Phew.
On listening to all three in a row, I found the last one the most accessible. Ironically, the composer dedicated it to an amateur cellist, even though it doesn’t have any melody bits for the cello to play.
Circumstantial evidence supporting the Brahms connection can also be found in the possessions of Richard, who remained Max Heinrich’s only child. His vinyl records were a decidedly mixed bag ranging from Dvorak to low brow singers such as Mireille Mathieu. There are a few LPs with chamber works, including Brahms’ string sextet Nr. 1 recorded by the Amadeus Quartet and guests, to which I hadn’t paid attention before I discovered the name of the composer in the photo. Other chamber works among the LPs with Dvorak’s American quartet together with Smetana’s quartet No. 1 as well as trios for piano, cello and flute by Hummel, Weber and Haydn. In the decades since Richard’s death I have listened to those trios a hundred times and even tried to play bits of the Hummel. The American quartet is close to my heart because it is adjacent to the more famous cello concerto and the New World symphony. But the Brahms had somehow managed to dodge my attention.
I also recall a novel by Françoise Sagan, Aimez-vous Brahms, displayed prominently on my grandparents’s shelf (the copy has disappeared now, so I can’t check for musical annotations). So we have some Brahms memorabilia, but the sheet music shown in the photo hasn’t shown up yet.
The Brahms quartets sound quite demanding and I would struggle to play any of the cello parts. Based on this and on the witness statement from Maria’s sister Anna, I’ll postulate that Max Heinrich must have played the cello for a while, maybe even in his musical training before he joined the infantry. In this case, Heinrich the cello could have been in the family since the 1890s.
This scenario makes for a satisfying life story but throws up some challenges with the logistics. On leaving Dieuze with a child and just 30 kg of luggage, Maria can’t have taken the cello along. If it was in Max Heinrich’s possession before 1918, it must have spent the war years either with his relatives in Tangermünde and then in Magdeburg or with Maria’s relatives in Bruchsal. Always assuming that he couldn’t take it with him to the front. Even though the instrument does look like it’s been through the war, so maybe he did after all? This will remain a mystery.
In any case we can tell that it has been played a lot. The bow has a lovely deep groove where Max Heinrich’s index finger used to rest. When I use the bow, I preserve this feature for posterity by using the underhand bow-hold which I learned as a young double bass player (see chapter 3).
Another partial photo of the quartet which I rediscovered recently,
Hausmusik (home concerts) among family and friends was still a thing during the Weimar Republic. In 1932, the day of St. Cecilia (November 22) was declared the annual day of Hausmusik. Its popularity goes back to the 19th century, when members of an expanding middle class were keen to demonstrate their cultural status by pursuing activities previously reserved for the courts of aristocracy, including chamber music. The bourgeois Hausmusik set itself apart from the more popular music of the common people by its choice of instruments and classical repertoire. There were string quartets and sonatas for the flute or the piano solo. In the taverns by contrast, you would hear accordions or cithers.
In the early 20th century, there was a growing criticism of this class separation, especially because the repertoire choices of ambitious middle class families may not always have matched their musical abilities. Thus, bourgeois families may have struggled trying to play Beethoven, only to set themselves apart from the folk songs and squeezeboxes of the lower classes. The combination of snobbery and lack of competence naturally encouraged derision. To avoid this problem, some critics made the interesting suggestion that middle class Hausmusik should revisit the music of the Renaissance, which generally is easier for amateurs to learn.
In the Weimar Republic, there have been efforts to bridge the musical gap between the classes. The pianist, music educator and politician Leo Kestenberg (1882-1962) at the Prussian ministry for culture worked out a holistic concept which he published in 1923 as a memorandum for the entire cultivation of music at school and in the population („Denkschrift über die gesamte Musikpflege in Schule und Volk“). He could implement some of its reforms before he was pushed out of office in 1932.
While the quartet seems to fit in this picture, Max Heinrich did not succeed in establishing musical activity as a family tradition. Richard only learned the fundamentals of recorder playing, although he appreciated classical music recordings, as mentioned above. Richard was already 10 years old when normal family life resumed after the war, and by that time he may have had other ideas of how to spend his spare time.
Note also that having a professional musician as a parent can easily backfire if the child doesn’t immediately meet the standards expected. A cousin reports that Richard sang out of tune, and there are reports that during his military service his comrades banned him from singing. However, seeing that he was able to hear music and had the desire to sing, I am sure that a suitable intervention early in life could have helped him to learn to make music too.
Apart from Richard’s chamber music collection mentioned above, he also had orchestral works on LPs, including several recordings of Dvorak’s cello concerto. They range from an early one released in 1950, which theoretically could have been Max Heinrich’s property, but probably wasn’t as I believe he never owned a turntable, to a late one from 1977. From this I conclude that Max Heinrich’s cello playing must have shaped Richard’s musical mind at least as a listener.
Richard graduated from high school (Oberrealschule Nord in Humboldtstraße, Elberfeld, today Helmholtz-Realschule) in March 1928 and started studying mathematics and natural sciences at Göttingen. This traditional university was then a global leader in mathematics boasting David Hilbert (1862-1943) as one of its professors. A new building for the mathematical institute was opened in 1929. By that time, however, Richard had moved on to spend a term at Vienna and then to conclude his studies closer to home, in Bonn where he remained until he took his state examination in 1933.
From January 1930, Max Heinrich’s story continues in the newborn city of Wuppertal, which at this point had 415,000 residents. In this year, Max Heinrich became the administrator of the city’s official pawnshop. Together with Maria and their dog, a German shepherd called Schluck (Gulp), and obviously with Heinrich the cello, he moved into a flat on the first floor of the pawnshop building.
Maria and Schluck the dog.
The trouble is I couldn’t find the address of this pawnshop online. It took me a visit to the city’s archives and some snooping around in their newspaper clippings and ancient address books on microfiche to track it down.
I learned that both Barmen and Elberfeld had one of their own – they only merged in a new location in February 1940. Elberfeld’s shop is the one we’re after and it has a longer history going back to 1821. It started out in a slaughterhouse in Brausenwerth, and in 1888 it moved to the house in Obergrünewalder Straße 21, which was also the address when Heinrich and Maria moved in to live above the shop. In the 1932 edition of the address book we find under this address, eureka, the “Städtische Leihanstalt” – no wonder I couldn’t find it before, I wouldn’t have thought of giving it that name! Max Heinrich is listed as resident on the first floor, as a Stadtobersekretär (although we had already promoted him to the higher rank of Inspector above?!).
I was very pleased to find that this address is in the very heart of the Luisenviertel which at least today is an extremely attractive neighbourhood with lots of restaurants. I think it is one of the buildings on the corner with today’s Friedrich-Ebert-Straße (then Königsstraße), although I am not quite sure which one, as the numbering on the buildings facing Obergrünewalder Straße is confused and only the numbers 17, 19, 24 (sic!), and 25 are in evidence on the odd-numbered side of the road. The building on the street corner next door to number 19 is old and very beautiful, so I’ve symbolically adopted that as a mental representation of the pawnshop, even though a map that I found later shows it on the opposite side of the road, next to today’s number 24. It’s all very confusing.
Further files I consulted contained a detailed description of how the pawnshop worked – the staff members included three permanent helpers, a clerk responsible for the till, an apprentice and two magazine workers, so a total of eight people. Elsewhere, there is also a mention of experts for the valuation of specific groups of items. Max Heinrich is named in a document dated 1.12.1931. After that, however, the file goes dark and the next document dates from 1937.
What I was hoping to find in the archives as well was information on events in early 1933. There was a minor scandal in that some items went missing from the site, and Max Heinrich launched an official investigation. Unfortunately, the investigation found that it was his wife Maria who had helped herself to some of these. An expert for the court diagnosed an underlying psychiatric problem for which she got some help, while Max Heinrich ended up in another office job in the administration of corporate tax matters.
I was hoping to find newspaper reports or official documents on the scandal and its resolution but had no luck with that. However, with the address books I could confirm dates when Max Heinrich was recorded as living in that building, and the names of the people in the position before and after him.
His predecessor in the flat and presumably in the job, was listed in the 1930 edition as Otto Drees, Leihhausverwalter. His successor in the pawnshop is named in 1935 as Karl Schwabe, Stadtass.
According to my previous information, they moved to Gronaustraße 35 in June 1933. However, the address book Barmen 1934 still lists this street as Königsstraße. It was renamed after the merger because Elberfeld also had a street with that name – today known as Friedrich-Ebert-Straße, as mentioned above. In Königsstraße 35 he is listed on the first floor as a Reisender (travelling salesman) which seems to suggest that he was suspended from his position in the city administration for some time while the investigation was ongoing. I’m not sure if he actually worked as a travelling salesman or whether this was just a euphemism for unemployed.
The first united address book for Wuppertal, dated 1935, has the new street name Gronaustraße and lists Heinrich as Stadtinspektor, which we think was his rank since 1924 (even though the previous address book listed him as Obersekretär). So he appears to have come out of the scandal unharmed, but I am wondering whether it left his position in the city administration weakened and forced him to keep a low profile as the Nazis took power.
Read on:
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