1940 | 1950

Childhood and my First Musical Experiences

A world without a mother is a different place. A world without a father as well...
My mother - the eternal question of my life-long guilt - died giving birth to me. My father, a music professor at the University of Breslau, was banished by the Nazis to the countryside and then to the war front. He died in action in a punishment battalion. I was sent to live with my grandmother until we were forced to flee from the onslaught on January 23, 1945 and after a year of flight she, too, died.

Twelve months later, on January 31, 1946, marked by disease and death, my constant companions, I was released from the first five dark years of my childhood by Wallydore Eschenbach, my mother's cousin and my future adoptive mother. It was during the ensuing long year of my convalescence, a time in which my harrowing past robbed me of my power to speak, that I heard music for the first time. Wallydore Eschenbach, a pianist, singer and music teacher, played Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Rachmaninov and Bach until the late hours of the night. My power of speech returned with the word "yes" when asked if I wanted to play music myself. Indeed, my past longed for expression and music gave it to me. It functioned as an outlet, but also as a gateway to its greater understanding. What would normally be considered just an interest in a young child became for me an obsession, and in my reawakened lust for life it also became my raison d'être. I felt as if I had been saved, born again. Through Wallydore Eschenbach and her music (which became my music), I was also able in a spiritual sense to give back to my natural mother some of what had been taken away from her. My life found new meaning and I felt at one with myself.