23
Sept. 1896 Born in Berlin into a German-Jewish middle class family.
His parents were religious but not strictly orthodox.
When AW was 10 years old, his father died of tuberculosis.
He adored his mother singing to him a song with a high voice for an
angel and a low voice for St Peter.
He received a good education, felt himself to be a loner but loved football.
1914
He was studying law at University when he was conscripted into the
Army and fought on the Eastern front in World War I later the Western.
He suffered terrible traumas from the cries of pain and for not going to help
one agonising soldier. He returned shell shocked and broken in health.
1919/20 He travelled to Italy, re-found strength and inspiration.
Returning to Germany, he abandoned law and decided he wanted to sing. His
lack of progress with his teachers prompted him to develop his own theories
integrating his appreciation of music, art, literature and current psychological
studies of the time (notably C.G. Jung).
1933
Hitler’s party the National Socialists take over power. Jews were further
discriminated against.
AW began his first manuscript “Orpheus or the Way to a Mask”.
1935 When trying to get working papers for permission to
teach singing, he was advised by Kurt Singer (Director of Berlin City Opera)
to contact Paula Lindberg, the famous singer and Charlotte’s step-mother,
for help. AW gave Paula lessons and spoke of his own theories on the voice.
First meets Charlotte and talks with her for hours about art and creativity
during the next years. Had no idea he had any influence on her.
1939 In January, Charlotte leaves for the south of France. A month later, AW flees Berlin to London, helped by Alice Croner. September: War declared.
1940 To avoid internment, AW volunteers to join the Pioneer Corps,
he is later invalided out.
1943 AW is given permission by the British Government to give singing lessons.
1945 World War II finishes
AW begins his longest and most comprehensive manuscript “The Bridge”.
1947 Roy Hart starts lessons with AW. Sheila Braggins starts
lessons.
1949 AW goes to Amsterdam for an operation with Dr Salomon, hears
of Charlotte’s death but Dr S knew nothing about the paintings at that
time.
Marita Gunther leaves Germany meets AW and begins lessons.
1950’s AW has many students. No constant daily contact at that time. Articles are written and contacts made with leading composers, musicians, actors, writers to pass on the work but there is no great response. In ’56, Jenny Johnson performs in the Hoffnung Music Festival to good reviews. A record “Vox Humana” is issued by Folkways and is released in the US.
In ’56, Kaya Anderson starts lessons with Roy Hart
and later with AW.
In the late ‘50s, AW’s ill health intensifies.
BBC documentary with AW ‘58. Aldous and Julian Huxley visit the studio.
’59 AW’s work is acknowledged by Dr Paul Moses,
Speech and Voice Professor at Stanford University, San Francisco.
5th Feb.1962 AW health deteriorates and he dies after developing a chest infection while in hospital. He had been teaching up to 10 days before his death.
ALFRED WOLFSOHN, his early researches
;;;;;;;;;;;When Alfred Wolfsohn was discharged
from the German Military Hospital in 1919, it was not because he was 'cured'
from either the mustard gas poisoning that he had received in the trenches,
nor the 'Combat Trauma' that he was suffering from due to his military service
in the first world war; on the contrary, it was because there was no further
treatment that the doctors were able to offer him. For the next ten years,
he struggled with this appalling state of health.
;;;;;;;;;;;Before 1914, he had pursued singing
as an interest; partly in connection with the musical training he had had
but also because he had a naturally pleasing singing voice. However after
the war, this was no longer the case. In the ten years following his release
from the hospital, one of the first means that he pursued to restore his
health was to try and re-find his lost voice. He went to a number of highly
reputed singing teachers but none of them were able to help him.
;;;;;;;;;;;By 1930, he was sufficiently himself
again to be able to continue his pre-war job as a singing coach for professional
classical singers. They came to him to redress their vocal problems. In
working with them, he began to realise that their vocal problems, like his
own, were based not on their physical condition but on their psychic condition.
It must be said that at this time, psychology was in its infancy so those
interested in the subject, like Alfred himself, were all searching. He soon
began to get some very encouraging results and many of his pupils showed
sustained improvements in their singing capacities, as well as, in their
psychological condition.
;;;;;;;;;;;One of his last non, singing Berlin
pupils, before he fled to England to escape the Nazis in 1939, was a young
girl called Charlotte Salomon.
She herself had fled from the Nazis a month before him, to go to the south
of France, where she painted her extraordinary autobiographical work of
over 700 gouaches, called “Life? or Theatre? a play with music”.
She died in Auchwitz in 1943.
;;;;;;;;;;;;It was not until 1961 that a first
exhibition of her work was presented in Amsterdam. Wolfsohn was utterly
amazed to learn that this collection of paintings had included him and much
of the thinking behind his vocal teachings. She had given him the pseudonym
'Amadeus Daberlohn'. Her grasp of
his work is quite striking. The paintings are held in the 'Jewish
Historical Museum' in Amsterdam from which one can obtain information
on books, a CD-rom and future exhibitions of Charlotte’s work.
;;;;;;;;;;;;In the near future, we hope that
we will be successful in the publishing of Alfred’s book "Orpheus
or the Way to a Mask", written during his Berlin days
in the ‘30s. Charlotte Salomon refers to this book extensively in
her paintings. Tragically Alfred Wolfsohn died in 1962 having never seen
“Life? Or Theatre?” so he neither knew what a great artist she
had become nor what a faithful practitioner of his teachings she had always
been.
Paul Silber Malerargues 2010.