Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Part One Interviews
- Part Two A Memoir
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Ancestors
- Chapter 2 On Being Jewish
- Chapter 3 Growing Up in Postwar Socialist Hungary
- Chapter 4 Margit
- Chapter 5 Tapespondence
- Chapter 6 Birth and Demise of a (Counter)revolution: A Boy's-Eye View
- Chapter 7 Broadcasting 1
- Chapter 8 Broadcasting 2
- Chapter 9 Editio Musica Budapest
- Chapter 10 Interviewing: An Obsession
- Chapter 11 Ich war ein Berliner
- Chapter 12 Moving to Vienna
- Chapter 13 Universal Edition
- Chapter 14 Back Catalogue
- Chapter 15 The Psychology of Promotion
- Chapter 16 Farewell and After
- Notes in Retrospect
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Chapter 1 - Ancestors
from Part Two - A Memoir
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Part One Interviews
- Part Two A Memoir
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Ancestors
- Chapter 2 On Being Jewish
- Chapter 3 Growing Up in Postwar Socialist Hungary
- Chapter 4 Margit
- Chapter 5 Tapespondence
- Chapter 6 Birth and Demise of a (Counter)revolution: A Boy's-Eye View
- Chapter 7 Broadcasting 1
- Chapter 8 Broadcasting 2
- Chapter 9 Editio Musica Budapest
- Chapter 10 Interviewing: An Obsession
- Chapter 11 Ich war ein Berliner
- Chapter 12 Moving to Vienna
- Chapter 13 Universal Edition
- Chapter 14 Back Catalogue
- Chapter 15 The Psychology of Promotion
- Chapter 16 Farewell and After
- Notes in Retrospect
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
The earliest date that can be established in my family's history is 1492: together with some two hundred thousand Sephardic Jews, they were expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella from Spain. Their trace was then lost for centuries. They must have wandered eastward, for they first emerged again in the eighteenth century at Dunaszerdahely in northwest Hungary. All I know is that an ancestor of my father's was a rabbi in that small town.
My first forebear on my father's side to be known by name is my greatgrandfather Farkas (Wolf) Weisz, who lived in Székesfehérvár, a major city southwest of the Hungarian capital, Pest-Buda. (In 1873, the twin cities on the Danube were united to form Budapest.) Farkas Weisz was a member of the tailors' guild in the first half of the nineteenth century. His charter has been preserved in our family archive. Actually, all my ancestors were Jewish craftsmen who lived in the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For some reason, they did not wish to improve their lot by moving to the imperial capital, Vienna.
Just as a point of interest: another Hungarian Jew of the lower middle class, the shoe vendor Samuel Schönberg, born in 1838 at Szécsény, in Nógrád County in Northern Hungary, decided to move to Vienna at one point—a decision which was to have a major impact on twentieth century music history: if he had been happy with his prospects in the small town of his birth and found a wife in the local Jewish community, his son Arnold would never have been born.
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- Information
- From Boulanger to StockhausenInterviews and a Memoir, pp. 269 - 273Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013