Goodbye Berlin. Aloha Hawaii!

Goodbye Berlin, Aloha Hawaii!

The tragic story of the Crown Prince of Operetta

By Gerald Frantzen and Hersh Glagov

As if he had been plucked out of thin air, the young Hungarian Jewish composer Paul Ábrahám burst onto the Berlin music scene in 1930 and changed the course of operetta forever. He set out for Berlin on the heels of the hit 1929 film Melodie des Herzens Melody of the Heart (the first German talkie film) and his operetta Viktoria, a hit in Budapest. Renting half of a first-class train compartment for himself and his wife Charlotte, Ábrahám made the journey from Budapest to Berlin, arriving in style. He took a room at one of Berlin’s finest hotels, the Hotel Adlon. There was just one hitch – he could only afford to stay there for two weeks. His intention was to secure a contract to produce Viktoria in Berlin.  He had two weeks to get it done before the money ran out. When a friend suggested that his money would last a lot longer if he took a more modest room in a Pension, he refused. The image-conscious Ábrahám wanted to present himself to potential backers as a successful composer and a good bet. On his last day at the Adlon, he received a telegram: “Operetta accepted-stop-come back immediately.” Sparing no expense, he invited his friends to celebrate the good news with a champagne breakfast. The Crown Prince of operetta had arrived. After accepting his contract, he moved out of the Adlon.

When asked why move now, he replied, quote: “Now, I have money; now, I can afford to live in a small Pension.”

When a Berlin publisher offered Ábrahám 4,000 marks, he hesitated, trying to calculate if that would be enough for a year. Finally, he asked, “Do you really think I can live decently in Berlin on that amount?” As it turned out, the offer was for 4000 marks a month. The contract entailed working with two of the best operetta librettists of the time, Fritz Löhner Beda and Alfred Grünwald, who had written a slew of successful shows for composers Franz Lehár and Emmerich Kálmán. Their first collaboration would be a German version of Viktoria. For Berlin, the operetta was renamed Viktoria and her Hussar.

Grünwald and Beda understood that the original Hungarian libretto by Imre Földes would need to be reworked if it was ever going to find favor with the sophisticated Berlin audiences.

In their hands, the song lyrics were transformed from cute and provincial to urban and elegant. Songs like “My little hen” became the more suggestive “Mausi, you were sweet last night.” But what set the show apart was that it was not a conventional operetta from the past, but one that embraced a modern style, in the manner of the revues of the famed impresario Erik Charrell – the German equivalent of Flo Ziegfeld. There was also a liberal helping of jazz. The “firm” of Ábrahám, Grünwald, and Beda had created something new: the first modern, urban operetta.

Viktoria consisted of a string of hit songs tenuously held together by an outlandish story that took the audience on a whirlwind journey from Hungary to Japan to Russia. The impresarios in charge of the production, the brothers Alfred and Fritz Rotter, took the show to Leipzig for tryouts before opening in Berlin. The Leipzig premiere in February 1930 featured some of the finest opera singers of the times, including Anny Ahlers, Fritz Steiner, Lizzi Waldmüller, and Louis Treumann (the original Danilo in The Merry Widow). Critics strongly felt that these stars helped catapult the show to fame and success.  The Rotters, however, would soon sour on the Hungarian director Miksa Preger, who had wanted his son to sing the tenor lead and his wife to be in charge of costumes for the Berlin production. After Preger was fired, the Rotter brothers sent a messenger from Berlin to Leipzig to pick up the manuscript and orchestra parts. Preger refused to hand them over and the two men got into a tug of war – literally. The messenger broke a finger but did not let go. History owes this loyal, anonymous theater employee a debt of gratitude. The show opened at Berlin’s Metropol Theater in August 1930 and was a breakout success. Ábrahám with his signature white gloves conducted the orchestra. He also brought along from Budapest Oskar Denés and Rosy Barsony, a husband and wife team who electrified the Berlin audiences with their dancing. The critics loved the show with its unique orchestrations and use of jazz motifs.  And as one critic put it, Viktoria und ihr Husar “waved the Hungarian flag in front of a dark background of a world in turmoil.”

Viktoria and her Hussar was soon playing in theaters all over Europe. In 1930/31 there were over 300 productions alone. Overnight, Ábrahám became an immensely wealthy man and was said to have made over 500,000 Deutsche marks his first year. Even more lucrative than the sold-out productions were the records he sold, as there were no less than six bonafide hits from the show. His newfound wealth meant that Ábrahám could do as he pleased.  He bought a Rococo-style villa at 33 Fasanenstrasse, a quiet street off the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin.

His villa would become not only his home but his office, rehearsal space, and musical laboratory. He furnished it lavishly with porcelain, paintings and oriental carpets. Every day, a maid, dressed in white from head to toe, delivered his royalty checks on a silver platter to him in his bedroom. Various musical ensembles could be found rehearsing in different rooms throughout the house.  Ábrahám would flit from room to room to work on various projects. Whereas most composers would travel to the office of a producer or publisher and bang out their tunes on the piano there, Ábrahám had his own, more grand way of doing things. He regularly invited producers and publishers to his villa to hear his latest work played by a live band. Ábrahám composed at a frenetic pace.  In 1930/31 he was working on over 6 different films. How could he manage it all? Ábrahám had assembled a team of copyists and orchestra arrangers who would take the melodic bon mots that he threw out to them and write down the arrangements. He only used these arrangers for his movie music and not his operettas.

In order for a film to be released internationally, the practice at the time was to shoot the same film in three different languages. Thus Ábrahám sometimes found himself at the film studio conducting the same score three times on the same day. Ábrahám never took his foot off the gas and continued to work on his films. Between 1931 and 1932 he scored the music for Das Blaue vom Himmel, Ein bißchen Liebe für dich, Glück über Nacht,Zigeuner der Nacht as well as the 1931 film version of  Viktoria und ihr Husar. He also wrote an international hit song for the tenor Jan Kiepura in the 1931 film The Singing City.

Ábrahám was now being hailed as the heir apparent to the throne of Franz Lehár, the king of operetta. He was a man of his time, and with Grünwald and Beda to guide him, his shows and music were in essence a snapshot of the Weimar Republic. Although composers such as Bruno Granichstaedten and Eduard Künneke had introduced Jazz into operetta, it was Ábrahám who refined it and used it to breathe new life into the genre. Bernard Grun in his biography of Lehar, devoted a section of his book to Ábrahám. He states, quote:

“Paul Ábrahám was a complex character, braggart, epicurean, depressive, hypochondriac:  superficial but pedantic, indolent but a firebrand. The sureness of his theatrical and musical instinct and his sense for the popular tune were overwhelming; his flair for orchestral technique was revolutionary, fifteen years ahead of his time.  Like a forest fire he swept across the European operetta scene and gave it its last great impetus.”

Ábrahám’s unique sound hinged upon its flexibility. His arranger, Egon Kemény, would write out three different orchestrations for the various sections of the orchestra – one each for the strings, brass and woodwinds. These orchestrations could be played by the entire orchestra or by just one or two of the sections. Depending upon his mood, or how he felt the music was going, Ábrahám, with a flick of his hand, could wave a group off from playing. In a recording studio nowadays, it would be the equivalent of cutting the strings or the winds out of a certain passage in a song. Of course, a modern recording engineer can do this by hitting a key on a computer. Ábrahám and Kemeny had found a way to do this many years before the technology was available. It was known among the Viennese operetta stalwarts, Lehar, Kalman, Eysler and Straus, that Ábrahám did not write his own orchestrations, despite his prodigious musical talent. The sheer number of projects that he was working on would never have allowed him the time to do it himself. In Vienna, composers who did not do their own orchestrations were derisively called Pfeiferlkomponisten (whistle composers). By this definition, Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rogers all would have been “whistle composers.” Lehár, however, understood that Ábrahám was perfectly capable of writing his own orchestrations. He defended Ábrahám’s musical abilities, saying:

“a good musician can never be good enough for operetta, just as a bad one can do just as little in operetta as anywhere else.”

Nico Dostal, one of the operetta composers who stayed in Germany during the Third Reich, was one of Ábrahám’s arrangers.  One can only guess at how much of Dostal’s musical output during the war was influenced by his time with Paul Ábrahám. Another name that crops up among Ábrahám’s copiers and arrangers is Arnold Schoenberg. The famous operetta composer Robert Stolz said:

“It is one of the ironies of music history: Schoenberg’s groundbreaking twelve-tone music was unintentionally bankrolled by the last, and the most business-savvy, of the great Hungarian operetta composers and his crowd-pleasing music.”

All the same, if you can’t stand the music of Arnold Schoenberg, please don’t blame Paul  Ábrahám.

By 1931, Ábrahám had no less than six companies touring Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Finland performing his operettas. The fast pace, however, took a toll on Ábrahám.  In his biography of the composer, Klaus Waller quotes the journalist Moritz Pirol who said:

“The more frantically he delved into his various projects the more he went out night after night seeking the distractions that were offered by bars, cafés and gambling casinos. He also sought sexual adventures that were meant to drive out his depression.”

Ábrahám’s wife, Charlotte, grew tired of his restlessness and returned to Budapest. Ábrahám continued his frenetic pace of writing – and living. In 1931 he started work on a new operetta based on a story by the Hungarian writer, Imre Foldes. Grünwald and Beda once again wrote the German libretto. The operetta was called Die Blume von Hawaii (The Flower of Hawaii).

The exotic world of Hawaii was dreamed up by Foldes and re-imagined by Fritz Löhner Beda and Alfred Grünwald. Of course, none of them had ever visited Hawaii. The story was loosely based on the life of Princess Ka’iulani. who ruled Hawaii from 1891 to 1893. Her reign was cut short after she tried to write a new constitution which would restore the monarchy and the voting rights of the poor. So much for the actual history. In the hands of Grünwald and Beda, a fictitious royalist party tries to restore an exiled princess to the Hawaiian throne. She has been living in Paris. They plan for her to marry a Hawaiian prince to whom she had been betrothed as a child. Meanwhile, while traveling incognito from Paris to Hawaii, our princess has fallen in love with a dashing American navy captain. Only in the outlandish world of operetta, which thrives on mistaken identities, and misalliances, could a show like this be written.

Strangely enough the director Miksa Preger, who had been fired from Viktoria und ihr Husar, was once again engaged for the Leipzig premiere. The music expanded upon the jazz elements that Ábrahám had introduced in Viktoria und ihr Hussar. In an homage to the success of Ernst Krenek’s 1927 Jazz opera Jonny spielt auf, the story of an African American Jazz violinist, they added a character in blackface, which was also loosely based on the jazz singer Al Jolson. This was bound to put Ábrahám and company into the crosshairs of the Nazis. The Nazis viewed jazz as an inferior cultural byproduct exported from America. As part of their racist ideology, they believed that both African Americans and Jews were “Non- Aryans” and therefore inferior. In Michael Kater’s book, Different Drummers: Jazz in the culture of Nazi Germany, he writes that the Nazis believed:

“…that the United States constituted a corrupt people devoid of sophistication, with a childlike mentality that countenanced fun and games but was incapable of profundity or erudition.

The Nazis utilized the following four arguments in their polemics against Jazz, although, according to Kater, “they had trouble with all but one of them.” 

1) They could not agree if the United States or Africa should be “deplored as the historic home of Jazz.”

2) They disliked syncopation. After all, it was not suitable for marching. When it was pointed out by musicologists that Bach sometimes used syncopation, they argued that it was the primitive context in which the syncopation was used that made jazz unacceptable.3) The saxophone. Ironically the instrument was a German invention that even Richard Strauss occasionally used. They argued that African Americans, quote: “debased the noble tone of the saxophone in how they played it, and utilized it to accentuate the already arousing syncopated rhythms.”

4) And finally, I quote Kater once again, “the alluring sensuality of jazz had to be viewed as corrupting national morality.” Jazz promoted promiscuity.”

Against the background of the emerging National Socialist polemics on race, The Flower of Hawaii opened on July 24, 1931 in Leipzig. The show was an overnight success and quickly moved to Berlin. It starred Harald Paulsen, Anny Ahlers, Rosy Barsony, and Serge Abramovich. Ábrahám, in his signature white gloves, conducted the opening night performances in both Leipzig and Berlin. But it was in Berlin that the show really came into its own. The Berlin production was once again produced by the Rotter brothers. The music that Ábrahám wrote for The Flower of Hawaii was inspired by the music halls, cabarets, and casinos he frequented on his nightly rambles through Berlin.It spawned ten numbers that soon became hit records. The synthesis of jazz and operetta was now complete.  Ábrahám created new orchestral colors by using unique instrumentations to evoke the exotic setting of Hawaii. He introduced the trombone as a solo instrument; the orchestra also included a banjo, a Hawaiian slide guitar, and two pianos that freely improvised throughout the score. Ábrahám himself recognized that he was onto something new, saying:

“Jazz has become the new symphonic music. The jazz elements have mixed with the rest of the orchestra. All the instruments have come together to create a new form of expression – that of the age of the airplane, not the stagecoach!”

The show parodies the U.S. occupation of Hawaii but does not address the issue of colonialism in any serious way. The story really was nothing more than a vehicle for ten great musical numbers, all of which have more to do with Weimar Berlin than with Hawaii. It was the world they knew, transposed to an exotic setting. The evocative and exotic score is peppered with the latest dance hall trends and jazz numbers of Weimar Berlin, as well as the sounds of the South Seas – or at least what Ábrahám thought the South Seas should sound like. Ábrahám’s unique take on Hawaii would be immortalized in an 1933 film.

The record sales from Die Blume von Hawaii continued to make Ábrahám a rich man. The show became even more successful than Viktoria und Ihr Husar.  The hit song my Golden Baby was recorded by Donald Peer and became a hit in America. As fast as the money came in for Ábrahám, he spent it.  He was rumored to have bought 60 suits and 300 shirts in a single fitting. As a clothier, I can tell you that an order like that would be enough commission for an entire year! He showered his friends with champagne and caviar and was famous for hosting “goulash” parties for the ‘tout monde” of Berlin. His generosity knew no bounds and he helped anyone who asked. But he was still restless. He continued to roam the streets, the bars and the gambling halls at night. The American jazz guitarist Michael Danzi, who played with various Jazz bands in Germany during the early thirties, mentioned that he often saw Ábrahám at an American-style bar called the Quick. There, Ábrahám could be found at the gambling tables.  He wrote:

“When he had lost and couldn’t phone for assistance to keep him in the game until his luck turned, he would tap us for a few hundred marks. It was quite a habit, but we always obliged. In return we got extra work at the film studios, so it wasn’t a waste of money.”

Of course, all of Ábrahám’s success only served to bring him more scrutiny. The Zeitgeist of the times was creeping up on him. Out on the streets, Nazi thugs beat up Jewish shopkeepers, musicians, and anyone who ran afoul of their hideous ideology. By 1932, once-prominent jazz bands such as Weintraub’s Syncopaters, Jack Hylton’s band  and Dela Bajos set out on European tours to avoid the violence and harassment. Ábrahám, however, continued to work and compose as if he were not aware of the events happening around him. Operetta provided an escape that the public desperately needed, and the writing of operetta was Ábrahám’s escape. By late 1931, he had started work on a film version of Viktoria und ihr Husar, as well as a new operetta, Ball im Savoy. The Rotter brothers once again produced the show and used Max Reinhardt’s 3,300 seat Grosses Schauspielhaus in Berlin for the opening performance on December 23, 1932. With a plot strongly reminiscent of Die Fledermaus, the team of Ábrahám, Grünwald and Beda wrote a show about a jilted wife who takes her revenge on her husband. The stunning Hungarian operetta star Gitta Alpar played the wife.

Her haunting portrayal was offset by the buffo couple of Denés and Barsóny. Their witty duets and dance routines almost stole the show. The opening night was a smashing success. Ábrahám’s biographer Klaus Waller writes:

“The Berlin operetta audience had only been this rapturous at performances by the great tenor Richard Tauber in Operettas by Franz Lehar. Quoting Maurus Pacher who was there that night, he continues:  “Long after midnight, the entire ensemble moves through the theater in a circle, holding colored lanterns, and Gitta Alpar sings Toujours l’amour once again, this time from the back of the house.” Her colleagues, Rosy Barsony and Oskar Denes, were celebrated as much as she was. A dream of an evening.”

In the Vossische Zeitung, on the next day, a critic wrote:

 ”There has been many a glamorous evening at the Grosses Schauspielhaus, but there has never been one more glamorous than last night.‘

At the heart of the great production, of course, was Ábrahám’s music. The critic, Ernst Decsey, did not hold back, writing, quote:

‘Paul Ábrahám (I say this with my hat off) is a Richard Strauss and at times even a Stravinsky of modern operetta.”

In the Berliner Morgenpost, they gave special praise to Oskar Denes and Rosy Barsony, who were seen for the first time on the Berlin stage together saying:

 “Barsony is the epitome of temperament and buoyant dance, always the joker in blonde curls, whether she’s in a tuxedo and top hat, letting loose the hundred thousand devils of her infectious exuberance. In Oskar Denes she has no ordinary dance partner. The elan of his dancing, his wit and trenchant delivery, especially with the laughing songs have not seen their equal in many years.’

 Denes played Mustafa Bey, a Turkish diplomat who has fallen in a love with the  American songwriter Daisy Parker (played by Rosy Barsony). In this song, Mustafa, who has been married six times, fondly recalls the free-wheeling days of his youth in Turkey.

The evening was pure escapist entertainment. The ebullient mood of the show was in stark contrast to the darkness closing in from the outside world. Everyone involved, authors, producers, performers and even the audience, were dancing on the edge of the volcano.

The show’s opening triumph would be short-lived. Alpar, Barsony and Denés were Jewish. Thus, Ball at the Savoy was written, produced, and performed by Jews, a fact that was not lost on the Nazis. Although the Berlin papers praised Ball at the Savoy, Goebbels’s newspaper, Der Angriff (The Attack) saw the show completely differently.  Quote:

“The most expensive stars were hired that were supposed to bring some pizzazz into the place with all their skills. So alongside empty scenes that only had revue razzle dazzle, there were a few scenes that might have been pleasing in their light colorful character  if one didn’t have to watch this whole theatrical apparatus that was drummed up by the Rotters to put four foreigners on the stage in the harsh footlights; if one didn’t have to listen to three actors who were paid huge sums of money to mangle our German language; and if the foreign composer Ábrahám weren’t on the conductor’s podium.”

 The Rotter brothers threw a lavish party after the premiere, but they never saw a penny of the ticket sales. Chronically in debt, their possessions were seized by one of their creditors (an avowed Nazi)  and the brothers were forced to flee in mid-January 1933. They fled to Lichtenstein, in an attempt to access some of their money in Switzerland.  Local Nazis in Liechtenstein kidnapped them.  Alfred and his wife fell to their death while trying to escape their kidnappers. Fritz, was injured, but survived and managed to get away. In Berlin, Ball at the Savoy continued to run, but under dire circumstances. Outside the theater, audience members were being harassed by Nazis, and shows were being regularly disrupted. Ábrahám, who had also been working on films during the day, now found himself a target of harassment by extras on the studio lots. The show finally closed on April 2, 1933.

Ábrahám could no longer ignore the storm clouds  that were gathering around him. The director Geza von Cziffra, remembered a conversation he had with him at the time:

‘When Paul Ábrahám had to leave Berlin in 1933, he cried: I wanted to die in this city.

Cziffra said to him: You can still do that, Paul. When this horrific episode is over you can come back.

Ábrahám replied, sobbing: But why do I have to go? Just because I’m circumcised?”

Fleeing Berlin, he set out to join his wife in Budapest.  He would leave behind his lavish collection of paintings, porcelain, and carpets. He also left behind some unpublished songs stashed in a secret drawer in his desk. His faithful butler, to whom he had entrusted the key, promptly sold these manuscripts to other, less gifted composers who published the songs under their own names. To add insult to injury, while Ábrahám had lost his income, these hacks were earning royalties off of his work. One can only guess at how many songs that were hits during the Third Reich were actually by Paul Ábrahám.

By the time he set off to Budapest in mid 1933, the numbers of performances of his shows were drastically reduced down to almost nothing. In the  1932/33 season Die Blume von Hawaii ran for 1,752 performances, but by the 1933/34 Season there were only 8 performances. The same thing happened with his operetta Viktoria und Ihr Husar. Ball im Savoy closed altogether and would remain unperformed for many years. The shows, however, continued to be performed in the rest of Europe. In 1933 Viktoria und Ihr Hussar and Die Blume von Hawaii opened in Paris, while Ball im Savoy opened in both London and Vienna. Savoy opened in Budapest. Ironically the Hungarian version was prepared by Imre Foldes who wrote the original libretto. At the opening Ábrahám was given a ten minute standing ovation. Inasmuch as he still held his Hungarian passport, Ábrahám’s arrival in Budapest wasn’t technically an exile. He immediately set to work on  new film scores as well as another operetta. Work was the best therapy against his sudden departure from Berlin. Over the next five years in Budapest, he would write eight new operettas and six films scores, including a film version of Ball at the Savoy which would feature many of the show’s original stars.  The first operetta he scored in Budapest was Märchen im Grand Hotel (The Fairytale at the Grand Hotel), a nine-person chamber operetta, which he wrote with Grünwald and Beda. The hotel setting was in step with the vogue at the time for novels and plays set in hotels. Märchen im Grand Hotel premiered in March 1934 in Vienna at the Theater an der Wien. Ábrahám was still in good standing in Austria.  The dress rehearsal for Märchen im Hotel was made into a charity event, and attended by Max Reinhardt, Engelbert Dollfuss, Kurt Schuschnigg,  and other notable dignitaries. Dollfuss, who became the Austrian Chancellor in 1932,  banned the Austrian Nazi party in 1933. He would eventually be assassinated in 1934. Otto Preminger, who would eventually become an important Hollywood director, directed the how using every trick in his box of stagecraf”

The reviews of Märchen im Hotel emphasized how jazzy the operetta was and how devoid it was of any Hungarian gypsy music. It was Jazz of the kind you would hear in New York, Paris, or London. Klaus Waller makes the point that it was a great show for Ábrahám, but one that would lead to no new record sales. Ábrahám continued to work. In 1935, Julius Meinl II (of the famous coffee house) commissioned Ábrahám to write an operetta for his wife, Michiko Tanaka. George Sebestyen, an early biographer recounts the meeting:

“Meinl asked Ábrahám to meet him at a bar. Meinl starts the meeting by praising the nation of Japan and its ancient culture and  mentioning that his own wife is from Japan. Ábrahám wonders if he has been brought here for a lecture about Japan.  Meinl says, quote:

Maestro, I’ll come right to the point. Are you ready to compose an operetta for my wife?

Ábrahám replies: Will the lady perform?

Meinl replies: She’s a great artist. She was before we got married and thank goodness she still is.

Ábrahám replies: I understand, but a Japanese operetta?

Meinl says: Not completely. The premier will be in Vienna. My wife is to play the lead part, she is a divinely gifted artist.  Our success is assured, possibly even worldwide success. Japan is very much in fashion at the moment.

Meinl continues: This will be easy for you. Viktoria und Ihr Husar, Japan- Flower of Hawaii, Hawaii. Ball at the Savoy, Nice. See, I know your work inside and out.

Ábrahám asks: Do they do operettas in Japan?

Meinl replies: I’ve no idea. This isn’t about Japan, it’s about Vienna.

Ábrahám asks: That’s not why I asked. It occurred to me that the need could arise to take a trip. If I have to take a trip, why not Japan.

Meinl, not understanding where Ábrahám is going with this, says: Why not?

Ábrahám asks: Are there Nazis in Japan?

Meinl replies: There are Nazis everywhere. It’s like a plague. It comes and goes. The secret is to live long and to outlive the plague.

Ábrahám replies: Yes, you have to outlive them.”

The operetta was called Dschainah, das Madchen aus dem Tanzhaus (Dschainah, the girl from the Dance Hall), and opened in 1935. The Viennese press not only liked the show but praised Tanaka for her performance. This was not a vanity project for a rich man’s wife. In reality, Michiko Tanaka was a very talented singer and actress who had a long career on stage and in film. The story was a lot like Madama Butterfly. At the premiere, several of the songs were repeated in response to enthusiastic applause. Today is it largely forgotten, despite its initial success with the public and critics who felt that it was his most mature and substantive music to date.

Ábrahám’s next project went from the exoticism of the far East to something much more relatable to the man on the street: a soccer team. By 1936 radio, soccer, and soccer on the radio had become ubiquitous cultural phenomena. Soccer stars were now making commercial endorsements in a way that we would recognize today. (The biggest German soccer star had cigarettes named after him.) Abraham’s new operetta capitalized on the growing popularity of organized sports and the celebrity sports hero. It also made fun of the Nazi preoccupation with physical culture as an expression of racial purity. The 1936 Berlin Olympics had been a showcase of Nazi ideology and  the alleged superiority of the Aryan race. The Nazi glorification of athleticism, physical culture and discipline, especially with regard to sexual abstinence, were all ripe for parody. The original Hungarian version of the show was called Love wins 3:1 and premiered in 1936. For the 1937 Viennese production, it became Roxy und Ihr Wunderteam. The title was a nod to the famous “Austrian Miracle team” of the 1930’s that had captured the public’s imagination.  Alfred Grünwald, as he had done before, sharpened the operetta’s satirical edge, making it Ábrahám’s most political show.  Roxy, who is engaged to the son of a Scottish Tycoon, flees the altar on her wedding day and seeks refuge in the London hotel suite of the Hungarian National soccer team. They adopt her as their mascot and take her with them to their training camp back in Hungary, which happens to be across the lake from a girls finishing school. The coach has ordered the team to abstain from sex, to focus on their next big game.  A perfect operetta plot. The show featured a group of athletes who sang Ábrahám’s jazzy tunes, which the Nazis abhorred, and who found the idea of abstinence only made them want sex even more.  Triumph of the Will indeed!

The  show took on the Nazis in a more serious way as well. In Roxy’s opening number she asks the soccer players “to give her a good hiding place. “ With the news coming out of Germany,  such a line would have had special meaning for Jewish audience members.

The famous Viennese soccer player Pepi Uridil made a guest appearance in the production, drawing a large audience. Oskar Denes and Rosy Barsony were once again in the show, although this time not opposite each other. One of the standout numbers was the jazzy Black-Walk song which was immortalized in the 1938 Viennese film of Roxy und Ihr Wunderteam titled Die Entführte Braut (The Kidnapped Bride). The song had nothing to do with advancing the plot. It was simply a vehicle to show off this famous dancing couple.

The reviews were split along predictable ideological lines. The Viennese Catholic Reichs Post called it “embarrassing frivolity with a disgusting effect.” The liberal Jewish paper, Die Neue Freie Presse, said it was “a mixture of English perfume and Hungarian goulash, of operetta and farce – lots of false beards but at least no insincere false tragedy.”  But was most notably absent was any acknowledgement of the show’s political undertones. It ran for fifty-nine performances. In 1938, the film version opened in five cinemas across Vienna. By this time however the writing was on the wall for Ábrahám. He left for Budapest to be with his wife, who wasn’t Jewish before the Austrian Anschluss in 1938. With his Hungarian passport and official residence in Budapest, he we was able to continue working, writing two more shows, Julia and The White Swan, both Hungarian operettas. By the beginning of 1939 it was clear he could live there much longer. One evening, Geza Von Cziffra ran into Ábrahám in Budapest’s Hotel Royal:

‘Paul Ábrahám was sitting with Gitta Alpar and the composer Nikolaus Brodsky, who had also returned from Berlin. I joined them. Paul’s first question was, “How long do you want to stay?”

I misunderstood the question: “I just want something to eat,” I replied.

“I don’t mean here in the restaurant, but in Budapest altogether.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, Paul. I just arrived in town an hour ago.”

“Then you’ve already been here too long,” said Paul. “I’m getting out of here tomorrow. There are just too many Hungarians here for me.”

It sounded like a joke, but it wasn’t. The next day, he left Hungary.”

On February 28, 1939, Paul Ábrahám boarded the train for Paris, leaving his wife, Charlotte, in Budapest. He had a few shows running and joined other recently exiled operetta composers, including Robert Stolz and Emmerich Kálmán. Ábrahám arrived in Paris with a new woman on his arm, Yvonne Louise Ulrich or Einzi. He would introduce her to Robert Stolz and she would eventually become Stolz’s fifth wife. Ábrahám and Kalman, who had once been rivals, found solidarity in their shared circumstances. They were both struggling to find their way in a foreign country and trying to keep one step ahead of danger. Ábrahám struggled to make ends meet. He became a family friend to the Kalmans in Paris, and Kalman’s young son Charles, who idolized Ábrahám, was hoping that he would be on the boat to New York with them. It didn’t turn out that way. Ábrahám received one of the last visas to Cuba and left France at the end of 1939.

In Havana he wrote a song called Una Noche in Havana, which mentioned the Hotel Nacional. As a result he was able to stay in this hotel for free. However, he was eager to get to New York. In August in 1940, with the help of friend, he got an American visa and left Havana for Miami. Instead of taking a boat directly from Havana to New York, he insisted on first taking a boat to Miami and then a train from Miami to New York because it was eight dollars cheaper. He arrived in New York and set about trying to find work on Broadway. The Shubert brothers had acquired the rights to his show Ball at the Savoy, but sat on the project. (We gave the American premiere in 2014). His predilection for beautiful women continued in New York. Michael Danzi, the American jazz guitarist, mentions that there was one woman whom Abraham strung along by promising her a role in big show. When he failed to write one, she left him for a rich oil tycoon. His situation became increasingly dire. His style of jazz was already being done, and well, by the likes of the Gershwins. He picked up work wherever he could: a few concerts at some cafes and, of all things, a judge for a beauty contest. He had taken residency at a hotel but was struggling to make a living. At the same time, his mental health was declining. He received an advance from a publisher and rented a hall in the Mark Lane hotel where he wanted to present some of his American songs. Michael Danzi tells this story from 1942:

“We had trouble elsewhere. The only opera singer who would not charge him was Czechoslovakian Jarmila Novotna. Haas, the orchestra leader, a fellow Hungarian, demanded Union rates. Anyway, around one hundred and fifty guests came to the production, which showcased Paul Ábrahám’s music. Critics and impresarios who knew Miss Novotna from her work at the Met applauded everything she sang, and said that Paul Ábrahám’s music would be part of the American theatre very soon. What a lot of hot air! They knew that  New York theatres were controlled by a tiny clique, and that anyone outside these composers, owners, and producers had very little chance of entry – especially if he was not wealthy.”

With all  the exiled operetta composers who now lived there, New York was almost a second Vienna. The struggles of Ábrahám were no different that those of Granichstadten, Kalman, Grünwald and Stolz.  Broadway and its public were not interested in what they had to offer. Alfred Grünwald summed it up the best when he said, “I deeply regret that we were so stupid as not to come to New York ten years earlier. We would have been big in both the theater and the film industry. Today it is one hundred times more difficult.”  Out of work, under continuous pressure to make ends meet, over the next two years Ábrahám’s  health continued to decline. He was suffering, as we now know, from the ravages of syphilis. Robert Stolz in his memoirs said:

“One day he said he was going to marry the famous Hollywood star of Hungarian descent, Ilona Massey. When we all showed up the next day for the wedding with flowers in hand, he didn’t remember any of it.”

Thus began the tragic illness. Ábrahám was slowly slipping into madness. One day he was found in the middle of Madison Ave., in New York city, with his white gloves conducting an imaginary orchestra. He was escorted off the street by two policemen and taken to Bellevue Hospital. This would be the first of several mental breakdowns. Robert Stolz tells the following story:

“Our mutual friend Hans Geiringer also lived at the St. Moritz. One night, when Geiringer came home, Ábrahám was sitting in the hotel foyer in his pajamas. He asked Geiringer if he could stay with him that night. Geiringer, who had two beds in his room, took him in and ordered breakfast for him. Ábrahám had been in Central Park for hours and was filthy. Ábrahám went into the bathroom. There, he spent twenty minutes sitting in ice-cold water.”

Geiringer had just fallen asleep when he heard an angry voice: “I’m going to kill you. You are my enemy. I’m going to kill you.” By his bed stood Ábrahám. He was brandishing the telephone threatening to kill him. Geiringer get away and call Ábrahám’s best friend, Alexander Paal, the photographer.  The two of them were able to bring the poor man to Bellevue hospital.

On January 5, 1946 he was brought to Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Eleven days later he was admitted to the Creedmore Psychiatric hospital in Queens. The original diagnosis was that he had dementia from syphilis. The hospital report stated that since 1945, he had lost control of his finances and was easily confused, hyper productive and suffering from delusions of grandeur. He was malnourished, chatty, disoriented, with diminished judgment and unsteady on his feet. Creedmore was no picnic. Ábrahám shared a room with fourteen other patients that smelled of coffee, smoke and urine. Ábrahám had a few visitors that would occasionally visit.

In 1955, a journalist who visited him there reported that he appeared to be well dressed and in good physical health.  But upon speaking to him, he realized Ábrahám wasn’t really there:

“He speaks in only whispered tones and is clearly living in his own world, which for him is his past.” 

When the journalist asked Ábrahám to play some of his music, Ábrahám obliged.

“He sits down at the piano and plays. . . The composer still has all of his melodies in his head. He plays them as he did years before, stylishly, elegantly, and with unmistakable technique. Here and there, he sings the melody, accompanying himself.”

The journalist continued:

“But – and this is what I find so horrifying – this fine, distinguished musician of yesteryear does not notice the sort of instrument he’s playing. It’s tinny, completely worn out, and grotesquely out of tune. This doesn’t seem to bother Paul Ábrahám. His hearing, his musicality are not the least bit disturbed by the horrible, false sounds . . . He actually seems delighted with this atrocious piano . . . After an abrupt final chord, he stands up and courteously shakes hands, then disappears back to the room he shares with 14 other people. Ábrahám  believes that he is living in a hotel.’

Ábrahám had remained in Creedmoor for nine years. He believed that there would be a performance of Ball at the Savoyon Broadway and that he would be paid ten thousand dollars. Of course this never happened. In the early 50s new film versions of Ball at the Savoy and the Flower of Hawaii were made in Germany. This meant royalties for Abraham, which his guardians used to pay for his stay at Creedmoor.  In 1956 the Paul Ábrahám Committee was formed and petitioned to have him brought back to Germany. They raised 8,000 marks and had him put aboard an airplane with over a hundred people who also were mentally ill, or considered a financial burden to the U.S.. The flight lasted over 100 hours as it made various stops around Europe. He finally arrived in Frankfurt where he disembarked at 2 in the morning. After seventeen years he was once again on German soil. He was sent to Hamburg where he was reunited with his wife Charlotte who had survived the war in Hungary.  They lived in a five room flat in Hamburg from 1957 to 1960. The last cruel twist of fate was that his Psychiatric doctor in Hamburg, Hans Bürger-Prinz, had been a avowed Nazi in charge of exterminating juveniles who engaged in “Asocial” behavior including listening to Jazz. Burger-Prinz, who was in the midst of fashioning a new reputation for himself in post-war Germany, could only have welcomed the opportunity to treat Ábrahám. His Nazi past only came out after his death in 1976.  Ábrahám’s time in Hamburg would be short-lived. On May 6, 1960, he died during surgery for a cancerous growth on his knee.  He lay in state in a section of the cemetery in Hamburg dedicated to the victims of the concentration camps. In a poignant eulogy the chairman of the Paul Ábrahám Society said:

“We are standing by the coffin of a victim of National Socialism.”

Ábrahám, who had endured so much, was finally at peace. He had risen to the pinnacle of his profession and was known as the “crown prince of operetta” before he was forced into exile – or, rather, multiple exiles – followed by madness and obscurity.

Why are we interested in Paul Ábrahám? Why recover his works? The simple answer would be the charm of his great melodies, his unique blend of influences, and the infectiously joyful spirit of his music. But there’s more to it than that.

Ábrahám and his music are largely unknown in the United States. Recent efforts to present the works of Jewish composers who perished in the Holocaust or were forced into exile have focused largely on classical composers. The works of operetta composers, many of whom were household names before the war, have not received the same attention. Operetta was the most popular genre of entertainment before the advent of film. It was dominated by Jewish composers, librettists, producers, and performers. The Third Reich and the Second World War disrupted this world, which never fully recovered. Ábrahám, Alfred Grünwald, and Gitta Alpar sought refuge in the U.S.; the Rotter Brothers escaped to Liechtenstein but were kidnapped by Nazis there; Rosy Barsony and Oskar Denes fled to Switzerland; Fritz Löhner-Beda was murdered at Auschwitz. Their stories need to be told; their memory deserves to be kept alive.

Ábrahám and his colleagues embodied Weimar-era Berlin with its free spirit, its frenetic pace, and its bold creativity. He brought joy to a public that was still recovering from a World War and on the brink of another one. He embraced the new sounds brought to Europe by African-American jazz bands. In so doing, he created a style that was a bridge between cultures. This put him at odds with those who sought an exclusionary, nationalist identity. Thus, Paul Ábrahám was a standard bearer for the values of openness, internationalism, and cosmopolitanism. In a world that is once again struggling with questions of inclusiveness and national identity, where demagogues seek to capitalize on fear, resentment, and parochialism, the lesson of Paul Ábrahám’s story is as relevant as ever.