Elkan Bauer was an Austrian composer and friend and contemporary of Johann Strauss II born in

Nikolsburg Mikulov (; german: Nikolsburg; yi, ניקאלשבורג, ''Nikolshburg'') is a town in Břeclav District in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 7,400 inhabitants. The historic centre of Mikulov is well preserved and i ...

, on April 4, 1852.

Biography

Despite being unable to neither read nor write music, he whistled melodies which were then transcribed and performed in the outdoor kiosks of

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. After being taken prisoner by the Germans in 1942, the Nazis burned all his possessions including his house, his documents and his scores. He was killed in the concentration camp of

Theresienstadt Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination ca ...

at the age of ninety, on September 20, 1942. Miraculously, thanks to a cousin, who had fled with his family to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

before the

Kristallnacht () or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation fro ...

, there survived two scores of his unpublished musical waltz ("Aeroplane waltz" and "Diana waltz"). The writer Elisa Springer, his maternal granddaughter, who wrote a book, ''Das Schweigen der Lebenden'' (''The Silence of the Living''), preserved these scores."Elkan Bauer."
Orpheus Trust. Orpheus Trust, n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2013.

References

External links

MP3 recording of Diana Waltz
19th-century classical composers 20th-century classical composers Austrian classical composers People from Mikulov Austrian people who died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto 1852 births 1942 deaths Whistlers Austrian male classical composers 19th-century Austrian male musicians 20th-century Austrian composers 20th-century Austrian male musicians Austrian people executed in Nazi concentration camps {{Austria-composer-stub