I want to thank and acknowledge Matthijs Boumans (editor of the Gustav Mahler Magazine, organ of the Dutch Gustav Mahler Foundation) for reading and editing my original Facebook post and accepting it for publication. Matthijs and I kept up an extensive correspondence and through his work my personal reminiscence of Grethl Hammerschlag Ungar blossomed into a page out of music history! I would also like to thank Pamela Wilson, Grethl’s granddaughter, for the historic photos of her grandmother Grethl.
Finally, the almost unknown photo of Mahler and Grethl at the piano and the two Mahler postcards are all courtesy of Rose Isepp (widow of the late pianist and opera coach, Martin Isepp). Martin Isepp was Grethl’s nephew.
MARGARETHE HAMMERSCHLAG UNGAR
Grethl Hammershlag as a child
Margarethe Hammerschlag Ungar (1894-1985) gave free lessons in German conversation in her large, old-fashioned apartment on Riverside Drive, New York. She taught many people: musicians, singers, and students at Columbia University. I met her through Larry Glazener of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra 1 . Often the subject of the lessons was the cultural life in Vienna between 1910 and 1930. She wanted to share those memories with her students. I was amazed to learn that her father Paul Hammerschlag (1860-1933) was Mahler's personal banker and close friend. Mahler often came to the Hammerschlags' apartment to dine. In addition, Mahler – instead of paying back a loan from
Paul Hammerschlag – gave piano lessons to Hammerschlag's two eldest daughters: Margarethe (or Grethl) and Liesl (or Lilly). This was done at the suggestion of Mr. Hammerschlag.
This is a photo of Gustav Mahler at the piano, teaching Margarethe Hammerschlag in 1908.
Above is a postcard that Mahler sent to Grethl. The card is addressed to „ Fräulein Grethl Hammerschlag“. On the left Mahler writes „ Herzlichste Grüsse , Gustav Mahler “ with a short musical quotation from the aria Vedrai carino by Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni . 2
The date is on the bottom left: August 24, 1908. The address on the right: Küb bei Payerbach N.Ö. (= Nieder(Lower) Österreich). 3
Above is the front of that postcard to Grethl:
Below is Mahler's postcard to Grethl’s younger sister Lilly. Here too, is a quote from Mozart's Don Giovanni, namely the aria Batti, batti o bel mazetto sung by Zerlina.
Here is the front of that postcard.
This is my favorite. Pamela Wilson found It In her former art studio in San Francisco. This is
Grethl with her beloved grandfather Josef Breuer. Anybody who knew Gretl would recognize the cheerful, lively expression she displays in this childhood photo.
Josef Breuer (1842-1925) developed the so-called cathartic cure or talking cure in the 1880s. His talented student Sigmund Freund (1856-1939) used Breuer's discovery as the basis for psychoanalysis. After a heated conflict with his former teacher, Sigmund demanded full credit for his teacher's work. This caused a lasting resentment between the two men.
In the 1920’s , Grethl was immersed in the artistic and social whirl of Viennese musical life. She met Édouard de Reszke, Enrico Caruso, Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter and many other renowned artists. She even met the composer Alban Berg (1885-1935) at a party. I remember her words about Berg to this very day.
She said , “ Alban Berg war solch ein netter Mann mit einem netten Gesicht ! Aber er komponierte solche häßliche Musik “
I gave her a skeptical look as I am an admirer of Berg’s music.
She revised her comment slightly, adding “ Ich meine, die Libretti waren einfach furchtbar! “
On December 14, 1919, Margarethe Hammerschlag married Felix Ungar. On the occasion of her wedding, she received an extraordinary gift. Her friend Alma Mahler, the composer's widow, gave her an oversized page of sketches in ink for the Auferstehungssymphonie ! Fifty years later, Frau Ungar showed me those very same sketches. I remember seeing the words O Glaube in Mahler’s thickly scratched black ink. I also remember that the manuscript was so large that it protruded from the corners of the frame! It was interesting for me to see that Mahler "sketched" in ink and not pencil. The Mahler Foundation has the following to say about this page of sketches: The victory at the end of Mahler's Second Symphony is hard-won, and this manuscript shows the complicated process of achieving it. The sketch sheet contains sketches of many famous passages, not least the O glaube section, with its searching melody and harmonies, as well as the soaring violin passages that precede the Auferstehen passages. A letter from Alma Mahler about this manuscript is enclosed in the lot, which was offered to Margarethe, eldest daughter of Mahler's friend, the banker Dr. Paul Hammerschlag, on the occasion of her wedding. It later came into the possession of the pianist Martin Isepp 4 . In 1938, the Anschluss of Austria to Nazi Germany shattered Margarethe's comfortable world. I found the continuation of her story in the online archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC: 'Felix Ungar (1887-1970) was imprisoned as a result of the annexation of Austria in 1938 and was only released after he had handed over his company.'
This was a period in Margarethe's life that she never spoke to me about. She only alluded to it and said, 'That was a difficult time.'
Grethl in her later years
In the early 1980’s, after a lesson, Grethl handed me a stack of her „vierhändige Klaviermusik “ - seemingly dating from the late 19th century. My late wife and I used to love to read through this music- just for the sheer fun of it! Recently, I went rummaging through this music, aware now that it was some of the same music that Grethl worked on with Gustav Mahler. On the music I found a number of pencil annotations- including fingerings and written out embellishments. It is possible that they are in Mahler’s hand.
Above this Diabelli four hand piano work is the word “ Walzer “ written in pencil.
Eric Randol Schönberg, the composer's grandson, maintains a database of Holocaust victims at www.geni.com . He emailed me he that he needed a photo of Margarethe for this database.
I turned to a former colleague, the violist Tina Pelikan, who is a lifelong friend of Margarete's granddaughter Pamela Wilson.
Recently, to my surprise, Pamela Wilson found a collection of beautiful and historic photographs of Margarethe Hammerschlag Ungar. I am very grateful to her for permission to use some of them for this article.
Joseph Tamosaitis
1 Larry Glazener is a former double bassist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra 2 De La Grange also mentions the existence of the postcards. In footnote 391 ( Henry_Louis de La Grange, Gustav Mahler. A New Life Cut Short (1907-1911 , Oxford University Press, New York, 2008, page 211): On August 24 (…) Mahler sent postcards to Hammerschlag's two daughters, Elisabeth (Lilly) and Margarete( Gretl ), quoting the opening bars of Zerlina's two arias in Don Giovanni. Photocopies of these various letters and cards were made available to this author by Eisabeth/Elisabeth Duschnitz Hammerschlag . 3 Küb is a district in the municipality of Payerbach. In the year 1905 a post office was opened in Küb because a staff member, confidant of Empress Zita, was staying in house number 7 and was therefore easily reachable for the empress. The post office was closed in 2004 and is now a historical post office museum. See also: https://www.lower-austria.info/excursion-destinations/a-nostalgiepostamt-kueb 4 Martin Issep (1930-2011) is a son of the third daughter of the banker Hammerschlag : Helena ( Helli ) Hammerschlag (1899-1968), She married Sebastian Mathias Isepp . Her son Martin married Rose Harris. In 2023, she published her memories of her husband in the book A Musician's Odyssey : Remembering Martin Isepp, Kelsons Press, London , 2023. This book features the photographs of the back of the postcards to Grethl and Lilly Hammerschlag as well as the photo of Mahler with Grethl at the piano. The mentioned Skizzenblatt by Mahler, which eventually came into the hands of Rose Isepp – Harris, came under the hammer at an auction house. After asking Rose Isepp, she no longer knows who the current owner (private collection or in the public domain) of the Skizzenblatt is.
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