Continuing this story, in the 1920’s and early 30’s, Margarethe Ungar was part of the artistic/social whirl of life in Vienna-then the music capitol of the world. She attended the Opera and the Wiener Philharmoniker. She met Edouard deReszke, Enrico Caruso, Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter and many others. She even got to meet composer Alban Berg at a party. She told me this about him, “Alban Berg was such a pleasant man with such a nice face but he wrote such horrible music!” I am an admirer of Berg’s music and gave her a skeptical look. She shuttled her head back and forth philosophically and said “Well, OK, but the libretti (to Wozzeck and Lulu) are just horrendous, simply horrendous!” In 1930 Margarethe Hammerschlag married Felix Ungar. For her wedding she received a spectacular gift! Her friend Alma Mahler, widow of the composer, gave her one very large page of sketches in ink for the Resurrection Symphony. Fifty years later, Frau Ungar showed me those sketches. I remember seeing the words “O Glaube” in bold scratchy black ink. Also I remember that the manuscript was a little too big for its frame so it stuck out the edges of the frame.
Of course, in the 1930’s everything changed and her “comfortable” world was shattered. I found the continuation of her story in the archives of the Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.
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