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Es Geht Wohl Anders (Things Turn Out Differently): The Unexpected Life of Walter Arlen

Dichter Department Store 1937

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2. Tante Henshi c. 1920s The Dichter family at their home in Burgenland in the 1920s. Seated in the center is Leopold Dichter and to his right, his sister Hannah (Henshi), who moved to Chicago in the late 19th century. Tante Henshi, as Walter knew her, provided crucial assistance, including visas, to Walter and other family members that allowed them to escape Austria when the Nazis came to power. Image from the Dichter Collection, courtesy of Schüetz Design.
6. In Burgenland, 1929 Walter's family at their home in Burgenland in November, 1929. Standing left to right are Dr. Blick, Berthold Silberstein, Toddy Kolb, Michael Aptowitzer (Walter's father), and Rosl Dichter. Seated left to right are Mrs. Blick, Esther Dichter, Edith Aptowitzer, Shirley Wahl, Rose Wahl, Gretl Dichter, Isidor Dichter, and cousin Joyce Wahl. Walter sits on the ground in the front. Image from the Dichter Collection, courtesy of Schüetz Design.
8. Dichter Department Store c. 1910 The signage in this 1910 photo of the store indicates the items that the Dichters offered: "HAUS KUCHENGERATE," which means "cooking utensils," a message reinforced by the pots and pans prominently displayed. Other signs on the left side of the photo advertise rubber goods, toys and leather goods. The number "40" indicates the store's location at Brunnengasse 40. Image from the Dichter Collection, courtesy of Schüetz Design.
14. At the Beverly Hills Hotel, 1957
16. Outside the Dichter Department Store, 1928
19. With Consul General Thomas Klestil, c. 1970s Walter (far left) stands next to Austrian Consul General Thomas Klestil and members of a German theater group during their visit to Los Angeles in the early 1970s. Klestil, who opened Austria's consulate in Los Angeles in 1969, went on to serve as Austria's ambassador to the UN and was elected President of Austria in the 1990s. Also pictured are the German Consul General Constantin von Dziembowski (far right) and German cultural attaché Ingeborg Kurtz (center). Image from the Arlen (Dichter) Collection, courtesy of Schuetz Design.
20. At the home of Minna Coe, 1957 Walter (top left) and guests at a dinner party hosted by Minna Coe (seated, center) in honor of Heitor Villa Lobos (seated, center) during the filming of "Green Mansions" in 1957. Standing next to Walter are choral conductor Roger Wagner, Viennese conductor Ernst Kanitz, and John Vincent, chair of the UCLA Music Department. Seated on left is renowned film composer Milkos Rosza. Image from the Dichter Collection, courtesy of Schüetz Design.
24. Hiking in Sauerbrunn, 1935
29. With Eugene Ormandy c. 1970s Walter with famed conductor Eugene Ormandy and his wife Margaret at their home in Palm Springs. Ormandy was born to Jewish parents in Hungary and came to the United States in 1921. He began his tenure as the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1936 and served for in the post for over 44 years. Ormandy would often consult with Walter about his work during visits to his family's vacation home in Palm Springs, as pictured here c. 1970s. Image from the Arlen (Dichter) Collection, courtesy of Schuetz Design.
30. Hannah and Wolf Aptowitzer
35. With Copland and Mills, 1965

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A Life's Work Rediscovered In 2007, as music curator for Vienna’s Jewish Museum, I was carrying out research for an up-coming exhibition and spending several weeks researching in Los Angeles. Barbara and Ronald Schoenberg had introduced me to Walter Arlen, whom coincidentally, I had met only the previous evening at the home of the Austrian Consulate. A friendship soon grew and Howard approached me with news of Walter’s own compositions. He told me that Walter would be furious if he knew that I had been told about them. He managed to show me a few sample manuscripts, which were instantly recognizable as musically literate and meticulously clear. They were obviously not avant-garde and appeared by their transparency and delicacy to be both appealing and attractive. A drive down Santa Monica Boulevard, and my initial impression was confirmed when Howard innocently popped in a cassette of a young violinist playing Sonnet for violin and piano, an arrangement of his song Does he Belong here-from his Rilke Cycle of Sonnets to Orpheus. The intrinsic beauty of this work, both as song and as violin solo, was so instantaneous, that I agreed to mount a concert of Arlen’s works at the Jewish Museum–a concert that we could not know would have enormous repercussions. Rather than being an evening with friends in the museum’s modest lecture theater, it became the memorial event for recalling Austria’s annexation in March 1938–seventy years earlier. Walter’s family story–long forgotten in Vienna–was a mere page in the horror of these events and the concert had become a gala with state and federal politicians from all parties in attendance.

The politicians were all from a generation that had not experienced the Anschluss and regardless of party allegiance, found it incomprehensible that such a disaster could have befallen their homeland. Walter, whose macular degeneration had now nearly rendered him totally blind, spoke quietly in the soft Viennese dialect of a forgotten age. For the politicians and members of museum staff in attendance, it was a deeply moving experience. It was not just the voice of someone who had witnessed what had happened, but Walter still spoke as the perfectly preserved seventeen-year-old boy he had been at the time. The pain and shock was nearly unbearable, with relief coming only from the melancholic beauty of the works selected.

Adding to the poignancy of the event was the concurrent demolition of the Art Deco building that had formerly housed the Dichter Department Store. It was where Walter had been born. The double dealings and mendacity of post-war Austria meant that restitution was inconceivable for either the store or the family estate on the Hungarian border. The lack of restitution meant that there was no resolution and ‘bitterness’ is insufficient to describe the anger and sense of rejection that Arlen would feel again as a ninety year-old. Yet paradoxically, returning his music to Austria became an act of reverse restitution, restoring to his homeland that tiny bit of cultural beauty that had been thrown out and trampled upon. It was in effect, yet another Dichter family mitzvah to the people of Vienna. His last composition before losing his eyesight entirely was My Song, to be sung a-cappella. He appended to his cycle of songs based on the poems of Rabindranath Tagore.
SOUND CUE - My Song - from Wein, Du Allein

Pain and anger does not diminish over time, but takes on a voice of its own. Arlen’s most angry work, Arbeit Macht Frei, is in many ways his most imaginative and creative, combining lyricism and suspense while departing from musical tones altogether in order to give a voice to those who perished in the Holocaust. In the second movement of the piece, he substitutes music with the gradual speeding up of a metronome, meant to mimic the heart-beats of those in the gas chambers who suddenly realized what was happening to them. It represents much that is unique about Arlen’s biographical evocations in sound.