Alan Walker

Dohnányi Redeemed

Ilona von Dohnányi: A Song of Life. Edited by James A. Grymes.
Bloomington, Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 252 pp.

 

Between the two world wars, Ernst von Dohnányi (1877-1960) was the most influential musician in Hungary. For a time he held simultaneously the posts of Director of the Liszt Academy, Conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, and Director of Music at Hungarian Radio. Aside from being a prolific composer of music in all genres, he was also a matchless pianist, an inspiring teacher and an administrator with a national vision for his country. Before his arrival on the scene, in the early 1900s, music-making in Hungary remained at a parochial level (gifted young Hungarians generally sought their musical training abroad), but with Dohnányi at the helm, the music of Hungary began to attract international attention. Bartók, Kodály, Leó Weiner and other Hungarians of that generation all owed their early starts to Dohnányi, who featured their music on Hungarian Radio, conducted it at home and abroad, and placed his unrivalled piano playing at their disposal. When he was at the height of his powers he was performing more than 120 concerts a year-solo recitals, chamber music, concertos-in Budapest and elsewhere. Bartók spoke the truth when, writing in 1920, he declared: "Musical life in Budapest today may be summed up in one name: Dohnányi". On the occasion of Dohnányi's 60th birthday, the Pesti Napló went further and declared: "Listen to us, for we are celebrating Ernst von Dohnányi, who is ours, and whom we have given to the world."
In all the circumstances it is extraordinary that until now there has never been a large-scale biography of Dohnányi in English. With the publication of Ilona von Dohnányi's narrative, A Song of Life, all that has changed. Ilona was Dohnányi's third wife, and this remarkable tribute to her husband fills the void with conspicuous success.
For the last eleven years of his life (1949-60) Dohnányi lived in Tallahassee, Florida, where he had been offered the post of Artist-in-Residence, and Head of the Piano Faculty. Ilona had long nourished the idea of writing the biography of her celebrated husband. Now that he had reached his twilight years (he was seventy-two years old when he settled in Florida), she thought it important to put the main outlines of his fabulous career on the record, especially since he was still under pressure from his political enemies in Hungary, who never lost the desire to destroy him. We will come to that later.
She embarked on this labour of love by conducting a series of interviews with Dohnányi over several years, in Hungarian. Her original notebooks, containing a careful record of these conversations, are presently in the possession of her son Julius. Ilona was a gifted linguist (she spoke five languages), and was known as a prolific writer of books and articles, including short biographies of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, and Robert and Clara Schumann. She was therefore well equipped to write a biography of Dohnányi, whom she knew intimately for the last 23 years of his life. Her Hungarian notebooks later became the basis of her typescript, prepared by her in English, which she deposited in Florida State University Library in 1960, shortly after Dohnányi's death. The archival records show that she had tried to find an American publisher for the book at that time, without success. For the detailed documentation of Dohnányi's professional activities from the early years, of which Ilona had no direct knowledge, she relied on a collection of twenty-six scrapbooks, which had been assembled by Dohnányi's American family with scrupulous care. Much of this precious material was smuggled out of Hungary during the 1950s by Dohnányi's sister Mitzi, one sheet at a time, enclosed between the leaves of her many airmail letters to her beloved brother. It was the only way to get this unique material into America during the Cold War. The documents go back to his twelfth year, and consist of concert programmes, reviews, photographs, newspaper articles and the like. A selection of this material illustrates the book, and some of it has never before been published. Particularly appealing is a photograph of Dohnányi, Bartók and Kodály, taken in 1900 at a Budapest fair, depicting this gifted young triumvirate in carnival mood. Dohnányi is about to hit an aggressive Kodály over the head with a guitar, while Bartók cowers between them holding an ethnic instrument of indeterminate origin. The picture is a useful reminder of the camaraderie that always existed among these three great musicians.
How accurate is the text? Let Ilona herself reply.

I learned the facts from Dohnányi. This made my work somewhat difficult, because Dohnányi did not like to talk about himself. Nevertheless, he insisted that I write everything down without adding any fiction or colouring it in any way.

We are told that Dohnányi himself read most of the chapters and approved them.
After his death the typescript languished in the library of Florida State University for 40 years. It was left to Dr. James Grymes, the founder and director of the recently established Dohnányi Archives in Tallahassee, to edit the typescript and prepare it for publication. The main problem was Ilona von Dohnányi's English, which was her fifth language, and required some revision. While providing her with somewhat more elegant English than she herself had been able to command, Dr Grymes has been careful to keep her own "voice" throughout her prose. He has also corrected those purely factual errors that inevitably creep into work of this kind, written more than seventy years after some of the events it seeks to portray, and published more than forty years after the text itself had been completed. As an additional precaution, Dr Grymes sought the help of Edward Kilényi (an American pupil of Dohnányi, who had studied with him in Budapest and later became his chief teaching assistant in Tallahassee), and Dohnányi's American granddaughter, Helen McGlynn, whose memories of Dohnányi went back to her childhood in the 1930s. Not only students of the composer's life and work but all Hungarians owe Dr Grymes a debt of gratitude. He has published an irreplaceable document, one that will serve as the official story of Dohnányi's life until a full-scale scholarly biography appears. The book's title, incidentally, is drawn from Dohnányi's magnum opus, Cantus Vitć-A Song of Life.

The book throws much light on a number of obscure corners of Dohnányi's life. Two in particular attracted my attention, one private, the other intensely public.
Like many other admirers of the composer, I had never been certain of the exact circumstances under which he met his third wife. Ilona first encountered him shortly after his 60th birthday. It was the summer of 1937 and Dohnányi was world famous. Her parents were giving a dinner-party to which they had invited a number of prominent people, including Dohnányi and his second wife, Elsa Galafrčs, the celebrated actress. So many other guests were swarming around him that Ilona could not even get near enough to introduce herself. "After supper," she later recalled,

I felt two palms being gently pressed against my eyes from behind me. A man's voice I had never heard before asked mockingly, Guess who I am? Puzzled, I wheeled around to find myself face to face with Ernst von Dohnányi. There was a smile on his lips and in his bright blue eyes as he looked at me. He gently took both my hands and, patting my flushed cheek, murmured, You resemble your father, my dear... I recognized you immediately.

It was love at first sight, for her at any rate. She was 27 years old-33 years his junior, unhappily married with two small children, and on the point of leaving her husband. Her name was Ilona Zachár, and she lived an isolated life on a country estate owned by her spouse. If she was vulnerable to Dohnányi's famous charm, he was at that moment just as vulnerable to her. His marriage to Galafrčs was dead in all but name, and Ilona Zachár soon realized it. Was this the catalyst that drove her a few days later to telephone Dohnányi at the Liszt Academy and seek an appointment? The reason she later gave was that she needed a regular income to support herself and her family, and she hoped that Dohnányi might be able to find her a job, perhaps with Hungarian Radio. She herself admits that her bold approach "displayed tremendous audacity." Imagine the scene. She was ushered into Dohnányi's office by his secretary, Kálmán Isoz. Liszt's Chickering grand piano dominated the room. Oil-paintings of past directors gazed down at her from the walls-including Mihalovich, Hubay and Franz Liszt. Some leather armchairs lent the place a bureaucratic atmosphere. Dohnányi was sitting at his desk working on some official papers. Everything was in stark contrast to the easy celebration a few days earlier, in the home of her parents. He rose to greet her in a somewhat stiff and formal manner, as befitted a Director. He was clearly puzzled. "Is there anything I can do for you?", he asked, in a polite but reserved voice. She told him she needed employment. "Why do you need a job?", asked Dohnányi. "Is it your intention to abandon your life on the estate?" It was a fatal question, indicating that Dohnányi knew more about her private life than she had realised. Ilona, already nervous at the situation in which she found herself, now poured out her heart to him about the unhappiness her marriage had brought her. Dohnányi offered her some words of comfort, and as they parted he kissed her gently on the cheek. "Although it was a casual kiss from a respectable uncle to his niece, my heart warmed and I knew that he liked me," she later observed. Dohnányi explained that there were no openings at the Academy and he had no power to make staff appointments at the Radio, but he would do his best to help her. Despite her linguistic skills he advised her to study the more practical crafts of typing and stenography, and search for a job as a secretary. She followed his advice and eventually secured a high-paid position at the Manfréd Weiss airplane factory. An intimate relationship with Dohnányi soon followed. She had meanwhile moved back into her parents' home in Budapest with her two children, and on Sundays Dohnányi would visit her there and take her and the children to the park, to the zoo, or to a restaurant for dinner. He hated duplicity, and this romantic attachment, which had occurred so late in his life, might have brought much remorse in its wake had fate not intervened. He developed a thrombosis in his right arm. Unable to practise the piano or to conduct, and forbidden by his doctor to engage in any physical activity, he moved into the spa of the Gellért Hotel where, almost immobile, he embarked on a fresh study of the musical scores of his beloved Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann. He was also free to receive as many visitors as he wished, including Ilona, away from the watchful eyes of Elsa Galafrčs. After three months he was completely cured, but he decided to stay at the Gellért and rent a permanent room there. He gave up everything that he had loved in his former life-above all his house on Széher Street with its beautiful garden that he himself had planted. It was entirely typical of Dohnányi that he surrendered the entire salaries he received from the Academy and from the Radio to his family. He kept only his fees from his concerts. Ilona tells us that she never once heard him utter a single word of regret about what he had given up. He seemed perfectly content in his hotel room, returning to the house on Széher Street only when he needed to retrieve one of his precious books from his large library, or, more rarely, when he was obliged to use one or two of its spacious rooms to hold an important reception.

The other issue on which the book is revealing is the highly public matter of the false charges brought against Dohnányi at the end of World War Two. The rumour that he had collaborated with the Nazis during the Horthy regime were set in motion by a group of disaffected Hungarians who wanted to destroy his reputation in the West; they were mainly second-rate musicians who thought that their careers had been hampered by Dohnányi during his twenty-five-year period as "musical dictator" of Hungary. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and their charges pursued Dohnányi to the grave, even though he was officially exonerated, first by the West and then by the Hungarian government itself. The story reads like fiction, but it is fact. In the summer of 1944, as the Russian army closed in on Budapest, Dohnányi and his new family sought refuge in the country home of Ilona's parents in Gödöllő, about thirty kilometres from Budapest. Because of his enormous power and prestige (aside from all his other positions, Dohnányi was also a Member of Parliament), he was besieged by people wanting his support and protection. He signed every petition and application put before him, thinking only to help the supplicants. An official piece of paper bearing the signature of Dohnányi was as good as a passport, given the chaos into which Hungary was fast sinking. He saved many people from the labour camps, including Jenő Sugár, the Jewish head of his publishing firm of Rózsavölgyi, who managed to escape to Italy. He also helped people to leave Hungary who were later denounced by the Russians as enemies of the state. How many petitions he signed is unknown, but at least some of those signatures came back to haunt him. And when the Russians finally occupied Budapest, in early 1945, they had more than enough evidence to try to have Dohnányi arrested. People were executed for less. Quite unwittingly he had laid the groundwork for his own prosecution and became a perfect example of the old saying: "No good deed should remain unpunished."
By the time that Budapest fell to the Red Army Dohnányi had fled Hungary. Realizing the catastrophe that was about to envelope his native land (he could already see the smoke rising from the burning buildings of Budapest's suburbs from distant Gödöllő), he hurried back to Budapest, collected a few belongings and made his way across the Austrian border, first to Vienna and eventually to the relatively peaceful surroundings of the village of Neukirchen-am-Walde. With him were Ilona and the two children. The last person to whom he said farewell on his way out of Budapest was his sister Mitzi, to whom he was exceptionally close. This nightmare journey, which was undertaken with hardly any food and no money, is described by Ilona in graphic detail and forms one of the most moving parts of the narrative. During those first months in Neukirchen-am-Walde, Dohnányi used to play the organ in the local village church for the Sunday services in exchange for the food which the villagers gave him and his family.
There is evidence that Dohnányi thought his sojourn in Austria would be temporary, and once the war was over he would be able to resume his life in Hungary. That never happened. Hungary, under its new Communist masters, made it clear that it did not want Dohnányi back, except as a prisoner. Three accusations were levelled against him: that he was a Nazi collaborator, that he was anti-Semitic, and that he was anti-Communist. Only the last accusation was true. He was anti-Communist all his life. (It is often forgotten that Dohnányi had left Hungary once before, during the brief Communist regime of Béla Kun, in 1919.) What compounded Dohnányi's difficulties was that as a member of Parliament he had attached his signature to the newly-formed Nemzeti Szövetség (National Association), like many other good patriots in Parliament. This document was directed against Russia. To those who ask, Why did Dohnányi leave Hungary?, the answer is plain. Had he remained he would have been executed.
Dohnányi now worked hard to clear his reputation. Since Neukirchen-am-Walde fell within the American Zone of Occupation, it became the job of the American Army to inquire into the false charges the Russians were making against him. By one of those extraordinary coincidences, his old pupil Edward Kilényi had meanwhile become an intelligence officer in the American Army, based in Munich. When he heard of the charges, Kilényi made it his special task to disprove them. He visited Dohnányi in Neukirchen, and there was a warm reunion. Thanks in large part to Kilényi, Dohnányi was officially cleared by the American Army, and with his innocence established they permitted him to give concerts in the American zone of occupation, but to military personnel only. Dohnányi needed clearance from another source entirely before he could be allowed to concertize before the general public in Austria and, by implication, abroad. This only came to light when his appearance at the Salzburg Festival in 1945 was cancelled, "because of his War Criminal activities". That damaging directive had come from the office of one Otto Pasetti, Music Officer for the American Zone in Austria, whose self-appointed task appears to have been to restore the musical life of that nation to its former glory. Dohnányi decided to travel to Salzburg to have it out with Pasetti. The confrontation took place in August 1945, in the office of the Mozarteum. Pasetti had been given plenipotentiary powers by the Americans, and he abused his authority. He was Tyrolean by birth, and had only recently been made an American citizen. Like many such people after the war, he was a small man suddenly made large by force of circumstance, and, in his case, by the elevating title "Music Officer for the American Zone". It was Pasetti's job to see that former Nazi collaborators were excluded from taking part in the musical life of Austria. He almost made a profession of standing in Dohnányi's way, blocking every attempt to have the famous musician exonerated so that his concert career in Austria and elsewhere could resume. In retrospect it is clear that this little man did not want to offend his Russian counterparts. Dohnányi now hand-ed Pasetti a letter from Lt.-Colonel Robert-son, an American Army officer who had got to know Dohnányi well, which declared that the composer had been cleared by the Americans and was already giving concerts for the American Army in Austria. Pasetti read the letter, and then turned to Dohnányi saying: "This has nothing to do with me.
I am building a new Austria, from musicians of reliable reputation, not like you with your highly unsatisfactory political background." It was one of the few occasions on which Dohnányi lost his temper.
"Of what am I accused?" he demanded, his eyes blazing. Pasetti, who was not used to being questioned himself, started to wilt under Dohnányi's glare. "There is a whole pile of accusations against you", he stammered.
"I want to know them", stormed Dohnányi.
"That is out of the question", replied Pasetti. "I cannot talk about them to you or any of your friends."
Dohnányi persisted. "I want to hear at least one of the accusations."
There was no reply. Our Music Officer for the American Zone had temporarily lost his tongue. In icy tones Dohnányi went on to tell the small bureaucrat before him that there was absolutely nothing in his past that he would change, that if he had to do everything again (which would presumably include signing the anti-Russian declaration as well) he would act exactly as before. That seemed to get Pasetti's attention. "We are allied with the Russians", he shouted. "Those who are against them are our enemies. I could arrest you now for this remark." At that, Ilona came forward and tried to approach Pasetti herself, but Dohnányi grabbed her arm saying: "Come, there is no reason to stay. We are only wasting our time." This was the theme on which untold variations were to be played in the years to come. The accusations were always nameless, nothing was ever specific, everything was left deliberately vague.
It was like wrestling with phantoms.
Of all the false allegations levelled against Dohnányi, it was the one alleging anti-Semitism that he felt most keenly. Jews had always been among Dohnányi's most prominent students at the Liszt Academy, and he had awarded a greater proportion of scholarships to them than to any other group-purely on musical merit. Among his Jewish students were Edward Kilényi, Annie Fischer, Endre Petri, Iván Engel, Andor Földes, Jenő Zeitinger, Lajos Heimlich, György Ferenczi, and György Faragó. The charges that he was anti-Jewish reached an absurd and sinister climax in October 1945 when it was alleged by the Hungarian government that he had "handed over sick Jewish musicians to the Gestapo." Dohnányi later discovered that this particular calumny had been started by a Jew whom he had earlier helped to get released from a labour camp in Hungary, a revelation that wounded him deeply. It was yet another matter for his nemesis, the indefatigable Pasetti, to investigate, one more delay on the way to Dohnányi's "rehabilitation."
In an interesting letter from the Hungarian violinist Tibor Serly, written in defence of Dohnányi in February 1949 (and included with several others in this book), the point is made that "not one Jewish musician of any reputation living in Hungary lost his life or perished during the entire period of World War II" (Serly's italics). It has meanwhile been proved conclusively that when the Nazi racial laws were introduced into Hungary, in the early 1940s, and a "star chamber" was set up within the Liszt Academy to purge it of its Jewish students and faculty, Dohnányi obstructed it at every turn, and made it unworkable. Far better known is the fact that in 1944, after the Germans had occupied Hungary, he disband-ed the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra rather than purge it of its Jewish players.

Not the least intriguing feature of this book are the Appendices. Two of them contain letters in support of Dohnányi, including a moving tribute from his Jewish colleague Leó Weiner. They also present a selection of documents dealing with the political storm raging around Dohnányi, includ-ing original documents from Pasetti, Kilé-nyi, Sugár, Tibor Serly and others. Another Appendix contains the texts of two very fine lectures by Dohnányi, published here for the first time and which deserve to become widely known, the first on Sight Reading and the second on Beethoven's Piano Sonatas. Finally there is a complete Catalogue of Works, compiled by James Grymes.
This Catalogue raises what is, perhaps, the most important point of all. It is as a composer that Dohnányi's claim to posterity will rest. His music has been routinely dismissed by some as "old-fashioned". The term is meaningless and has no place in the critical lexicon, where it continues to serve as a substitute for thought. It is used by those who misguidedly base their theoretical picture of music on the scientific model, and particularly on the development of technology-where each stage is considered a step towards the next one. But this analogy is surely false. Art is not science. Scientific inventions may supercede and even replace one another, but works of art do not. The language of music is there to express something. The only question that matters is: "Does it succeed?" Why would one need to know the date before answering such a question?
In any case, the music shows every sign of outliving its critics. A long-awaited revival of Dohnányi's music is now upon us. And nowhere is this in greater evidence than in the composer's native Hungary, where it has recently enjoyed a strong recovery. Dohnányi has meanwhile had a street named after him, close to the Liszt Academy. And in 1990 he was posthumously awarded the Kossuth Prize, one of Hungary's highest distinctions.
"Dohnányi is ours!" When the Pesti Napló issued that proclamation, sixtyfive years ago, it had no portent of the dreadful events that were soon to overtake Hungary and Dohnányi himself. Those words have unwittingly turned into a challenge. Hungary now shows every sign of wanting to heal the breach that Hungary alone was responsible for creating. How far is it willing to go? A subsidy in perpetuity for the newly established Dohnányi Research Centre in Budapest would be a good beginning. History teaches us that it is never too late for a nation to bring about a reconciliation with its greatest sons.