As a musicologist, I have been trained to study and analyze music, the manuscripts and sketches through which it has come down to us, its history and sociology, production and reception. One thing I have not often had to deal with in my work are love letters. But it so happens that in my current book project, on the history of the musicians who fled the Nazi regime to Iceland in the 1930s, I have come across a sad but beautiful love story between two young musicians in Berlin.
Until 1933, it seemed like they would be together forever. Robert Abraham was a 21-year old pianist and composer/conductor; his girlfriend Emmy Schultz was a year older, a talented pianist. They both studied at the Berlin Academy of Music, but when the Nazis took power, it soon became clear that Robert would be better off elsewhere: he was Jewish, the son of the noted musicologist Otto Abraham.
Emmy, on the other hand, was "Aryan" and although she loved Robert more than anything, they decided that she would stay behind, at least for the time being. Robert went to Paris, studying conducting with Hermann Scherchen (the legendary conductor who gave the first performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire), then to Copenhagen, where he enjoyed the financial support of an old family friend. But by 1934 hardly any foreign musicians were allowed to work in Denmark, and even with his best efforts, Robert was forbidden to give concerts there. In September 1935, he took a ship to Iceland, where he was allowed to settle and eventually became one of the country’s most beloved musicians, conducting orchestras and choirs, as well as researching Icelandic music history and completing the first ever doctoral thesis on Icelandic music.
Emmy did not follow Robert to Denmark, or to Iceland. She didn’t come from a wealthy family, and it was impossible for her to intend to stay for months without employment in a foreign country, without even having completed her music degree in Berlin.
I first came across the love story of Robert and Emmy a few years ago, and through some serendipitous googling I was lucky enough to find Emmy’s daughter Heide, who lives in Wacken, Germany. She was delighted that someone was writing about her "Onkel Robert" and in summer 2022 I was finally able to visit her and examine the letters from Robert to Emmy, which she had kept for all these years. Then, in February 2023, Robert’s Icelandic daughter-in-law called me to say that she had found a box of letters that Emmy wrote to Robert during their separation in 1934-1935. I was thrilled to be able to read them and learn more about their relationship, although I also felt somewhat awkward reading other people’s love letters.
But these are some serious love letters! Emmy was clearly head over heels in love, but also desperately sad to be so far away from the man she loved. In one letter, written in December 1934, she says: "Robert, you are so good and kind. I long for you day and night. You’re always there. I think of you always. I love you always. It never ends." By May 1935, she has become impatient, complaining that he doesn’t write often enough, and is desperate to know more about the details of his life in Copenhagen. By the time he arrived in Iceland later that year, they probably both knew that their relationship had come to an end.
Emmy finished her piano degree in Berlin and eventually married the violist and composer Artur Grenz, who had been one of Robert’s best friends at school. Robert married an Icelandic woman, Guðríður Magnúsdóttir. After the horrors of the war, he would send food and warm clothing to his old friends in Germany via the Red Cross, and they kept their friendship alive until Robert’s sudden and untimely death in 1974. Even today, the children and grandchildren of Emmy Schultz and Robert Abraham are aware of this beautiful story of a love that wasn’t meant to be. It is yet another reminder that the horrors of dictatorship and war affect everyone, also "ordinary" people who just want to be able to love and be kind to one another.
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