Pál Hermann

ESTRIN: I love how it’s optimistic. It feels forward-looking, uplifting. It feels modern.

KENNEDY: Absolutely. Hermann was in his 20s when he wrote his Cello Concerto. He was basically a student. And it’s full of optimism. It’s full of life because so was he. He was huge fun. This amazing violinist he used to play with called Zoltán Székely, who was very famous through the 20th century, described him as flott. And I spent ages trying to interpret what flott means. It’s a Hungarian word that translates roughly as light and easy, fun and chilled out. That was Pál Hermann.

I want to remember him with that flott, that energy, that lightness, because that was who he was.

- NPR interview. Daniel Estrin and Kate Kennedy (author of 'Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound').

The biography of Pál Hermann could almost have been the typical story of a remarkable musician: a talented cellist hailing from Hungary, he made his international break in 1923 and soon emigrated to Berlin. Here, the story starts to veer in another direction: his life in Berlin was slowly, but increasingly, encroached upon by Hitler’s regime. He lost his job and moved first to the Netherlands, and then to Belgium. Eventually, he escaped to France, where, in February 1944, he was deported – probably to Lithuania – never to be heard from again.

He is survived, materially, by 26 compositions. Pál left several of them behind in his in-law’s home in Amersfoort and in his brother-in-law’s place in Toujouse, and others were found in the BNF in Paris, the Banff archives and the historic archives in Toulouse. Just recently, his last two works were discovered in Toulouse. In a near-miraculous turn of events, his cello was rediscovered in 2024. The stark losses – a life of musicianship, other compositions lost during the war, and what might have been – leave Pál’s compositions and cello as poignant, yet meagre, remnants of a life lost to the Holocaust.

A gifted cellist

At 13 years old, Pál entered the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music, now the Franz Liszt Academy. He counted renowned composers Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók among his teachers, and violinist Zoltán Székely among his friends. Lists of student performances in the Academy’s archives show Pál and Zoltán played together constantly.

His first performance outside of Hungary was a private concert of Kodály’s Sonata for Solo Cello, Op 8 at composer Arnold Schoenberg’s home in Vienna in 1920. A few years later, his performance of the same sonata in Salzburg at the International Society for Contemporary Music marked a breakthrough in his reputation as an interpreter of contemporary music.

The introduction of antisemitic policies under Hungary’s Regent Admiral Miklós Horthy, a decade before the Nazis came to power, led many young musicians to leave the country. Pál left Budapest for Berlin in 1920.

In Berlin, Pál studied with the famous cellist and composer Hugo Becker at the Staatliche Akademische Hochschule für Musik, then known as a centre of avant-garde music. Very much in demand, Pál performed with numerous ensembles across Europe. The Baroque music ensemble he performed with held concerts almost every week; among those in the audience was Albert Einstein, who invited him and other musicians to perform in his home. Einstein, himself a skilled musician, joined in on occasion.

During this time, Pál also taught cello and composition at the Volksmusikschule Berlin-Neukölln: one of the first public music schools in Berlin, which brought folk music, singing and music theory classes to workers and children typically excluded from formal music education.

Together, Pál and Zoltán performed across the Netherlands, Germany and England. In the Netherlands, they performed the Dutch premiere of Kodály’s Duo for Violin and Cello, bringing it to international attention, and they premiered Hermann’s Grand Duo for Violin and Cello. In England, they enjoyed the patronage of the Dutch-born couple Jaap and Louise de Graaff, ardent music lovers and art patrons. They bought excellent instruments for Zoltán and Pál – a Stradivarius violin for Zoltán and a Gagliano cello for Pál. In 1929, Louise suggested to her niece Ada Weevers that she go and see Pál in concert in Amsterdam. Pál and Ada met, and fell in love. He began to visit her in her hometown of Amersfoort whenever he could. As their relationship grew, Ada withdrew from her medical degree at the University of Amsterdam. They married in 1931, and Ada moved to Berlin to live with Pál. They welcomed their daughter, Corrie, in 1932.

Leaving Berlin

In March 1933, Hitler consolidated absolute power in Germany and it was soon evident that the Hermanns would have to leave Berlin. Fleeing the country, they spent the summer in the Netherlands, hoping for respite. But tragedy struck when Ada was caught in a vortex in the sea: she was rescued, but the water she had inhaled led to pneumonia, and she died soon after.

With the Dutch Musicians’ Union policy to only give work to Dutch artists, Pál moved to Brussels. He often visited Corrie who he had left in the loving care of Ada’s family. Pál continued to work as a musician, performing in quartets throughout Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy and Hungary.

In 1937, he moved to Paris, where he performed regularly as a soloist. War broke out in 1939, curtailing Pál’s life even further. Contact with and visits to his family in the Netherlands became sparse and then practically ceased altogether. When France began to mobilise, Pál signed up as a foreign volunteer with the 23rd RMVE of the French army and was initially assigned to a military marching band. After the German occupation, the regiment was disbanded. He moved to the south of Bordeaux, where he stayed with the de Graaff couple. Their home was just within the ‘Free Zone’ that remained for the first part of the war outside Nazi control, and Pál was among many musicians and artists who fled across this border and sought safety in the de Graaff home. However, relations soured with the de Graaffs, and he was forced to leave the obscurity of the countryside, and try to earn a living in occupied Toulouse.

For two years, Pál moved between a cheap hotel and rented rooms, taught cello to a handful of pupils and played public performances – surprisingly often in his own name, although as the campaign to round up Jews intensified, he adopted the pseudonym de Cotigny to try mask his identity.

He was arrested there in April 1944: whether because his ‘de Cotigny’ papers had been found to be forgeries, or because he had been caught in a street round up remains unclear. He was deported and taken to the Drancy Camp near Paris. From here, he was among the passengers on Convoy 73, a train destined for the Kauen concentration camp near Kaunas, Lithuania.

While still in the station, he wrote a note to his brother-in-law Jan Weevers and threw it out of the train. A stranger found it and posted it to Jan. It read:

We have been told we’re going to work for the Organisation Todt. We are still full of hope, despite everything. As for my instruments, please save whatever you can

Pál was never heard from again.

‘I am the soul of music’

Jan came up with a plan to save Pál's cello. Despite limited transport during the war, he set off for Toulouse.

In Toulouse, he met two friends who would help him with his task. At night, they went to Pál’s apartment, making their way past police patrols in the city. The Gestapo had boarded it up, but they managed to force open a tiny window and get inside. Once inside, Jan’s friends pushed a cheap student cello in behind him. Jan then swapped the Gagliano cello for the lesser model they had brought with them, and they made their escape.

Jan cycled 150 km home with the cello on his back. The cello was saved.

A few years later, the family reluctantly decided to sell the cello to pay for Corrie’s studies. After that, the family lost track of it until very recently.

In 2024, musician and musicologist Kate Kennedy published her book Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound, the story of four cellists – including Pál, and his missing Gagliano cello. She travelled all over Europe looking for the cello, which bears a most unusual, distinctive inscription burnt into the sides of the instrument. She failed to find the cello before her book was published, but just before its launch she was contacted by cellist Jian Wang who remembered seeing the cello’s Latin inscription: ‘I am the Soul of Music’ at a competition in Brussels in 2022. The cello was discovered to be in the care of the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf and was being played by Australian cellist Sam Lucas. Corrie and her father’s cello were soon reunited at a concert held at London’s Wigmore Hall – where Pál had played 100 years before.

Corrie’s message to Europe

Hitler has burned books, destroyed paintings and buildings, murdered millions of people. But music is invincible.