Viktor Ullmann (1898 – 1944)
1898 Born on January 1 to a Jewish family in Teschen, then an Austro-Hungarian garrison town, in what is now the Polish part of the city, i.e., Teschen’s Old Town. His father Maximilian was a professional soldier (who, in order to advance his career, had himself and his wife Malwine, née Bilitzer, baptised and converted to Roman Catholicism). Viktor, who was also baptised as a Roman Catholic immediately after birth, attended elementary school in Cieszyn and then graduated from the first grade of high school there.
1909 With only his mother (his father continues his military career in various parts of Austria-Hungary), Viktor moves to Vienna, where he attends Razumovsky’s grammar school and becomes increasingly drawn into and influenced by Vienna’s rich musical scene. He takes his first music theory lessons with Josef Polnauer.
1916 – 1918 In May 1916, Ullmann prematurely ended his studies with a so-called war matriculation exam and, on his father’s advice, enlisted in the army as a one-year volunteer. After completing the necessary training, he served as an artillery observer during the fighting in the Soča Valley (Italian: Isonzo) in present-day Slovenia in 1917. After the 12th Battle of the Isonzo, he was transferred to the Adriatic coast, to the town of Barcola near Trieste, where he developed a rich concert and compositional activity in the army until the end of the war. After demobilisation, he returned to Vienna and, after the collapse of the monarchy, decided to take Austrian citizenship.
1918-19 In Vienna, at his father’s request, he studied law while also attending an eight-month composition seminar led by the famous composer Arnold Schönberg. It was here that he met his first wife, Martha Koref, who came from Prague. At her instigation, the couple moved there in 1919, and on the recommendation of his teacher, Schönberg, Viktor secured a job at the New German Theatre (today’s Prague State Opera).
1920 – 1927 Viktor Ullmann works as a répétiteur, choirmaster, and conductor at the New German Theater in Prague, whose music director at the time is the outstanding conductor and composer Alexander von Zemlinsky; Ullmann is also already working on his own compositions and enjoying his first successes with critics and audiences alike.
1927 – 1928 After his boss and role model, Zemlinsky, leaves for Berlin, Ullmann also leaves the theatre. He accepts an offer from the theatre in Ústí nad Labem and works there as music director and chief conductor of the opera. However, he leaves the theatre after the first season due to financial difficulties and returns to Prague.
1929 – 1931 He worked as a composer and bandleader at the Schauspielhaus theatre in Zurich. In 1931, he divorced his first wife and soon remarried Anna Winternitz, the daughter of a prominent Prague doctor, with whom he shared an interest in the teachings of the Swiss philosopher Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy. The couple had four children (three boys and a girl) in the following years.
1931 – 1933 In 1931, Ullmann became a member of the Anthroposophical Society. He interrupted his musical career and, together with his wife, started running an anthroposophical bookshop in Stuttgart. However, because he fell victim to economic fraud at the very beginning of this venture, the couple found themselves on the brink of bankruptcy after two years.
1933 – 1938 Under pressure from debt and creditors, the family returned to Prague in the summer of 1933, and Ullmann sought a new livelihood, which he achieved only through freelance work. In addition to lectures, music criticism, and other activities, he also devoted himself increasingly to composition and became one of the most respected composers of interwar Czechoslovakia. During the 1930s, he won the prestigious Emil Hertzka Prize twice, and his works were performed at contemporary music festivals. Ullmann’s father Maximilian died on March 20, 1938, in Vienna, just one week after Hitler’s annexation of Austria, leaving his son Viktor as his sole heir. Thanks to the courage of one of his father’s friends and the court in Vienna’s Josefstadt district, Viktor gained access to his inheritance, which allowed him to live and work in Prague as an independent composer until his deportation to Terezín, and to begin publishing his works.
1939 – 1941 After the Nazis broke up Czechoslovakia, Ullmann continued to compose, including the opera The Broken Jug (based on Heinrich Kleist’s drama); his attempts to emigrate failed, but his two children (his son Johannes and daughter Felicia) were saved by being transported to Great Britain.
1942 – 44 On September 8, 1942, Ullmann and his third wife Elisabeth, née Frank-Meissl, were deported to Terezín, where, like many of his fellow artists, he continued his intensive compositional, concert, teaching, and critical activities under extreme conditions. He founded and led the Studio for New Music. During his 24-month stay in the ghetto, he composed 22 works, including his most famous work, the opera The Emperor of Atlantis, or The Denial of Death. On October 16, 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz in the so-called artists’ transport and, immediately upon arrival, probably on October 18, murdered in a gas chamber.
1945 – 1975 Ullmann’s works from Terezín, which the composer gave to his friend Emil Utitz before being transported to Auschwitz, were saved thanks to him and another prominent Jewish intellectual, H.G. Adler, who, like Utitz, survived the Holocaust (and is the author of the very first book about life in the Terezín ghetto, published in 1955). However, for a long time no one showed any interest in them, until in 1975 the British conductor Kerry Woodward presented his own adaptation of the opera The Emperor of Atlantis in Amsterdam. And although the adaptation is very different from the original, the performance was very well received and the music world finally began to take an interest in Viktor Ullmann’s work. His musical estate was taken over by the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, and the German publishing house Schott in Mainz began to systematically publish Ullmann’s works.
For detailed information about the composer’s life and work, see, for example, the online Czech Music Dictionary of People and Institutions.(https://www.ceskyhudebnislovnik.cz/slovnik/).
Further recommended reading:
Schultz, Ingo: Neklidný Středoevropan Viktor Ullmann. Příběh pražského německého skladatele (překlad: Magdalena Živná), NAMU a NOEMI Arts&Media, Praha 2024 (viz též záložka „Monografie“).
Voda, David (ed.): Pražská antroposofická moderna. Praguer Anthroposophische Moderne. 1907-1953, Arbor vitae societas, Praha 2024
Ullmann, Viktor: Pád Antikrista. Libreto opery podle „dramatické skici“ Alberta Steffena (překlad: Vlasta Reittererová), nakladatelství David Voda – Bibliotheca enigmatica, Olomouc 2014.
Ullmann, Viktor: Cizí pasažér. Deník ve verších (překlad: Vlasta Reittererová, poznámky: Jan Dostal), nakladatelství David Voda – Bibliotheca enigmatica, Olomouc 2014.
Kuna, Milan: Hudba na hranici života, Naše vojsko, Praha 1990.
Kuna, Milan: Hudba vzdoru a naděje. Terezín 1941-1945, Editio Bärenreiter, Praha 2000.
Ullmann, Viktor: Svědek a oběť apokalypsy, 1914-1944 (publikace ke stejnojmenné výstavě), Archiv hlavního města Prahy a NOEMI Arts&Media, agentura pro mezinárodní komunikaci, Praha 2015.