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A String Instrument
Erich Hartmann (left) with colleagues, April 1965
Flowers
It is December 2018, a cold but sunny day: dark coats and bright scarves, black bikes shuffling through the old leaves. Frau Annemarie Bastiaan waits for me at a bus stop on Kurfürstendamm, an elegant avenue in West Berlin. I am holding the flowers she suggested I get Herr Erich Hartmann. Amaryllis, because they bloom for a long time.
Hartmann is the last witness. No one else is alive who played in the Berlin Philharmonic during the Nazi period. The meeting comes thanks to a friend in today’s orchestra. ‘If you are writing about the war, you should talk to him about his instrument,’ she suggests. An email to the intendant of the orchestra brings me to the woman I now see at the kerb; she visits Herr Hartmann regularly at his care home.
Frau Bastiaan addresses me with the formal pronoun Sie instead of the informal du. At the top of the double-decker, in the much-desired seats right above the driver, we make well-mannered conversation. We share the awkwardness of two people who don’t know each other going to a third location. But a masterful view of the street passes beneath us. The fancy shopping boulevard, with its Christmas decorations, gives way to unbombed villas along parks in the western suburbs. Through the branches of the skeletal woods, I see the gleam of a lake. The light is angular and precise.
Frau Bastiaan tells me that her husband, Johannes, or ‘Hans’, was a concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic during the Nazi period. He joined the orchestra shortly after the regime took power and remained for forty-two years. They married in the 1990s, she much his junior. Herr Bastiaan was the penultimate survivor of the Nazi’s orchestra, dying in 2012. Now, only Herr Hartmann is left at the age of 98.
We arrive in the well-manicured spaces of the care home. It’s a low, modernist affair, with well-meaning, comfy touches that don’t quite match the institutional needs: holiday ornaments pinned to the antiseptic, no-stick walls. The watchful nurses at the curved entrance desk are so used to Frau Bastiaan’s visits that they give a smiling hello without raising their eyes. We follow a confusing set of stairwells and hallways, past closed doors marked with the names of Herr-this and Frau-that, up to the second floor.
‘He gets a lot of visitors,’ says Frau Bastiaan.
I say, ‘I hope I get as many when I’m old.’
She replies archly, ‘That doesn’t just come on its own.’
She knocks on Herr Hartmann’s door and opens it immediately. He is standing in the middle of the room, his walker in two hands, at an angle to us. Having got up to meet us, he’s made it only a short distance, smiling with bright eyes. He outstretches his stiff hand from his walker and says: ‘All the way from Canada! I don’t think I’ve ever had a guest from so far away.’
Frau Bastiaan shakes her head, referring to my West Berlin neighbourhood, ‘Erich, he lives in Kreuzberg!’
Three Bows
If Herr Hartmann were a bird, he might be a crane, examining you curiously: tall, very thin, a long oval face and nose, and small eyes that peek angularly. These eyes, interested and unclouded, are easy to engage. Herr Hartmann wears a pressed shirt.
I look around, at the case of antique books with leather bindings; the bed with its knitted quilt and hand grips; oil paintings of flowers; a large photo of the orchestra playing in the unbombed Old Philharmonic Hall; a gold-plated Beethoven vinyl; a photo from Hartmann’s retirement in 1985 after forty-one years (he is being congratulated by the principal conductor, Herbert von Karajan); a framed photograph of Wilhelm Furtwängler peering down. From the window, we peek into a dying garden.
I look around for Hartmann’s double bass. The object closest to a musician’s story is his instrument – part of his body, an extra limb – and I want to tell its story. But below the television is only a small electronic keyboard, unplugged, with keys that are too small. Then I notice three old bows from his instrument that hang from a wall. They have a synecdochic relationship to the missing Kontrabass, too large to keep here.
I ask why he has three of them.
Herr Hartmann replies, ‘They are all a little different. They need to be restrung with horsehair.’
I admit they all look the same to me, and ask, ‘When was the last time you played the double bass?’
‘Such a long time ago! When I could still drive. Twenty years ago. That was the last time.’
He tells me that he played a Dvořák quartet. Or perhaps Schubert. He can’t remember.
‘You must miss it.’
‘Naturally. Also, the piano. Here I can practise a little. But it’s hard to plug in. And it’s such a small instrument.’
Frau Bastiaan makes him comfortable at the table and puts out the almond cookies she made among the glasses and books. She has a capable manner, practised at dealing with old people, and she speaks loudly. I try to do the same. Herr Hartmann is so pleasant in his replies that he gives the illusion that getting old is OK. As we sit near the window, I’m again astonished by how quickly it gets dark at this hour in December. Frau Bastiaan gives us our starting point when she says: ‘Your father was a piano maker in Leipzig …’
Youth
Erich Hartmann grew up around instruments.
‘My father had his own shop,’ he explains. ‘A large one that sold pianos, harmoniums.’ The workshop was below street level – ‘The basement is still there!’ Erich and his sister would help their father with the repairs. The firm engaged a piano tuner who was blind: ‘He was the best, with the best ear.’
I listen as this 98-year-old describes the delicate atmosphere of early mornings in his father’s workshop. The boy would go down to the basement – ‘around 7 or 7.30 a.m. before the customers came at 9 or 9.30 a.m.’ – and took the opportunity to play the instruments. ‘I was very young. It was lovely.’ He was also an accomplished pianist – no wonder, growing up with a traditional Saxon approach to music education, learning more than one instrument, and even composing. ‘You shouldn’t just play music, you should know it!’ went the dictum.
‘How old were you when you started playing the double bass?’ I ask.
‘Fifteen or sixteen years old. I went with my father to the music conservatory, and they explained how they needed certain instruments. Bassoon, double bass. “We don’t need flautists or violinists. So, think about what you want to play.” It was a difficult choice. I thought about it for a long time. But I knew I wanted a string instrument, and I was tall!’
‘Did you know you wanted to be an orchestra musician?’
‘I heard the Berlin Philharmonic in the Altes Gewandhaus in Leipzig. It was the first time I saw Furtwängler and his orchestra. It was so superb for me. But I could never have imagined that one day I would be there with them, in the thick of it.’
Berliner Philharmoniker with Furtwängler during the war years
As a young man, however, he would find himself sooner on the Eastern Front of Hitler’s war, at precisely the moment that Germany’s fortunes turned towards defeat, after a period that he spent fighting in France and Poland. The Battle of Stalingrad raged between August 1942 and February 1943. Meanwhile, the Soviet battles against the Germans south of Moscow were known, due to the many casualties, as the ‘Rzhev meat grinder’ (named for the town on the Volga). Around 30 million people died in battles to the east.
Hartmann tells me, ‘I was in Russia. It was snowing and there were no winter clothes for the soldiers. Hitler said the clothes would come and the soldiers should just stay there and the war should go on! That’s what Hitler said. I was attacked in a bombing raid that hit six or seven people, me too.’
Hartmann survived by the skin of his teeth. Badly wounded, he was sent – his right arm shattered – to Warsaw. ‘They said, we have no place for you.’ So, he was sent onward to the south-west of Germany near the city of Ulm.
Frau Bastiaan remarks, ‘I notice your hand is cold. Let’s close the window?’ She stands up and Erich Hartmann describes the months he spent in a well-supplied Catholic recovery home in a cloister.
‘They almost took your arm off. Why don’t you show him?’ Frau Bastiaan says, pulling up the old man’s sleeve.
Startled, I draw back. Half of Erich’s right forearm has been sliced away, right to the bone.
His skin – taut, freckled with age – is like on an ancient, bevelled tree trunk. Over time, the tree has compensated for the gash with a weathered knot. I see how the skin buckles around the scar before growing smooth again towards the elbow. I watch this distortion for just a moment, before the sleeve is pulled down.
Physical evidence from the Russian Front on one of its last living bodies. I am brought closer to the war than in a long time. The testimony is visual, even sensual in its violence, something a document has trouble articulating. The incontrovertible proof is part of this smiling man. It is as if 1943 is just outside the window. Herr Hartmann reaches with his other arm and tries more of the almond cookies.
‘It must have made playing your bass difficult,’ says Frau Bastiaan.
‘I couldn’t play with the right hand,’ he replies, ‘but I could hold the bow in it. It took me nine months to recover. They took good care of me; the doctor knew my profession. Soon I could walk a little.’
The clinic was a respite from the bloodiest battles of the war. The patients went on an excursion to the enormous cathedral in Ulm – ‘It was beautiful. We really loved it’ – and Hartmann played a small organ in the room of a nun. She encouraged him to improve, and also to visit. Once recovered, he went to his parents in Leipzig, and was exempt from service because he could no longer operate a gun.
‘In Leipzig, my teacher told me there was a position free in the Berlin Philharmonic and that I should go and audition. I told him there’s no sense in doing that because I’m not far enough along in my studies. “That’s not important,” he replied. “From every performance you will learn something.” And he was right.’
Hartmann decided to go at the spur of the moment and describes the anticipation in the family as he prepared to travel to Berlin. The capital still appeared relatively safe, due to a lull in bombing from 1942 into most of 1943, when naval battles in the Atlantic took priority. It was only in November 1943 that British bombers redirected their air power to the city, precisely when Hartmann made his way to the metropolis.
‘I didn’t know Berlin at all. Then, my sister wanted to come along too. My mother also wanted to go with us. So, the three of us, with the double bass, all went. It was 1943.’ I imagine them all packed into a train compartment with the very large instrument.
‘And what happened at the audition?’
‘I went and apologised that I had not brought an accompanist with me. And they said, that’s not important. We have everything here. So, I went upstairs and there was someone from the orchestra there to accompany me. Furtwängler wasn’t present but the whole orchestra listened to me. After I played, I expected them to say it was good, or it was bad, or to come back later. But they said absolutely nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘They only gave me a sheet of paper with the next rehearsals and performances I needed to participate in.’
‘Boom!’
The Double Bass
Erich Hartmann, engaged from 1 November 1943, was thrown into performances without a moment to breathe. Additional pressure came from the one-year contract: after an obligatory trial year – like today – the orchestra would vote whether to keep him. He needed to convince two-thirds. But he was unlikely to do so with his current double bass.
Hartmann explains to me that, while he played a good solo instrument, with a clear sound, it was not appropriate for orchestra playing. He presumed it would be difficult to find another Kontrabass but his new colleagues said, ‘Of course you can, you just need to make an effort!’ Berlin, of course, was full of instrument makers. With a fistful of addresses, Hartmann began his hunt.
‘At the first place I went, it worked out! I told them I wanted a beautiful, old double bass. They said, “You’re lucky; one has just come in.” Ja ja, but what will it cost? And they replied, “Nothing at first since you have been engaged by the orchestra. Take it with you. You just need to be careful you don’t damage it.” I replied that I was careful. So, I took it and showed it to my colleagues. And they said: immediately, this one. They liked it: everything was there, it was a splendid instrument. Everything was good about it except I had no idea what it cost! And they said: “Don’t worry about it. We’ll pay for it and then you can pay us back monthly.” And I thought: that’s not a bad idea. And so, I went for it.’
‘How long did you play this instrument?’
‘Un...
