Research Catalog

Title

Kein Land des Lächelns : Fritz Löhner-Beda 1883-1942 / Barbara Denscher, Helmut Peschina.

Author

Denscher, Barbara, 1956-

Publication

Salzburg : Residenz, 2002.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Peschina, Helmut, 1943-

Description

218 p. : ill., music; 21 cm.

Summary

Traces the life of Austrian librettist, lyricist, and writer Fritz Löhner-Beda, born Bedřich Löwy in Wildenschwert (Bohemia) in 1883. Pp. 179-196 deal with his fate in the Holocaust. Löhner-Beda, who had collaborated with Franz Lehár, Hitler's favorite composer, since in 1916, hoped this contact would save him from being harmed after Hitler's rise to power in 1933. On 1 April 1938, however, Löhner-Beda was arrested and deported on the first train with Austrians aboard, the so-called "Prominententransport", to Dachau. In fall 1938 he was transferred to Buchenwald where, together with fellow prisoner Hermann Leopoldi, he composed the famous anthem of the concentration camp, "Das Buchenwaldlied". In 1941 he was sent to Bernburg an der Saale and avoided being gassed only because it became known that he was Lehár's librettist. In 1942, crushing his hopes that Lehár would intervene on his behalf, Löhner-Beda was deported to Auschwitz and assigned to slave labor at the Buna factory. In December 1942 he was denounced for not working hard enough and beaten to death. His wife and two daughters perished in the camp in Maly Trostinec earlier that year.

Subject

• Löhner, Fritz, 1883-1942
• Librettists > Austria > Biography

Genre/Form

Biographies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 204-206) , filmography (p. 207) , list of published poems (p. 208-212) , list of libretti (p. 213-214) , and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

3701713022 (hd.bd.)

OCLC

• 50811422
• SCSB-10059640

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library