Julius Buchwald

Julius Buchwald was born on April 2, 1909, as the second child of the manufacturer Salomon Buchwald and his wife Adele Buchwald,
 geb. Durst, born in Vienna. His maternal ancestors came from Prague and Bukovina, the father from Slovakia.
 He had come to Vienna at the age of 14 as an apprentice shoemaker and later co-founder and owner of the metalware factory Buchwald & Kretsch, which initially specialized in horse harness fittings  and later also established itself as a supplier in the fashion industry (eg through the production of belt buckles).

The Buchwald family was at times very wealthy, employed domestic workers and entertained a summer residence in Konstantinsbad in western Bohemia.
 Looking back, Mimi Grossberg, Julius Buchwald's older sister, described her family as extremely art-loving;
 Music lessons for the children and concert visits were taken for granted.
 Both children must indeed have been gifted several times:

Mimi, who later became a poet and milliner, learned piano and cello and attended composition classes as a 20-year-old with Paul Amadeus Pisk at the Adult Education Center Ottakringer Volksheim. Julius learned violin and already published as a 13-year-old two song compositions.

In addition, both children were taught by the father early in chess.

Religiosity played only a minor role in the childhood of Buchwald.

On the other hand, he describes in his memoirs that he experienced anti-Semitic attacks at school early on, which shaped his entire training years.

At the age of 15, Julius Buchwald completed his school education at his own request and resigned in September 1925 in the father's factory where, according to a certificate of employment, he was employed until February 1930, according to a second testimony, however, until March 1934. Concert programs and criticisms prove that Julius Buchwald from 1931 until 1935 at the Vienna Conservatory with Walter Bricht composition studied.
Similar to the Ottakringer Volksheim, the Volkskonservatorium was a facility which aimed above all at educating broader and less affluent sections of the population of all ages.
Accordingly goes from the memories of Julius Buchwald and his sister that the family's financial success did not last and after years of steady losses, the company finally continued to operate only to a very limited extent from 1934 onwards could. From 1934 Julius Buchwald was probably active as an independent merchant or commercial agent.
Presumably in the course of the "Aryanization" of the economy after the "Anschluss", the paternal company was placed under provisional administration in September 1938 and on March 18, 1939 deleted from the commercial register.

In the public Buchwald emerged mainly as a song composer.

For the years 1932 and 1933 are several performances in collection programs, i.e. in the Wiener Konzerthaus and the Urania Education Center in Vienna, busy.
In 1933, a fugue for piano was premiered during a lecture evening of the composition class of the Volkskonservatorium
(LWÖE Buchwald J). Although the evidence of the song shows that Buchwald already during his studies also recognized as a composer outside his training institute,
However, performances after his years at the Volkskonservatorium can no longer be proven.

Julius Buchwald and his wife Lily Buchwald, born Rattner, decided soon after the "Anschluss" of Austria for an escape into exile. In the summer of 1938, Lily Buchwald left Vienna for England, followed by Julius Buchwald in September. His sister Mimi Grossberg emigrated to New York with her husband Norbert Grossberg. Julius Buchwald was able to take on a position as a button designer in London, possibly mediated by his father's company contacts.

In June 1940, Julius Buchwald was initially "enemy alien" for several months outside London and interned in a transit camp in Liverpool before being transferred to the Isle of Man in November 1940. About his experiences during this time, which drove him far into his US exile years in the form of depression-like moods,
Buchwald's reminder text "Nature is the beginning" (BuchwaldJ o. J.) provides urgent information.

After his release from internment, Julius Buchwald and his wife settled in Newark-on-Trent, where they both continued their education at the Newark Technical College in addition to earning a living, and interestingly enough, Julius Buchwald through painting and sculpture classes. With the help of Mimi Grossberg and a sister of his father, Buchwald and his wife managed to leave for the United States in December 1944; The couple arrived in New York on Jan. 6, 1945.

With the help of Mimi Grossberg and a sister of his father, Buchwald and his wife managed to leave for the United States in December 1944; The couple arrived in New York on Jan. 6, 1945.

Although Buchwald continued to compose in exile, he always earned his living with non-musical activities, in New York primarily as a stamp dealer.

Mimi Grossberg reports her brother set to music several of her poems in New York,and the songs were then performed at the Austrian Institute
(Questionnaire of the Oral History Collection of Columbia University, AR 3815, in: LBI BuchwaldJ).
However, Buchwald's preoccupation with fine arts and poetry seems to have been in the US exile to have the upper hand. He was involved in the artists' association Kew Forest Art Association, exhibited several paintings and sculptures in New York galleries and wrote short stories and poems some of which were later also published. His greatest interest, however, was construction (in jargon "composition") of chess problems, of which he published more than 3,000 pieces and with whom he twice, 1946 and 1948, won the international chess trophy world championships.

Despite many efforts, Julius Buchwald and his sister did not succeed in helping their parents escape from Vienna. For the father, the immigration to the US was the Hungarian quota, which was exhausted for years. When, after all, they found a way to bring their parents to Cuba, the authorities did not allow them to leave. After the war on the United States on Dec. 7, 1941 broke the contact with the parents. Salomon and Adele Buchwald were finally deported to the ghetto Theresienstadt on July 29, 1942, whereupon on September 21, 1942, they were taken by transport Bp-359 to the Maly Trostinec concentration camp near Minsk where they were in all likelihood shot (BlumesbergerS 2008, p. 23). Both Julius Buchwald and his sister believed to the end of their lives that their parents had died in the Auschwitz concentration camp; Only recent research results have been able to trace the actual deportation path.

Mediated by Mimi Grossberg, the Buchwalds in the United States from 1947 circulated in circles of the "Aufbau", especially in the leisure and hiking group New York Firsters. The group soon began to become culturally active;Julius Buchwald participated creatively in a performance of the cabaret Einakters "The Refugeria" of his brother-in-law Norbert Grossberg and wrote for the "New York Hiking Times", a newspaper founded by the group. Julius Buchwald died on 9 Aug. 1970 in New York liver cancer.

Against the backdrop of their genesis, Julius Buchwald's compositions certainly do not represent a significant historical and significant work in terms of music history. He remained committed to late-Romantic to extended tonality and was rhythmically conventional and not very inventive. In an essay draft (after 1945) he even shows himself openly anti-modern and propagated the music of Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler as "a civilized musical manner" instead of the currently perceived and rejected by him "barbaric rhythms" (LWÖE BuchwaldJ) compositions as evidence of a versatile human being who - in addition to economic reasons in Vienna - presumably also because of his forced exile failed to channel his multiple talent in one direction and to develop it in contact and exchange with his outside world. Composing, composing, painting and also the "chess problem composition", which is strongly equipped with an aesthetic component, seem to be of varying importance and probable at different times in Buchwald's life also to have been relevant creative means of expression in the context of a biographical crisis management.
The life of Julius Buchwald and his sister Mimi Grossberg in the US are both Closely linked to the impressive cultural activity of Austrian exiles in New York
 and therefore of cultural-historical as well as socio-historically significant.

Die Schwalbe magazine wrote:

Born in Vienna, Julius Buchwald (2 April 1909 - 9 August 1970) emigrated after the German occupation of Austria, first to England and later to the USA. He was one of the most successful two-move composers in the 1940s - he composed over 2,500 problems in total - and repeatedly occupied top positions in the world composition rankings initiated by himself and supported by the IPB (International Problem Board). (In this list, which was later discontinued by the PCCC, the total number of honours achieved in the period under consideration was decisive). Buchwald was an artisan and expert in antique prints by profession, while also working as a painter and ceramicist, playing bridge and composing music - no wonder that he was always very busy with such a wide range of interests. 

Source: www.arves.org