TEach of them could play seven instruments, and critics hailed them as the best jazz combo in 1920s Berlin, with Marlene Dietrich and Josephine Baker vying to secure them as their backing band. But after the Nazi occupation and years of setbacks, exile and internment in Australia, Weintraubs' syncopated legacy was lost in the mists of time.
Now, 100 years after their formation, the Weimar Republic's tightest jazz band is returning to the city that once worshiped them. It's not a living thing, it's painted on canvas. On October 21, the group's paintings will go on permanent display at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. This comes after the museum acquired the painting from its previous owner in Canada.
This work was painted in 1927 by Austrian artist Max Oppenheimer. jazz band It captures the jagged energy of the music that dominated the German capital's nightlife in the years between World War I and World War II.
This illustration, used to illustrate a pamphlet promoting Weintraubs Syncopators concerts in the late 1920s, shows the group as a quartet, although they frequently performed with five or more musicians. Founding duo Stefan Weintraub and Horst Graf take center stage here on drums and saxophone, respectively, but they would have been equally adept on piano or clarinet.
“What made Weintraub's band outstanding was their versatility, both in terms of the instruments they played and the genres of music they played,” says the Berlin-based historian and author of The Syncopators' Forgotten Songs. says Albrecht Dümling, whose book about the story will be published in 2022.
They play symphonic jazz, swing, waltz as well as Schrager – A catchy German pop song. At the time, it was considered wittier and more sophisticated than today's brash pop songs. Their big hit song titles include: “My lover wants to take me sailing on Sunday.'' and “My gorilla has a villa at the zoo.”. Friedrich Olender, Berlin's most prolific cabaret composer, joined the band for a time in the 1920s, replacing Weintraub on piano.
They also played with Josephine Baker and the Tiller Girls, so it's no wonder that the Syncopators provided the musical elements for Marlene Dietrich's songs that defined the cultural prosperity of the Weimar Republic. “Fall in love again” – Like other cabaret songs featured in Josef von Sternberg's 1930 film blue angel.
With the rise of National Socialism, the Syncopators' career came to a halt. Although they dismissed jazz as decadent “negro music,” the Nazis never called for a nationwide ban by law, and the band remained in Berlin for several years under the Germanized name “Die Weintraubs.” He continued to perform at the venue.
However, the day after watching the Reichstag burn on February 27, 1933, the band decided to embark on an international tour from which they would never return. “Although the Weintraubs' Syncopators were never officially banned or deported, their fate was clear, as their namesake and most of their members were Jewish. ,” Dumling said.
After successful performances in the Soviet Union and Japan, the band relocated to Australia, but struggled to gain a foothold in the local scene due to opposition from the musicians' union. In 1941, not only German soldiers but also Poles and Chileans were interned as enemy aliens. Dumling discovered in the National Archives of Australia that British officers had accused them of being Soviet spies, and with no evidence or refutation of the allegation, the Syncopators were left behind razor wire. It was still there.
After the war, most of the band members remained in Sydney, but they were split up, with some working as mechanics and others working as refrigerator salesmen.
But behind Oppenheimer's portrait of the band also lies the story of several other exiles brought about by the rise of fascism. The artist himself left Berlin in 1931 and later moved to Switzerland and the United States.
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The painting's owner, the famous lawyer and amateur psychoanalyst Hugo Staub, also hurriedly left the city in mid-March 1933, and the work was moved to his apartment off Kurfürstendamm. Left behind. According to an affidavit signed by Staub's son in the 1960s, none other than Hitler's confidant Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstengl told Staub that he was going to be arrested as a prominent member of the League for Human Rights. He was telling me something.
It is unclear what happened to the painting during and initially after the war, but in 1962 it was auctioned to a former Berlin real estate developer living in exile in Canada. The work hung in family living rooms in Montreal and Ottawa for half a century, before being loaned to the National Gallery of Canada and finally sold to the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
“I started to think it was good that these musicians were being celebrated again in their hometowns,” said Ruth Fryman, whose uncle bought the painting in 1962.
The exchange was made with the permission of the descendants of the painting's original owner, Hugo Staub, who received a solatium as part of the sale. Various families and individuals connected by Oppenheimer's painting will attend its unveiling on October 21st in Berlin.
“There's a great sense of completion,” said Zurich-based Australian Michael Fisher. His father Emmanuel and uncle Addy were part of the final lineup of the Syncopators before their disbandment. “Seeing the band return to the city they left behind the day after the Capitol fire means the world to me.”
