Ostbahnhof Berliń

Abstract

This chapter explores the reasons why east European Jews sought to study at the Berlin Conservatory. It investigates the dramatic influx of Jewish students, both instrumentalists and composers, that found encouragement and advancement at the Berlin Conservatory between the years 1918 and 1933. It also mentions Władysław Szpilman, Jascha Horenstein, Joseph Rosenstock, and Karol Rathaus that studied in the Berlin Conservatory and went on to find international fame. The chapter analyzes how music functioned as a medium for mobility, nobility, and the transcendence of origins and the strictures of imposed identity. It looks into the eastern European music student's perception of the Berlin Conservatory, which served as a site of self-reinvention and a transit station to the wider world.