1933-39 Anti-Nazi Years

We had to leave Africa for good, rather hurriedly and rather unexpectedly.  We were in Rhodesia, it was early 1933, and Raymond was caught up in some rather ‘shady’ business deals – and he was expelled from the country, and deported back to England!  We were escorted to Durban, South Africa, and put on a boat MV ‘Haruna Maru’ from Yokohama bound for Southampton, arriving back in the UK in November 1933.

On board the ship was a young German Lutheran pastor, Franz Hildebrandt, who took a great deal of interest in me.  He had studied theology in Berlin and Marburg, places so familiar to me, and he was very musical, too.

Franz was greatly agitated by the current political events in Germany, especially with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and he was on his way to London to join his close friend Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who similarly had enormous troubles and anxieties.  He found a great friend in my Raymond Richardson and the two men had long discussions and conversations on the journey back to England. Franz also showed great interest in Methodism and the theology of the Wesleys.

The upshot of all this was that Franz Hildebrandt offered to buy me from Raymond!

It was not long before I ended up in a new home, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Manse at Manor Mount in Forest Hill, South London, which also housed a small day school for German children living in London.  Franz Hildebrandt brought me here because he was committed to the cause of freedom and justice which his friend was espousing, along with such influential allied friends as George Bell, Anglican Bishop of Chichester.

Franz was also aware that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was, like him, a very keen and proficient musician – at one time seriously contemplating a career as a professional concert pianist.

There was certainly something about this young serious-minded Lutheran pastor, and of course his name became extremely well-known after his murder at the hands of the Nazis in 1945.  More of this later.  But for now, I want to focus on Bonhoeffer’s musical connections and remarkable interests.  Very early on, after my arrival, Bonhoeffer persuaded Franz Hildebrandt to part with me and give me to one of the very bright young children attending the school at the Forest Hill Manse.  His name was Walter Harrison, aged 7, the son of James & Helene Harrison, living in Herne Hill, South London.  Walter’s mother came from a prominent Jewish musical family in Vienna, Austria, with the name Keller, well known to such luminaries as Joseph Joachim, Alma Mahler and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

(Bonhoeffer’s London home, and School)

When young Walter handled me as he practised, I was aware my voice was being profoundly affected by the deep emotions and feelings associated with the Jewish people as they became increasingly subjected to the horrors of the Nazi regime.  It was, of course, at this time after Adolf Hitler had become Chancellor in Germany in 1933, and huge numbers of people started to look to Britain and the USA as possible places to escape from their anticipated terrors.  Yet again the musical threads which bind Germany and Britain together were played out on my strings and through my resonant body.

On one memorable occasion in September 1934, Dietrich Bonhoeffer took Walter and his parents with Franz Hildebrandt to a Promenade Concert at The Queen’s Hall to hear music by a favourite composer of mine, Ralph Vaughan Williams.  It was the first performance of ‘Fantasia on Greensleeves.’  There was clearly an emotional connection here between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and my ‘Norfolk’ composer friend. (All my Norfolk-based folk song history, and my inextricable links to the Richardson family, came flooding back to me when Dietrich spoke so enthusiastically about this Vaughan Williams premiere).

It became evident to me that here was yet another powerful meeting point between music and theology.  As is well known, Bonhoeffer was later martyred in a German prison, moments before the end of the War, and prior to his execution he wrote in his letters about an obsession with ‘counterpoint’, ‘polyphony’ and the significance of ‘cantus firmus’ when trying to answer the vital question ‘Who is Jesus Christ for us today?’  I got the distinct impression that Vaughan Williams’s outlook on life, with his admiration for John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ struck a chord with Bonhoeffer’s search for ‘religionless Christianity’.

More about this next time!

(Transcription of an early example of Polyphony)