Eva Klemperer

Diagnoses

Personal

Vocation

Family

German concert pianist, organist, painter, literary translator, and the first wife of noted writer and diarist Victor Klemperer. The daughter of a Protestant farmer from East Prussia, she trained as a concert pianist. Shortly after 1900, however, she gave up her career aspirations and worked as a piano teacher. She studied painting with Walter Leistikow. In 1904 she met the Jewish Romance language scholar Victor Klemperer (1881-1960). They married on 16 May 1906 against the wishes of his parents, who refused to marry their son with the destitute pianist. The couple first lived in Berlin. At the time of the marriage, Victor Klemperer worked for various Berlin newspapers as a reviewer. Eva Klemperer gave up her work and became his colleague. She corrected his articles and typed them, accompanied her husband to lectures, and assisted him with writing his doctoral thesis. Later she followed him to Munich. During the First World War, Eva Klemperer resumed her music studies to the annoyance of her husband, based now in Kowno, and specialized in organ music. She occasionally played with friends and acquaintances and also composed her own pieces, but had to end her musical activity due to various diseases. She suffered in the 1920s, among other things, from biliary colic and depression. After the First World War, the couple moved to Dresden where Victor took up a position as professor of Romance Studies. Their attempts to emigrate from the German Nazi Reich after 1935 failed. However, as an "Aryan" woman Eva was able to protect Victor from immediate deportation. She also actively campaigned for his work during the National Socialist (Nazi) era. Eva Klemperer first hid her husband's diary manuscript pages between her sheet music. Later, she took them regularly and at considerable risk to a friend in Pirna, since the pages would otherwise have fallen into the hands of the Gestapo during house searches. Eva Klemperer is thus often cast as a heroine in current discourse on women's resistance during the Third Reich. In 1940, the couple were forced to leave their residential building in Dölzschen and were relocated to a Jewish house. Eva had stored the notes of her musical works together with furniture in a store in Dresden. The bombing of Dresden in February 1945 prevented a planned deportation of the couple, but also resulted in the destruction of the notes. Klemperer had packed some of the notes, along with paintings, in a suitcase as emergency luggage and deposited them in Munich. The suitcase, however, was lost. "She is so infinitely gifted, yet nothing remains of her," wrote Victor Klemperer in his diary. The couple was able to flee to Bavaria after the bombing of Dresden and returned to Dresden in June 1945. Immediately after the end of the Second World War, Eva and Victor Klemperer actively supported the reconstruction of a cultural life in Dresden as members of the Kulturbund of the GDR. Eva Klemperer occasionally appeared as a musician at concerts of the Kulturbund. She died on 8 July 1951 as a result of a heart condition. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)