The book Anneliese Landau's Life in Music: Nazi Germany to Émigré California is the exploration of the life of a woman who broke boundaries and defied expectations. Author Dr. Lily Hirsch, shares stories of this remarkable woman who pushed past bias to earn a Ph.D. in musicology in 1930 and then lectured on early German radio, breaking new ground in a developing medium.
Landau emigrated in 1939, and ultimately settled in Los Angeles, assuming duties as music director of the Jewish Centers Association in 1944. In this role, she knew and worked with many significant historical figures, among them the composers Arnold Schoenberg and Ernst Toch, conductor Bruno Walter, and the renowned rabbi and philosopher Leo Baeck.
Lily Hirsch’s talk offers an account of one woman's unique story of survival; someone who confronted other people's expectations of her, as a woman and a Jew. It also provides a fresh perspective on the Nazi period in Germany as well as on music in southern California, impacted as it was by the many notable émigrés from German-speaking lands who settled in the area.
This event is made possible by the Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and is co-sponsored by the UCLA Music Library and the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies.