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An exceptional life-story to fascinate everyone, because it is a unique tale of defying fate. Maurice Ravel wrote his piano concerto for the left hand for him, Prokofiev his fourth, Richard Strauss, Hindemith und Britten composed for him. He lost his right hand in the First World War. Nevertheless, through willpower and perseverance Paul Wittgenstein became one of the most famous virtuosi of his day. Paul Wittgenstein was a wholly exceptional man, full of contradictions: a fanatical seeker after truth who led a double life, a Jew baptised into the Catholic faith who considered all Jews dishonest, an Austrian patriot who had to emigrate to the USA in 1938, a highly gifted pianist who lost his right arm in the First World War and went on giving concerts. The idolized son of a family known as the “Krupps of the Habsburg Monarchy” married the blind daughter of a tram conductor. Lea Singer explores the drama of his life with sensitivity, intelligence and great verbal elegance. »Lea Singer knows how to mine her researches for gold.” NDR
About the author:
Lea Singer graduated in art history, music and literature. She is a journalist and author of textbooks and lives in Munich. Apart from her novella The Austrian Whore (Die Österreichische Hure) in 2005, she has published four highly acclaimed novels: in 2000 The Tongue (Die Zunge), in 2003 Madly in Love (Wahnsinns Liebe), about the fatal affair between Arnold Schönberg’s wife Mathilde and the painter Richard Gerstl, in 2005 The Naked Life (Das nackte Leben), about the life and marriages of Constanze Mozart in 2006 Four Colours of Fidelity (Vier Farben der Treue), set in Salzburg in 1935, and most recently The Almond Core (Mandelkern, Hoffmann und Campe, 2007), the story of an internationally famous neuroscientist, a female Dr. Faust. |
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