2023-11-04 10:27:30
Under the title “Sturmzeit”, the jazz musician Sabina Hank, together with Michael Köhlmeier, Reinhold Bilgeri and Tini Kainrath, remembered the Jewish Viennese communist, activist and poet Jura Soyfer, who was arrested in 1938 while fleeing via Vorarlberg to Switzerland, on Friday in Hohenems died in the concentration camp. Organized by the Jewish Museum Hohenems, the artists managed to create a touching, multi-voiced evening under the influence of current events.
The musician and composer Sabina Hank has long been interested in the work of Soyfer, who was born in Kharkiv in 1912 and who, after his family fled to Vienna in 1920, wrote newspaper articles, political cabaret, drama and poetry in the interwar period. At the suggestion of Willi Resetarits, Hank set his highly political poems to music in 2005, which she recited in Hohenems in front of a sold-out house with piano and voice, alternating between quiet and powerful tones.
She was supported in the moving songs by “Special Guests”, two singers who couldn’t be more different: the smoky voice of Reinhold Bilgeri and the soft soul of Tini Kainrath. David Dollinger (bass), Klaus Perez-Salado (drums) and Clemens Salesny (saxophone) also played.
The musical-literary montage was completed by Michael Köhlmeier, who, as usual, skillfully spoke about the upheavals in the world of Jura Soyfer, starting with the heyday of nationalism in the 19th century, the First World War, the corporate state and the Nazi regime. “He was a Jew, a communist, a political activist and he was a writer – and that was very dangerous for him,” said Köhlmeier about the situation of the young, clairvoyant poet in the 1930s. Nevertheless, Soyfer always remained optimistic.
Together with a friend, after being imprisoned for communist activities and the Nazi takeover, he wanted to escape to Switzerland on skis across the Montafon. He was arrested on March 13, 1938, shortly before the border. Soyfer ended up in the Dachau concentration camp, where he created the well-known “Dachaulied”. Even there he was still capable of lines like “Freedom will laugh brightly at us.” The 26-year-old died of typhus in the Buchenwald concentration camp in February 1939. His discharge papers had been signed the day before and the urn was sent to his refugee parents in the USA.
In his introductory words, museum director Hanno Loewy had previously referred to the “burning topicality” of the topic; when planning, they did not yet know “how stormy this autumn would actually be.” The work of a museum that fights against anti-Semitism, racism and nationalism is “not always easy, in fact it is particularly difficult at the moment,” admitted Loewy. The evening was intended to “encourage us all”. If you take the final applause as a benchmark, it was successful – even if there was some melancholy and thoughtfulness in it.
(SERVICE – “Storm Time – Sabina Hank and Michael Köhlmeier tell the story of Jura Soyfer”. An event by the Jewish Museum Hohenems, LöwenSaal Hohenems. Further date: November 4th, 8 p.m.)
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