Part 1 OVERTURE - 1931

Read by Delia Corrie

Play

Pause

Stop

I had often thought it would be romantic to live abroad, starve in a garret and study music. So when I graduated from the Royal Academy of Music I decided to do just that. The year – 1931.

I chose Berlin because my Aunt Olga Hopkinson had a cousin in Potsdam who took in students

I arrived in Potsdam in the middle of September and a week or so later went to Berlin for my interview at the Staatliche Akademische Hochschule for Musik in Charlottenburg. I was filled with confidence. It didn’t worry me at all that I couldn’t understand the prospectus they had sent me. I don’t believe it would have bothered me if I had realized that they required a good working knowledge of the language from foreign candidates.

I’d visited Germany three or four times. I had learnt German at school for a year. I had often listened to a German grandfather when my grandmother wanted to discuss with him matters unsuitable for children. Or servants. I knew German!

Perhaps I felt a bit shaken when I was shown into room full of black-coated professors, who greeted me as though I were the overture to a comic opera. In Germany they told me, girls don’t play wind instruments. Do they in England? I said “Ja” with my best German accent.

They fell about laughing and told me to play something on the piano. They listened politely and asked me to play the flute for them.

They then asked me whether women played in orchestras in England. I said “ja” again, firmly. They laughed even more heartily.

Had I come especially to Germany to study music at the Hochschule? I said “ja” for the third time. Not quite so firmly.

They accepted me; I am convinced because they thought I was a first class joke.

The posh relations whom I will mention in the following letters home were Carl von Siemens, Carli von as he was always referred to in our family was a nephew of Sir William Siemens who founded the English branch of the firm in 1858. My grandfather, Alexander Siemens and Carli von didn’t like each other. Sir William had preferred Alexander to his other cousins and nephews He and his Scottish wife had no children and Sir William looked on Alexander as his adoptive son and promoted him in every possible way.

Also Carli von emerged from the 1914-18 war wealthier than ever, Alexander on the English side considerably poorer.

Whatever the reasons, whenever the German relations met the naturalized English cousins, they quarrelled robustly at the top of powerful voices.

A new letter will be featured twice a week.