Torn Between Cultures: A Life of Kathi Meyer-Baer by David Josephson (review)

Abstract

Torn Between Cultures: A Life of Kathi Meyer-Baer. By David Josephson. (Lives in Music Series, vol. 9.) Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2012. [xiv, 323 p. ISBN 9781576471999. $36.] Illustrations, selective bibliography of writings of Meyer-Baer, bibliography, index. Kathi Meyer-Baer (1892-1977) was a Jewish-German musicologist and librarian. She was a productive scholar, publishing five books and numerous articles from 1917 1975 on topics as wide-ranging as choral music, aesthetics, musical incunabula, and basse danse. Like many scholars in her generation, she immigrated United States via France during Second World War, and was one of seventeen musicians and music scholars helped by Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars. Yet, unlike others aided by committee, such as Alfred Einstein and Edward Lowinsky, she never found a permanent academic position-perhaps because she was only woman-and knowledge of her and works seems have vanished from records. Although important enough for inclusion in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, these entries are cursory and outdated. What David Josephson has uncovered in this in-depth biographical monograph is a narrative that tells us not only about Meyer-Baer's and career, but also is an engaging case study of musical emigres, German and American musicological institutions, and academic miscommunications. Josephson focuses primarily on Meyer-Baer's life, rather than her works, dividing book chronologically and geographically: first section, entitled Germany, details her education and beginning of her career; France, slimmest section, focuses on Baer family's two years in France; third and largest section, America, delves into her in U.S.A., her search for an academic position, and her continued research. Josephson relies on archival material from three main sources: Baer Family Collection in Santa Maria de Xalostoc, Mexico; Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University; and Paul Hirsch Collection at British Library in London. The items cited by Josephson are primarily letters, from which he quotes extensively, letting Meyer-Baer and her colleagues, especially Paul Hirsch and Sophie Drinker, speak for themselves. As Josephson notes, Meyer-Baer's gender did influence her career, especially at beginning: Professor Hermann Kretschmar blocked her dissertation at Berlin University in 1915, claiming that to accept her dissertation would be give a female student an unfair advantage in wartime over her male counterparts (p. 8). In order complete her doctorate, Meyer-Baer transferred Leipzig University, a move sponsored by Hugo Reimann, where she spent just a single day taking exams. After her struggle submit her dissertation, it is not surprising that she faced same resistance a few years later, when her Habilitation application, necessary' qualify for a university job, was rejected. In meantime, Meyer-Baer strung together a few lectures and began publishing articles. After a chance introduction at an after-concert party, she came in touch with Jewish-German businessman Paul Hirsch (1881-1951) and visited his impressive private music collection. Shortly thereafter, he offered her a position as librarian, thus beginning the most stimulating decade of her professional life (p. 24). Josephson suggests that it was accident (p. 294) that Meyer-Baer found employment with a Jewish patron, given anti-Semitic climate of 1920s Berlin. Meyer-Baer enjoyed her time at library and immediately began working toward publication of a multivolume catalog of library's holdings, no small task with some twenty thousand items, and a series of facsimiles of its rare scores and treatises, which started come out in print in 1922. …