13/08/2025
1910 Was a Good Year!
In 1910 Willian Howard Taft became the first President to throw out the first pitch at a Major League baseball game. That was on April 14th.
A week later, on the 21st, we lost one of our most important writers when Mark Twain died.
Many other events happened that year, too.
But on the whole I think of it as a good year. Why?
Because eight memorable people I (much!) later knew were born then. Though most of their parents were probably not concerned with the events above as seven of the eight were born in Germany. (Their parents may have been more focused on the doings of Kaiser Wilhelm II and his government!)
Something else interesting about this group is that, with one exception, all of them lived to a high, or even extraordinary age.
The exception was the one I may have known longest and best, Dr. Hans Wolff (1910 - 1975). My parents met him in 1950 when my mother went to work as a nurse at the Hospital for Joint Diseases in Harlem. Hans had a long career there as a respected orthopedist and his wife, Eleanor was also a nurse there. The Wolffs lived in Riverdale, in the northwest corner of the Bronx, an area which combined the best characteristics of the city and the suburbs. They convinced my parents to move there, too. It was a wonderful neighborhood for my brother and me to grow up in, as did the Wolff's sons, John (now Yonason) and Paul.
Hans was an outgoing, robust, and positive individual with a good sense of humor. Which was impressive as he had a lot of sadness in his earlier life. Though he was the son and grandson of doctors, he never knew his grandfather and he barely knew his father, who died when he was 2 1/2. Many years later, during World War II, his mother died in a concentration camp.
Hans and Eleanor met during the war, when both served in the American army, he as a surgeon, she as a nurse. Though Hans was a German Jew, like my parents, he was the exception in that he didn't marry someone from the same background. Eleanor was a proud New England Yankee, from western Massachusetts with Mayflower ancestry. But Hans and Eleanor had a wonderful marriage, were particularly close friends of my parents, and Eleanor fit in well with all the other friends.
In 1972 Hans had to retire after being diagnosed with ALS. His family took excellent care of him those last three very difficult years. (My parents also visited him often until Eleanor told them it was too exhausting for Hans to have any company aside from the family.)
Fortunately, Eleanor, a lady with a lot of s***k and initiative, had a long and interesting life after losing Hans. She moved back to Hadley, Massachusetts, where she had grown up, and built a house. Long interested in both family history and American history, she got involved in the local historical society.
One day the historical society received a letter from a clock maker living in South Carolina requesting information about a famous clock maker who had lived in the area. Someone said "Why don't you write the man a letter, Eleanor?"
So Eleanor did. (As I heard the story) the letter began, "Dear Mr. Stratton, I don't know anything about clocks, but that man was my great-grandfather."
The long and short of it is that a correspondence ensued, and eventually he came up for a visit. And sometime later Eleanor married Charles Stratton and they had more than 20 good years together!"
Heinz Brock (1910-1997) was a first cousin of my father, and the brother of Lotte Brock Passer, a remarkable lady who in 1939 got papers to get 59 (Jewish) friends and relatives out of Germany and into England just in time.
Unlike his sister, who moved to England in 1934, Heinz left Berlin for Palestine (later Israel) in 1935 but relocated to Great Britain around 1949. I first met Heinz and his then wife, Susi, when they visited America in 1963, and saw them several times later in the 60's when we visited London. They were always warm and hospitable.
The one member of the "Class of 1910" as I'll call them, who was born in the States was Dr. Benjamin Kotkov (1910-2006), the father of my friend, Frank Kotkov. A native Bostonian he had a charming Boston accent and a no-nonsense practicality as well as a sense of humor. A man of numerous accomplishments he had achieved smichah (ordination as a rabbi), but made as his primary profession psychology, devoting himself to serious study, and dedication to his patients, whom he continued to see till he was quite old. His wife, Sally, was lively, cheerful, and much interested in the arts. Though she "ran the show" at home (ie maintained the household) for many years, it was impressive how he took over doing everything during her at least 15 years of decline resulting from dementia. Even when it would have been easier for him to have her in a facility, he insisted on caring for her at home. He did such a good job that she actually survived him by a few months when he died at the age of 96.
Vera Meibergen (1910-2015), a cousin by marriage, was so nice the one time I met her that I stayed in at least occasional contact until she wasn't able to come to the phone anymore. She lived in San Francisco and when I visited there in 2002 invited me to lunch. We were walking along the street to catch a bus to the restaurant when she noticed the bus down the block, and started running towards it, so as not to miss it. Only once we were on the bus, did she, a little bit breathless, tell me she was 92! Later on she moved to a senior residence with many activities for its residents. I remember speaking with her over the phone on her 102nd or 103rd birthday. She told me she had had a busy day attending, I think, a fitness class, and later, a lecture. She passed away a week before her 105th birthday.
Ellen Oberlander (1910-2001) was a cousin and the sister of Margot Hochberger. But whereas Margot lived in New York, and was always one of my several ''favorite aunts", ie older cousins of my parents, Ellen lived in England and was less in touch with relatives. So I only first met her on one of my trips there when I was close to forty.
Ellen and Margot had quite a tragic family history, and their experiences were very different. Their parents both died when Margot was three, and Ellen was eight. But whereas Margot was adopted by a well-to-do aunt and uncle who had no other children, this couple only wanted the "cute little one," not also the traumatized eight year old. So Ellen went to live with another aunt and uncle who already had two children, and sometimes treated her as a step-child.
Ellen staged the "rebellion" against her family by leaving Germany in 1931 for Italy. And, rather at the last moment, she was able to get to England in 1939. In England she was, at least, safe, but alone. She took a job as a nanny in the countryside. She felt quite isolated from everything she was used to, especially with her then limited English, but was happy when someone gave her a bicycle, so she had a bit of freedom to get about on her days off.
On one such day off she was eagerly looking forward to a party not far away to which she had been invited. But, to her great disappointment, she discovered that one of the tires on her bike had a "puncture" (or a "flat," as we Americans call it.) Hoping she could still make it to the party, she went to a local mechanic who promptly fixed it. She was delighted! Having already been in England for awhile, she had noticed that people sometimes called each other "mate." So she told the mechanic "Thank you so much! I am mating with you!"
She had no idea why he then laughed so hard!
By the end of the war she had met Muriel Simmons, an English lady, with whom she lived for the rest of her long life. Both became teachers at a school in Walton-on-Thames, where they bought a house. They had quite an active social life, as they were both very cultured, educated, and interesting to converse with.
Ellen was also lucky that Muriel took such good care of her as she got older, because Ellen was born with a congenital problem that got worse and worse as she aged. Her joints were very stiff, and she couldn't bend. Despite her increasing physical (never mental!) disability ,Ellen was able to get to restaurants, concerts, and other events because Muriel and their friends provided so much help.
In the meantime her English got much better, though she never lost the strong German accent. But I'm reminded of another "Ellen" story concerning a difference in language, though not German from English, but English from American.
Because of her stiff joints, she eventually had a chair which raised her up from a seated, to a standing position. Not knowing what the following expression meant in America, where we have capital punishment, she referred to it as her "electric chair!"
Sina Berlinski (1910-2011) was my first piano teacher and Herman Berlinski (1910-2001) was her husband. Although they were the descendants of Polish Jews they grew up in Leipzig, where Bach spent the last 27 years of his life, and they imbibed the spirit and music and culture of their environment. Both were serious piano students, and Sina's teachers included the noted pianist, Robert Teichmüller. Herman was also interested in conducting and being a composer.
Both left Leipzig for Paris shortly after Hi**er came to power and they married there in 1934. Both of them studied with Alfred Cortot, whom they greatly admired musically, though not politically. After World War II began, Herman served for a time in the French army. But after being discharged they decided to come to America because:
1) Though a veteran, France would not give him permission to work, and
2) The situation became more difficult for Jews.
In America they both went to work teaching many piano students to support themselves and their son. An ambitious man, Herman eventually studied organ, and became one of the organists at New York's Temple Emanuel. He also studied for, and received a doctorate when he was close to 50. He became a noted composer of Jewish liturgical music which is performed in Reform synagogues. (Some of his works can be heard on YouTube.)
We first met the Berlinskis when I was little because they lived down the hall from us on the sixth floor of the apartment building in Riverdale where we lived. When I was eight years old, by which time they had moved to another apartment in the area, I began lessons with Mrs. Berlinski. (I would NEVER dream of calling her "Sina!") She was serious, strict, and thorough but not unkind. Three years later she told me they were moving to Washington, DC, where he would assume the position of Music Director of Washington Hebrew Congregation. I cried because she was the only piano teacher I had known!
Though she lived almost another 50 years, and though there were sometimes many years in-between our seeing each other in person, she never lost interest in what I was doing. Whenever I produced a new CD, or wrote an article which I thought might interest her, I always sent it to her and received an acknowledgement and encouragement in return. And even when she was 100 years old, I always, so to speak, "sat up and paid attention" when a letter from her arrived, in the ornate, elegant handwriting I used to see in my notebook so many years before, telling me what I should practice, and that I should try harder!
The last remarkable person I want to tell you about is Dr. Gunter Lorenz (1910-2019). My father met him when both of them were well into their senior years, and members of the local Jewish Community Center Senior Men's Club, which met once a week. The presentations at meetings could range from a member telling his life's story, to another member's description of his last vacation, to a recital by me, etc. On one occasion someone was giving a talk about end of life care, during which Gunter, a retired physician with a good sense of humor who was then 101 years old, leaned over to Dad and whispered "This can easily be avoided. Just drop dead!!"
On other occasions, even when he was past 100, Gunter read a book on some subject that interested him, like the history of gold, then delivered a lecture about it to the club, and answered questions.
Gunter had the longest life span as well as the longest memory of anyone I have known. He grew up in a part of eastern Germany that is now part of Poland and in 2014, on the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of World War I, I called to ask him his memories of that time, when he was four years old. (Actually nothing dramatic happened in his life then, he said, as there was no fighting anywhere near him, though his father had to leave home to serve in the army.)
Before the war began, also as a four year old, he had travelled to Warsaw with his parents to visit relatives. There was no independent country known as Poland then, and Warsaw was a part of the country occupied by Russia. At that time he saw a beautiful Russian Orthodox church. He returned there when he was eight or ten, by which time there was an independent Poland, and he saw that the church had been torn down and replaced by training grounds for the new Polish army, as he said the Poles hated the Russians, and were mostly Catholic, not Russian Orthodox. Full of s***k and spirit he also argued with a teacher back in school in Germany who looked down on Poles and said Warsaw was very dirty. "No" said Gunter "It was very clean and beautiful!" He did this in an era when students were NOT expected to contradict their teachers!
Gunter wanted to be a doctor and, indeed, finished medical school in Germany. But by the time he graduated, Jews were not allowed to work anymore as physicians in Germany. However, he wasn't able to leave the country yet. So he went into another profession, becoming an optical engineer, and working in that capacity till he left, a few year later.
Before I go on, I cannot resist telling you one of the most astonishing things I ever heard him say. At one of the Men's Club meetings, one of the other members (most of whom, unlike Gunter and Dad, were born here) mentioned that people of their generation had sometimes been kept out of universities in this country because of quotas for Jews. Gunter said that before Hi**er came to power (after which everything "went to hell" for the Jews in Germany) the only thing that counted for acceptance in German universities was your grades, not your ethnicity. And that before Hi**er there were American Jews who came to study in Germany because quotas had excluded them from universities and medical schools in America!!!
Eventually, not long before World War II began, Gunter and his first wife were able to leave Germany and set sail for America, though they had to stay in Cuba for a year before being admitted here. While in Havana, he saw the ship the St. Louis, filled with Jewish refugees from Europe, hoping to be allowed to land here, or in any neighboring country. But as no country would accept them, including the United States, the ship returned to Europe, and many of the passengers ended up in concentration camps.
After arriving in New York, Gunter took a job as an optical engineer, and continued doing that till the war ended. Of course, what he really wanted to do was be a doctor, but he had heard discouraging things about how difficult it was for foreign doctors to obtain their licenses here. However, one day a colleague who also came from Germany told him it wasn't as difficult as he thought, and after a short period of intense study, Gunter passed the exam and got his New York State medical license.
He then established a practice in general medicine in the Bronx, which he maintained for many years, and worked long hours. Gunter looked out for the interests of his patients. Once, a patient told him he had had no relief from pain even though Gunter had prescribed a strong medication for him. This did not sound right to Gunter who, knowing the patient lived right across the street, asked him to go home and bring back the medication. Upon seeing that it was something else, cheaper and weaker than what he had prescribed, Gunter reported the pharmacist to the authorities.
Eventually Gunter moved to Westchester and took a job at a veterans' hospital, so he could be more available to help his wife, who was ill. Eventually she died, and some years later he married a much younger woman who, together with his daughter and son-in-law, took wonderful care of him in his later years.
When he was 106 or 107 Gunter and his wife were in an auto accident (no, he wasn't driving anymore!) after which he was more fragile, and not able to go out and do as much before. The last time I spoke with him, a month before he died, his voice was weaker, but he was totally with it mentally, and he tried to exhort a young(er) person (me) on saying "We always have to keep on going, and do the best we can!"
It was his 109th birthday.
That was inspiring!
Donald Isler
