Aloys Fleischmann (1880-1964): Immigrant Musician in Ireland

1. Youth in Dachau 1880–1906

1. Youth in Dachau 1880–1906 11 THE MARKET TOWN AND ARTISTS’ COLONY OF DACHAU When Aloys Fleischmann was born in 1880, Dachau was known to Bavarians as an old market town and the summer residence of the Wittelsbach kings; it was known to painters and those interested in their work as an artists’ colony, having been a centre of landscape painting since the middle of the nineteenth century. From 1933 the name took on a threatening connotation for all opponents of Nazism, being the location of the first concentration camp, which was established there in that year; from 1945 all over the world the name became synonymous with the infamy of the defeated regime. Dachau is first mentioned in a document of AD 805 when it was donated by a noblewoman to the church – in 2005 it celebrated its twelve-hundredth anniversary. The town lies about twelve miles northwest of Munich, the centre perched on a hill 1,500 feet above sea level. Aloys Fleischmann 1904 12 Chapter One From the castle gardens there is a panoramic view over the surrounding countryside with Munich and sometimes the Alps visible on the horizon. At the southern foot of the hill beyond the river Amper there used to be extensive moorland dotted with small lakes and pools and covered by a blanket of almost twenty feet of turf. The name ‘Dachau’means ‘clay land surrounded by water’: it derives from the locality rather than being the name of a settlement.1 It was the extraordinary light and vivid colours to be found on the marshlands to the south of the town, and the charm of the hilly farmlands and forests to the north, which attracted so many landscape painters to the area. The population of Dachau increased during the nineteenth century due to improved medical care2 and the beginning of industrialisation. When Aloys Fleischmann was growing up in the 1880s, there were about 350 houses in the town and 3,000 inhabitants; by the time he was twenty the number had grown to 5,000. When his father was a boy, there had been about 200 houses and 1,300 citizens; when his grandfather was a child only 160 houses and 1,000 citizens.3 The feudal privileges of the aristocracy were long-lived in Bavaria: serfdom was not formally abolished until 1808; restrictions on trade did not end until 1868. Dachau had long been a town of prosperous brewers, a centre of trade in agricultural produce and timber and home to a large variety of craftsmen. From the mid nineteenth century the modernisation process began to move from the urban centres and to have a considerable impact on the surrounding countryside. In 1862 a large paper factory was founded which catered for Munich’s growing number of newspapers and publishing houses; in 1868 Dachau was linked by rail to Munich and Ingolstadt. This made it easier for the painters to travel to Dachau from Munich: from the 1890s to 1914 large numbers of distinguished artists came to paint and many to live. Literary accounts of the artists’ colony increased its fame, bringing more writers, more painters, and also actors and musicians, until in 1900 it was said that every tenth person to be seen on the streets of the town was an artist. Over a thousand painters came to Dachau between 1840 and 1914.4 It was, of course, the Dachau countryside as yet untouched by modernisation which brought them there and the attraction of a traditional way of life which was vanishing in the metropolitan centres from which they came. The train service, however, also brought industrially manufactured goods to the town which had previously been provided by the craftsmen, a development which began to threaten their livelihoods and the culture so esteemed by the newcomers. FLEISCHMANN’S FAMILY BACKGROUND Fleischmann’s grandfather: a barber-surgeon Aloys Fleischmann was born in Dachau on 24 April 1880. His father, also Aloys, was a master-shoemaker; his mother, Magdalena Deger (called Youth in Dachau 1880–1906 13 Leni), the daughter of the Dachau bookbinder, Josef Deger. Aloys was their only child, born twelve years after their marriage. The family were citizens of Dachau, being house-owners: Josef Deger had bought a house in 1835, which he transferred to his daughter Leni in 1867 so that her fiancé could set up a workshop in the town after her marriage.5...