Music Lessons and Brother Bernhard

Let us now get back to our own family life. We children were by now grown up. We had finished the schools and we girls had passed the exams and received our diplomas, which could help us to get independent teaching jobs.

As far as the music is concerned, after master Harras’ departure we were left with several rather weak females, young girls who want to earn a little extra, or sometimes needed the money badly. And they all taught us cheaply. They came to mother and asked to give us lesson. For instance, Miss Tilla Seemel, who together with her old aunt lived with us in our house. She was consumptive and died a short while later. All of them, I am sure, gave there best and made sure we stuck to the tempo, but their taste ran to things like “prayer of a maiden” by Thekla von Bardazweska and such easy salon pieces that were favorites at that time. Of course, these tastes were transmitted to us students.

Later on, when we were older, we came to music director Scholz, who fiddled the morning concerts in the park with his small orchestra. From him we heard and learned Opera pieces and other better music. But otherwise he was disgusting. When his of beer and liquor smelling face came close to us and he maybe even put his arm around our waist, I felt nauseated. It was better, when after only half an hour he jumped up and ran into his bedroom to start dressing for the evening and from there called out “wrong, wrong” or sometimes “bravo, bravo”. Some lucky start freed us from this hero Scholz.

Later, at the end of the sixties, a music school was finally started in Riga. It was called “First Music Institute” and the leader was Emil Siegert, who had immigrated. Entrance into the school was also possible for less affluent people. Father wanted that I entered the school, and there I heard my first sonata by Beethoven, whose name I hardly knew. The horizon for such beauty in music was lifted for me, but how to be able to play this music well presented difficulties. Siegert himself was no example for difficult piano playing. His students just had to practice, practice, practice, without any instruction. Although at the end of the semester our techniques had not improved, we had to play during public examinations. I always was embarrassed, because I knew how much my playing was missing.

I was in a class with two noble Poles, August von Junzill and Peter von Schostakowsky, who later made a name for himself as the director of the Philharmonic Society in Moscow. Both boys were very talented but lazy. I, on the other hand, practiced very diligently and therefore could keep with them and the competition with them was actually the encouragement to advance. After a year or so, those two left and moved away. Thus, I was left to keep shining as the only star of the Music School Siegert. That was exceedingly embarrassing for me. I was even ashamed lost all courage and also left the Music School.

Besides, I was now at an age where the motto was: Work and earn something. Tutoring without a recommendation as a teacher, which we did not have, did not pay very well. Therefore, we were looking for positions as tutors away from home. At the beginning of the seventies, I found one in Lithuania with the family von Hryszkiewicz, where I remained for seven years. Sister Mila, meanwhile, followed a more practical path. She finished a seamstress course and developed good skillfulness. This helped her in later life. Then she looked for governess post. Her first job was here in Latvia near Wolmar with a good bourgeois family.

I wrote earlier about brother Christoph’s mercantile career. Brother Bernhardt, as the oldest, had spent several years in foreign countries and spent there his inheritance from his grandmother. Now he had come back and did not really know what to do. He did not seem to have the right trust in his carpenter training. The roofs of houses that he tried to build seem always to be askew, as some people teased him. And so he was just wasting some time without any serious job. He did not keep that much contact with us siblings, since he was so much older. He only teased us girls, in a friendly way, and he did not have any common interests with brother Christoph. He mainly spent time in the house of family Stengels, a widow who had three sons and had lived a few years in our old house. She probably came from the printer’s guild, because all three sons were printers and quiet, calm people. The youngest, Hermann, was the same age as Bernhard and very nice and mannerly. We saw the other two seldom, since they worked abroad. Bernhard spent a lot of time by Stengels, probably not because he was attracted to the printing craft but because he could read a lot of books there, which was always his main interest.

But now I have to tell about another family, who also lived with us for about 25 years. This was the family Sankowsky, a couple with two Dachshunds and a maid. Their apartment was above us in the newly built wing. The contact with them became immediately very cordial. A sister, a widow Thomson, with her daughter Alide, often visited them. Alide had gotten to know sister Mila through the same confirmation class and they also had taken the seamstress course together and the acquaintance widened into a friendship.

When something was going on at our place, for instance we would dance, the Sankowsky’s came down to take a look at everything and of course, their visitors, Mrs. Thomson with daughter Alide came too. Brother Bernhard was a dashing young man and a spirited dancer. Of course, he immediately asked Miss Alide and swang her around, although this was quite a piece of work, since she was clumsy and often flopped to the floor. This always angered her mother, who could not restrain herself from saying: “Of course, there lies my lump of daughter again!” It was said, that she was unhappy with everything the daughter died, because no schooling or other lessons seemed to be absorbed.

It was said, that even in her earlier life Mrs. Thomson was never satisfied. Her husband was a baker and owned the second largest bakery, right after Kroepsch. He also was leaseholder of the Wohrmann Park. He was a very respectable person who tried to keep propriety and order and it was said that he personally would chase furtive riffraff, like overly made up and ambiguous women, from the park waving his cane, in remembrance of the honored donor of the park. However, in his own home, he did not play the first fiddle. There they lived a sumptuous life, so-called good friends feasted at his always open table, until he finally noticed that he was being ruined. Then he went into the attic and shot himself. Everyone was sorry for him, because it was said that he was a thoroughly honorable man.

There was not much left for the wife and children and they had to live now quite frugally. Mrs. Thomson was sickly and died soon after we got know her. The inheritors, two sons and a daughter, divided the legacy. After the house that was highly indebted was sold, everyone received 8,000 Rubels. Miss Alide now was able to marry. It was said that she had several suitors. She was not exactly pretty, but had her youthful charm and brother Bernhard liked such chubbiness and thus he too started wooing her. He did not keep quiet and talked to mother who said: “Go ahead, she is gentle like a dove and has always been treated harshly by her mother. She will make you a good wife.”

And so, at the end of the summer of 1866 was the wedding and after a year came the little Sascha-son (Alexander) who was the darling of all of us. However, the dovelike gentleness did not last long. Soon she banged her fists on the table and screemed: “Now as a wife I am longer dumb!” And she soon had her husband henpecked. He managed her fortune well, immediately bought a small house with a large lot in the Gertrudstreet. He built more on the lot and they lived there like patriarchs all their lives, even if not without strife and arguments – mother Lida made sure of that.

Ever now and then, the good Bernhard set to work with some new undertaking, with which he thought to reach the brass ring sooner. He and the friends Stengel opened a printing shop and started a newspaper called “newspaper for the city and country”. It lived only for a short while and went to sleep after a few weeks. The only good thing was, that they immediately found a buyer, a printer Weide, so that the brothers did not sustain any harm. Weide kept the newspaper for a few years, but then he went bankrupt and the brothers Ruetz continued the newspaper. It is now called “Riga Rundschau” and thrives in a rather large way.