Fritz Kreisler and my Red Wool Scarf

Fritz Kreisler - Time Magazine - February 2, 1928

A keepsake from my late aunt came to light in cleaning out an old closet today. Alas the old Christian Dior winter coat (from my long gone glory days in banking, bought at Barney's NY with part of a real Christmas bonus) had succumbed to moth holes and is a loss but there in the pocket was tucked away an old plain red wool scarf – no holes thank God.

My aunt had been an employee to the late Mrs. Fritz Kreisler as cook, part-time housekeeper and companion in the Kreisler New York apartment.

After Fritz Kreisler died, Aunt Mary brought us a bag of some men’s toiletries, cologne bottle wrapped in a cork label (la dee da) etc. and this old red scarf that Mrs. Kreisler said that my aunt could dispose of, and that the violin virtuoso had once used in life. I guess I took the scarf out of that bag of hand me downs and it has somehow stuck to me through the years.

Today I found it again.  Today I finally looked up Kreisler’s bio on Wikipedia for the first time.  I have memories of the fact that my parent’s generation took for granted live radio performances of this violin player in the golden days of radio.  His name was a household item in the day of live connected human entertainment. 

No canned music on the media back then. Some thought the idea of playing a record of a virtuoso in live prime time radio as something obscene. There is a remark to that effect somewhere in the movie “The King’s Speech” whereby the establishment thought a recorded voice of the King giving a canned speech would somehow be considered fraudulent. Well, the times do change. Whatever.

It is no wonder why Hitler and his vision of the future failed. With a diaspora of Jews like Einstein and Freud and not pure Aryan Christianized artists like Kreisler, it reminds me of the present already failed vision of the German pope who now wants to caste out all intellectuals, feminists and gays from the RC church in the next to fail European vision thingy. Oh well.  

Enjoy the art.  Forget the politics.