Exhibited here is a signed program for Marian Anderson’s appearance as a guest artist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Haifa on April 27, 1955. The program is also signed by her accompanist, Franz Rupp.
Rupp (1901-1992), a Jewish pianist who had escaped with his family from Nazi Germany, was already a star when he began working with Anderson, a relationship that lasted more than 25 years and produced recordings of several masterpieces they performed together. Anderson’s favorite genres were lieder, the 19th-century German art song characterized by the treatment of the piano and voice in equal artistic partnership, and her beloved Negro spirituals. Rupp, who was already a renowned lieder performer, quickly came to share Anderson’s passion for spirituals. He remained deeply devoted to her throughout their long association, and he famously took the lead in fighting against venues that insisted that Anderson enter the theatre through segregated entrances.
Perhaps the seminal event that brought international prominence and fame to Anderson (1897-1993) was the refusal by the Daughters of the American Revolution to permit her, or any other black performer, to sing at Constitution Hall (1939). First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt publicly resigned from the DAR in protest, and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes offered Anderson the opportunity to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939. Her performance that day became one of the most notable concerts of all time, with 75,000 people of all races hearing her rendition of patriotic and spiritual songs and millions more listening in on radio. Perhaps more importantly, it served to raise American consciousness about racial discrimination and paved the way for the nascent civil rights movement.
Not as well known is that long before Anderson was denied permission to sing at Constitution Hall, she was refused lodging at Nassau Inn in Princeton during her April 16, 1937 concert at the McCarter Theatre there, and Albert Einstein invited her into his home as a guest. It was the beginning of a long friendship. Whenever she returned to Princeton, she stayed at his home on Mercer Street, including a visit two months before he died.
Also not as well known is that besides working during the large part of her career with a Jewish accompanist, Anderson had a grandfather who considered himself Jewish; was managed by a Jewish impresario (Sol Hurok); established an important scholarship for young Jewish musicians; and was a profound Zionist.
Anderson’s maternal grandfather, Benjamin Anderson, was a deeply religious man who, after converting to Judaism, referred to himself as a “Black Jew” and proudly practiced his religion in a household of Baptists. He observed Shabbat, belonged to a small local congregation whose members called themselves Hebrews or Israelites and where the men wore traditional yarmulkes, and may well have influenced his granddaughter’s positive attitude toward Israel. He also observed Passover; according to Anderson, “I first heard the words `Passover’ and `unleavened bread’ from his lips.”
Shortly after Israel’s War of Independence, Anderson sang at a concert and dinner sponsored by the American Fund for Israel Institutions to help raise funds for the new Jewish state. Referring with great affection to the citizens of Israel, she explained that “Music is my method of saluting these people who have built a country against tremendous odds.”
Anderson originally planned to visit Eretz Yisrael as early as 1935, the same year the Nazis barred her appearance in Berlin, but the trip never took place. In April 1955, two decades later, she arrived at Lydda airport where she was greeted by Eleanor Roosevelt who, coincidentally, was leaving Israel the day Anderson arrived.
Touring Israel for much of 1955, Anderson visited the places that had inspired her Negro spirituals, including the high walls of Jericho, the wide river Jordan, and the eternal Jerusalem:
I could see in Israel the geographic places that represented the reality, and they stirred me deeply. I kept thinking that my people had captured the essence of that reality and had gone beyond it….
You [the people of Israel] make it easy for one of my race to feel very, very much at home here from the first moment. To stand on the banks of the Jordan, or to see Jerusalem and those other places so tied up with one’s religious background and our spirituals, makes a profound impression.
One unforgettable highlight of her triumphant tour, which included sixteen appearances in less than three weeks, was her performance of Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody with the Israel Philharmonic. The piece, written in German, was generally boycotted by Israel following the Holocaust, but the men’s chorus prepared a Hebrew translation for Anderson’s concert, and she thrilled her audience when she sang the entire oratorio in Hebrew. (Israeli critics characterized her Hebrew as “perfect and articulate.”)
On her visit to Israel, Anderson was impressed by the Jewish spirit of creativity and idealism, particularly on kibbutzim (she helped celebrate a Passover Seder at Kibbutz Givat Brenner and also sang at Kibbutz Ein Gev near Yam Kineret):
The audiences in Israel were something special. They were made up of young people who had found a refuge and a home there, and their hunger for music was exceptional. But no audience was more remarkable than those we had when we performed at the two kibbutzim, those pioneering agricultural communities created by dedicated men and women who had the faith and energy to cause a desert to bloom.
During the 1930s, Anderson had been condemned by Nazi Germany for performing Aryan music – and, of course, for her skin color (an invitation to perform in Germany was rescinded after the Nazis learned that, despite a Nordic-sounding surname, Anderson was actually black) – and in the Soviet Union for singing about Jesus, all of which may also have contributed to her spirit of amity with the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who had created Israel. Echoing the 1948 NAACP statement that Israeli independence “serves as an inspiration to all persecuted people throughout the world,” she stated that she understood anew how “the Negro made images out of the Bible that were as vaulting as his aspirations.”
For Anderson, the translation of biblical history into the realized political dream of a Jewish state constituted “an act of liberation” that equally well expressed “the deepest necessities of [blacks’] human predicament.” She was particularly moved by a thousand-strong Passover “liberation Seder” in which she participated and by the singing of Go Down Moses, one of her favorite spirituals, in the original Hebrew. Wanting to create a more permanent bond with the Israeli people, she contributed part of her fee to endow an annual scholarship to be awarded to gifted Israeli singers.
In 1930, Anderson had traveled to Scandinavia, where she met Jean Sibelius and performed several of his lieder for him. Stirred by her singing, he said he felt she had been able to penetrate “the Nordic soul,” and they became close friends. The friendship developed into a professional relationship, as the Finnish composer altered and composed songs for Anderson to perform. Sibelius wrote A Jewish Girl’s Song for contralto and piano and, when it was performed as part of the incidental music for Procope’s play Belshazzar’s Feast, Sibelius dedicated the song to her (1939).
On November 14, 1960, Anderson was presented with an illuminated scroll by the National Women’s Division of the American Friends of Hebrew University, who named her Woman of the Year. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Michael Comay, announced that a Marian Anderson United Nations document reading room would be installed in the library on the new Hebrew University campus in Jerusalem, and the AFHU Women’s Division announced a campaign to raise $1 million for the library.
In a world filled with anti-Semites and haters of Israel, it is very important that we always remember, recognize, and pay tribute to our friends, past and present.
