Alfred Zwiebel - Early Life

Early Life

He was born in Fürth, in southern Germany, but when he was four, his family moved to the city of Bamberg, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its medieval cathedral and many other gems of art and architecture from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque. It was there that he spent his childhood and youth, and the beauty of that city and its surrounding area, the region of Germany known as "Franconian Switzerland," inspired him from his boyhood to the end of his life.

Soon after the Nazis came to power, Zwiebel and his family left Germany; he and his four siblings were raised as Lutherans by their mother, but his father was Jewish, as well as politically active against the Nazis. In 1935, Zwiebel immigrated to the United States, living first in Milwaukee and then settling in New York City, where in 1941 he married Clara Fried, a portrait painter who had studied with American Realist artist Tully Filmus. They had one child, a daughter. Zwiebel served in the U.S. Army during World War II and became an American citizen in 1944.

For the next 20 years he worked at a variety of "day jobs," painting whenever he had free time. Among other things, he worked as a baker, ski salesman, and commercial artist. From 1949-1953, he was a radio personality in New York City, where he had a weekly program, "Music From Alfred Zwiebel's Collection," on station WABF, playing opera and classical music recordings from his own extensive collection (opera was another of his lifelong passions). He also occasionally wrote articles on music for publication. Two singers engaged at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1950s and '60s, Lisa Della Casa and Anneliese Rothenberger, studied painting with him while in New York.,