Early Life (1906-1934)
Waxman was born Franz Wachsmann in Königshütte (Chorzów) to jewish parents in the German Empire's Prussian Province of Silesia (now in Poland). At the age of three Waxman suffered a serious eye injury involving boiling water tipped from a stove, which permanently impaired his vision.
In 1923, at age 16, Waxman enrolled in the Dresden Music Academy and studied composition and conducting. Waxman lived from the money he made playing popular music and managed to put himself through school. While working as a pianist with the Weintraub Syncopaters, a dance band, Waxman met Frederick Hollander, who eventually led Waxman’s introduction to Bruno Walter.
Waxman worked as an orchestrator for the German film industry, including Hollander’s score for The Blue Angel in 1930. Waxman’s first dramatic score came in 1934 for the film Liliom. In the same year Waxman was attacked by Nazi sympathizers in Berlin, precipitating his move with his wife to Paris. Soon after arriving in Paris, and observing the encroaching German armies, Waxman moved again, this time to Hollywood.
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