Viktor Ullmann - Chronology

Chronology

• 1898 Born in Teschen (in Austrian Silesia) on 1 January
• 1909–16 Attended school in Vienna
• 1916–18 Military service as a volunteer; service at the Front; promotion to Lieutenant
• 1918 Attended the University of Vienna, studying law and attending lectures in sociology and philosophy of Wilhelm Jerusalem and attending Arnold Schönberg's "composition seminar"
• 1920 autumn: Choirmaster and co-repetiteur under Alexander von Zemlinsky in the New German Theatre in Prague; later (1922–27) conductor
• 1925 Composition of the "Schönberg Variations" for piano (first performance 1926 in Prague)
• 1927-1928 Director of Opera in Aussig an der Elbe (Ústí nad Labem); afterwards back in Prague without a position
• 1929 Success of the "Schönberg Variations" at the music festival of the International Society for New Music (Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik; IGNM) in Geneva
• 1929-1931 Composer and conductor for stage music in the theatre at Zurich
• 1931-1933 Bookdealer in Stuttgart, as proprietor of the anthroposophical Novalis-Bücherstube
• 1933 Flight from Stuttgart; return to Prague
• 1934 Hertzka Prize for the orchestral arrangement of the "Schönberg Variations" (Op. 3b)
• 1935-1937 Instruction in composition from Alois Hába
• 1936 Hertzka Prize for the opera The Fall of the Antichrist (Op. 9)
• 1938 After the performance of the Second String Quartet at the IGMN Festival in London, stays for about two months in Dornach near Basle
• 1939 Beginning of the persecution of the Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
• 1942 (8 September) Deportation to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp; active as composer, conductor, pianist, organiser, teacher and music critic. Most important compositions preserved in manuscript: 3 piano sonatas; piano sonatas; songs; opera The Emperor of Atlantis; melodrama The Manner of Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke
• 1944 (16 October) Transfer to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was murdered in the gas chambers on 18 October 1944