German Jewish pianist and teacher.

Career Summary

Edith Schreier was born Edith Jacoby on January 23, 1891 in East Prussia, daughter of Daniel Jacoby, dealer in fur goods, and his wife Martha (née Rosenthal). She attended school in Königsberg, where she studied piano with Conrad Hausburg, and Berlin. In 1912 she married Fritz Ascher, with whom she lived in Hamburg and had a son, Ernst Joachim Ascher, in 1913. Fritz was killed in the war in 1917.

At the recommendation of Artur Schnabel, Edith embarked on piano studies with Moriz Violin, who had moved from Vienna to Hamburg in 1921. Violin introduced her to fellow-pupil Otto Schreier, suggesting that they would make a good four-hands duet partnership. The two married in 1928, but Otto died aged 28 on June 2, 1929. Edith immediately moved to Vienna so as to be close to Otto's parents; and on July 1, 1929 she gave birth to Irene Schreier. In 1930 Edith enrolled for the state examination in piano as an exterrnal student at the Vienna Academy for Music and Performing Arts, qualifying as a professional piano music teacher.

After the National Socialist annexation of Austria, Edith emigrated in 1939 with Irene, arriving in the USA on March 4, 1939 and settling in San Francisco, where her son Ernst was a student at U. C. Berkeley. After unsuccessfully attempting to support herself and her child by teaching, she learned to cook and eventually, together with refugee friends, started a cooperative house which soon turned into a boarding house. When the Violin family also emigrated to San Francisco, Irene's lessons with the teacher who had brought her parents together, recommenced. Another refugee from the Nazi terror also appeared: Oswald Jonas,Violin's erstwhile student and closest friend.

Jonas's main purpose however was fulfilled when Edith and he married after he was offered a position at Chicago's YMCA College School of Music (later Roosevelt University) in 1942. Once settled in Chicago, Edith worked at various jobs before substituting for a well-known piano-teaching colleague during her absence. This developed into a permanent situation: she became the beloved teacher of countless students of all ages, eventually joining the faculty of the Music Center of the North Shore under the originally Viennese director and conductor, Dr.Herbert Zipper.

After Oswald's retirement from Roosevelt University, he and Edith regularly visited Europe. He was frequently invited to lecture in Germany and Austria, often by his former students. His great interest in music manuscripts led to work in various music libraries. Undecided where to settle, the question was solved when an invitation in 1965 to be Regents' Professor at the University of California, Riverside, turned out to be so mutually rewarding that it became their new home. Soon Edith had a new circle of friends and pupils and although annual visits to Europe continued, Riverside became home. It is presently the location of a permanent Oswald Jonas Memorial Collection (OJ) in the University's library, well used by Schenker scholars.

Their last trip to Europe, in 1974, included a lengthy stay with Irene and her family in Oxford, where Dana Scott, Irene's husband had the chair of Mathematical Logic. Not feeling her energetic self, Edith sought improvement in a cure in Lenggries in Bavaria. Instead she died there on September 13. Oswald returned to Riverside until his death there in 1978.

Documentation

No correspondence is known to survive between Edith Schreier and either Heinrich Schenker or Moriz Violin. The Oswald Jonas Collection holds her certificate of naturalization (1944) at OJ 69/1, item 2.

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