Mother of pianist Paula Szalit.

Reisel Szalit and her husband Simon had four children: Beile (1866–), Heinrich (1867–), Rebeca (1871–), and Paula (1885–1942). Of these, Heinrich and Paula are known both to have been musically gifted.

Nothing is known of the relationship between Reisel and Paula after the latter left home for Vienna c. 1893. Schenker’s diary for June 18, 1914 records: “Paula Szalit's mother visits me for the first time and informs me of the dreadful tragedy that her daughter has been stricken by religious mania.” Schenker’s callous reaction was: “Who may have sent her mother to me? Who, in view of the tragedy, had the depravity to spare themselves expenses only to pile them upon me, who had not seen the girl since she was fourteen or fifteen years old?” This is the only known contact between Reisel Szalit and Heinrich Schenker.

Paula herself wrote to Schenker in 1918 that she was entirely “cut off” from her family. This suggests that a rift had taken place somewhere between 1906, when she returned to Lemberg as head of the advanced piano class at the Lemberg Conservatory, at which point her performing career appears to have stopped, and some time in the mid-1910s.

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