Charlotte Demant

Charlotte Demant was born on January 2, 1894, in Tarnopol, a city in the Austrian-Hungarian part of what is now Ukraine. The second youngest of seven children, she grew up in a family headed by her father Josef Demant, a court official, and her mother Ernestine. When Charlotte was still young, her father moved the family to Czernowitz, the capital of the Habsburg crown land of Bukovina, for professional reasons.

In Czernowitz, Charlotte completed her high school education and began studying music at the local conservatory. Her musical talent was evident early on, though she had to finance her studies largely through her own work at a local bank. A review of a music school concert on May 25 and 29, 1911, noted that "Miss Charlotte Demant already possesses considerable skill, and her flawless rendition of Chopin's B flat minor Scherzo made us completely forget that we were at a student production."

The first Russian occupation of Czernowitz in autumn 1914 disrupted this promising beginning. The local bank evacuated its staff, including 20-year-old Charlotte, to Vienna. Her family followed shortly afterward as part of the broader displacement of the German-speaking population.

Vienna and Musical Development

In Vienna, Charlotte continued her musical education with distinguished teachers. She studied singing with court opera singer Laura Hilgermann and later with the well-known tenor Daniel Andersen. She took music theory lessons with Anton Webern, which she later remembered as "unforgettable," and according to some sources, studied piano with Eduard Steuermann. It was also during this period that she studied with Hanns Eisler in music theory.

Her first encounter with Hanns Eisler came in 1919 at a lecture he gave about Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony. As Charlotte later recalled: "One afternoon in 1919, I joined a group of young musicians and music lovers at a lecture given by a young musician who had just returned from the war. He spoke about Gustav Mahler in the form of a very beautiful and interesting analysis. I had been introduced to him beforehand as a young singer. He was very pleased because he also had some of his songs in this company. He then asked me if I could sing his songs, and I gave him a sample. From this gesture, he realised that I could sing directly from the sheet music, which he liked very much and which immediately brought us closer together."

This meeting led to extensive musical collaboration and ultimately to marriage on August 31, 1920. The couple initially lived in the legendary Grinzinger Baracken before settling in an apartment at Mozartplatz 2 in February 1924.

Charlotte became politically active in the mid-1920s, joining the Communist Party of Austria around 1924 or 1925, recruited by her ex-brother-in-law Paul Friedländer. Her political commitment would prove both dangerous and costly in the years to come.

In 1925, Hanns Eisler decided to move to Berlin for economic reasons. Charlotte followed in 1927, but their time together in Berlin was brief. She was pregnant and returned to Vienna to care for Hanns's ill mother and to give birth to their son Georg Franz on April 20, 1928. From this point forward, the couple lived apart, with Charlotte remaining in Vienna while Hanns pursued his career in Berlin.

Charlotte's responsibilities in Vienna were substantial. She cared for Ida Maria Eisler, who suffered from heart disease following her husband's death, until Ida's death in December 1929. She also had custody of their son Georg and for many years housed Friedrich Gerhart Friedländer, the child of Elfriede Eisler and Paul Friedländer. Additionally, she was involved in Communist Party work, which became illegal after the party was banned in May 1933.

The marriage formally ended in divorce on May 14, 1935, though contact continued due to their son, often complicated by financial disputes over maintenance payments.

Underground Activities and Mounting Danger

After the Dollfuß regime dissolved the Austrian parliament in March 1933 and banned the Communist Party, Charlotte continued her political activities underground. Her apartment became a refuge for foreign Communist Party officials, and she helped wounded Schutzbündler members cross the border to Bratislava after the Austrian Civil War of February 1934. She housed two leading officials of the illegal Yugoslav Communist Party in her apartment.

As the political situation deteriorated, Charlotte made the difficult decision to emigrate. In mid-1936, she and her eight-year-old son Georg left for Moscow, where she had been promised work at the State Music Publishing House (MUSGIS).

In Moscow, Charlotte found work at the state music publisher, where she played a key role in several important publications. She was instrumental in the 1937 publication of the Eisler-Busch songbook "Pesni bor'by germanskogo proletariata" (Songs of Struggle of the German Proletariat). According to her son Georg's recollections, she also worked on publications of songs by Sergei Prokofiev and possibly Gustav Mahler, though evidence for the latter is unclear. She continued to work as a singing teacher while in Moscow.

Georg Eisler later described the complex atmosphere of their Moscow years:

"Only a few fragments of memory remain from my childhood in Moscow: the Karl Liebknecht School and the many German-speaking emigrant children, the low wooden houses, the subterranean palaces of the still very new metro, accessible only by fast-moving escalators, the two large mirrors at the entrance to the Hotel Lux. Added to this was the extreme polarity of emotions: Ernst Busch singing in front of us schoolchildren, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the elation of political events, the initially quiet, indefinable horror as the number of teachers mysteriously dwindled in the wake of the Great Purge; how more and more friends disappeared from the circle of adults, and one learned not to ask too many questions."

The arbitrary nature of Stalin's purges made life increasingly precarious for Charlotte and her son. Like many Moscow emigrants, their residence permit was not renewed at the beginning of 1938, forcing them to leave after less than two years. They initially planned to return to Vienna, but the Anschluss made this impossible. Stranded in Prague, Charlotte missed her ex-husband Hanns Eisler by only a few weeks.

Charlotte spent about a year in Prague, during which time she worked with anti-Nazis fleeing the Sudetenland after the Munich Agreement of September 1938. As the situation became increasingly dangerous, she sought a way to reach a safer country. Shortly before Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Charlotte and Georg were able to flee to England with the help of the Quakers.

Musical Life in England

In England, Charlotte settled in Manchester, where she was finally able to devote herself entirely to her musical activities. She gave recitals throughout England, naturally including works by the Schoenberg School. Her specialty was accompanying herself on piano during her vocal performances, demonstrating her skills as both singer and pianist.

She played chamber music with notable musicians, including cellist Friedrich Buxbaum, a former member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and professor at the Conservatory of the Society of Music Friends and the Academy of Music in Vienna, who had also been forced to emigrate. Charlotte conducted a women's choir and worked for four years as a singing teacher at the Young Women's Christian Association (Y.W.C.A.), which offered music lessons as part of its educational programs for disadvantaged women.

This association with a religious organization might seem surprising for a communist, but it represented both a practical necessity to earn money and an opportunity to remain musically active. The Y.W.C.A.'s commitment to women's rights and education also aligned with some of her values.

During these years in England, Charlotte's son Georg developed his interest in the visual arts, eventually studying at the Stockport School of Art and the Manchester Academy. He found an early teacher and patron in Oskar Kokoschka. Georg's father Hanns was demonstrably unimpressed by these artistic plans, and it was solely due to Charlotte's support that Georg was able to pursue his artistic career, which would later make him an important figure in 20th-century painting.

Musicologist Georg Knepler was one of the few to acknowledge Charlotte's artistic achievements during her English exile. In an article for the Österreichische Volksstimme entitled "Austrian Musicians in London," he described her as one of the most important musicians active in the Anglo-Austrian Music Society, noting that "among the Austrian singers, it is above all Marianne Mislap-Kapper, Charlotte Eisler and Ernst Urbach who have made a name for themselves as lieder singers."

Return to Vienna and Limited Opportunities

Charlotte and Georg returned to Vienna in 1946, where she attempted to rebuild her musical career and reconnect with the city's musical establishment. However, her political convictions limited her opportunities significantly. She gave recitals at venues including RAVAG (Austrian radio), the Vienna Musikverein, and the Vienna Konzerthaus, sometimes in collaboration with the Austrian section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (IGNM). She also performed at a Universal Edition house concert dedicated to Hanns Eisler.

There is evidence of her work directing Viennese workers' choirs, including one in Floridsdorf and others she mentioned in conversation with Hans Bunge: "a youth factory choir at Siemens-Schuckert and then another one." Her recording activity for Austrian Radio was apparently extensive, though tragically, as her son Georg noted: "When all the many audio tapes [with vocal recordings by Charlotte Eisler] were deleted from RAVAG in the 1950s and nothing could be saved from the large archive, I had to regard this as a belated act of political revenge."

A concrete example of Charlotte's politically motivated exclusion occurred when she applied for a teaching position at the Vienna Conservatory after returning from exile. Despite her qualifications and a successful audition, she was hired only at the Kagran Music School, an affiliated institution in a distant suburb that merely prepared students for university entrance qualifications. The director at the time was Wilhelm Fischer, a musicologist who had himself been forced to work in a metal factory during the Nazi era because of his Jewish heritage, but even he was unable to secure Charlotte a position at the main conservatory.

As Charlotte recalled: "I went to the conservatory and said, 'I am a singer and would like a position as a teacher.' We had a very decent and wonderful musician as director there. He asked, 'Are you willing to give us an audition – that is, to sing for us, etc.?' I agreed, sang in three languages, accompanied myself and gave a trial lesson. Then I went out; the director called me back in, kissed my hand and said, 'You've far exceeded our expectations!' So I got the teaching position, but with a salary...! It's paid by the hour, so first you have to accumulate the hours – so it was a very difficult life."

Charlotte's health problems, particularly with her bronchi, became increasingly frequent. By 1953, her health had deteriorated to such an extent that she was no longer able to give regular singing lessons and had become practically unable to work. Her position at the conservatory was terminated on June 30, 1952.

The loss of her constant piano accompanist Herbert Häfner also dealt a severe blow to her career. Häfner, a conductor and pianist who was a student of Zemlinsky and one of the few performers in Vienna who championed the avant-garde in the post-war years, died unexpectedly on June 28, 1952, in Salzburg while conducting an orchestra concert during the ISCM/IGNM World Music Days.

Financial Struggles and A Forgotten End

Financial difficulties plagued Charlotte throughout her later years. The first written acknowledgment of Hanns Eisler's obligation to pay maintenance dates from 1953, but the lack of practical implementation led to bitter correspondence. Charlotte showed remarkable patience because she did not want "the name of the revolutionary composer Hanns Eisler," whose artistic qualities she continued to "value extraordinarily," to be "denounced in public" in connection with her own plight. In the 1950s, even the SED (Socialist Unity Party) had to intervene to ensure that regular payments were finally made.

Political circumstances after the conclusion of the Austrian State Treaty and the republic's clear orientation toward the West made opportunities for artists who identified as "left-wing" increasingly scarce. After the mid-1950s, there is no evidence of further practical musical activities by Charlotte. From 1957 onward, she was only able to work for a few years as editor-in-chief of the music section of the Austrian-Soviet Society.

Charlotte Eisler died on August 21, 1970, in Vienna from cancer. She died completely forgotten by the musical establishment she had once served. No obituary appeared in any media at the time, not even in the Volksstimme, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Austria.

Throughout her career, Charlotte had been a specialist in the vocal works of the Second Viennese School, maintaining extensive repertoire that went well beyond the songs of Hanns Eisler to include works by Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. During her exile in England, she had also mastered the local repertoire, becoming recognized as an expert on contemporary British music.

Her documented performances show how extensive her repertoire was, and Hanns Eisler himself, despite their personal difficulties, described her many years after their separation as "the most musical woman I know." She championed his music throughout her life, performing works including Six Songs for Voice and Piano Op. 2, Newspaper Clippings Op. 11, Lullabies of a Proletarian Mother, and excerpts from the Hollywood Songbook. As she told Hans Bunge in an interview: "Then, for twenty years, I performed the songs that [Ernst] Busch also sang."

Charlotte Eisler's life encompassed extraordinary musical, intellectual, and political transformations. From her early promise as a young musician in the Habsburg Empire through her involvement in the underground Communist movement, her years of exile in Moscow and England, and her difficult return to post-war Vienna, she maintained her commitment to music and her political ideals despite personal cost. Her story illustrates both the achievements possible for a determined artist and the price paid by those whose political convictions put them at odds with the established order of their time.

Sources

Hannes Heher, Weit über’s Ziel geschossen - Charlotte Eisler: Sängerin, Pianistin, Musikologin, Kommunistin. In: Communications of the Alfred Klahr Society . No. 3 , 2020 ( online PDF; accessed June 2025]).