Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, "Music at World's End: Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contribution to Music in Iceland" (SUNY Press, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary

New Books Network – Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, "Music at World’s End: Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contribution to Music in Iceland”

Host: Ari Barbalette
Guest: Árni Heimir Ingólfsson
Date: October 4, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth interview with Icelandic musicologist Árni Heimir Ingólfsson about his new book, Music at World’s End, which traces the lives of three exiled musicians—Heinz Edelstein, Robert Abraham, and Victor Urbancic—who fled Nazi Germany and Austria and profoundly influenced the musical culture of Iceland. The conversation explores exile, resilience, cultural exchange, the creation of musical institutions, and how displacement can yield both struggle and transformation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Árni’s Personal Journey

• Background: Born and raised in Reykjavik; no household musical tradition but enrolled in music school as a child ([02:38]).
• Formative Inspirations: Gifted a music history book at 12–13 and inspired by concert attendance and music theory lessons that included historical context ([03:00]).
• Academic Path: Studies at Oberlin Conservatory (double major in piano and music history) followed by a Harvard PhD in musicology; returned to Iceland to research and teach ([04:10]).
• Quote:

  “There was something about music history that I just found particularly fascinating. It sort of combined a lot of interests and qualities, I think, that I have that made it very interesting.”—Árni ([03:30])

Thematic Foundations of the Book

• Core Message: The creative potential generated from hardship and displacement, illustrated by the lives of the musicians who, despite being forced from their homelands, created something enduring and influential in their new setting ([05:06]).
• Relevance for Today: Parallels drawn between the refugee experience of the 1930s–40s and contemporary crises ([05:35]).
• Quote:

  “...the core message of the book is how sometimes wonderful and inspiring things can come out of really terrible and awful situations.”—Árni ([05:07])

Main Subjects: The Three Exiled Musicians

• Brief Biographies:
  • Heinz Edelstein: Jewish cellist from Freiburg, educator.
  • Robert Abraham: Jewish conductor and musicologist.
  • Victor Urbancic: Viennese conductor, composer, pianist, married to a Jewish woman.
• Iceland’s Openness:
  • Iceland accepted very few refugees; these three were allowed due to Iceland’s cultural nation-building efforts as it approached independence from Denmark ([06:20]).
• Transactional Exchange:

  “They gave Iceland what Iceland wanted—a better sort of introduction to the whole classical music scene. And instead, Iceland basically gave them life.”—Árni ([07:47])

Early Lives and Pathways to Iceland ([09:08])

• Upbringings: Educated in cultured households; top conservatory training in Germany and Austria.
• Migration Stories:
  • Urbancic and Edelstein secured faculty positions at Reykjavik Music School.
  • Abraham, arriving without a job, faced a more precarious entry.
• Professional Versatility: All three were multidimensional—teaching, composing, performing, and institution-building.

Adaptation and Challenges in Iceland ([13:58])

• Language Acquisition: All three learned Icelandic to a high degree, integrating professionally and socially.
• Xenophobia: Local resistance and competition for jobs; some hostility from Icelandic musicians ([15:20]).
• Impact: They raised the standard of music performance, introduced canonical Western works, established choirs and orchestras, and initiated music schools.
• Public Memory: Their legacy is alive among older Icelanders, many of whom participated in ensembles led by the exiles.

Spouses and Family Experience ([20:32])

• Wives:
  • Melitta Urbancic (poet, actress, doctorate in literature) and Charlotte Edelstein (economist) both struggled to assimilate and flourish, in contrast to their husbands' public roles.
  • Abraham married an Icelandic woman, aiding his acceptance into Icelandic society.
• Quote:

  “Their wives were as, let's say, underappreciated in their time as their husbands were able to flourish.”—Árni ([24:31])

Genesis of the Research ([25:10])

• Initial Spark: Commissioned to write newspaper articles on the three musicians in 2001; returned to the topic multiple times over 24 years.
• Process: Extensive engagement with family members, archives, and a multi-decade commitment to telling their collective story.

Icelandic Musicology and Legacy ([28:09])

• Pioneering Role: Robert Abraham was Iceland’s first musicologist, setting the standard for subsequent generations.
• Contributions: The book fills gaps in the history of Icelandic music, linking the explosion of contemporary Icelandic music to these foundational immigrant contributions.

Music Education ([31:02])

• Institution Building:
  • Edelstein, especially, founded a new music school for children (which Árni himself attended as a boy).
  • The exiles professionalized music education, created pipelines for classical music, and established standards still in place.

Iceland’s Refugee Policy ([33:04])

• Government Resistance:
  • Prime Minister Hermann Jónasson—“quite xenophobic”—actively restricted refugee entry.
  • Only a handful managed to enter; many worthy applicants were rejected (e.g., composer Viktor Ullmann, later murdered in Auschwitz).
• Quote:

  “Iceland had to take care to continue to be the pure Nordic country that it had always been.”—Árni, quoting Jónasson ([34:30])

• Changing Discourse: Only recently have these grim aspects of history been publicly reassessed, paralleling current immigration debates.

Archival and Research Challenges ([38:59])

• Fragmented Sources: Exile and time made records scarce.
• Family Archives: Access to private family letters was crucial (notably those found with Abraham’s ex-girlfriend’s daughter in Germany).
• Official Documents: Compensation applications filed postwar proved invaluable for reconstructing biographies.

On Jónasson’s Legacy ([46:28])

• Revisionism: The study, alongside recent scholarship, has reframed Jónasson as both a nation-builder and an architect of exclusion, relevant to contemporary policy debates.

Reykjavik Music School ([48:52])

• Centrality: Founded in 1930; exiles were critical in shaping its evolution into Iceland’s premier music institution.

Acknowledgments ([50:22])

• Deep gratitude expressed to the families of the three musicians and institutional funders.
• Quote:

  “...going through private letters and things that are very intensely personal... you need to... show that you're worthy of the trust that people are putting in you.”—Árni ([50:28])

Looking Forward ([52:16])

• Next Project: Book on Icelandic composers of the 1950s–60s who introduced modernism.
• ‘Trilogy’ Concept: This third project will complete Árni’s chronicling of 20th-century Icelandic music, following his previous book on composer Jón Leifs.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On music and history’s personal resonance:

  “Performing was very nice and all of that, there was something about music history that I just found particularly fascinating.” ([03:30], Árni)

• On Icelandic nation-building and exile benefits:

  "...it was sort of transactional. They gave Iceland what Iceland wanted... Iceland basically gave them life." ([07:47], Árni)

• On resilience in adversity:

  “…how sometimes wonderful and inspiring things can come out of really terrible and awful situations.” ([05:07], Árni)

• On multicultural legacy:

  “People have such fond memories of these men. It's amazing to see how alive their legacy is even today and what they accomplished.” ([18:45], Árni)

• On documentation and research luck:

  “…often I felt like it was sort of hanging by a thread that I found all the information that I needed.” ([39:54], Árni)

• On current resonance:

  “...it shows what an incredible contribution people can make when they are allowed to flourish in a new setting...” ([48:10], Árni)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Árni’s background and musical inspirations ([02:38]–[04:30])
• Why write the book? Exile’s creative legacy ([05:06]–[06:02])
• Introducing the three musicians and Iceland’s context ([06:08]–[08:58])
• Early lives and emigration paths of Edelstein, Abraham, Urbancic ([09:08]–[13:47])
• Adaptation, influence, and public reception in Iceland ([13:58]–[19:27])
• Spouses’ perspectives and gendered adaptation ([20:32]–[25:03])
• Origin and evolution of the research ([25:10]–[28:05])
• Legacy and Icelandic music history’s development ([28:09]–[31:02])
• Music education transformation ([31:02]–[32:55])
• Iceland’s refugee and immigration stance ([33:04]–[37:48])
• Archival research: finds, gaps, & approaches ([38:59]–[46:21])
• Hermann Jónasson’s policy legacy and present-day echoes ([46:28]–[48:48])
• Reykjavik Music School’s history ([48:52]–[50:12])
• Acknowledgments and support ([50:22]–[52:07])
• Next projects and future research ([52:16]–[54:03])

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Tone and Approach

The episode is scholarly, warm, and conversational, imbued with respect for historical detail, the complexities of migration and acculturation, and the impact of individuals on national culture. Through detailed storytelling and personal reflection, Árni balances empathy for refugees’ struggles with a celebration of their legacies.

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Transcript

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[Ari Barbalette]

Hello. Welcome to the New Books in History channel of the New Books Network podcast. I am your host, Ari Barbalette. Today I'm honored to engage in a dialogue with Arni Hamer Ingolfsson. We will discuss his newly published book, Music at World's End, three exiled musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and their contribution to music in Iceland, published in Albany, New York by State University of New York Press, 2025. Arni Haimir Ingolfsson is a researcher at the Reykjavik Academy. He is an Icelandic musicologist, lecturer, choral conductor and pianist. He has published widely on music history in both Icelandic and and English. Arnie, it's an honor to be in dialogue with you today.

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Thank you.

[Ari Barbalette]

To begin, can you kindly tell us about yourself? Where did you grow up? What formative events in your life inspired and catalyzed the researcher you would later become?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Well, I'm born in Reykjavik, Iceland, and I grew up here. I went to school here. I'm not really. I didn't really grow up with music in the household. But when I was six or seven, my parents decided to send me to music school where I studied piano and gradually I I came to really love it. And especially when I was around sort of 12 or 13, I started going to classical music concerts and started really getting inspired to do more with music. And sort of at the same time, my father gave me a music history book for Christmas. It was sort of a general, almost like a textbook or survey of music history. And also at that time, my music theory teachers started incorporating a bit more music history into her teaching. And so I gradually realized that while I really loved piano and performing was very nice and all of that, there was something about music history that I just found particularly fascinating. It sort of combined a lot of interests and qualities, I think, that I have that made it very interesting. When I had finished high school, I decided to go to the United States to continue my education for university. I had already attended music camp for two summers at Interlaken in Michigan, so I knew a little bit about the admissions process and what you had to do to get into university in the US So I decided to apply to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, which is an excellent school. And I realized that they had a major where you could do both piano performance and music history at the same time. So I was there for four years. And then from there I went on to Harvard and got my PhD in musicology from them in. In 2003. And then after that, I moved back to Iceland. And I've been here since, researching music and teaching and giving lectures and. And playing piano sometimes. So that's. That's sort of my background.

[Ari Barbalette]

What inspired you to write this book and prepare this research? What message do you hope to convey to readers?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Well, it's a book about exile and displacement. And really, I think the core message of the book is how sometimes wonderful and inspiring things can come out of really terrible and awful situations. And I think it's a really relevant topic today because obviously we see these things about displacement and exile and war and the catastrophic effects that war has on ordinary people all the time, all over the world, sadly. And this book is sort of. It reminds us of, I guess, a ray of hope somewhere, that it's a story of three men who were able to turn a potentially terrible fate to their advantage and get out of it in a really successful way.

[Ari Barbalette]

What are the primary themes in your book? What story and stories does your book tell?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Well, the primary theme or primary story is it's the story of three musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria who were. Two of them were Jewish. One was called Heinz Edelstein, and the other one was called Robert Abraham. And then a third one, Victor Urban, was married to a Jewish woman. And so all of them, when the Nazis came to power, they really, they couldn't stay. They knew they had to leave and they tried all kinds of different things. And they ended up all arriving in Iceland and being allowed to stay here and work here. And which was not quite obvious because Iceland didn't accept very many exiles from Nazi Germany at the time. There were many more who were turned away, sadly, but they were allowed to stay. And the reason for that, really, was because Iceland was sort of in its final push towards independence in the 1930s. It was on the cusp of. Of it had been part of the Danish kingdom. So the king of Denmark was king of Iceland. But Iceland was sort of preparing to cut that bond with Denmark and become independent. And people realized that it wasn't enough just to aim for political independence. It wasn't enough just to have a president and a parliament. We also had to aim for cultural independence. So we had to have a national theater, a national gallery, a symphony orchestra, a music school. All of these things that people. People were quite occupied with the idea that Iceland would be a nation among nations, that it had all of the cultural infrastructure that an independent country required. And because there was so little classical music happening in Iceland, there was really no tradition of classical music. The first symphony orchestra performed in Iceland in 1926. So there was a sense that, well, if we want to create this tradition here, if you want to really create a tradition of music that that can flourish, then we can't do it by ourselves. We need outside help. And so these men just happened to be at the right place at the right time. So it was, in a way, it was sort of transactional. They gave Iceland what Iceland wanted, a better sort of introduction to the whole classical music scene. And instead, Iceland basically gave them life. Because if they had stayed in Nazi Germany for another few years, they would certainly not have survived, or probably not have survived.

[Ari Barbalette]

Can you tell us about the early life's upbringings, educations and formative years of Victor Urbanczik, Heinz Adelstein and Robert Abraham?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Sure, they were all incredibly talented musicians who were brought up in highly educated, cultured families. And Victor Roban was from Vienna. He was trained there. He was a conductor, pianist, composer, incredibly versatile. Heinz Edelstein was a cellist from Freiburg. And Victor Urbancich was a pianist, composer, conductor from Berlin. And they all trained at the highest level. They went to top conservatories in Berlin, in Freiburg, in Vienna. Urban and Edelstein were a little bit older, so they had already begun their careers. Urban was a conductor. He had a job at the State Theater in Mainz In Germany. He was one of those cases of. Of people who had basically to flee the Nazis twice. Because in 1933, when the Nazis took power in Germany, he had to flee back home to Austria, to Vienna, where he was from. Then he got a job in Graz in Austria, where he taught for a few years. And then when the Nazis took Austria, they had to leave again. Heinz Edelstein had a career in Freiburg. He had a wife, a Jewish wife, two young sons, was playing in orchestras, was teaching. A big passion of his was music education. So he had a lot of young students. And Viktor Obanzisch, because he was about 10 years younger than the other two, his career hadn't actually started yet, but he was studying at the top conservatory in Berlin and was incredibly talented. All of the documentation and eyewitness accounts from, for example, his fellow students at the conservatory say that, oh, he was by far the most talented one in our class. He could do anything he wanted. He was in his second year of basically university when the Nazis took power. And he realized almost immediately that he just had to get away. They all went to Iceland, sort of through different ways. Orbanic and Edelstein were hired to be on the faculty of the Reykjavik Music School, which had recently been founded. In 1930, the first music school was founded in Iceland. And they needed teachers, they needed talented teachers. And. Or knew that a friend of his, an old friend from. From university, was in Iceland, but wanted to move back to Vienna. And so they basically exchanged jobs. So Urban took the post of his friend, Franz Mixer, and the mixer took the job of Urban Chic in Graz. Edelstein very randomly got the job in Iceland because he met one of the leaders of the music school in Germany. He was there looking for musicians, for teachers for the school. So Obani and Edelstein, these two musicians, already had a job when they came to Iceland. So they already had a sort of a support network of professional and personal contacts that they could rely on also in terms of just the paperwork of, you know, getting the applications ready, getting the permits that they needed to work and live in Iceland. Abraham had a different story. He went first to Copenhagen. He tried to get a job in Denmark, and that didn't work out because Denmark had a very strict policy towards immigrants. And so in the end, he realized he would not be allowed to work there. And he knew some people who knew other people who were from Iceland. And they said, well, why don't you try going there? I'm sure, you know, there are certainly plenty of. There's certainly Plenty of work for you to do there. But the problem was that he didn't have a job when he arrived. So it was. It was a much more tense situation with him. It was. He was closer to being turned away, let's say at the border than the other two were. But in the end, it all worked out. They were all allowed to stay. And they're. They're contributions were immense to the musical scene in Iceland.

[Ari Barbalette]

How did Victor Urbancik, Heinz Adelstein and Robert Abraham adapt to life in Iceland? What challenges did they experience?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Well, I mean, there were all kinds of challenges, I expect, and they all really did their best and did an amazing job of adapting to life in Iceland. They all learned Icelandic, which is a difficult language to learn. It's. It's quite complicated and. And they all learned it quite well. Even just reading the. Their letters and the things that they wrote in Icelandic. It's amazing because their grammar is almost perfect and it's really quite, quite exceptional. They also had, you know, they had all these professional contacts. They were. They were able to sort of navigate adapting to the culture here. But they did experience challenges as well because Icelanders at the time were quite xenophobic, I guess you could say. There was a sense that, you know, that Icelanders should be responsible for creating the musical culture and what are these foreigners doing that, you know, they're taking our jobs, etc. Etc. So Robert Abraham had a. Had a situation where he first started his career in Iceland, in Akureyri, which is a tiny town, or was at the time a tiny town in the north of Iceland. And he started a choir, which was something that he could do very well. And he was incredibly popular. And people really wanted to be part of this choir. They did very interesting things. They did repertoire that no other choirs in Iceland had ever done, etc. Etc. But there was another local choir conductor there who was very upset and said that. That Abraham was stealing his singers and all of this. And so there was. There was personal tension because people felt like these foreign musicians were in some sometimes unspecified way ruining their own careers by taking opportunities that should have been given to local musicians. So that was quite difficult. The same thing happened a few years later to Victor Urbancic. He was a conductor. He was really the strongest orchestral conductor in Iceland at the time and really trained the orchestra, the small orchestra that Reykjavik had, and raised it to the level of a professional orchestra. When that had happened around 1950, the orchestra decided that they would hire another conductor to be their principal conductor. And that was A big shock for Urban, who then got a job at the National Theater, which had also been recently established. And then that led to a whole big conflict with the, let's say the leading players of the cultural scene in Iceland. But they really, I mean, the work that they did was so incredibly influential. They, they started music schools, choirs, trained the orchestra, they, they taught Icelanders how to perform and, and live with classical music and really establish the scene. They gave the first performances in Iceland of works that are considered absolutely canonical, like the masterpieces of Western classical music, the Bach Passions, Mozart's Requiem, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. None of these works had been heard in Iceland before. These guys came and trained with an incredible number of rehearsals, usually because it took much longer to get the local players and singers to a level where something was ready for performance than if they had been able to stay in Germany. So these were incredibly talented men and they were also very versatile. And I think that's the key to their success in Iceland was that they were able to do all the different things that need to be done. They, they, they taught little kids, they, they worked well with adults, they worked with professionals, they worked with amateurs, they, they researched history, they were able to communicate the background of the music. So they, they weren't just narrow specialists. I think Iceland would not have been a great place for, for musicians of that kind. They were really able to do all of the different things that, that had to be done in order to, to raise the, the level of music making in Iceland. And one of the things that I really enjoyed when I was promoting the book in Iceland was meeting all the people now usually in their 70s or 80s, sort of the, the older generation of, of people that would come to my, my readings and, and invariably people would raise their hands afterwards and say, oh, you know, I remember Abraham or I sang in a choir, that urban church conducted, et cetera. And people have such fond memories of these men. It's amazing to see how alive their legacy is even today and what they accomplished.

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[Ari Barbalette]

Can you tell us about the spouses of Robert Abraham, Heinz Adelstein and Victor Orbancy?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Yes. So two of them were already married when they came to Iceland. Victor Urbancic was married to a woman called Melitta. Melitta Urbancic was a poet and an actress. Heinz Edelstein was married to a woman called Charlotte, who was an economist. They were both incredibly talented women. Melitta also had a doctorate in. In literature. So they were incredibly well educated, talented women who, when they arrived in Iceland, they were not able to adjust and adapt as well to life here as their husbands. This, of course, we come back to, you know, the, the different roles at the time for men and women, the fact that the. The men were working outside the home, they were in constant contact with locals. Melita Urbancic and Charlotte Edelstein were working within the home. They were raising the children, making sure that the home functioned as it should. And they really were not able to flourish in Iceland in the way that their husband did. Charlotte Adelstein, in fact, moved back to Germany in 1951 on her own. The marriage had been a bit rocky for a while, and basically they separated. Edelstein stayed here in Iceland for a few more years, and Charlotte went back to Freiburg and sort of tried to resume her life there. Melita Urban lived in Iceland for her whole life, but she always felt like an outsider here. And even though she did really interesting things, she wrote a lot of poetry. And that has also been, in the last few years, sort of rediscovered and published again. And it's really interesting because it deals with this idea of belonging and not belonging and trying to adapt and not really being able to. And being in this strange country that has this sort of lunar landscape of, you know, this vast wilderness that just looks like the moon. And you have these winters that are so dark and the sun hardly comes up at all. And she writes about the difficulties of adapting to this. But she did some really interesting other things as well. She was a sculptor. She did some really interesting sculptures. She was the first person in Iceland to start Cultivating bees. She had beehives and made honey, which was completely new in Iceland at the time. But she wasn't able to do what she really loved doing. I mean, she was an actress, but she never learned Icelandic well enough to be on an Icelandic stage. And she didn't write her poetry in Icelandic, she wrote it in German. So their wives were as, let's say, underappreciated in their time as their husbands were able to flourish. So there are really interesting contrasts there. Robert Abraham, on the other hand, came to Iceland as a single man. He was, as I said, he was younger than the other two. He'd had a girlfriend, actually in Berlin, but she wasn't Jewish. And so they decided that she would stay behind and he moved on, first to Copenhagen and then to Iceland. He eventually married an Icelandic woman. And that's one of the reasons, I think, why Roberst Abraham was accepted into, let's say, Icelandic society, Icelandic culture, as more of an Icelander than the other two. His Icelandic also, by the way, his language skills were phenomenal, apparently. And so he. So he wasn't really considered an outsider to the extent that maybe the other two were. He was. He was considered much more of a local. And I think that helped his career, particularly towards the. The second part of his career, that. That he had the. The advantage of really just being considered Icelandic.

[Ari Barbalette]

What first picture interest, the experiences of Jewish refugee musicians in Iceland.

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

That's actually an interesting story. It's kind of a long story, but in 2001, when I was doing my dissertation at Harvard, I got an email from an Icelandic editor who was the editor of the culture section of Iceland's largest newspaper. And he said, we've been thinking of having articles on these three musicians who fled the Nazis to Iceland. Would you be willing to write them? And my first reaction. This shows you that first reactions aren't always the best ones. My first reaction was, I just really don't have time. I'm writing my dissertation. This is a big commitment, and I should probably just say no. But I decided to sleep on it. And the next day I thought about it some more, and I thought, this is just much too interesting, this material. These stories are so fascinating, I would be stupid not to say yes. And so we made an agreement that I would do it during the summer when I would be in Iceland anyway. And I met some of their families. They had all died by that point, these three men, but their families, their children were still here. And so I wrote these articles, and they were very successful, and people enjoyed Them, I think. And then I just started doing all kinds of different things. I put that completely aside for a long time. Then in 2012, which would have been Robert Abraham's 100th birthday, his family got in touch with me and said, well, would you be. Your article was so interesting. Would you be willing to expand it a little bit and write a little bit more on his story? So I did that and that was also a lot of fun. And gradually I realized that this was in fact material for a whole book, that telling their stories both individually but also as a larger story, putting them all together would really make sense. And so in 2020, I received a three year grant from the Reykjavik from the Icelandic Research Fund, which allows you to basically have a job as a researcher for three years doing a specific project. And so this was my project for three years. And in 2024 my book came out in Iceland in icelandic. And in 2025 it came out in, in English. So. So this was, I mean you could almost say this was an almost 25 year journey. It's a quarter of a century of, of of not constantly engaging with these stories, but coming back to them again and again because I always felt like there was more that needed to be done and, and that these stories had to be told. And I'm really pleased that it was an honor to be able to do this.

[Ari Barbalette]

What is your book's contribution to Icelandic musicology?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Well, I guess first of all, I should note that Icelandic musicology has a very short history. In fact, Robert Abraham was sort of the first Icelandic musicologist because he, apart from all the other things that he did as a performing musician, conductor, all the teacher, all the other things. He got his PhD in musicology actually from the University of Iceland in 1959. It was the first. He's still the only musicologist to have gotten a PhD from University of Iceland. And so he really sort of set the tone for what music research has been doing in Iceland ever since then and in many ways has been the model for my own work. I really look up to his work and the things that he wrote. And so there hasn't really been all that much musicology until I came back from my studies in 2003. And I guess what I've been trying to do in my work since then is fill in the blanks of what Icelandic music history has been all the way from really the Middle Ages until today. And I think this is a, an important contribution because it tells the stories of these three men who, who come here from Nazi Germany and these are dramatic stories, and they're, you know, for a while you think, well, will they make it? You know, because it was. It was a close call to get out of Germany at the time. But it's also the story of how musical life in Iceland developed at a crucial period. Icelandic music today is really respected, and people love it. And people are really amazed at how much music is going on in Iceland right now. Not just classical music, but pop and rock and Bjork and Siguros and all these things. And I think what this book does, among other things, is that it sheds light on the background of, well, how did this happen? How did a country that has about 400,000 inhabitants, inhabitants, which is, you know, tiny by any standards, how did a country this small get to be this big in music? And I think part of the answer is because these three men did such an incredible job of creating a music culture for an entire country. And I think for Icelanders to have that story, to have sort of the backstory of really where they come from musically, is really important.

[Ari Barbalette]

How does your research shed new light on the history of music education in Iceland?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Well, music education, when. When these musicians came to Iceland, there had been very little systematic music education. So that was one of their many jobs, was to improve that and to make sure that education was accessible, that it was good, that it was producing results, the results that people wanted. And so eventually all of them worked for the Reykjavik Music School, which still is and has been for this entire period, almost 100 years, really the leading music school in Iceland. And they raised that to a level where it was preparing young musicians for a professional life in music. Heinz Edelstein, because he came to Iceland already with both experience and interest in teaching young children, he decided to sort of expand the already existing school and create a new department for young children, which eventually became a whole new school, a whole new institution of music education for children from, let's say, 5 to 5 to 12 or something like that. That's incidentally, that's the music school that I went to as a kid. So I also have a sort of personal connection to that history, because the dean of that music school at the time was Adelstein's son. So I knew about his family history even when I was a kid. So they really formed music education in Iceland. They basically created it because they were establishing and forming the institutions that teach music in Iceland. And that was incredibly important.

[Ari Barbalette]

Can you comment on Iceland's stance toward refugees who sought to flee there from Nazi occupied Europe?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Yes, Iceland sadly, as I mentioned earlier, was not very willing to accept refugees from Nazi occupied Europe. We had a prime minister called Hermann Jonasson. He was both Prime Minister and Minister of justice, which meant that he was responsible for immigration and was basically able to shape things the way he wanted them. He was apparently quite xenophobic. There were many Icelanders at the time who felt that, well, we're just about to get our independence. We need to sort of secure our own identity and all this. And then also the sense that Iceland being sort of having been isolated for so long in the north of Europe, with not many people coming here from the outside, that Iceland had preserved in some way some kind of pure form of. I mean, there were all kinds of almost racial theories going on at that time. And there's a quote that I use in the book that is attributed to Prime Minister Hermann Jonason, where he said to a Danish diplomat that Iceland had to take care to. To continue to be the pure Nordic country that it had always been. And he said, and the ones that we've let in in the past few years, we need to make sure that they leave again. So that was. That was the government stance. It was very anti immigration. And in the event, only about a handful, I guess, of people were allowed to come. It was these musicians, obviously, there were a few others. There was one called Kurtzir, who was the dean of the visual arts school in Iceland, who also was very influential in visual arts. But very, very few people were allowed in. What I do in my book for the first time is also tell the stories of a few other musicians that we now know tried to get to Iceland or were curious about coming to Iceland in order to flee from the Nazis, but were rejected. And those are stories that I think need to be told in this context as well. There was one musicologist from Germany called Alphonse Silbermann, who in the end went to Australia. There was a musicologist from Berlin called Ludwig Misch, who actually remarkably survived in Berlin throughout the war. But after the war, went to New York. There was Paul Erdenson, who was a violinist and violin teacher who ended up in China. And the most famous of the four that I found who tried to get to Iceland but were rejected was Victor Ullman, who was a composer, quite a famous composer. And he wrote to Urbanci in Iceland. He had gotten his address from someone from a friend and wrote to him and said, basically, can you help me? What do I need to do to. To get a job in Iceland and permission to stay there? And he said, it's, it's quite sad to read this letter. He says I will do anything. I will play piano in cafes, I will play in bars, I will do whatever it takes to, to be able to, to live in Iceland. And that didn't happen. And he was killed in Auschwitz. So this is a part of Icelandic history in the 20th century that was overlooked for a very long time because people felt it was uncomfortable. We didn't really want to have to deal with it. That has changed in the last few years. There was a very interesting book written in Icelandic a few years ago that sort of talked about immigration policies and Icelanders view towards foreigners over a longer period, but dealt with obviously the 1930s in a lot of detail. So that combined with the research that I've done on these musicians I think really has shed new light on the whole refugee immigration situation in iceland in the 1930s. For a limited time at McDonald's, get a Big Mac Extra Value meal for $8. That means two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun and medium fries and a drink. We may need to change that jingle.

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[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

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[Ari Barbalette]

What were the most difficult aspects of your research and writing process? How did you overcome and circumvent such challenges?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Well, I think the most difficult aspect or the most challenging aspects of my research was simply finding material. And part of it is obviously these three men that I'm studying are all dead. Urban died in 1958. Edelstein died in 1959. So that's quite a while ago. And Robert Avram died in 1974. And also combined with that, the fact that anyone who has researched people who have to flee. People who go into exile, they're not always able to bring all of their material with them. I mean, there's not necessarily the sense of a large archive of material that you might have, if people are able to live in one place for the duration of their lives. So the difficulty was simply finding all the material that I needed. Their families were incredibly helpful. They opened their doors for me. Sibyl Urbancic, who's Victor Urbancic's daughter, she basically laid out. She got all of the letters, the family letters from the basement and just sort of laid them out on her dining room table and said, you know, use this as you. As you wish. I also did a lot of archival research looking at things like, you know, the political situation, their background in Germany and Austria before they came here. What. What kind of work were they doing? How was that received? Et cetera, et cetera. So I did a lot of work in the Icelandic National Archives, the Icelandic National Library. I did some research in Germany and Austria as well, in Austrian archives, state archives there, and obviously private archives as well. So it all came together in the end. But often I felt like it was sort of hanging by a thread that I found all the information that I needed. But it really did take a lot of work to get there.

[Ari Barbalette]

Can you describe in more detail the archives and libraries you consulted in your research process? How would you evaluate their helpfulness?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Yes. So in Iceland, the National Archive has basically most of the material from Robert Abraham because his family donated it to. To that archive. So that had already. By the time that I started researching the book that had already been cataloged. It was in quite good order, so I could order, ask for things, and was able to get pretty much exactly what I needed from them. The National Library has a few things related to Victor or. But also musical institutions at the time, also institutions that. That employed them, as well as archives of other musicians who they were in contact with, colleagues, competitors, even, et cetera. So I was able to fill in a lot of the sort of background history as far as Iceland was concerned at the Icelandic National Library in Germany, the archives were able to help a lot with the circumstances of their leaving Germany and how they were, for example, forbidden to work, how they dealt with the bureaucracy of Nazi Germany. And one of the things that was very helpful was after the war, in order to get compensation from the German state, which the Jews that had been able to flee Germany and Austria were entitled to, they were entitled to some compensation basically for pay that had been lost because they had been forbidden to work but in order to apply for that compensation, you had to basically write a whole essay about how your career in Germany had been impacted negatively by the Nazis coming to power. And those essays are actually incredibly helpful documents because there they tell us, well, I had this job and this job, and I got paid this much and this much. And then this happened. And this person came and said, well, you can't work here anymore, et cetera, et cetera. So those. Those documents gave me the background stories that I needed as far as telling the stories of how their lives in Nazi Germany became gradually unbearable. And that obviously then led to their coming to Iceland. So those were some of the official archives that I consulted. And then part of it was just trying to be inventive with trying to find as many people that had some kinds of connections to these men that were still alive and that might be able to tell some kind of story. And the most remarkable, I think, of all of these was when I managed to track down the daughter of Robert Abraham's girlfriend, former girlfriend, in Berlin before the war. So I was able to get in touch with her. She's a wonderful woman living in Germany called Heide Sommer. And I wrote her a letter. This was in the middle of COVID I was stuck in Iceland. I wasn't able to travel anywhere to see any archives or anything, but I saw that she had written her memoirs. And so I wrote her an email and said, basically, hi, I'm an Icelandic musicologist and I'm writing a book about your mother's ex boyfriend in college. And I had no idea how she would react. And she wrote back immediately and said, oh, my God, of course I know who Robert Abraham was. My mom talked about him all the time. And he was such a good friend of my mom's and my dad's. And so she knew the entire story. And after Covid had ended, she invited me to Germany to visit her. And it turned out she had preserved all of the letters, all of the correspondence between Robert Abraham and her mother. So that was a whole. It was one more piece in the puzzle of his life before he came to Iceland. So it was a question of being imaginative in terms of where might things be that I haven't found yet? And not just in terms of public archives and things that are accessible to the public, but also finding people that might have, you know, buried in an attic somewhere or in a chest drawer, some letters or other documents that might relate to this story.

[Ari Barbalette]

How does your research shed new light on Prime Minister Herman Yonasson's Legacy.

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Well, I think, like I said earlier, combined with this largest study that was published a few years ago, I think his. His legacy has in the last few years been. Been completely revised. I mean, he was. He was an incredibly influential politician in iceland in the 1930s and 1940s, and generally I. I suspect quite respected and loved and people admired him. I mean, obviously he was elected into power many times. And in the last decade or so, I think people have come to see sort of and realize the more unappealing aspects of his politics and that his desire to keep Iceland free of all immigrants was not only misguided, but incredibly cruel. And that we could have saved a lot more people from the terrible fates that they experienced in Nazi Germany and Austria if we had done more to help them. Another interesting thing is how this relates to the current situation, because immigration issues are still incredibly a hot topic of debate in Iceland. And there's been a lot of discussion here recently about the current immigration policies. And in fact, the. The last government before the one that we have now basically collapsed last year because of immigration issues. So I think my book came out in terms of sort of being in dialogue with a current situation that is flexible and still developing in Iceland. My book came out at a really interesting time because it shows the parallels. It shows the dangers of having such a restrictive immigration policy. And it also shows what an incredible contribution people can make when they are allowed to flourish in a new setting, when they are allowed to come and do what they do best.

[Ari Barbalette]

Can you tell us about the Reykjavik Music School?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Yes, the Reykjavik Music School was founded in 1930. So it was quite a young institution when these musicians came to Iceland. It was basically started by a few Icelandic musicians and a few foreigners as well, who just saw that there would never be any progress in music in Iceland if there wasn't obviously a decent music school where you could teach music. And so these men, especially Edelstein and Urban, come at a crucial time when the school is sort of, you know, finding its way forward. There's already some kind of pattern of how they do things, but they're able to really move things forward quite a lot because they worked there for such a long time. And then Abraham joined the faculty later. And this school is still, as I said, the leading music school in Iceland. I studied there for four years during high school. And it's basically where almost all classical Icelandic musicians have studied at one point or another before then going abroad or in the past two decades, going to the music university here in Iceland.

[Ari Barbalette]

Would you like to Express gratitude publicly to anyone who was helpful in your research, writing, editing or preparation process.

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Wow. So many people that, that were helpful in one way or another. I would say first and foremost all of these musicians families, because they were so kind to me and they trusted me with their histories and their backgrounds and their material that, that, you know, going through private letters and things that are very intensely personal is. It's always, it's always something where you need to, to, to be careful and, and show that you're worthy of the trust that people are putting in you and showing you by giving you access to these precious materials. So I'm incredibly grateful to all of them and I'm also very pleased that they were so happy with how the book turned out. I think they felt like I had for the first time. I was also showing them for the first time some details that they didn't know about in their own family histories. So that was really delightful. Also, of course, I mean, my publisher is both here in Iceland. The Icelandic Literature Society published the Icelandic version of the book. And then Sunni Press in the US and also of course, the Icelandic Research Fund. Because without three years of research funding, which meant that this was. I was able to just have this as my full time job for three years, I wouldn't, I think, have been able to finish the book, at least not in the three years that it took. It would have taken much longer if I hadn't been able to focus on it so completely.

[Ari Barbalette]

As we bring today's dialogue to a close, can you tell us about where your time and attention have gone since completing this work?

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Yes, I've already started a new book project which is going to take another, at least another three years. And I was fortunate enough also to get funding from the Icelandic Research Fund for that. That's going to be a book about the generation of Icelandic composers who were active and sort of came back from their studies back to iceland in the 1950s and 60s and basically brought the whole concept of modern music and modernism and music to Iceland. So these are young composers at the time who are influenced by Stockhausen, by John Cage, by all kinds of fairly radical, you could say, maybe avant garde things going on in music. And then they brought that to Iceland, where it was not at all well received, at least at first. But they were able to gradually create some kind of acceptance for new music in Iceland, which I think is also important because so much of what is going on in Icelandic music right now basically requires that kind of acceptance and wouldn't have happened if they hadn't sort of paved the way. And it's also, I think, a nice, let's say, conclusion to what I see as almost a trilogy of books that I will hopefully then have written about Icelandic music in the 20th century. Because my first book was called Jord Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland, and that's about Iceland's first really serious classical composer who was called Johan Leifs. And then this book, and then a book that goes even further into the 20th century looking at modernism and how things developed after the Second World War. So that's going to take up my time for the next couple of years.

[Ari Barbalette]

As we end our dialogue today, I'd like to express my heartfelt appreciation to you for your thoughtful and erudite contributions to this conversation. I can hardly be more appreciative.

[Arni Hamer Ingolfsson]

Thank you very much.

[Ari Barbalette]

As we end today, I'm signing off as Ari Barbalat, your host on the New Books in History channel of the New Books Network podcast. Today I've been honored to engage in a dialogue with Arni Hamer Ingolfsson. We have discussed his newly published book Music at World's 3 Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and their contribution to Music in Iceland, published in Albany by State University of New York Press, 2025. Arni Hamir Ingolfsson is a researcher at the Reykjavik Academy. He is an Icelandic musicologist, lecturer, choral conductor and pianist. He has published widely on music history, both in Icelandic and in English. This book was nominated for the 2024 Icelandic Literary Prize in the nonfiction category, his third nomination for that award. He is the author of more than 20 peer reviewed articles as well as 18 entries in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Thank you wholeheartedly for your time and participation. Thank you.