{"id":288,"date":"2012-10-21T12:39:02","date_gmt":"2012-10-21T19:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/?p=288"},"modified":"2015-07-27T11:27:13","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T18:27:13","slug":"mahler-photo-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/?p=288","title":{"rendered":"Mahler photo update"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Since my previous posting about the missing Mahler photo<\/a>, there have been two separate articles by Dan Wakin in the New York Times<\/em>. \u00a0The first article on October 10, 2012<\/a>, accurately described the facts we had developed. \u00a0Then the man who discovered the photo, Cliff Fraser, decided to speak to Dan Wakin, resulting in a second article on October 17, 2012<\/a> that only added further confusion and obfuscation.<\/p>\n

According to his own family, Cliff is a bit of a shady character, so anything he says has to be taken with a grain of salt. \u00a0He apparently sent Dan Wakin a copy of a sworn statement signed by his grandmother, Rene Fraser, stating that she “saw her husband, Abraham Fraser, receive the Mahler photo as a gift from his teacher, the composer Josef Schmid, in Brooklyn before the family moved to California in 1958.” \u00a0This appears to me to be very likely a fabrication by Cliff. \u00a0Cliff refused to send us a copy of his grandmother’s statement, and even blacked out the name of the alleged notary and witnesses on the copy sent to the New York Times<\/em>. \u00a0His grandmother is, conveniently, “too elderly to be interviewed,” according to Cliff. \u00a0Besides the difficulty of explaining how the photo went from the Schoenberg home in Brentwood, where my aunt Nuria specifically recalls seeing it in my grandfather’s study, to the Berg pupil Josef Schmid in Brooklyn, now Cliff has to explain why on earth the conductor Schmid would give this treasured Mahler autograph to his completely undistinguished pupil Abraham Fraser. \u00a0Cliff isn’t helping himself by inventing a story and putting words into his elderly grandmother’s mouth.<\/p>\n

More likely is that Abraham Fraser picked up the photo from the autograph dealer in Long Beach that his son remembers him frequenting. \u00a0We’re still trying to identify the name of that dealer.<\/p>\n

Wakin’s second article also misleadingly suggested that the Schoenberg family “first offered to buy the picture.” \u00a0That was untrue. \u00a0At one point, my uncle Lawrence Schoenberg wrote to Cliff, “Are you\u00a0considering selling the photograph?\u00a0 If so, we would be interested.” \u00a0That is not an “offer,” but rather an inquiry, attempting to determine what Cliff’s intentions were. \u00a0Cliff admits that he responded by offering to sell the photo for $350,000, “but said in the interview that that was a wildly inflated amount to scare them off.”<\/p>\n

Cliff subsequently offered the photo for $100,000 to a dealer, as you can read on Bill Ecker’s blog<\/a>. \u00a0Since Cliff’s story is that he found the photo in his grandmother’s house, one has to wonder on what authority he is offering to sell the photo. \u00a0Is he trying to steal it from his grandmother, or has she authorized him to sell it on her behalf?<\/p>\n

As the hunt for more evidence goes on, we continue to uncover more interesting clues. \u00a0Here is a photo of Mathilde Sch\u00f6nberg, taken in Berlin, with the Mahler photo in the background.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Additionally, the Alma Mahler – Arnold Schoenberg correspondence has just been published by Haide Tenner (“Ich m\u00f6chte so lange leben, als if Ihnen dankbar sein kann”<\/em><\/a>\u00a0Residenz Verlag 2012). \u00a0The book is filled with interesting details about their 50-year (platonic!) relationship. The one constant is Schoenberg’s adoration for Gustav Mahler.<\/p>\n

To the New York Times<\/em>, Cliff made some reference to the address card for Josef Schmid and the fact that it had Schmid’s New York address. \u00a0The card appears to have been updated by Richard Hoffmann, a cousin of my grandmother who became my grandfather’s assistant around 1948. \u00a0Not sure how this could be relevant. \u00a0Schmid had sent a number of letters and birthday greetings to Schoenberg<\/a> over the years. \u00a0But there is no evidence that Schoenberg ever wrote to Schmid. \u00a0Probably he received a copy of the mimeographed 1949 letter Schoenberg sent out on his 75th birthday.<\/p>\n

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Since my previous posting about the missing Mahler photo, there have been two separate articles by Dan Wakin in the New York Times. \u00a0The first article on October 10, 2012, accurately described the facts we had developed. \u00a0Then the man … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":669,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}