Wikipedia:
Paul Abraham, Hungarian Pál Ábrahám (* November 2, 1892 in Apatin, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary; † May 6, 1960 in Hamburg), was a Hungarian-German composer. He wrote primarily operettas.
Abraham was born in the Danube-Swabian, German-speaking community of Apatin in the Batschka (then Hungary) He was the son of the Jewish merchant Jakab Abraham and his wife Flora Blau (Ábrahám Jakab, Blau Flóra). In Budapest he studied composition under Victor von Herzfeld at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Music (from 1913 to 1917). During his studies he wrote his first compositions, which were performed in the great music hall of the Academy. These were a Hungarian serenade, a cello concerto, and a string quartet (all 1915). "Audacious banking transactions," as he himself later recounted, landed him in prison bankrupt in early 1924. The duration of the sentence is unknown. Abraham then worked as a clerk, conducting small ensembles in cafes and jazz cellars on the side. In 1927 Abraham became Kapellmeister at the Budapest Capital Operetta Theater, where he subsequently caused a sensation with four songs for the ''Operetta Zenebona''. In the spring of 1929, he was the musical director of the Hungarian premiere of the operetta ''Riviera Express'' by Géza Herczeg and Robert Katscher. ''The Lady's Husband'' was then his first own musical theater piece. In 1930, the operetta ''Viktória'' was successfully premiered in Budapest. At the same time he became known in Germany with a song from ''Der Gatte des Fräuleins'' (''The Lady's Husband''). Paul Abraham contributed it to the first UFA sound film ''Melodie des Herzens''. Titled ''Bin kein Hauptmann, bin kein großes Tier'', the composition, sung by Willy Fritsch, became a huge recording success.
With the expansion of his popularity in Germany, he moved to Berlin. There, in the early 1930s, he became the most sought-after composer of his time. With the revised opera Viktória (under the new name ''Viktoria und ihr Husar''), ''Blume von Hawaii'' and ''Ball im Savoy'', he created, together with librettists Alfred Grünwald and Fritz Löhner-Beda, the most successful musical stage pieces in all of Europe. Through his modern compositions, in which he combined traditional elements with jazzy rhythms, he was considered the innovator and savior of the somewhat outdated genre of operetta. At the same time, he contributed music to numerous films from productions in Germany and other European countries.
In 1933, this flight of fancy came to an abrupt end when the National Socialists seized power. Abraham had to return to Budapest, his music was considered "degenerate" and fell into oblivion in Germany. In Vienna in the 1930s, he was still able to bring out the operettas ''Märchen im Grandhotel'', ''Dschainah und Roxy und ihr Wunderteam'', but then he had to leave Budapest because of the fascist movements, which had also reached Hungary. He fled to Paris without his wife. In 1940, he came to New York via Cuba, where he was unable to gain a foothold. In the "motherland of jazz" no one was interested in his compositions. A new creative activity was additionally prevented by a fatal illness. In 1946, deranged, he conducted traffic on Madison Avenue and also caused a stir with other bouts of mental illness. Sick with syphilitic meningoencephalitis, he was first sent to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, and from there to Creedmoor Psychiatric Center on Long Island.
In 1956, the composer returned to Germany - after the Federal Republic of Germany had settled the question of the Hungarian citizen's departure with the USA - on the initiative of a Paul Abraham Committee founded in Hamburg to a large extent by Walter Anatole Persich. He was first treated in the psychiatric ward of the University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf. Afterwards he lived for almost four years with his wife, who in the meantime had emigrated from the People's Republic of Hungary. In 1960, he died after a severe cancer illness and was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery. Until his death, Abraham remained convinced that he would live in New York and soon be able to land another great compositional success.
In 1967, ''Abrahamstraße'' in Hamburg-Rahlstedt was named after Paul Abraham. At the facade ''Klosterallee 80'' in Hamburg-Harvestehude there is a commemorative plaque for Paul Abraham's residence there 1956-1960. Since 2019, part of the Grindelberg park in Hamburg-Harvestehude is officially called "Paul-Abraham-Park".
Note: Translated from the German version of Wikipedia into English.
