Michael Wieck

Michael Wieck (born 19 July 1928) is a German violinist and author. He was the first violinist of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1974-93. In 1989 Wieck published a memoir, Zeugnis vom Untergang Königsbergs, in which he related his and his family's sufferings under the Nazis and, after the German defeat, under the Soviets. This moving story has been translated into English and Russian.

Wieck was born in Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia. He is the son of two Königsberg musicians who were widely known before the Nazi era, Kurt Wieck and Hedwig Wieck-Hulisch. They were founders of the popular Königsberger Streichquartett (Königsberg String Quartet).

After consultation with a local rabbi his Jewish mother and his Protestant, but in religious matters indifferent, father had decided to bring up their children, Michael and his sister, Miriam (born 1925), as Jews and enrolled them with the Jewish congregation in Königsberg. According to the Halacha a person born from a Jewess, who is no outspoken apostate (e.g. convert to another religion), is Jewish by birth. This differs from the non-religious Nazi racist categorisations of half, quarter or smaller fractions of Jewishness or Aryanness, respectively, which are completely alien to Judaism. Following the 1935 Nuremberg Laws (article 5, sentence 2) this caused Wieck and his sister not to be categorised as Mischlinge, but as Geltungsjuden ("Jews by legal validity"). Their mother was categorised fully Jewish.

After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 they experienced the gradual ramping up of anti-Semitic discrimination and oppression. They were first ejected from public schools and sent to Jewish schools. They were later forbidden to attend classes at all, and Miriam was sent to a boarding school in Scotland in 1938 (Kindertransporte), taking the place of another girl who had gone to the United States.

...
Wikipedia