The Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, ca. 1928. Ernst Glaser is sitting in the concertmaster’s chair, a position he would occupy for an astounding thirty years. (Courtesy of Ernst Simon Glaser.)
During the 1940–41 concert season, the Norwegian city of Bergen was celebrating the 175th anniversary of the founding of its orchestra. The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra was instituted in 1765—a date that establishes the city as the home to one of the oldest orchestras in the world. During one point in its proud heritage, the ensemble’s music director was none other than the renowned Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, one of Bergen’s most famous native sons.
The highlight of the Bergen Philharmonic’s 175th season was to be an appearance by Ernst Glaser, the concertmaster of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and the country’s most prominent musician. Anticipation was especially high because Ernst was going to be performing on a valuable Guarneri del Gesù violin that had once been owned by the celebrated nineteenth-century Norwegian virtuoso Ole Bull—another international figure from Bergen.
But after Nazi youth staged a riot to protest Ernst’s plans to perform on the national treasure, his appearance in German-occupied Bergen was canceled in the middle of the concert.
The Nazi Occupation of Norway
Norway declared its neutrality on May 27, 1938, and reaffirmed this position on September 1, 1939. But by April 1940, it was clear that the country would soon be occupied by either Germany or Great Britain. Germany wanted access to Norway’s naval and air bases, as well as to the northern port of Narvik for the continued transport of crucial iron ore from neutral Sweden. England wanted to block Germany from having that very same access.
Germany struck first and won a decisive victory. Moving swiftly by air and sea, German forces invaded Norway early in the morning on April 9, 1940. Norwegian cities from the southern coast to the Arctic Circle—including Bergen and Narvik—were occupied within hours. By that afternoon, German troops were marching unchallenged down Oslo’s main thoroughfare. Although fighting continued elsewhere in the country for two months, the Norwegian forces were poorly equipped, badly outnumbered, and grossly underprepared. They had no choice but to surrender and did so on June 10, 1940. The German conquest had taken longer than it had in other countries, but it was now complete.
In their mission to Nazify Norway, German leaders found a ready collaborator in Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian politician whose last name has since become synonymous with opportunistic traitors. In 1933, Quisling had founded the National Union, Norway’s Nazi Party. Within two years, Quisling had started accusing Jews of engendering world communism by controlling monetary systems and presses. There were only around 1,600 Jews living in Norway at the time. Although this was less than 0.1 percent of the population, Quisling had asserted that they had secured influential positions as part of an international conspiracy to destroy the country.
Bolstered by the rise of Nazism in Germany, Quisling had ramped up his vitriolic anti-Semitism with each passing year. His goal was to create a “New Norway” in the mold of Hitler’s Third Reich, using any means necessary to preserve what he saw as the purity of the Nordic race. To assist him with propagating anti-Semitism and persecuting Jews, Quisling had even created his own paramilitary force. Modeled after Nazi Germany’s infamous Brownshirts, the “Hird” took its name from legendary Norse warriors.
After the German invasion, Quisling was named acting prime minister and ultimately minister-president of Norway. With the blessings of the occupying German authorities with whom he shared power, Quisling and the Norwegian state police quickly introduced a number of measures intended to ostracize and eventually eliminate Norway’s already small Jewish population. In May 1940, the police confiscated radios belonging to Jewish families. In addition to preventing Jews from listening to foreign broadcasts, this measure marked the first efforts to identify Norwegian Jews and rob them of the legal rights afforded to other Norwegians. The process of registering Jews was expanded that fall, when the Nazis demanded and received lists of the Jewish residents of Oslo and Trondheim, which were the two largest Jewish communities in Norway.
The Norwegian Nazis instigated a campaign of harassment against the newly identified Jews. They smashed the windows of stores that were owned by Jews, or painted over them with anti-Semitic slogans such as “Jewish Parasites!” and “Jews not tolerated in Norway.”65 A number of Jewish doctors were deprived of their medical licenses and therefore of their right to work.
There was also an attempt to dismiss Jewish musicians from their positions. Edvard Sylou-Creutz, who was named a co-director of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation after the Nazis took power, announced that all music by Jewish composers should be banned and that all performers should be required to be members of the National Union Party. Shortly thereafter, composer and prominent music critic Per Reidarson proposed a Union of Norwegian Artists and Journalists. Modeled after the Reich Culture Chamber, Reidarson’s Union would have excluded all Jewish artists from their professions.
It was this same movement to blacklist Jews that blocked Ernst Glaser from performing in Bergen.
Ernst Glaser
Ernst Glaser was born in Germany, but had identified himself as a Norwegian ever since he moved to Norway on August 28, 1928. In return, he became one of the country’s most beloved cultural figures. Known for his virtuosic performances as much as for his devilish sense of humor and good looks, he was a national celebrity.
Ernst was born in Hamburg on February 24, 1904, to Jewish umbrella manufacturer Felix Glaser and his wife, Jenny Rosenbaum. It was Jenny, a pianist herself, who decided that Ernst would play the violin, while his older sister Lizzie would play the piano. From 1921 to 1925 Ernst was a student of the legendary violin pedagogue Carl Flesch in Berlin. Ernst subsequently earned a position as the associate concertmaster of the Bremen State Orchestra, a position he held from 1926 to 1928.
In 1928, Ernst became the concertmaster of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra at the recommendation of Max Rostal, a fellow student of Flesch’s. Rostal had been the concertmaster in Oslo, but was leaving to move back to Berlin, where he had been offered a teaching position at the prestigious music conservatory. Issay Dobrowen, the conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic who would later serve as one of the principal conductors of the Palestine Orchestra during its first three seasons, selected Ernst from seven finalists. Ernst immigrated to Norway and was immediately smitten with both the country and the Norwegian pianist Kari Marie Aarvold, whom he married in 1929.
Shortly after arriving in Norway, Ernst dedicated himself to raising the level of music in his newly adopted homeland. One way he accomplished this was by teaching two generations of Norwegian violinists. Indeed, most of the important Norwegian violinists of the latter twentieth century—including Ernst’s successor as the concertmaster of the Oslo Philharmonic and a number of other members of the orchestra—were his students.
Ernst made his most significant contributions as a performer, serving both as the concertmaster of the Oslo Philharmonic and as the leader of the orchestra’s string quartet. A devoted advocate for contemporary music—especially new music from Norway—he initiated a tradition of performing a violin concerto with the orchestra every year. These were often the world premieres of concertos by contemporary Norwegian composers who otherwise would have been relegated to obscurity. He also performed abroad, in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, bringing distinction back to the country he now called his home.
Ernst applied for citizenship in 1933, the same year that his daughter Berit was born. He sensed the mounting anti-Semitism in Germany, and was eager to become naturalized in Norway. He became a Norwegian citizen in 1934. He welcomed his second daughter Liv into the world one year later. Ernst begged his parents to join his new family in Norway, but his father was among the many German Jews who did not foresee the danger and insisted on staying. He maintained that he had no reason to live in fear in the country that had always been his home.
Ernst’s sister Lizzie also remained in Germany. She was more concerned about the future of German Jews than her father was, but she still refused to leave. Lizzie changed her mind after her husband was arrested on Kristallnacht. Having served Germany honorably in World War I, Ernst’s brother-in-law was fortunate enough to be released within three weeks. After being warned that he would be arrested for a second time, he and Lizzie drove straight across the border to Holland.
The Kristallnacht riots also convinced Ernst’s father to finally emigrate. With the help of the board of directors of the Oslo Philharmonic and members of the Norwegian government who had grown fond of his playing, Ernst was able to overcome discriminatory immigration policies and secure entry visas for his Jewish parents. They moved in with Ernst and his family with just their suitcases, their umbrellas, and two German reichsmarks in their pockets.
Ernst’s favorite aunt did not make it out of Germany. She perished in a concentration camp.
Ole Bull’s Violin
For his January 16, 1941, appearance with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Ernst was going to play a violin concerto by Christian Sinding to commemorate the venerable Norwegian composer’s eighty-fifth birthday. As a special treat for the Bergen audience, Ernst planned to perform the concerto on a violin that had been recently donated to the Oslo Philharmonic by the descendants of Ole Bull.
In addition to being hailed as one of the greatest violinists of all time, Ole Bornemann Bull (1810–80) was—and still is—a source of immense national pride in Norway. While teaching himself to play the violin, he developed new techniques for replicating sounds from Norwegian nature and for performing folksongs and country dances. When the king of Denmark asked Bull who had taught him to play, he replied, “The Mountains of Norway, your majesty.”66
The result was a ruggedly individualistic style of playing. Bull preferred long, heavy bows that are more appropriate to the traditional Norwegian Hardanger fiddle than to the classical violin. His own experience playing the Hardanger fiddle also convinced him to flatten the bridges and fingerboards of his violins to allow him to draw the bow across several strings at the same time. Even his repertoire was unique. He had a penchant for performing his own flamboyant compositions—often based on Norwegian melodies—instead of the established warhorses.
Bull did much more than bring prestige to his homeland. He seemed to personify it. Born and raised in Bergen, he grew up mingling with Norwegian peasants at the local market and in the country. From them he developed a deep respect for the Norwegian folk character that had been subjugated during the country’s four-hundred-year union with Denmark. Bull became a patriotic leader in the Norwegian National Revival, spearheading the establishment of the Norwegian National Theatre in Bergen and later attempting to found a National Academy of Music in Christiana (now Oslo) with Grieg. Bull felt that his countrymen held “a wonderfully deep and characteristic sound-board” vibrating in their breasts,67 and his mission was to endow them with the strings that would resonate the unique Norwegian sound throughout the world. He spent most of his life touring the world’s greatest capitals, but never grew tired of returning to his homeland to share his talent with his compatriots. Charismatic and patriotic, he was Norway’s most famous and most loyal son.
In May 1940, Bull’s granddaughter presented the Oslo Philharmonic with a violin that was made in 1742. The instrument was already valuable because it was a Guarneri del Gesù, and such instruments are generally considered to be equal to—if not better than—the finest Stradivariuses. But this instrument was also a historic treasure because it was once owned and played by Ole Bull himself.
Ernst was the first person to play the violin after several decades of neglect. Taking the valuable instrument out of the elongated case that was custom-built to carry Ole Bull’s extralong bows, Ernst played Ole Bull’s song “The Herd Girl’s Sunday.” “I have never heard such applause,” Ernst later recalled, adding with his typical lighthearted humor, “although that had nothing to do with me.”68
The instrument was not in great shape and required some restoration. Despite a slight defect in the construction of the scroll—a common problem among late Guarneris—the experts in Oslo nevertheless claimed that the violin was among the best instruments that Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri ever made. Ernst found the violin to have a relatively small sound, but he did note that it had a lovely, shining tone. He played the violin in Oslo in the fall of 1940, and spent the next several months continuing to acclimate the instrument back into playing condition. Now he was bringing the instrument to Ole Bull’s hometown for one of its first appearances in the twentieth century.
The citizens of Bergen were quite eager to hear Ole Bull’s Violin. None of them had even dreamed that they would ever get to witness the magical sound with which the revered Norwegian virtuoso had enchanted audiences all over the world a century earlier. To reinforce the connection to Ole Bull, Harald Heide—who had been the philharmonic’s artistic director since 1908—had prepared something special. The grand finale would be Heide’s arrangement of Ole Bull’s Polacca Guerriera for violin and orchestra, with Ernst once again playing the solo part on Ole Bull’s Violin.
Bergen
The philharmonic concert began innocently enough, with a performance of Haydn’s Military Symphony. About fifteen minutes into the Haydn, a large group of teenage boys entered the concert hall and occupied the empty seats. Some audience members found it nice that the young people were taking an interest in classical music, even if they did arrive late. Others immediately suspected that the teenagers’ motives were much more sinister: the boys were members of the National Youth—Norway’s version of the Hitler Youth—who were planning a demonstration if the Jewish concertmaster from Oslo set foot on the stage.
The Nazis had already called for a partial boycott of the performance. Although Quisling’s National Union Party had allowed the philharmonic to hold the concert, it had forbidden the newspapers from reviewing it. The German authorities had approved the program, but had prohibited their people from attending the concert. They saw the appearance of a Jewish soloist as a slap in the face of the occupying forces.
Up to that point, the Nazi censorship of the Bergen Philharmonic had been limited to their repertoire, much like Germany’s suppression of compositions by Jews. Music by composers who were obviously Jewish had been banned, but the censors had been oblivious to the Jewish heritages of figures like the Czech composer Jaromír Weinberger. Later that year, after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the works of Russians were also prohibited, robbing the audience of their favorite composer, Tchaikovsky. But a Nazi demonstration in the middle of a concert was unthinkable, especially since Ernst had played the same concerto on the same violin three days earlier in Oslo.
The violin concerto was supposed to follow the Haydn symphony, but Ernst did not appear. The lengthy gap between pieces and the presence of the National Youth created a foreboding silence throughout the audience. Backstage, Nazi officials were telling maestro Heide that Ernst must not be allowed to perform. Heide was instructed to stop the concert. He refused. He did, however, buy himself some time by postponing Ernst’s appearance to later in the concert.
Heide returned to the stage and announced a change: the orchestra would now play The Flute of Sanssouci, an orchestral suite by German composer Paul Graener that came after the concerto on the printed program. The appearance of The Flute of Sanssouci on the program must have placated the German censors who had originally signed off on Ernst’s performance. The work, which pays homage to the flute-playing eighteenth-century Prussian king Frederick the Great, was composed by an ardent Nazi who was also the vice president of the Reich Chamber of Music.
The orchestra played all four movements of Graener’s suite. Then there was another long pause. Instead of returning to the podium, Heide could be seen pacing back and forth behind the orchestra, looking distraught. The members of the orchestra looked at him and at each other in confusion. Finally, Heide resigned himself to the fact that he would be putting Ernst at too much of a risk if he allowed him to perform. Heide stepped to the front of the stage and announced that he was very sorry, but that due to unforeseen circumstances the remainder of the concert would have to be canceled.
“What the hell!” yelled one of the National Youth from the balcony. “Why doesn’t he come?” They had been waiting to protest Ernst through half of the Haydn and all of the Graener. They had grown impatient for the protest to begin.
“Is it because Glaser is a Jew?” someone else shouted.69
Then all hell broke loose.
The demonstrators started booing and chanting “Down with the Jews! Down with the Jews! Away with the Jew Moses Salomon,”70 referring to the object of their scorn not by his true German name “Ernst Glaser” but by “Moses Salomon,” a very Jewish-sounding name that they invented for him. The National Youth dropped flyers from the balcony that read, in poorly spelled Norwegian:
OLE BULL’S VIOLIN.
is a Norwegian national treasure.
His works are the founding pillars of Norwegian music
THE NORWEGIAN YOUTH will not allow our Germanic honor to be soiled by
THE JEW MOSES SALOMON
(alias Ernst Glaser)
This Jewish peddler has misappropriated Ole Bull’s fiddle, our national treasure, and is traveling by land and sea making money off of it.
WE DEMAND THAT MOSES SALOMON’S PEDDLING TOUR BE STOPPED HERE IN BERGEN:
National Youth
The lights in the concert hall came on, allowing the audience to finally see the uniforms of the National Youth. In what is surely one of the most heroic moments in the history of music, the music lovers in attendance became enraged and attacked the demonstrators.
After Germany had occupied Bergen, the audience had resolved to keep the philharmonic concerts as free from Nazi politics as possible. They had accepted the presence of German soldiers and civilians in the concert hall, but these new audience members had not interfered with the performances. This protest was something completely different. It was an unwelcome intrusion into their artistic sanctuary. They decided to fight back.
In response to the chants of “Down with the Jews,” the Norwegian actor Hans Stormoen called out, “Down with the rioters.”71
Fights broke out throughout the concert hall. One member of the audience struck a Nazi hooligan with the handle of her umbrella. A violinist from the orchestra tore off his tuxedo jacket and jumped from the stage to join the bloody fistfight against the National Youth.
Before things could get too far out of hand, Heide leapt to the podium and quickly instructed the orchestra to strike up the Norwegian national anthem.
The entire orchestra rose. As soon as the audience and the National Youth heard the opening chords, their patriotism obliged them to stop what they were doing and sing along. The fighting ceased, with the exception of a few minor skirmishes at the back of the hall that were caused by the state police’s removing Hans Stormoen and other counterprotesters. The ejected audience members were released later that evening with the flimsy explanation that they had been detained for their own protection during the angry demonstration. The members of the National Youth were never even questioned for their role in the fracas. Instead, they were praised by the German authorities for their passion.
When the orchestra finished the national anthem, the audience spontaneously launched into the Norwegian royal anthem, which begins “God save our gracious King.” (It is sung to the same melody as Britain’s “God Save the King/Queen” and America’s “My Country ’Tis of Thee.”) By singing the royal anthem, the audience was thumbing their noses at the Nazis by brazenly displaying their allegiance to King Haakon VII.
Norway’s first king after the country gained independence from Sweden in 1905, Haakon had fled Oslo during the German invasion on April 9, 1940. He and his government had retreated to the town of Elverum, where they had laid the legal groundwork to continue the war against Germany from outside the country. Since fleeing to England on June 7, 1940, the king-in-exile had become an international symbol of Norway’s resistance to the Nazi occupation. Despite several attempts both before and after Haakon’s escape to pressure him to use his constitutional authority to legitimize the Nazi regime, the defiant king had steadfastly maintained that he would abdicate rather than support the appointment of the Quisling government. In an inspirational address over the BBC on July 8, 1940, King Haakon had announced that he would maintain Norway’s sovereignty until the country was liberated.
Throughout the national anthem, the National Youth had been compelled to stand at attention, extending their right arms in the Nazi salute. While the rioters had stood motionless, Heide had made sure that Ernst and Ole Bull’s Violin were safely escorted out of the hall. Members of the Nazi Party had been waiting for him outside the main doors to the concert hall, but were fortunately too naive to realize that an artist would leave by the backstage door.
By the time the royal anthem started, the National Youth realized they had been tricked. “Close the doors!” they shouted as they ran to block the exits. “Get the Hird here!” they cried.72
The National Youth were no match for the determined audience, which simply laughed loudly and booed them. One man forced himself through the blockade, slapping one of the youths in the face as he passed by. The rest of the defiant audience simply marched out the door.
The courage of the Bergen citizens did not stop at the performance. Despite being warned against printing anything about the concert, Bergen’s Morning Paper and Evening Gazette both published editorials blasting the riot, the latter categorizing the demonstration as “regrettable” and “exceedingly unfortunate.” The actions of the National Youth, the Evening Gazette maintained, were “an assault against the music-loving public in our city.”73 The philharmonic board sent a letter to city leaders and the Norwegian Department of Public Information and Culture to protest the behavior of the National Youth. The department responded by praising the rioters for the successful demonstration and by punishing those who spoke out against it. From that point on, the members of the philharmonic board were forbidden from serving on the city council.
Oslo
Ernst returned to Oslo, where he continued to face anti-Semitism. In February 1941, the German occupation authorities ordered his removal from the Oslo Philharmonic. Philharmonic leaders protested, insisting that Ernst was so important to the orchestra, they would put their jobs on the line to protect him from being fired. At first, the Germans refused to relent, insisting, “A Jew cannot have an official position in Norway.”74 They ultimately yielded to pressure and announced that the question of whether Ernst could keep his job would be put off until later.
The pressure came from philharmonic leaders as well as from Dr. Gulbrand Lunde. As the minister of the Department of Public Information and Culture, Lunde was in charge of propaganda for the Nazi regime and second in command only to Quisling himself. He was, simply put, the Norwegian equivalent of Nazi Germany’s Joseph Goebbels. Although Lunde was an ardent devotee of Nazism, he also maintained a deep respect for Ernst’s artistry and wanted him to continue performing. Like the German Nazis who oversaw the orchestras in Auschwitz, Lunde’s personal pride in supporting an outstanding ensemble overshadowed his aversion to the Jews who played in it.
Across Norway, the oppression of Jews continued to worsen. In July 1941, all Norwegian Jews in civil service were dismissed, and Jewish lawyers and other professionals were permanently stripped of their licenses. That fall, all Jewish stores were confiscated. In February 1942, Quisling amended Norway’s constitution to reinstate a prohibition against admitting Jews into the country. This restored the exact language that had been part of the original constitution in 1814 but which had been rescinded in 1851.
The Jews in central and northern Norway became the victims of increasingly vicious campaigns of terror. In April 1941, the Germans seized the synagogue in Trondheim, removing all of the Hebrew inscriptions and replacing the Stars of David in the stained-glass windows with swastikas. In June, the Nazis arrested Norwegian and stateless Jews in Harstad, Narvik, and Tromsø, sending them to the Sydspissen concentration camp in Tromsø. The Jews arrested in Trøndelag, Møre, and Romsdal were sent to the concentration camp that had been established in the Vollan prison in Trondheim and later to the one at Grini, near Oslo.
In southern Norway, especially in Oslo, the Jewish community was living in relative calm. When the Germans had declared on September 25, 1940, that all religious denominations would be protected, the Jews had believed them. Some of the Jews who had fled to Sweden during the German invasion had even returned to Norway after assuming that there would be no danger. Yes, some of their apartments and homes had been commandeered by the Germans, but this had also happened to gentiles. The Jews had no reason to believe that they would be singled out for persecution.
The period that allowed Oslo’s eight hundred Jews to live in peace came to an end on September 24, 1942, when the German security police ordered the Norwegian state police to begin making plans to arrest all of Norway’s Jews and their families for deportation.
Ernst’s Nazi defenders immediately understood that they would not be able to protect him any longer. Jim Johannesen, a high-ranking member of the Hird, told Ernst that plans were being made for a large-scale campaign against the Jews, but that senior officials in the Quisling government did not want anything to happen to him. In his efforts to save Ernst from being arrested, Johannesen volunteered to drive him across the Swedish border in a car owned by Captain Oliver Møystad, the commander of the Hird and the acting head of the state police. Ernst refused.
Johannesen was an accomplished violinist who had even been the concertmaster in Bergen for a while. He was also known for inventing fantastical stories. Like other Jews living in Oslo, Ernst was blissfully ignorant of the full extent of the Nazis’ evil plans for the Jews. He decided not to take Johannesen’s warnings seriously. He did not even bother to tell his family, as he felt that there was no reason to worry them.
To convince Ernst of the severity of the situation, Johannesen took him to see Minister Lunde, who welcomed Ernst warmly. Lunde confirmed that the Jews were in jeopardy. He encouraged Ernst to find refuge in Sweden, promising that this would only be a temporary measure. Ernst would be welcome to return home once the war was over and the Norwegian government regained its autonomy from Nazi Germany.
Ernst appreciated the sentiment, but insisted that he could not leave his children and parents.
“Yes, we can fix that,” Lunde replied. “We could put the children in Telemark. Isn’t that where Quisling is from?”
The very thought came as a terrible shock to Ernst. “And what about my parents?” he asked.
Lunde assured him that arrangements could be made for them, as well. Ernst remained unconvinced. As with his father four years earlier in Germany, Ernst simply could not believe that he and his family would really be in danger in their own country.
Within one month, all of that changed. At nine o’clock on the evening of Friday, October 23, the state police started planning a massive operation that would result in the arrests of all Jewish men in Norway between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five in one day. They scheduled the campaign for Monday, October 26, and spent the weekend hastily compiling a list of male Jews.
The plot was supposed to be a secret, but there was a mole in the office of Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, the German general who had led the invasion of Norway and who had remained in the country to command the occupying troops. That secret agent was Theodor Steltzer, an officer in the German army who had never been sympathetic to Nazism. Near the end of the war, Steltzer would be called back to Berlin, arrested by the Gestapo, and sentenced to death for his role in the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.
In 1942, Steltzer was secretly working with the Norwegian resistance movement. He often met with his underground contacts in the home of Wolfgang Geldmacher, a German businessman who was married to a Norwegian. When Steltzer notified Geldmacher of the impending arrests, Geldmacher quickly mobilized his contacts in the resistance movement and urged them to help their Jewish compatriots escape to Sweden. Their campaign was a remarkable success. By the beginning of 1943, the heroes of the Norwegian resistance movement would help 850 Jews—more than half of all of the Jews living in Norway before the Holocaust—flee to safety in Sweden. Yad Vashem would later declare the members of the movement “Righteous among the Nations” for risking their lives to save the Jews.
Sweden was an ideal destination for Norway’s Jewish refugees. It shares a thousand-mile border with Norway, allowing for numerous passages through the Scandinavian mountain range. Sweden was also politically convenient as one of only five European countries that managed to remain neutral during World War II. Most important, the country welcomed Jewish immigrants. By receiving thousands of Jewish refugees from twenty-seven countries, Sweden became the only European country to double its Jewish population during the Holocaust.
Geldmacher’s associates in the Norwegian resistance included pianists Robert Riefling and Amalie Christie, who both paid Ernst a visit on October 25, 1942—the day before the arrests were to take place.
“We’re not leaving this apartment until you agree to leave,” they told him. They had already made plans to hide Ernst and his family.
Ernst and Kari remained in Oslo, secreted in the apartment of the famous Norwegian architect Magnus Poulsson. The children stayed with family friends in the coastal town of Moss. Ernst’s parents were sent to a guesthouse owned by a sister of the Norwegian pianist Mary Barratt Due, but were later relocated several times.
The next morning, Ernst and Kari called the couple who lived in the apartment below the one they had abandoned. The neighbors confirmed that Ernst and Kari’s apartment had been raided. Once the Norwegian police officers had established that nobody was home, they had moved on. The two policemen who had visited the Glaser apartment were one of sixty-two pairs of state policemen, Oslo policemen, and members of the German SS who had gathered that morning at five thirty. Each set of partners had been given an envelope with the names of ten Jews whom they were to hunt down and arrest.
Meanwhile, Geldmacher and Riefling were trying to figure out what they could do with Ernst. While all of the Jews in Norway were in danger, they knew that Ernst would be under particular scrutiny. He had been in the spotlight ever since the incident with Ole Bull’s Violin in Bergen. It was quite possible that he would be singled out for persecution.
Still not fully comprehending the magnitude of his danger, Ernst continued about his business by attending a philharmonic rehearsal that morning. Then he did something reckless. He went to visit Lunde to ask whether the minister would keep his word about protecting his family. He was unable to get in. Ernst learned that Lunde and his wife had died earlier that day when their car had fallen off a ferry dock. It was—and still is—suspected that the bizarre accident was really an assassination by Germans who wanted a minister whose views were more closely aligned with their own.
Ernst finally realized that his life was in jeopardy. He also understood that with Lunde gone there was no longer anyone who would protect him. He had no choice but to disappear quickly. But he was still determined to play the concert that evening, which was also to be broadcast over the radio. The Norwegian painter Henrik Sørensen got on his knees and begged Ernst not to show up to the concert, but Ernst remained resolute. He would perform, even if it meant appearing in a very public venue where the Nazis could be waiting for him.
Ernst played the concert. He was on pins and needles the whole time. The program featured a modern work by a Finnish composer. There were several violin solos, but Ernst found it difficult to focus on the music. Preoccupied with the dangers he faced, he came in late on one of his solo entrances.
“Too late, too late,” the Finnish conductor Georg Schnéevoigt admonished him in their shared language of German.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Ernst thought to himself, nervously wondering if the same could be said for his delay in leaving the country.
Fortunately, it was not too late. After the concert, Ernst escaped into a car that was waiting for him by city hall and vanished. He was taken to meet Søren Christian Sommerfelt, who worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Sommerfelt gave Ernst some money and told him to hide with an accomplice in Oslo and await further instructions. He would be taken out of the country as soon as possible.
Other Jewish men were not as fortunate. On October 26 and 27, 260 of them were arrested and taken to the Bredtveit Prison, just outside Oslo. From there they were transported by train to the Berg concentration camp, where they were joined on October 28 by 350 other Jewish men. The prisoners spent the next month suffering from starvation, inadequate medical care, and an absence of clothing and bedding in a facility that lacked water and sanitation.
The first Jews to arrive in the Berg concentration camp were trumpeter Herman Sachnowitz, his four brothers, and their father. The Sachnowitz family had been contemplating leaving Norway ever since the German invasion, but the four oldest males were continually arrested by the Nazis. Knowing that whichever Sachnowitz was being held captive at any given time would be shot if any of the others fled the country, the family had no choice but to stay. All five male members of the Sachnowitz family were arrested at four thirty in the morning on October 26 and taken to Berg.
On November 26, 1942, the Sachnowitz men and around 275 other prisoners from the Berg concentration camp were transported on a special train back to Oslo, where they were reunited with 562 Jews, including women, children, and elderly people. Among them was one of Herman’s sisters. They had all been arrested the night before as the final stage of a campaign to round up not just the males but every Jew who remained in Norway.
Jews who held citizenships in England, America, Central and South America, neutral countries, and countries allied with Germany were spared from deportation. The remaining 532 were put on the German troop ship Donau, sailed to Stettin—the same Polish seaport from which Germany had embarked for its invasion of Norway in 1940—and loaded into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz. There 186 able-bodied men were put to work in Birkenau and Auschwitz III, while 346 women, children, and elderly people were sent directly to the gas chambers.
On March 3, 1943, 158 Jews who had been interned in the Bredtveit Prison after missing the first deportation arrived in Auschwitz. From this second transport, thirty-eight were put to work while 120 Jews of ages ranging from fourteen months to eighty years were sent to their deaths.
Herman Sachnowitz’s father and sister were selected for death immediately upon disembarking at Auschwitz in November 1942, as were both of Herman’s remaining sisters when they arrived in March 1943. Herman and his four brothers were among those from the first transport who were sent to work at Auschwitz III. Herman’s three older brothers would die in Auschwitz III within four months. Herman’s little brother would later die in Josef Mengele’s infamous experimental block.
Herman’s own life was spared in August 1943. That was when he was accepted as a trumpeter into the newly formed orchestra at Auschwitz III, an ensemble with which he performed until the camp was evacuated on January 18, 1945. He was transferred to Buchenwald and then to Bergen-Belsen, where he was liberated on April 15. He traveled back to Norway as quickly as possible and returned to his home. It was empty. Herman was the only member of his entire family who had survived.
The Sachnowitz family was certainly not the only Norwegian family to be completely erased during the Holocaust. Of the 762 Jews deported from Norway, all but twenty-three died in German concentration camps.
Flight to Sweden
On October 27, 1942, while Herman and more than six hundred other Jewish men were being taken to the Berg concentration camp, Ernst was secretly taken to see Lise Børsum, a key figure in Geldmacher’s circle who was later arrested for her role in the Norwegian resistance. It was in Børsum’s house that Geldmacher had met with and mobilized forty members of the Norwegian resistance movement two days earlier. And it was Børsum herself who would arrange Ernst’s escape to Sweden. Børsum informed Ernst that he would have to leave Kari and their daughters behind in Norway. At the time, nobody guessed that the Nazis would come for the Jewish women and children one month later.
Ernst was given shelter by a man named Hasselberg, whose wife was out of town. While he hid at Hasselberg’s house, Ernst had two tasks: to cook dinner and to avoid being seen through the windows. On his second day at Hasselberg’s house, Ernst received a visit from Kari. She informed him that he would be leaving that day. She gave him a series of complex instructions from Børsum. The cloak-and-dagger plot to get Ernst out of Norway sounded like something out of a spy novel.
Ernst would be picked up by Berit Poulsson, who was disabled and who was therefore allowed to drive wherever she wanted. Poulsson would drive him to the train station, where he was to wait for Amalie Christie. When Christie arrived, Ernst would pretend to ignore her, as if she were a total stranger. He would follow her as she boarded the train. Through a secret signal, she would draw his attention to a luggage compartment that would contain a backpack full of items he would need for his journey.
Ernst did as he was instructed. He even had Kari cut off all of his hair in the hopes that nobody would recognize him. It was raining, so he was able to shield himself from view underneath a large umbrella. Since holding a violin case would ruin his disguise, Ernst left behind his personal violin—an excellent instrument made by the eighteen-century violinmaker Giovanni Battista Guadagnini that his father had bought for him. While Ernst was waiting for Christie at the crowded train station, Børsum showed up. She brought with her a letter that she explained was a coded message. She instructed Ernst to take the document with him to Sweden. “Of the group with which you are going, you seem to be the most sensible,” she said. “So please keep this with you and deliver it to the Norwegian legation in Stockholm.”
Ernst boarded a train that would take him toward Hamar, seventy-five miles north of Oslo. His disguise seemed sufficient until he heard someone calling his name. A young man whom Ernst did not recognize told him to get off the train.
Ernst was relieved to see that the young man was accompanied by Christie. The young man pushed something into Ernst’s hand. It was Swedish kroner, to give Ernst a little extra money. Then he gave Ernst his final instructions from the Norwegian resistance movement in Oslo. Until then, Ernst had not been informed of his destination, out of fear that he would be arrested and tortured into betraying details about the escape routes being cultivated by the resistance movement. Now that he was safely on board the train, Ernst was told to disembark at Romedal, the last station before Hamar, and find a taxi driver named Thorleif Bronken.
Once the train was finally under way, Ernst hid his face behind a newspaper. Despite his efforts to travel incognito, a young woman on the train recognized Norway’s most famous living musician.
“Aren’t you Mr. Glaser?” she asked.
“No, I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” he audaciously replied.
When Ernst disembarked at Romedal, he and four other escapees were whisked away in Thorleif Bronken’s taxi. They were driven to a small schoolhouse in Åsbygda, where a teacher named Kjellaug Herset lived. The escapees hid in the schoolhouse attic for two nights, maintaining complete silence during the days. If Herset’s Nazi colleague heard something fall on the floor, a bed squeak, or any other noise overhead, it could have meant their deaths. On the second night, Kjellaug’s fiancé Lars Sagberg informed the escapees that he would take them by truck to the Glomma River, which runs near the Swedish border. They would cross the river on a barge. Another guide would help them finish the journey over the mountainous terrain on foot.
A few weeks before helping Ernst and the other four refugees get to the Glomma, Sagberg had met with another group of escapees in the schoolhouse. The nine refugees had gathered around a radio listening to the BBC, whose broadcasts had been forbidden. After Sagberg changed the channel to the Nazi-controlled station in Oslo, they all heard a declaration that anyone who helped Jews escape the country would receive the death penalty. The escapees bristled and looked at Sagberg nervously.
“Oh, that makes no difference,” he assured them.
“Doesn’t it frighten you to hear that there is a death penalty for helping a Jew, when there are nine of us?” one refugee asked Herset.
“That makes nine death penalties,” she responded defiantly.
“This is something we have heard several times before, so we’re not worried,” Sagberg confirmed.75
After crossing the Glomma, Ernst and the other escapees in his convoy were taken to a log cabin. During their second night at the cabin, they started their journey on foot. A farmer followed behind the group on a horse and sled to cover their tracks. After several hours of walking through the snowy night, they arrived at another log cabin, where they were given food and coffee. Cold, wet, and tired, they were hoping to find a warm place to rest, but the log cabin was unheated. So they continued their journey. They did not find another log cabin until 1 a.m. the next day.
Ernst was exhausted. He was in no shape for this type of physical activity. One of his knees had become so stiff from overuse that it would no longer move. He fashioned a cane to assist him the rest of the way. He was also freezing. Other than the long coat he had brought with him, he was not properly dressed for hiking in the snow. He was given a raincoat, but he was so short that the coat dragged on the ground when he walked. To make matters worse, when he placed his soaked ski boots next to the fire to dry them, they shrank so much that he could not put them back on.
On the next day, a third guide rowed the refugees across a lake to Sweden. Ernst made his way to Stockholm, where he knew he would have the best chance of earning a living through playing the violin. He also intended to take the letter from Christie to the Norwegian legation. It was only later that Ernst opened the letter to find that it contained not a coded message but money. It was the same amount that Ernst had held in his bank account in Norway. It was his to spend.
Ernst’s wife Kari and their daughters fled to Sweden a few weeks after him. Warned of impending danger by the girls’ schoolteachers, they escaped Oslo just as the Nazis started rounding up women and children. Although Kari would have been considered an Aryan by Germany’s Nuremberg Laws, Quisling’s severe interpretations of Jewishness would have included her for being married to a Jew. She and her daughters—who despite having been christened would be considered Jewish by virtue of having a Jewish father—would have been arrested, deported to Auschwitz, and sent directly to the gas chambers.
At first, Kari and the girls traveled north, just as Ernst had done. They hid on a farm in Hamar for three weeks before being sent back to Oslo. After returning to the capital city, they continued traveling south. When they reached the southeastern Norwegian border town of Ørje, they walked in the rain toward the Swedish border with twelve other women and children.
After becoming separated from their guide and getting lost in the forest, they arrived at a farm the next morning. Approaching the farmhouse could have meant walking right into the arms of Nazi sympathizers, but Kari had no choice. By this time, seven-year-old Liv and nine-year-old Berit were too cold and exhausted to continue any farther.
Kari knocked on the door. When an old woman answered, Kari blurted out that they were refugees on their way to Sweden who had gotten lost. The old woman proved to be friendly. She informed them that they were still in Norway, and had been heading in the wrong direction. She invited them in for coffee and told them, “You must not stay here for longer than an hour, because there are inspections here every morning.
“But you are not far from the border,” she assured Kari. “My husband will guide you across.”
After struggling to wake the exhausted children, Kari and the girls continued their journey. She and her daughters joined Ernst in Stockholm on December 19.
Ernst’s parents had an even more difficult odyssey. They had escaped Nazi Germany just a few years earlier and were now fleeing a second country. Exhausted and freezing in the Norwegian winter, the elderly couple could not keep up with their transport. There were Germans in the same forest that night with dogs and guns searching for two deserters, but the elder Glasers simply could not run anymore. They found a stump in the forest and sat down. Their guide did not realize that they had fallen behind until much later. He brought the rest of the group to the border and went back to Norway for the Glasers. When he found them later that night, they were sitting by themselves in the woods, holding hands, expecting to die together. Instead, he brought them safely to Sweden.
Sweden
In Stockholm, Ernst used his contacts to establish a new life. He and his family stayed with old friends who owned an antiquarian bookstore. He borrowed a violin from the son-in-law of the late concertmaster of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. It was not until several months later that Ernst would be reunited with his Guadagnini violin, which Geldmacher smuggled into Sweden hidden in a suitcase full of clothes.
When Ernst visited the Swedish Music Society, he was told that he was free to give concerts, but that as a refugee he was ineligible for steady employment. In the spring of 1943 he was nevertheless hired by Georg Schnéevoigt, the Finnish conductor who had led Ernst’s last concert in Oslo. Schnéevoigt was the principal conductor of the symphony in Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city after Stockholm and Gothenburg. Despite strict regulations that only Swedes could be hired for paid positions, Schnéevoigt was able to use his considerable influence to not only appoint Ernst as the orchestra’s substitute concertmaster, but also to get Ernst a job teaching at the music conservatory in Malmö.
While Ernst was playing with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, the ensemble brought in the famous Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad as a soloist. Flagstad was one of the greatest opera singers of the twentieth century, but was also suspected of being a Nazi sympathizer. At issue was her decision to ignore an unspoken boycott by returning to Nazi-occupied Norway to be with her husband. This in itself might have been forgivable were it not for her husband’s ties to Quisling’s National Union Party.
“You must know our concertmaster,” Schnéevoigt told Flagstad when she arrived in Malmö. “He was the first violinist of your orchestra in Oslo. He fled your country a short time ago.”
“Of course, I know who he is. He played several times for me in the orchestra. I’m so happy to hear he’s all right. Isn’t he a splendid musician?”
“An excellent one,” Schnéevoigt concurred, adding that Ernst was still a little shaken by his stressful escape from Norway.
“I can well understand that. I’d very much like to say hello to him. Could you let him know?”
“Gladly.”
Flagstad waited and waited for Ernst to appear, but he never showed up.
During the concert, she was pleased to find that Ernst’s playing was still in top form. At the end, she shook his hand and thanked him for playing. “I want to talk to you,” she whispered.
Ernst nodded politely, but he did not go to see her after the concert.
Later, when Ernst finally visited Flagstad, he was rather distant.
“How are you?” she asked. “I’m so happy to see you here and all right.”
Ernst did not respond.
“Your friends have been worried about you in Norway,” Flagstad continued. “And now I can tell them that you are happy and well in Sweden. Is there anything I can do for you in Norway?”
“No,” he quietly replied. “Nothing.”
“There must be some relatives I can call up for you,” Flagstad volunteered.76 It was only after she confided in Ernst that her brother had been helping a desperate Jewish colleague in Norway that Ernst finally smiled and asked her to make some inquiries on his behalf.
Playing the violin provided Ernst with the opportunity to support his family throughout their exile. He was even able to send his children to an excellent boarding school near Stockholm. With his daughters tucked safely away, Ernst was free to tour throughout Sweden, often collaborating with Kari. In their performances in Sweden, Ernst and Kari promoted Norwegian music, specifically compositions by Grieg. In a concert in Stockholm on October 17, 1943, Kari played Grieg’s beloved piano concerto. Less than two weeks later in Gothenburg, Ernst and Kari gave an all-Grieg recital that included a sonata for violin and piano, some songs, and Ernst’s transcription of the quintessentially Norwegian “Solveig’s Song” from Peer Gynt. The Glasers also toured schools, playing Norwegian folksongs and teaching the Swedish children about Norwegian history and culture.
Ernst and Kari would often perform alongside other well-known Norwegian artists at benefit concerts to raise money for Swedish Aid for Norway. A local aid committee somewhere in Sweden would call the Norwegian legation in Stockholm seeking entertainment for a fund-raising event. The educational office would see who was available, and dispatch performers accordingly. The performers were each given a modest allowance of twenty kroner per day for their food, travel, and lodging.
Over time, the refugees started performing more and more for the “Boys in the Woods.” These brave young men were Norwegian freedom fighters who had gathered in camps along the Swedish border. Under the pretext of undergoing instruction as a reserve police force, the Boys in the Woods were actually receiving military training from the Norwegian resistance movement in preparation for their country’s liberation from the Nazis. The performances by Ernst and the other Norwegian artists provided comfort to the Boys in the Woods while also reminding the homesick young men of what they were training to protect. Ernst took great pride in contributing to the Norwegian cause and giving back to his fellow countrymen. “It was good to be able to do something for our boys,” he later explained.77
The performance environments in the camps could hardly be considered ideal. Cabaret musician Robert Levin later recalled performing on a piano that was strapped to the back of a truck for easy transport from camp to camp. One outdoor performance was so cold that his fingers froze stiff, causing him to make all kinds of mistakes. In that particular performance, he was accompanying Norwegian soprano Randi Heide Steen. When a gust of wind blew snow into Steen’s mouth, she nearly choked to death. At a different camp, Levin encountered a piano that was missing its sustain pedal. Throughout the entire performance, Levin worked the piano keys while journalist and author Leif Borthen played the role of the missing pedal. Crouched underneath the piano, Borthen would release the damper mechanism every time Levin would put his right foot down and return it whenever Levin would lift his foot. This time it was not the cold weather but his own laughing that made it difficult for Levin to play.
The willingness of Norway’s greatest artists to travel up and down Sweden performing in such wretched conditions astounded and inspired the Boys in the Woods. One freedom fighter later recalled trudging through the camp in Öreryd one drizzly, cold evening in May 1944 and stopping dead in his tracks upon hearing the sound of a violin playing. After weeks of training in the rough forest terrain, the young soldier had completely forgotten what great music sounded like.
He followed the sound to an officers’ barracks, where he immediately recognized Ernst. The Norwegian legend was warming up by playing “Zapateado,” from Pablo de Sarasate’s extraordinarily difficult Spanish Dances, op. 23. Kari was sitting peacefully beside him darning socks.
When the soldier learned that Ernst would be playing in the camp that night, he immediately assumed that the virtuoso violinist would be playing repertoire as advanced as “Zapateado.”
“Surely you’re not going to serve that one up tonight!” he cautioned. “You’ll be booed off!” He suggested that Ernst would be more successful playing Norwegian folksongs for the unsophisticated soldiers.
“Snob!” Ernst retorted. “Silly fool! I know these guys. I’ve been playing in Norwegian barracks and camps throughout Sweden since I came here in 1942, and I know what they want. They want good stuff, my friend! There’s no point in cheating.” Ernst admitted that the most complex works might not be appropriate for an audience of Boys in the Woods, but he promised to compensate for that by limiting his repertoire to the works of their countrymen. “Let’s take our pick of Norwegians and there are plenty of great works they would be happy with,” he continued. “Right, Kari?”78
Kari simply nodded, and continued her darning.
Ernst and Kari had long since figured out how to entertain the Boys in the Woods, including those who had never been exposed to classical music before. To appeal to their new audience, they did indeed make sure to include some popular compositions in their repertoire. But they also felt an obligation to avoid watering down their programs too much. They wanted to not only inspire the soldiers, but also educate them. They underscored this approach by prefacing the classical works by Grieg and other Norwegian composers with spoken introductions and with poems read by Norwegian writers. They called these presentations “Journeys Through Norway in Poetry and Sound.”
The air was filled with excitement for the Glasers’ performance in the Öreryd camp. The Boys in the Woods always looked forward to their weekly entertainment. This time, the gray monotony of camp life would be lifted by none other than the concertmaster of the Oslo Philharmonic and his piano-playing wife. Although the soldiers may have been a little baffled by Johan Svendsen’s complex Romance for Violin, they showed their appreciation at the end of the concert with a rousing ovation. Unlike the reserved, genteel applause preferred by Oslo’s concertgoing elite, the Boys in the Woods responded to the performance by clapping their hands, stamping their feet, hitting the walls, and shouting “hurrah!”79
The Norwegian performers became very close friends while traveling all over Sweden performing for Swedish Aid for Norway and for the Boys in the Woods. Ernst, Levin, and two other artists formed an especially intimate circle that they called the Philosophy Club. After each benefit concert, they would be invited to extravagant parties that they suspected cost more than the proceeds from the performance. Whoever had the largest hotel room would host the rest of the club after the party so they could recap that evening’s escapades. They talked and laughed for hours.
It was during this time that Ernst began to rediscover his Jewish heritage. Like many German Jews of the early twentieth century, he and his parents had always thought of themselves exclusively as German and had given little thought to Judaism. But Ernst became compelled to explore the language and traditions of his ancestors by his experiences during the Holocaust, as well as through the deep connection that he forged with Levin, who had been a devout Jew his entire life. Ernst started studying Hebrew with Levin. He would bring a Hebrew-language copy of the Old Testament with him on tours so he and Levin could read it together on the train. Ernst’s proficiency in the language became so strong that Levin later started referring translation questions to him.
On October 25, 1944, the northeastern town of Kirkenes became the first Norwegian locality to be liberated by the Russians. At the request of the Norwegian legation, Levin composed a Kirkenes March to celebrate the historic event, set to a new text by Norwegian playwright Arild Feldborg. A few days later, Levin conducted the march’s premiere in Järvsö, Sweden, where Norwegian military commander Olaf Helset had just completed a major maneuver with five thousand armed and uniformed Norwegian soldiers. It was a momentous occasion that signaled that the Boys in the Woods had evolved from a motley collection of refugees into a full-fledged military operation that would soon be ready to cross back into Norway. Ernst played the violin and also helped Levin arrange several Norwegian folksongs for the celebration.
Return to Norway
Ernst and Kari returned to Oslo immediately after the end of the war. Unlike half of Norway’s prewar Jewish population, their family had survived the Holocaust. Most of their personal belongings had also been miraculously safeguarded. The arrest orders of October 26, 1942, had come with instructions to confiscate all Jewish property, especially valuables, jewelry, and cash. But when Ernst and Kari returned to their apartment, they found only their grand piano and three chairs missing. These items were quickly returned, thanks to a decree the Norwegian government-in-exile had issued from London in 1942 guaranteeing that all belongings appropriated during the war would be returned to their original owners.
Ernst also resumed his post as concertmaster of the Oslo Philharmonic. On December 6, 1945, he even returned to Bergen to perform Jean Sibelius’s First Violin Concerto—on Ole Bull’s Violin. It was the first time he had touched the instrument since his canceled appearance in Bergen almost five years earlier. The entire affair had robbed him of his interest in playing that particular instrument, but the opportunity to finally play Ole Bull’s Violin in Bergen allowed him to put the circumstances of his previous trip to Bergen behind him.
He also continued to perform with Kari, including a live studio recording they made together for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation on January 10, 1946. A recent rerelease of this recording on the first volume of the series Great Norwegian Performers 1945–2000 has renewed interest in Ernst’s playing.
In the 1950s, Ernst was forced to back away from his most visible positions after developing a nervous tremor in his right hand that some say was a lingering aftereffect of his experiences during the Holocaust. He left the string quartet in 1956 and accepted a demotion to associate concertmaster in 1958. He was replaced by one of his students—one of many protégés who would represent the next generation of great Norwegian violinists. In that same year, Ernst founded the Oslo Philharmonic’s popular chamber orchestra, an ensemble that he led until 1963. In 1965, he stepped down as associate concertmaster of the philharmonic but remained in the first violin section. A man of extraordinary intellect, Ernst spoke several languages and continued to serve as the orchestra’s interpreter whenever foreign soloists and ensembles were visiting.
Ernst retired from the Oslo Philharmonic in 1969. He moved to Bergen to become the director of the city’s music conservatory, which is now known as the Grieg Academy. Kari stayed behind in Oslo, and the two drifted apart. In 1971, Ernst caused a minor scandal by falling in love with violinist Christine Torgersen, who was principal second violin in the Bergen Philharmonic. In addition to being thirty-six years younger than Ernst, Christine had two children with her current husband, who sat close to her in the Bergen Philharmonic as the orchestra’s principal violist.
In 1972, after divorcing Kari and marrying Christine, Ernst left the disapprovingly conservative atmosphere of Bergen in favor of the small town of Ålesund, Norway. Ernst directed a new music school and conducted the local orchestra, while Christine taught in the conservatory and served as a concertmaster of the orchestra. In addition to adopting her young son and daughter, Ernst fathered two more children with Christine: Ernst Simon and Susanna.
In 1976 Ernst returned to Oslo, where his friend Robert Levin had become the first director of the Norwegian Academy of Music three years earlier. Ernst immediately began making new contributions to Oslo by teaching violin and chamber music at the new academy. He also served on the board and program council of the Oslo Philharmonic, as well as on the board of the New Music Association. He died in Oslo on April 3, 1979.
Today, Ernst’s musical legacy lives on through three of his children: his daughter Liv, who grew up to become a piano professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music; his stepson Torleif Torgersen, a piano professor at the Grieg Academy in Bergen; and his son Ernst Simon Glaser, who is rapidly establishing a career as one of the finest cellists of his generation.
Ole Bull’s Violin remains in the possession of the Oslo Philharmonic, where it is played by their current concertmaster. In 2007, the orchestra loaned the instrument to the Violins of Hope project for a performance by Shlomo Mintz. Amnon outfitted the violin with a new bridge and a new sound post while adjusting the entire instrument to suit Mintz’s discerning tastes. The virtuoso played the renewed violin in a sold-out concert in Paris that marked the debut of the Violins of Hope.