Author Description

Available now, for the first time, Amy Shapiro's excellent biography on Dr. Adler, weaves over 20 years of research on this brilliant Austrian musician, physician, philosopher, and esoteric astrologer, author, and WWII refugee in a compelling story: This pioneering biography chronicles the gathering of letters, stories and memoirs across over twenty years of discovery, of people who knew Dr. Oskar Adler personally, recounting the vital role that Adler played in the pre-Nazi cultural life of Vienna prior to 1938 and later in England. The legend of Oskar Adler unfolds as myths separate from reality, woven together by the common thread of a quest to create a portrait of Adler's life in its entirety. Examples include verifying the relationship between Oskar and his brother Max, a famous Austrian political theorist and exploring the question of whether Adler's wife Paula (Freud) was a blood relation to the famous Sigmund Freud. The story begins at the author's encounter with Adler's esoteric tome, The Testament of Astrology, as translated by his devoted pupil Zdenka Orenstein. Letters by the Adlers from 1938 to 1952 document the bittersweet fate of Vienna's WWII exiled and express his devotion to music, metaphysics and the search for news of loved ones who were missing. Filmmaker Dale Rosen says of these letters: "As a documentary film producer I know how important it is to preserve a record of the past. The Adler letters add another tile to the larger mosaic of Jewish history." An accomplished musician, Dr. Adler played first violin in the Adler Quartet. Distinguished musician Franz Schmidt wrote a glowing Attestation about Adler, and composer Arnold Schoenberg was a schoolmate and pupil of Adler's in Vienna; their friendship is evident in their correspondence. Other renowned musicians who paid generous tributes to Adler were Hans Keller and Dr. Kurt Frederick, and Adler mentions many of his musical colleagues in the autobiographical introduction to his classic