Karl Rankl

Karl Rankl's story represents one of the most remarkable trajectories in 20th-century musical life: from the fourteenth child of Austrian peasants to a conductor who worked with the greatest figures of his era, only to find himself stripped of his career by Nazi persecution and forced to rebuild his life entirely in wartime Britain. Born in 1898 in Gaaden near Vienna, Rankl studied with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, becoming part of the progressive musical circles that would define modern music. His conducting career took him through major opera houses in Austria, Germany, and Czechoslovakia, where he championed contemporary works and worked alongside Otto Klemperer. When the Nazis rose to power, Rankl's Jewish wife and his own political opposition to fascism made his position untenable, forcing him into a series of displacements that would culminate in his dramatic escape to Britain in 1939, just weeks before war broke out.

A Conductor's Crucible

Karl Franz Rankl was born on October 1, 1898, in Gaaden near Vienna, the fourteenth of seventeen children in a peasant family. The family ran the Zur Krone inn, and tragedy marked his early years - his mother lost ten children, all over one year old, with three dying in a single week from diphtheria. All the children suffered from tuberculosis in some form, and Karl himself had severe lung problems that would affect him throughout his life.

His health crisis came early. A lung abscess that doctors couldn't locate without X-ray technology required multiple operations, including the removal of parts of his ribs. During his third operation, doctors performed a lumbar puncture, meaning he remained conscious and heard the surgeons discussing his case: "I'm sure he's going to die. He only weighs about 6 and a half stone but we do have to operate." Eighteen doctors subsequently told him he would have to abandon any professional ambitions and move to Egypt for the dry climate. However, one homeopathic doctor advised him to work constantly as the only way to straighten his bent posture caused by the missing ribs.

Despite these challenges, music was central to the Rankl household. His father played three instruments, and his youngest brother, who died of tuberculosis at 26, was considered by Karl to be a musical genius. Karl showed extraordinary early talent - by age seven, his piano teacher declared there was nothing more he could teach him. A Vienna Philharmonic string player even approached Karl's father about training the boy professionally, but his father refused, not wanting his son to become a "starving brat." Karl also failed to gain admission as a chorister at Heiligenkreuz monastery because he couldn't read the alto clef - knowledge that, as a farm boy, he had never encountered.

At the Heart of Musical Revolution

At the end of 1918, following his military service with the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment No. 77, Rankl began studying with Arnold Schoenberg. He initially studied harmony and counterpoint, later progressing to composition, and also took a conducting course with Anton Webern in 1920-1921. This placed him at the heart of the Second Viennese School's revolutionary approach to music.

Rankl became a founding member of Schoenberg's Association for Private Musical Performances, working as an assistant to conductors, as an instrumentalist, arranger, and in organizational roles. Alongside fellow students Hanns Eisler and Erwin Stein, he arranged Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 for chamber ensemble for the society in 1921, though the society closed before the performance could take place.

The relationship with Schoenberg was both profound and complex. Rankl studied with him for four years, but their relationship became strained in 1931 when Rankl was in Wiesbaden and Schoenberg in Berlin. Rankl disagreed with Schoenberg's decision to publish his twelve-tone method, arguing: "You write it. It is modern. But why publish your system? You are the only composer who can go in and out of the twelve-tone system as you feel like it. Bach never published how he wrote a fugue." Rankl disliked writing music that had to be worked out mathematically on paper - he insisted on being able to hear it. After this disagreement, the two men didn't speak in person for years, though they eventually reconciled through correspondence, and Rankl dedicated his opera "Deirdre of the Sorrows" to Schoenberg, who accepted the dedication before his death.

Rankl's first professional appointment came in 1922 as répétiteur and chorus master at the Vienna Volksoper, where he later became an assistant conductor. His transition to conducting came about through necessity and talent. After World War I, employment was essential for survival, and when the Volksoper sought a chorus master, Rankl succeeded among 27 candidates. The decisive test involved playing Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier" from full score at the piano - a skill he had acquired through his Schoenberg training that the other candidates lacked.

His progression was swift but challenging. The head of the Volksoper pointedly asked him: "Rankl, who is behind you? Who is financing you?" When Karl replied "Nobody," he was told he wouldn't advance in the profession without wealthy backers to support and promote him. This lack of financial backing would be a recurring theme throughout his career.

From Vienna, Rankl moved to increasingly prestigious positions: conductor at the Municipal Theatre in Reichenberg (Liberec) in 1925, where he enjoyed two successful seasons, then to Königsberg in 1927. In 1928, he secured what seemed like a breakthrough appointment as assistant to Otto Klemperer at the Kroll Opera in Berlin, one of the most progressive opera houses in Europe.

At the Kroll Opera, Rankl strongly supported Klemperer's radical programming policy, which promoted new music and innovative productions. The theatre, under the artistic direction of Paul Bekker, represented everything progressive in German musical life. Here, Rankl conducted premieres of works by contemporary composers and directed Berlin workers' choirs, composing workers' songs and choruses himself. He led the premiere of Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler's "Die Maßnahme," representing the pinnacle of politically engaged musical theatre.

However, the Kroll Opera's progressive stance made it a target for conservative critics and politicians. When it closed in 1931 due to financial and political pressures, Rankl found himself appointed as First Kapellmeister at the Prussian State Theatre in Wiesbaden for the 1931-32 season. The theatre continued as the Nassau State Theatre in 1932, but Rankl received no further engagement, keeping himself financially afloat through guest conducting in Moscow, Leningrad, and Czechoslovakia.

The Tightening Noose

The Nazi rise to power in 1933 made Rankl's position impossible. His wife Adele was Jewish, the daughter of chemist Rudolf Jahoda, whom he had married in 1923. Additionally, his own political convictions were strongly opposed to fascism - his work with workers' choirs and contemporary composers had marked him as politically unreliable in the new regime.

In February 1933, Karl Rankl left Germany in protest against the Nazi regime. That autumn, he secured the position of First Kapellmeister at the Städtische Bühnen in Graz, where he worked for four years. This period proved remarkably productive despite the growing political tensions. He conducted Austrian premieres of Alexander von Zemlinsky's "The Chalk Circle" and Richard Strauss's "The Woman Without a Shadow," and composed his only string quartet.

However, even Austria was not safe. Graz was becoming increasingly right-wing, and many of the Jewish singers from Berlin whom Rankl had employed gradually departed for America or wherever they could find refuge. The situation became untenable after the Munich Agreement in 1938.

In 1937, Rankl had moved to the Neues Deutsches Theater in Prague, where he conducted the world premiere of Ernst Krenek's "Karl V" - a work that barely survived one performance before political circumstances forced the theatre's closure. The opera's premiere was technically challenging, with so many wrong notes that Rankl joked they would all be millionaires if they received a pound for every mistake.

After the Munich Agreement, Karl and Adele Rankl fled to Switzerland via a circuitous route, where Karl completed his First Symphony. They planned to continue to the United States but were forced to return to Czechoslovakia at the end of November 1938. There they remained until their final departure for England, which was initially intended only as a transit stop.

The Doll, The Policeman, and the Boar

In August 1939, just three weeks before war broke out, the Rankls reached England and initially lived in Bristol. Karl's arrival at Croydon Airport provided an early indication of the scrutiny he would face as a refugee. A customs official questioned the presence of a doll in his luggage, suspecting it might contain drugs or messages. After satisfactory explanation that the doll must have been placed there by someone else, the official "forgave" him - a phrase Rankl had never expected to hear upon entering Britain.

In June 1940, they were forced to move to London, where Rankl was shortly afterward interned as an "enemy alien." The internment process itself revealed the arbitrary nature of wartime security measures. One morning a policeman arrived at 7:15 AM to take him to the internment camp. The officer offered to return in an hour while Karl dressed, perhaps hoping he might disappear, but Karl was waiting with his packed belongings when the policeman returned.

His internment journey took him through barracks in Albany Street, then to Lingfield Racecourse, then Huyton in Liverpool, and finally to the Isle of Man. This occurred despite official documentation stating that continued confinement would cause him to suffer a nervous breakdown. On the Isle of Man, he found himself among other refugee musicians including Ravitsch and Landauer, and they organized concerts every night for the internment camp.

After approximately three and a half months, Rankl was released from internment for health reasons. In the meantime, his London apartment had been bombed, and Adele had fled to friends in Oxford, where Karl followed her. The stress of displacement and uncertainty took its toll - in 1942, he suffered a complete nervous breakdown and was unable to walk for about eighteen months.

Their situation improved in February 1943 when Professor Gilbert Murray, the distinguished Greek and Latin philologist, made his cottage available to them. Murray, who would later be depicted in Shaw's "Major Barbara," had no ear for music himself, confessing to Karl: "You will forgive me. I only know when the national anthem is played when the people get up. I have no ear for music at all and going to a concert is torture to me." Nevertheless, he provided the stable environment Karl needed for recovery.

The cottage on Boar's Hill provided an ideal setting for composition. Surrounded by heathland where Karl could walk and think about music, he found the peace necessary to work on his symphonies and songs. During this period, he was unable to obtain a work permit as a conductor until 1944, so he devoted himself entirely to composition. His widow later recalled that he also played viola in a string quartet during this time, maintaining his connection to practical music-making.

Return to Conducting and Recognition

When Rankl finally received permission to resume his conducting career in spring 1944, he made a favourable impression with British orchestras. He worked successfully with the Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Northern, and London Philharmonic Orchestras. The Times praised his "boundless energy... clear-cut performance and with a strong feeling for the shapely line of a melody." William Glock in The Observer praised the "natural firmness" of his "splendid" and "authoritative" conducting of Beethoven.

The process of obtaining work permits revealed the bureaucratic absurdities refugees faced. Felix Aprahamian, then manager of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, needed a conductor for 40 concerts when other conductors were unavailable. At the Labour Exchange, the official examined Rankl's CV skeptically, asking: "Who guarantees that I can believe all that?" When Rankl replied that he had no guarantor and offered to leave, the official's questioning became even more hostile. Learning that Rankl was a composer, the official turned purple, jumped up, hit his desk and shouted: "Whoever gave you permission to do that in this country!" The situation was resolved only when someone from the Oxford refugee committee complained to the official's superior.

During this period, Rankl also made significant recordings for Decca and Columbia, including symphonies by Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Dvořák, as well as concertos and opera excerpts. He made particular efforts to perform works by his former teachers, conducting the British premiere of Schoenberg's "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte" and the world premiere of Webern's Cantata Op. 29.

Painting Pictures with Music

Throughout his wartime exile, Rankl maintained his compositional activity, completing several symphonies and song cycles. His approach to composition was methodical and holistic. As he explained:

"I have a feeling I have to write. It's in me and I want to write it. Other people write novels or detective stories or a painter wants to paint pictures. If you like, I paint pictures with music. However, I will not put pen to paper before I know how the symphony is going to end. I don't start writing a bit here or a bit there... unless I have a clear picture of the arc I want to span from the beginning of the work right to the end I wouldn't start writing."

His musical language remained fundamentally Austrian despite his exile. When asked why his music didn't reflect British influences, he responded: "I am Austrian and I cannot suddenly tune in to the British chords and music because that would be imitation. I can only write how I feel, the way I'm going." This artistic integrity, maintaining his authentic voice despite displacement, characterized his entire approach to his work.

The war years also saw him complete his opera "Deirdre of the Sorrows," based on J.M. Synge's play. He worked ruthlessly to cut the text, insisting: "A libretto for an opera has to be to the point." The opera would later win a composition prize from the Arts Council of Britain for the Festival of Britain in 1951, though it has never received a full staged performance.

From Refugee to Builder of Dreams

By 1945, as the war drew to a close, Rankl had not only survived the trauma of displacement and internment but had emerged as a recognized figure in British musical life. His conducting had impressed critics and orchestral musicians, his recordings had established his interpretive credentials, and his compositions had continued to develop despite the enormous personal and professional disruptions he had endured.

The experience of exile had tested every aspect of his resilience - physical, mental, and artistic. From the fourteenth child of Austrian peasants to a refugee musician starting over in middle age, his story embodies the broader tragedy and complexity of European displacement during the Nazi era. Yet his ability to maintain his artistic integrity while adapting to new circumstances would prove crucial as he prepared to take on the enormous challenge of rebuilding British opera at Covent Garden in the post-war years.

His wartime experiences - the internment, the breakdown, the slow rebuilding of career and confidence - had prepared him for the enormous task ahead: creating from nothing a permanent opera company that could compete on the international stage. The refugee who had arrived with a mysterious doll in his luggage had, through determination and exceptional musical gifts, positioned himself to play a central role in Britain's post-war cultural reconstruction.

Sources

Bach Cantatas Website. "Karl Rankl (Conductor)." Bach Cantatas Website, accessed August 2025. https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Rankl-Karl.htm 

Conway, Paul. "Karl Rankl: Interview with Mrs Christine Rankl by Paul Conway." MusicWeb International, 12 July 1999. https://www.musicweb-international.com/rankl/

"Karl Rankl." Musiques Regénérées, accessed August 2025. http://www.musiques-regenerees.fr/GhettosCamps/Internement/GreatBritain/RanklKarl/RanklKarl.html