The son of a judicial counselor, Ernst Weißler was born on May 28, 1887, in Königshütte, present-day Chorzów in Poland. Following family tradition, he studied law at the University of Halle after completing secondary school, but abandoned a legal career during his clerkship. In 1910, he began studying music theory and voice in Halle, continuing his training in 1911 at the University of Music in Berlin. One of his earliest engagements took him to the Bayreuth Festival, where in 1914 he sang in the festival choir as a bass. After a one-year engagement as bass and solo répétiteur at the Halle Stadttheater, he moved to the Lübeck Stadttheater in 1915. In 1916, he was called up for military service, but after the war he resumed his career in Berlin, working as a private répétiteur and pianist. From 1925 to 1927, Weißler lived in Eberswalde as a lecturer and concert pianist before returning to Berlin.
After 1933, his living conditions deteriorated steadily: Weißler was classified by the new regime as Jewish. Although he was initially accepted into the Reich Chamber of Music as a “non-Aryan” member, he was expelled on August 22, 1935. His appeal against this decision was unsuccessful, but he managed to support himself as a choir singer in Jewish communities and as a music teacher. He also taught three “Aryan” musicians, which was prohibited by law. This was discovered during an inspection conducted on behalf of the Reich Chamber of Music, and he was threatened with a fine of 500 Reichsmarks. In the midst of this difficult situation, he received news in 1937 of the death of his younger brother Friedrich, who had been murdered at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as a member of the Confessing Church. Ernst Weißler decided to flee Germany. Aboard the SS Gneisenau, he left for Shanghai from Bremen on June 13, 1939, arriving in July. There he made a living in the following years as a music teacher and bar pianist. With the Japanese occupation of the city, conditions for the Jewish population worsened significantly. From 1943 onward, they were interned in the Hongkew Ghetto. Weißler, too, was forced to live there for nearly two and a half years under extremely harsh conditions.
After the war, in 1946, he moved to Beijing, where he took a position at the National Academy of Arts and returned to giving private lessons. This period of relative stability ended only two years later, in November of 1948, when all foreigners were ordered to leave Beijing. Weißler returned once again to Shanghai. Due to financial difficulties, he only managed to return to Germany in 1949. In November of that year, he returned to Europe and traveled via Naples and Munich to Freiburg, where he later settled. It took several years for his application for compensation to be resolved, and he was initially dependent on public assistance until the dispute with the compensation authorities was decided in his favor and he was granted a pension. Ernst Weißler died on June 23, 1972, in Freiburg.
1887 Chorzów
1972 Freiburg im Breisgau