Verstummte Stimmen

The son of the bassoonist and composer Samuel Schuyer, Louis Schuyer was born in The Hague. After completing his training, he worked as a solo cellist with the Haarlem Orchestral Society and, from 1924 to 1928, held the same position with the Frankfurt Symphony Orchestra. While in Frankfurt, he was also active in the Jewish community, performing at concert evenings devoted to Jewish music. In 1927, he was invited to the Bayreuth Festival.

From 1928 to 1933, Schuyer was a member of the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra. On March 7, 1933, members of the SA and SS blocked the entrance to the broadcasting building and denied all Jewish members of the ensemble—including Schuyer—entry. He likely remained in Stuttgart until 1936 before returning to the Netherlands. There, from 1937 until the German invasion in 1940, he played in Utrecht’s municipal orchestra. His wife, the violinist Eveline Schuyer-Lopez Salzedo, was also a member of the ensemble.

During the occupation, Schuyer was no longer permitted to work as a musician. He therefore joined a Jewish symphony orchestra associated with the Joodsche Schouwburg. Comparable to the Jewish Cultural Federation in Germany, this was an institution created by the occupying authorities as a kind of “cultural ghetto” for Jewish artists expelled from regular theaters and orchestras.

In May of 1942, the German occupiers began deporting Jews living in the Netherlands. Louis Schuyer and his wife were deported to the Sobibor extermination camp, where they were murdered on June 11, 1943. His father, Samuel, had already been murdered at Auschwitz on December 11, 1942.

When the National Socialists came into power in 1933, it set off an unprecedented wave of expulsions from German opera and theater stages: For countless singers, actors, musicians, and members of the technical and stage staff, this meant the end of their careers. “Silenced Voices” makes the fates of those persecuted for “racial” or political reasons visible and audible.

An interactive map traces their life journeys: from major stages to the places of exclusion, exile, or murder. This creates a powerful connection between the past and the present: The biographies of those persecuted are narrated by ensemble members from some of Germany’s most important theaters, both past and present—the Hamburgische Staatsoper, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Semperoper, the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, and the Staatstheater Stuttgart.

The portal thus serves simultaneously as a tool for scientific research, a digital space for remembrance, and a resource for exploring local history.