Paul Gergely was born on May 22, 1901, in Budapest. The details of his early musical career are largely unknown; the only confirmed activity is his participation as a pianist in a performance of a concert suite based on motifs from Darius Milhaud’s La Création du monde at the 1927 Donaueschingen Festival. From 1929 on, he worked as a répétiteur at the Berlin Kroll Opera and later also at the State Opera. He also worked as a conductor for film productions, including for the Berlin filmmaker Walter Ruttmann. Gergely’s name appeared on the list of Jews circulated by the Nazi factory cell at the Berlin State Opera in the spring of 1933. On June 1, he was dismissed under the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service”. He subsequently returned Budapest, though how he survived there is unknown. After 1946, he worked in Zurich as chief répétiteur at the Stadttheater. At the staged premiere of Arnold Schönberg’s Moses und Aron on June 6, 1957, he served as musical assistant to Hans Rosbaud. Paul Gergely died on September 20, 1988.
1901 Budapest