The Postcard
A postcard that was published by LL. It was posted in London on Tuesday the 22nd. October 1907 to:
Miss Lee,
Thorofare,
Woodbridge,
Suffolk.
The brief pencilled message on the divided back of the card was:
"Fond love."
Note the presence of what has become a very rare sight in British towns - a pair of underground toilets.
The Brompton Oratory
The Brompton Oratory is a large neo-classical Roman Catholic church in the Knightsbridge area of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. It is Grade II* listed.
The church is faced in Portland stone, with the vaults and dome in concrete; the latter was later heightened in profile and the cupola added, making it 200 feet (61 m) tall.
It was the largest Catholic church in London before the opening of Westminster Cathedral in 1903.
The church is closely connected with The London Oratory School, which was founded by priests from the London Oratory. Mass is celebrated daily, and ceremonies are frequently conducted for prominent people.
Two of the Oratory's three choirs have published physical copy and digital audio albums.
History of the Brompton Oratory
John Henry Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. He later founded the Birmingham Oratory. Other former Anglicans, including Frederick William Faber, briefly established a London Oratory in premises near Charing Cross.
Faber's growing following purchased a 3.5-acre (14,000 m2) property in November 1852 for £16,000 in the rapidly developing suburb (and former village) of Brompton.
An Oratory House was built first, followed shortly by a temporary church; both designed by Joseph John Scoles. Within the Oratory House is a chapel, known as the Little Oratory.
An appeal was then launched in 1874 for funds to build a church.
Notable Weddings and Ceremonies at the Brompton Oratory
-- 1865 -- Stéphane Mallarmé married Marie Gerhard
-- 1889 -- Edward Elgar married Alice Roberts
-- 1891 -- Ernest Dowson was officially confirmed as a Catholic at the church
-- 1918 -- Matyla Ghyka married Eileen O'Conor
-- 1926 -- Alfred Hitchcock married Alma Reville
-- 1933 -- Charles Francis Sweeny married Margaret Wigham
-- 1941 -- Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe married Peter Thomas Geach
-- 1974 -- James Hunt married Suzy Miller
The Brompton Oratory Today
After World War II, with the resettlement of thousands of Polish Allied servicemen (many of them Roman Catholics), South Kensington became a temporary Polish hub. Nearby were the offices of the Polish government-in-exile, the Polish Hearth Club and Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum among other meeting places for exiles.
Due to the generosity of the Oratory Fathers, a Polish Solemn Mass was held every Sunday at 1 pm from 1945 until 1962 while the Polish community migrated westwards in the capital and the Polish Catholic Mission was able to establish in 1962 a parish at St. Andrew Bobola Church, Hammersmith.
During the Cold War, the area between the pillars and the wall at the front of the Brompton Oratory was used as a dead drop by Soviet spies in Britain, from where they hoped to communicate with Moscow.
In September 2010, decorative banners were erected at the Brompton Oratory to celebrate the beatification of Cardinal Newman during the Pope's visit to London.
Brompton Oratory Architecture
A design from Herbert Gribble, then 29, won a competition to design the Oratory in March 1869. The foundation stone was laid in June 1869, and the new church was consecrated on the 16th. April 1884.
The competition specified the "Italian Renaissance" style, but the Roman Baroque and Wren were also drawn on. Devon marble was used in the major order of pilasters and the minor order of columns, with more exotic marbles in the apse and the altars, with carvings in metalwork, plasterwork, wood and stone.
The Oratory houses Italian Baroque sculpture: The Twelve Apostles by Giuseppe Mazzuoli (1644-1725) acquired from Siena Cathedral in 1895, and the Lady Altar, with sculptures by Tommaso Rues (1650–1690).
The altar, originally decorating a chapel dedicated to the Rosary, was acquired from the church of San Domenico Brescia after its demolition in 1883.
Gribble's decorative scheme for the apse was not proceeded with, but the decoration of the St. Wilfrid and the St. Mary Magdalene chapels do reflect his intentions. The St. Philip Neri altar is to his design.
The second great decorative campaign (1927–32) was by the Italian architect C. T. G. Formilli, in mosaic, plaster and woodwork, the cost exceeding his estimate of £31,000.
Further decoration marked the 1984 centenary.
The reredos of Doric columns in yellow scagliola (2006) of the St. Joseph chapel, and a new altar and reredos of the Blessed Cardinal Newman (2010) are by Russell Taylor.
The statue of Newman in cardinal's robes (1896) is by L. J. Chavalliaud in an architectural setting by Thomas Gaming.
The church boasts magnificent vestments and altar plate, and houses an important library.
Brompton Oratory Choirs
The London Oratory is internationally known as one of the custodians of classic Catholic liturgical traditions. Solemn Latin Mass and Vespers are celebrated on all Sundays and obligatory holy days during the year. In particular, the great liturgies of Christmas, Holy Week and Easter attract packed congregations.
To serve the liturgy, the Oratory Fathers have fostered a notable musical establishment comprising three separate choirs plus a professional music staff.
-- The Senior Choir
The London Oratory Choir is an adult, professional chamber choir serving the major liturgical celebrations in the Oratory Church, including solemn Latin Mass and Vespers on all the Sundays of the year and for major feasts.
Dating from the establishment of the London Oratory on its present Brompton Road site in 1854, the London Oratory Choir is England’s senior professional Catholic choir, and has an international reputation as one of the world’s leading exponents of choral music within the traditional Roman Rite.
The senior choir is noted especially for its performances of Renaissance polyphony and the Masses of the Classical Viennese school.
-- The Junior Choir
The London Oratory Junior Choir was founded in 1973 by John Hoban to give boys and girls together an opportunity to serve the liturgy in a great church. In addition to singing regularly one evening service and one Sunday (English) Mass every week, the Oratory Junior Choir is also active outside the Oratory.
Noted for its free tone and forthright delivery, it has appeared in all London’s major concert halls and at the Proms, with conductors including Andrew Parrott, Nicholas Kraemer and Sir John Eliot Gardiner (including prize-winning recordings of Monteverdi’s Vespers in St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion).
Since 1979 it has provided the children’s chorus for Royal Ballet productions at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
It can also be heard on the soundtrack to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2.
-- The Schola Choir
The London Oratory School Schola Choir was founded in 1996. Educated in the Junior House of the London Oratory School in Fulham (London), boys from the age of 7 are given choral and instrumental training within a musical environment underpinned by Catholic traditions.
The Schola is regarded as one of London's leading boys' choirs, and sings at the Saturday 6.00 pm Mass in term time, at daily prayer services, and at benediction in the School chapel.
In addition to liturgical and concert performances, the choir has recorded for The Lord of the Rings (film series) soundtracks.
The Schola Choir's audio albums have mainly been joint albums with minor collaboration in performing Leonard Bernstein reflective, spiritual works or with soloist Roxanna Panufnik.
The Brompton Oratory Organ
The London Oratory has a rich organ tradition. The current organ of 45 stops, 3 manuals and pedals, built by J. W. Walker & Sons Ltd, 1952–54, was the first church organ in London to be built on neo-classical lines, and is considered to be one of the finest British organs built since World War II.
Emilie Schindler
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 22nd. October 1907 marked the birth of Emilie Schindler.
Emilie Schindler (née Pelzl) was a Sudeten German-born woman who, with her husband Oskar Schindler, helped to save the lives of 1,200 Jews during World War II by employing them in his enamelware and munitions factories, providing them immunity from the Nazis.
Emilie was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel's Yad Vashem in 1994.
Emilie Schindler - The Early Years
Emilie was born in the village of Alt Moletein (today Maletín in the Czech Republic), to Sudeten German farmers Josef and Marie Pelzl. She had an older brother, Franz, with whom she was very close.
Emilie's early life in Alt Moletein was idyllic, and she was quite fond of nature and animals. She was also interested in the Gypsies who would camp near the village for a few days at a time; their nomadic lifestyle, their music, and their stories fascinated her.
Marriage to Oskar Schindler
Emilie Pelzl first met Oskar Schindler in 1928, when he came to Alt Moletein to sell electric motors to her father. After dating for six weeks, the couple married on the 6th. March 1928 in an inn on the outskirts of Svitavy, Schindler's hometown.
Emilie described Oskar as follows:
"In spite of his flaws, Oskar had a big heart, and was
always ready to help whoever was in need. He was
affable, kind, extremely generous and charitable, but
at the same time, not mature at all.
He constantly lied and deceived me, and later returned
feeling sorry, like a boy caught in mischief, asking to be
forgiven one more time—and then we would start all
over again."
The Schindlers in World War II
In 1938, the unemployed Oskar Schindler joined the Nazi Party and moved to Kraków, leaving his wife in Svitavy. There he gained ownership of an enamelware factory that had lain idle and in bankruptcy for many years.
He re-named the factory Deutsche Emaillewaren-Fabrik, and he principally employed Jewish workers because they were the cheapest.
However, he soon realized the true brutalities of the Nazis, and the Schindlers started protecting his Jewish laborers. Initially, they saved the workers by bribing the SS guards; later, they listed their employees as essential factory workers, manufacturing munitions for the Reich.
When conditions worsened and they started running out of money, Emilie sold her jewels to buy food, clothes, and medicine. She looked after sick workers in a secret sanatorium in the camp in Brněnec, Czech Protectorate, with medical equipment purchased on the black market.
One of the survivors, Maurice Markheim, later recalled:
"She got a whole truck of bread from somewhere on
the black market. They called me to unload it. She was
talking to the SS, and because of the way she turned
around and talked, I could slip a loaf under my shirt.
I saw she did this on purpose. A loaf of bread at that
point was gold.
There is an old expression: Behind the man, there is the
woman, and I believe she was a great human being."
The Schindlers saved more than 1,200 Jews from extermination camps. In May 1945, when the Soviets moved into Brünnlitz, the Schindlers left the Jews in the factory and went into hiding, for fear of being prosecuted because of Oskar's ties with the Nazi party.
Life After the War
The Schindlers fled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a dozen of the Schindler Jews. In 1949, they settled there as farmers, and were supported financially by a Jewish organization.
In 1957, a bankrupt Oskar Schindler abandoned his wife and returned to Germany, where he died in 1974. Although they never divorced, they also never saw each other again.
In 1993, during the production of the film Schindler's List, Emilie Schindler and a number of surviving Schindler Jews visited her husband's grave in Jerusalem. She was accompanied by Caroline Goodall, the actress who portrayed her in the film:
"At last we meet again ... I have received no answer,
my dear, I do not know why you abandoned me ...
But what not even your death or my old age can
change is that we are still married, this is how we
are before God. I have forgiven you everything,
everything ..."
After the film's release, Emilie's close friend and biographer, Erika Rosenberg, quoted Emilie in her book as saying that the filmmakers had paid "not a penny" to Emilie for her contributions to the film.
These claims were disputed by Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's Ark, who claimed he had recently sent Emilie a cheque of his own, and that he had gotten into an argument with Rosenberg over this issue before Emilie angrily told Rosenberg to drop the subject.
In his 2001 film In Praise of Love, filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard accuses Steven Spielberg of neglecting Emilie while she was supposedly dying, impoverished, in Argentina.
In response to Godard, film critic Roger Ebert mused:
"Has Godard, having also used her, sent her
any money? Has Godard or any other director
living or dead done more than Spielberg, with
his Holocaust Project, to honor and preserve
the memories of the survivors?"
Schindler lived with her 50 pets for many years in her small house in San Vicente, 40 kilometres south-west of Buenos Aires. She received a small pension from Israel and Germany. Uniformed Argentinian police were posted 24 hours a day to protect her from anti-Semitic extremist groups. She formed friendships with many of the soldiers.
The Death of Emilie Schindler
In July 2001, during a visit to Berlin, Schindler told reporters that it was her greatest and last wish to spend her final years in Germany, adding that she had become increasingly homesick.
Emilie died at the age of 93 from a stroke in Märkisch-Oderland Hospital, Strausberg, on the night of the 5th. October 2001, 2½ weeks before her 94th. birthday.
Her only relative was a niece in Bavaria. She was laid to rest at the cemetery in Waldkraiburg, Germany, about an hour away from Munich. Her tombstone includes the words from the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5, Wer einen Menschen rettet, rettet die Ganze Welt ("Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world.").
The Legacy of Emilie Schindler
Emilie Schindler was honored by several Jewish organizations for her efforts during World War II. In May 1994, she and her husband received the Righteous Among the Nations award from Yad Vashem, along with Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family in the Netherlands during the war.
In 1995, Emilie was decorated with the Order of May, the highest honor given to foreigners who are not heads of state in Argentina. Her life inspired Erika Rosenberg's book Where Light and Shadow Meet, first published in Spanish in 1992, and later made available in English and German translations.
She appears in the Thomas Keneally novel Schindler's Ark and the 1993 film based on it, Schindler's List, in which she is played by Caroline Goodall.
She is the subject of the opera Frau Schindler by composer Thomas Morse, which premiered in 2017 at the Gärtnerplatz Theater in Munich. The following year a new production of the opera, directed by Vladimir Alenikov, was produced at the Stanislavsky Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre for their hundredth anniversary season.
