{"id":257567,"date":"2025-11-02T12:47:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T12:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/257567\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T12:47:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T12:47:13","slug":"i-didnt-know-my-childhood-music-tutor-was-adolf-hitlers-pianist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/257567\/","title":{"rendered":"I didn’t know my childhood music tutor was Adolf Hitler’s pianist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ken BanksNorth east Scotland reporter, Aberdeenshire<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC<\/p>\n

Liz Slaven is still a keen musician more than 50 years after her piano lessons<\/p>\n

When Liz Slaven was a schoolgirl, she took up piano lessons. Her tutor, Walter Hambock, was recommended to her by a classmate.<\/p>\n

Hambock gave her weekly lessons and helped her pass her music exams in the early 1970s.<\/p>\n

Liz thought her friend had been joking when she said that the musician had worked for a historical figure.<\/p>\n

It was only later in life that she discovered her music teacher had in fact been Adolf Hitler’s pianist.<\/p>\n

\"HelenHelen Duncan<\/p>\n

Walter Hambock moved to Scotland where he taught and published music<\/p>\n

It is only recently that Hambock’s story has emerged – a quiet, unassuming musician who caught the ear of the German leader but was then punished by the Nazi regime that killed millions of Jews in the Holocaust during World War Two. <\/p>\n

Walter Hambock was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1910, and became an accomplished pianist.<\/p>\n

His skills – including playing the music of Beethoven – came to the attention of senior Nazis.<\/p>\n

They recommended him to Hitler, and Hambock spent several years playing for him whenever his services were demanded.<\/p>\n

However, his life was turned upside down in early 1940 when he was arrested and taken to Berlin after returning from playing in a concert with a Jewish conductor in Holland.<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

Adolf Hitler took his own life in 1945 when facing defeat in the war<\/p>\n

He was then sent to the Dachau concentration camp on the grounds of being politically unreliable, and then onto Flossenburg camp.<\/p>\n

He emerged from the camp in April 1945.<\/p>\n

Hambock would later move to Scotland, where he married Helen Weir in 1962.<\/p>\n

The couple settled in Aberdeenshire, with Hambock taking up the position of organist at Strichen Parish Church. His wife taught locally.<\/p>\n

\"Strichen<\/p>\n

Hambock took a job as the organist at this church in Aberdeenshire in the 1960s<\/p>\n

He was also publishing music, and took on roles in the community such as musical director of Fraserburgh Musical Society.<\/p>\n

His story has come to public attention all these years later after amateur historian Billy Watson was looking in archived copies of the Fraserburgh Herald – which covered the Strichen area – in Fraserburgh Library.<\/p>\n

There he found articles about the musician’s arrival.<\/p>\n

\"FraserburghFraserburgh Herald\/Fraserburgh Library<\/p>\n

Walter Hambock featured in old local newspaper articles<\/p>\n

“I was reading a 60-year-old copy of the Fraserburgh Herald, and the front page – it was a big broadsheet at the time – was packed with small local stories,” he said.<\/p>\n

“One of the reports stood out, the local music society had appointed a new musical director, described an an international professor of music, staying in the tiny village of Strichen.<\/p>\n

“His name was Walter Hambock, I thought that was a German or Austrian name, and I thought there’s maybe a story here. So I just went on the hunt to find out about him.”<\/p>\n

As he looked through the archives more, there was a moment of “shock and delight” at details of the link to Hitler.<\/p>\n

\"Billy<\/p>\n

Billy Watson used old newspaper archives for his research<\/p>\n

The Fraserburgh Herald article stated: “Walter Hambock now spends many evenings in the solitude of Strichen Parish Church playing the organ with the memories of Nazism and concentration camps far in the background.<\/p>\n

“It is difficult to associate this quiet, unassuming but brilliant musician with the Hitler regime, and it is an association he wants to forget.”<\/p>\n

Billy said there had been a “fantastic response” to his research, and that Hambock was fondly remembered for his “warmth and friendliness” by people who had accepted he had a past he did not want to speak about.<\/p>\n

The couple later moved to Newmains in North Lanarkshire, and one of the people who remembers him from that time is Liz Slaven.<\/p>\n

Liz, 71, who now lives in Longside in Aberdeenshire, had started learning the piano at 10.<\/p>\n

\"LizLiz Slaven<\/p>\n

Liz Slaven is pictured as a schoolgirl in the 1970s<\/p>\n

As she got older, and it came to time for exams in fifth and sixth year, a classmate recommended her own music teacher as being really good.<\/p>\n

“She said he played for Hitler and I said ‘aye that’ll be right’.”<\/p>\n

She didn’t believe her.<\/p>\n

“When I first met him I had to play for him,” she recalled. “I went upstairs and there was a piano full of piles of music.<\/p>\n

“I was really nervy, he sat beside me, and at the end of it he said to me ‘Beethoven does not write for you, Haydn writes for you’. I have never forgotten that.<\/p>\n

“For Beethoven you need big hands, you need strength, and I did not have that. I need to play more delicate-type things.”<\/p>\n

She was Hambock’s pupil for about a year-and-a-half, and he took her through her Higher and Grade Seven music exams.<\/p>\n

“Nothing was ever said about Hitler,” she said. “For so long I did not really believe it, it was just a story, and it was only later after he died I read it in black and white.”<\/p>\n

\"Royal<\/p>\n

Liz Slaven (Craig was her maiden name) was presented for examination by Hambock<\/p>\n

Hambock died in 1979, aged 70, and was buried in Airdrie.<\/p>\n

The couple never had children of their own, but his goddaughter Helen Duncan lives in Fort William.<\/p>\n

The 54-year-old is determined to see his life story in print one day.<\/p>\n

“His story reduces myself and my husband to tears,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Everyone that knew him thought highly of him it appears. I thought, wrongly, that people are no longer interested in ‘war stories’.<\/p>\n

“But it goes beyond that – and not many were Hitler’s pianist.”<\/p>\n

Liz Slaven said she will always remember Walter Hambock fondly.<\/p>\n

“He was just a really nice old gentleman and a really good piano player,” she said.<\/p>\n

“He was gentle, I did not really feel I was getting a piano lesson.”<\/p>\n

She added of the entire remarkable story: “It’s amazing how people meet and their paths cross.<\/p>\n

“I think he made me into a good piano player, not a maestro, but nae bad. It’s a really nice memory and something I will never forget.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ken BanksNorth east Scotland reporter, Aberdeenshire BBC Liz Slaven is still a keen musician more than 50 years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-257567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}