When organbuilder Hans-Ulrich Erbslöh was in Honolulu in May, we floated the possibility of seeing one another again while on this GoAhead Tour of Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. So today, Bill Potter and I “played hooky” from a walking tour of Munich and took the train to the Hohenschäftlarn station where Hans picked us up.

We had time to kill before our restaurant reservation so Hans drove to a museum in Murnau where a group of expressionist artists created a community at the turn of the 20th century, including Vasily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Alexei von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin and not coincidentally, Adolf Erbslöh, Hans’ grandfather, who had several works displayed here.

I found a most interesting biography of Adolf Erbslöh on the Metropolitan Museum’s website, which reads in part:

Adolf Erbslöh
New York, 1881–Irschenhausen, Germany, 1947

Adolf Erbslöh was a German painter who early in his career participated in progressive art circles in Munich that brought him in direct contact with the international avant-garde, among them the Cubist artists and dealers. Erbslöh amassed an art collection that encompassed works of his contemporaries, including Picasso.

Born in New York, but after 1888 raised in Barmen in western Germany, Erbslöh came from a middle class background. His father, Gustav Adolf Erbslöh, was a partner in the import-export company Dickerhoff, Raffloer & Co. In the early 1900s, after a three-year period of traveling and studying abroad, Erbslöh enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. In 1904 he moved to Munich, where he continued his art education under local artists and eventually established his own studio. Three years later the artist married Adeline Schuchard, daughter of a wealthy industrialist family from Wuppertal-Barmen. Influenced by Post-Impressionism, Erbslöh gravitated toward local Munich artists with similar interests in modern, radical art. He befriended Russian artists, among them the emerging Expressionists Alexei von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and Vasily Kandinsky, with whom he formed the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Artists Association of Munich, or NKVM) in 1909. Kandinsky served as the president and Erbslöh as the secretary and chairperson of the group’s exhibition committee. With the position, Erbslöh took charge of the organizational matters of NKVM, a task that required frequent travels within Germany and abroad. The three exhibitions organized by NKVM during its brief existence in 1909, 1910, and 1911 took place at Heinrich Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie in Munich and all drew harsh criticism. Erbslöh’s paintings were included in all three shows.

After the museum visit, on a whim Hans stopped at a beautiful baroque church called St. Tertulin, and I was very surprised to see such an ornate church in the middle of the countryside! Hans spoke to a caretaker inside, and within a few minutes, I was sitting at the organ console! The organ dated from 1784 and had recently been renovated— what a beautiful instrument, beautiful case, beautiful sound in a gorgeous acoustic! I don’t know what Hans said to the caretaker, but he must have convinced him that I was a real organist. The man gave us CDs and a brochure about the organ. Unfortunately, I had neither my organ music nor my organ shoes with me, so I had to make do with sightreading the piece of music that was on the organ, a baroque partita. However, the pedalboard was limited — only a little more than an octave, so I couldn’t have played much of my music anyway, so I ended up improvising. But — what a treat!

We joined with Hans’ wife, Christiane, and family at a restaurant near the family home in Irschenhausen and had probably the most delicious trout dinner I’ve ever had! Very tender and juicy with a breaded, crispy crust. I also had Rhabarberschorle (rhubarb spritz), which is rhubarb juice, mixed with sparkling water, and almost every restaurant in Germany has it on its menu.

Just a short distance away was another baroque church, the Abtei Schäftlarn, but I did not play the organ. Still, the church was beautiful inside and again, I marveled at such baroque splendor in the middle of the countryside.

Afterwards we drove to the family home in Irschenhausen where we had dessert. It was in 2012 that Hans invited my husband, Carl, and son, Stephen, to stay here for a few days to enjoy the quiet and the beautiful scenery. I especially liked seeing the weeping beech tree again.

We took a short walk to the village and just a few doors away, met Hans’ neighbors, Andreas von Beckerath and his wife, also named Christiane! Andreas is the son of organbuilder Rudolf von Beckerath, and had the father lived to age 83 as Andreas is, he would have looked very much the same. Unfortunately, Rudolf von Beckerath died of pancreatic cancer at age 69.

What a wonderful day this has been! We were so blessed to see Hans and his family and to play the beautiful 1784 organ at St. Tertulin was truly remarkable.