Features
Austrian features
Anton Karas (by Manfred Hochmeister, translated by Ulrike Wright)
When looking for traces of Anton Karas in Vienna, you had better start in the XXth District, at the corner of Marchfeldstraße / Leystraße, where a plaque at No. 17 Marchfeldstraße points out that Karas was born there on 7th July 1906.
He spent his childhood and youth in the house opposite, at Leystraße No. 46 with his parents and 4 brothers and sisters.
He grew up in a typical working-class environment. That part of the city was then known as the ‘district between the bridges’ (‘Zwischenbrücken’), a very poor area, where machine factories and the houses in which the workers lived were standing cheek by jowl.
Anton was drawn to music even as child at school. His parents enabled him and his brothers and sisters to learn simple musical instruments, and with them, Anton who was only 14 years old, could be seen playing the zither – the instrument that would later make him famous the world over. During his apprenticeship as a metalworker, he took zither lessons and also played in a zither club.
After completing his apprenticeship, he worked for a short spell in the machine and vehicle manufacturing works of Fross-Büssing K.G., but was made redundant from there due to lack of orders, as early as January 1925. This gave him the opportunity to devote himself to his preferred career, and he played together with the renowned zither virtuoso in those days, Adolf Schneer , on the Vienna Heurigen tavern circuit. He was soon earning more money than his father.
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