Otto Luening
LENIN IN ZURICH
This excerpt from Otto Luening's autobiography relates to
the time when he was a student at the conservatory in Zurich
during World War I.
Otto Strauss steered me around town between meals, and I
soon felt quite at home in what appeared to be the peaceful atmosphere
of Zurich. At table three days later, he suddenly leaned over
to
me and
hissed apprehensively, "Sshh, sshh . Revolutionaries ... over there,"
and poin ted to three men who were making their way to a reserved
table in the rear of the hall. When they were out of earshot Strauss
continued: "Ulyanov, a Russian revolutionary, also known as
Lenin .. . . Don't look now." Strauss went on: "They come here almost
every day for the midday meal. They just sit in the corner and eat and
talk a little, and then leave."
"Do you know anything about them? Who are they?"
"Lower your voice . . . we don't want anyone to hear us."
Ulyanov, who used the cover name Lenin, had been living in
Zurich for about a year. The Lenins rented a room in Spiegelgasse 14
near what is now the Jacob 's Fountain in the old part of Zurich. The
little street was rather dark and narrow and only a block and a half
from the Restaurant Meierei where the Cabaret Voltaire, the famous
Dada nightclub, held its programs.
Strauss, as a Swiss from the Ticino, had learned Swiss German and
had a direct pipeline
to
the Swiss Social Democratic party through his
friend Buttner, the kettledrum player of the opera and symphony
orchestra, a radical socialist who attended every meeting of the Party.
Buttner told Strauss that Lenin paid twenty-four francs for his room,
that Lenin's wife sometimes made simple meals on a kerosene stove,
that Lenin produced all his political manifestos in the tiny double
Editors ' note: This excerpt is [rom
The Odyssey of an American Composer
by Otto
Luening, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, Inc.
