Peter Diamand
Peter Diamand, CBE (8 June 1913 – 16 January 1998) was an arts administrator and director of the Edinburgh Festival, carrying out that role from 1965 to 1978.[1]
Diamand was born in Berlin on 8 June 1913, and educated there, but held Austrian nationality.[1] In the early 1930s, being Jewish,[2] he fled to Amsterdam to escape Nazism.[1] While there, he worked as secretary to pianist Artur Schnabel.[1]
Diamand spent some time in a Dutch concentration camp before escaping. He and his mother needed to hide from the Nazis, in attics and other cramped places, with inadequate food.[3] Schnabel's last student, pianist Maria Curcio, looked after them, at great risk and high cost to her own health and career.[2] In 1947, they married.[1] They divorced in 1971. He subsequently married American violinist, Sylvia Rosenberg.
He appeared as a "castaway" on the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 15 August 1966,[4] and was made an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1972.[1]
Diamand died on 16 January 1998, in Amsterdam.[1]
References
<templatestyles src="Asbox/styles.css"></templatestyles>
 |
This British biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
- Use dmy dates from July 2014
- Use British English from July 2014
- 1913 births
- 1998 deaths
- People from Berlin
- People from Amsterdam
- Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
- Arts administrators
- Austrian expatriates in the Netherlands
- Austrian expatriates in the United Kingdom
- Jewish refugees
- German Jews
- Austrian Jews
- Edinburgh Festival
- British people stubs
