The Baton and the Jackboot: Recollections of a Musical Life

404pp, plus some monochrome plate illustrations. In blue publisher's cloth boards with gilt titles front and spine. 8vo. Boards faded towards edges and rubbed and rounded at corners and spine ends; sunned over spine, worse where there is dust jacket loss, quite cocked. Tanned text block edges. Free endpapers tanning. Page margins tanned, volume a little loose. Otherwise, internally neat and clean. Dust jacket has loss at spine ends, some loss, closed tears, shelf wear, not price clipped.

Berta Giessmar (1892-1949) was secretary & business manager to orchestral conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Wilhelm Furtwangler. Of Jewish heritage, she worked for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra until 1935 when she fled Nazi Germany for London.