Schönberg, Bessie

Bessie Schönberg was born in Hanover, Germany on December 27, 1906, the youngest of three girls. Her American born mother, Rose MacGrew had met and married Alexander Schönberg, then an engineering student, while studying music in Germany. When Schönberg was very young the family moved often as MacGrew pursued a career as opera singer. In 1911 or 1912 however, apparently due to her mother's illness and problems in the marriage, MacGrew suddenly left the family and returned to the United States.

Two years later Schönberg's father was called into active military duty and she and her sisters were left in the care of Gertrude Bierschenk, a young woman originally hired as a companion to Schönberg's mother. She moved to Dresden with the three girls at the start of World War I. At age nineteen at the invitation of her mother, and with the encouragement of her father, Schönberg moved to Eugene, Oregon to be with her mother and to study at the University there. Finally she had an opportunity to study dance, in which her father had never approved of her becoming involved. Yet after the rich cultural climate she had experienced in Dresden she was at first quite dissatisfied with the teachers and art she experienced in the United States. It wasn't until 1927 when Martha Hill joined the faculty of the University of Oregon that Schönberg became truly inspired by her studies in dance.

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