Hermann Leopoldi: Vienna’s “Grosser Bernhardiner”

The date was October 10, 1942. The 2,500 seats in Orchestra Hall in Chicago were sold out with mostly German-speaking concertgoers, both longtime residents and more recently arrived immigrants (or refugees, as they were called at the time). The event was a concert by Hermann Leopoldi, “Vienna’s most popular entertainer” as the playbill touted