Charles Martin Loeffler

Charles Martin Tornov Loeffler (January 30, 1861 – May 19, 1935) was a German-born American violinist, composer, and viola d’amore player. Family background Charles Martin Loeffler was born Martin Karl Löffler on January 30, 1861, in Schöneberg near Berlin to parents who were both from Berlin families. The family moved repeatedly, first to Alsace, and then to Smila, 200 km from Kiev , while Loeffler was still a small child, and then to Debrecen, in Hungary, where his father Karl taught at the Royal Academy of Agriculture. Later he lived in Switzerland. The father, Karl Löffler, was an agricultural chemist who espoused republican ideals in writing as a journalist under the name “Tornow” or “Tornov”. When his son was about twelve years old, Prussian authorities arrested Karl Loeffler and he died of a stroke in prison. Throughout his career, Charles Martin Loeffler claimed to have been born in Mulhouse, Alsace; in his lifetime, articles were published dissecting his “typically Alsatian” temperament. He sometimes used his father’s pseudonyms as one of his middle names. Career Loeffler decided to become a violinist and studied in Berlin with Joseph Joachim, Friedrich Kiel and Woldemar B