Name Peter Diamand | ||
Born 8 June 1913 (age 84), Berlin, Germany Died 16 January 1998 (aged 84), Amsterdam, Netherlands | ||
Peter diamandis biographical circa 2008
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.
Diamand was born in Berlin on 8 June 1913, and educated there, but held Austrian nationality. In the early 1930s, being Jewish, he fled to Amsterdam to escape Nazism. While there, he worked as secretary to pianist Artur Schnabel.
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. Schnabel's last student, pianist Maria Curcio, looked after them, at great risk and high cost to her own health and career. In 1947, they married. 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, and was made an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1972.
Diamand died on 16 January 1998, in Amsterdam.