He promised to bring a ‘gay and lively’ musical repertoire to a remote Scottish community when he made his home there in the 1960s.
But Austrian musician Walter Hambock also brought a far darker secret with him when he decided to settle north of the Border.
The one time church organist had been Adolf Hitler’s personal pianist.
The extraordinary story of a man who fled to Aberdeenshire after being hired – then imprisoned – by the Führer was uncovered after more than half a century thanks to local history enthusiast Billy Watson.
The Scots sleuth, 70, grew intrigued by the mysterious Hambock when he found a 1965 article about a ‘pianist famous for his skill’ enlisted as the director of an amateur musical society in Strichen, near Fraserburgh – a job he seemed suspiciously overqualified for.
Mr Watson explained: ‘I couldn’t imagine how an international professor of music had come to stay in Strichen… I thought he might have been a conman.’
Trawling though newspaper archives, he learned Hambock was a piano prodigy whose performances in Berlin mesmerised ruthless Nazi leaders Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering.
The pair recommended him to Hitler, who was so dazzled by his private renditions of Beethoven that he gifted him a signed copy of Mein Kampf.
Walter Hambock had been Adolf Hitler’s personal pianist
The musician fled to Aberdeenshire after being put in a concentration camp, ending up in Strichen where he worked as a church organist
Adolf Hitler had been entertained by Walter Hambock for years until Nazi leaders discovered he played alongside a Jewish conductor while on tour
After five years with Hitler, Hambock’s musical skills hit the wrong note with Nazi leaders in 1940, as they discovered he played alongside a Jewish conductor while on tour in the Netherlands.
He was interrogated by Martin Bormann, one of Hitler’s most feared henchmen, and exiled to the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria.
Mr Watson said: ‘He thought he was going to die there, but the camp commander recognised him and got him to form an orchestra… playing as thousands of prisoners marched to their deaths.’
The commander – also a Beethoven fan – dressed Hambock in an SS officer’s uniform to allow him to escape from the front gates.
When the freed pianist returned home, his wife had remarried on the assumption he was dead already.
Hambock eventually built a new life with a Scottish woman called Helen Weir, and moved to Strichen where his links to the Nazi regime would remain a secret. He found work there as a church organist, which came with a house and a salary of £48 per annum.
Mr Watson said Hambock could often be found playing the organ in the empty church, ‘alone with his thoughts and memories’.
After almost eight years in Strichen, Hambock and his wife moved to Motherwell where he taught music. He died in 1979 aged 70.
The revelations about his past have shocked the community, who have many fond memories of him. Isabella George, part of Hambock’s musical society, wrote: ‘Walter was a lovely gentleman who never raised his voice.’
Mr Watson joked: ‘I grew up thinking that nothing much ever happened in my part of the world. How wrong I was.’
