Oskar Adler was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

ist, physician

Medicine

Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

 and esoteric savant

Esotericism

Esotericism or Esoterism signifies the holding of esoteric opinions or beliefs, that is, ideas preserved or understood by a small group or those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. The term derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward",...

.

A close friend of Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

 from their schooldays, Adler taught him the rudiments of music, gave him his first grounding in philosophy, and played chamber music with him. Though self-taught, Adler for many years led a string quartet whose regular cellist was another composer-friend, Franz Schmidt

Franz Schmidt

Franz Schmidt was an Austrian composer, cellist and pianist of Hungarian descent and origin.- Life :Schmidt was born in Pozsony , in the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . His father was half Hungarian and his mother entirely Hungarian...

. Adler also played in Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances

Society for Private Musical Performances

The Society for Private Musical Performances was an organization founded in Vienna in the Autumn of 1918 by Arnold Schoenberg with the intention of making carefully rehearsed and comprehensible performances of available to genuinely interested members of the musical public...

, lectured on music and philosophy, as well as giving musical and spiritual advice to, and casting horoscopes for, many of Vienna’s leading creative artists.

In 1935 the violinist Louis Krasner

Louis Krasner

Louis Krasner was a renowned Ukrainian-born American classical violinist who premiered the violin concertos of Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg.-Biography:...

 consulted Adler (as well as Carl Flesch

Carl Flesch

Carl Flesch was a violinist and teacher.Carl Flesch was born in Moson in Hungary in 1873. He began playing the violin at seven years of age. At 10, he was taken to Vienna, and began to study with Jakob Grün. At 17, he left for Paris, and joined the Paris Conservatoire...

) about the solo part of the Violin Concerto

Violin Concerto (Berg)

Alban Berg's Violin Concerto was written in 1935 . It is probably Berg's best-known and most frequently performed instrumental piece.-Conception and composition:...

by Alban Berg

Alban Berg

Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

 which Krasner had commissioned but could not, at that time, play. Around this time, Adler was also the teacher of the musician, writer and Schoenberg-expert Hans Keller

Hans Keller

Hans Keller was an influential Austrian-born British musician and writer who made significant contributions to musicology and music criticism, as well as being an insightful commentator on such disparate fields as psychoanalysis and football...

.

After the Anschluss

Anschluss

The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....

 Schoenberg tried to arrange for Adler to come to California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, but he escaped instead to the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, spending the 1940s in the Lake District

Lake District

The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...

 and his last years in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

Adler's principal books were Critique of Pure Music (1918, still unpublished), and The Testament of Astrology (published in 3 volumes 1935-37, many subsequent editions).

The Testament of Astrology translated into English by his devoted pupil Zdenka Orenstein and edited by Amy Shapiro M. Ed. is available in e-Book format through the Online College of Astrology. The Testament of Astrology Vol. 1 The Testament of Astrology Vol 2

A biography, by Amy Shapiro M. Ed. includes letters, stories and memoirs gathered across twenty years of discovery, of people who recounted the vital role that Dr. Oskar Adler played in Vienna's pre-Nazi cultural life before 1938 and while in exile. It is available in e-Book version through the Online College of Astrology Dr. Oskar Adler: A Complete Man