As a violinist, Wittenberg was a member of piano trios with Frederic Lamond and Joseph Malkin,[2] with Anton Hekking and Artur Schnabel (later Clarence Adler) and with Heinrich Grünfeld and Moritz Mayer-Mahr.
After the Machtergreifung by the Nazis, Wittenberg lived in Dresden, where the Jüdischer Kulturbund organised numerous musical activities.
In 1941, before the outbreak of the Pacific War, a student offered him a life in the USA with good job opportunities, house and car, but Wittenberg wanted to stay in Shanghai.
After the occupation of Shanghai by the Japanese he had to move with his family to a very limited accommodation in the "isolation zone" for Jews.
The film director Chen Yifei portrayed the Jewish colony in Shanghai and especially Alfred Wittenberg in his documentary Escape to Shanghai (1999), in which other main characters were Wittenberg's students, the pianist Ming-Qiang Li and the Austrian violinist Heinz Grünberg.