Composed in 1933–34, it was written in response to the plight of (and dedicated to) those who died in the first Nazi internment camps.
As the title suggests (miserae is Latin for 'wretched' or 'miserable') the work reflects not only Hartmann's humanist credentials but his early awareness of what was starting to happen in Germany at the time.
The dedication on the autograph manuscript reads My friends, who had to die a thousand times over, who sleep for all eternity – we shall not forget you.
It was premiered at the 1935 festival of the International Society for New Music in Prague, where it was chosen as the opening work.
Before then, it had rarely been performed owing to Hartmann's ambivalent attitude towards the relevance of his pre-war works.