Paul Abraham

Paul Abraham (Hungarian: Ábrahám Pál; 2 November 1892 – 6 May 1960) was a Jewish-Hungarian composer of operettas, who scored major successes in the German-speaking world.

[1] Abraham was born in Apatin, Austria-Hungary (today Serbia), and studied at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music in Budapest from 1910 to 1916.

Abraham was a son of Jakab Ábrahám (c. 1859–1909) – who was a merchant from Apatin, later head of a small private bank – and Flóra Blau (1872-1943), who came from Mohács (South-Hungary, next to Danube).

He was unwanted both as a Jew, and as the author of Die Blume von Hawaii, considered a piece of "degenerate art" by the Nazis,[1] telling the story of a German sailor who falls in love with a Hawaiian girl.

After a mental breakdown he was in February 1946 committed to the Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, later to the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens.