Anneliese Landau did not intend to have a career in music. After completing her education at the Lyceum in Halle, she resolved, along with her dear friends Greta and Dora, to study at the local Frauenschule, founded in 1911. This type of finishing school existed at the turn of the century to prepare promising women for “appropriate” careers and duties—domestic arts, child care, and social work. The three friends hoped to obtain together their Frauenschule certificates to teach nursery school. Such group planning was not unusual for the girls. In their last three years at the Lyceum, Greta, Dora, and Landau socialized regularly in and outside of school, collectively organizing dinners and sleepovers at one another's homes. But then, at the Frauenschule in 1920, something changed. Landau described the shift: “I felt a coldness creeping up between them and me.” During a break in the first week at their new school, Dora and Greta made clear the rift; they walked out of the classroom without a word to Anneliese. Landau was shocked. But she didn't shrink away from the two, at least not yet. Though still a teenager, she already had a mature directness in her dealings with people. She confronted Dora and Greta, demanding an explanation. The answer felt familiar, a replay of Landau's earliest rejection by her first school friend, Ilse Strube: “My parents feel it would be better if you would keep to your kind of people, and we keep to ours.” It didn't hurt any less.

Years earlier Landau's father had attempted to soothe young Anneliese by reasoning with her that such rejection came from jealousy. We are the “chosen people.” They are not. But Anneliese found little consolation in that rationalization. When she told her mother about Dora and Greta's behavior, her reaction seemed more honest. At home, in their three-floor apartment on Alte Promenade 6, now Universitätsring 6, her mom cried. Sitting on the bench next to the oven, Anneliese saw her mother's worry and concern, “and I realized who my true friend was.”

Landau did not return to school with Dora and Greta. She couldn't.