Under the influence of rising anti-Semitism in Germany, Paul Ben-Haim - born Paul Frankenburger in Munich in 1897 to Jewish parents - decided to flee Germany shortly after the National Socialists came to power. This meant that he had to leave behind a career that had been brilliant until then: As a conductor in Munich and Augsburg, he had achieved great success with audiences and had long since made a name for himself as a composer on a national level. As late as March 1933, several performances of his works had been planned, such as his Concerto grosso (1931) with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, but this soon became impossible due to performance bans. In November 1933, Frankenburger finally left Germany for Palestine, where he henceforth called himself Ben-Haim (‘son of Heinrich’). There he had to build a new life in a country whose language he first had to learn and in an environment in which there was hardly enough work for the many emigrant musicians. Paul Ben-Haim died in Tel Aviv in 1984.