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| conryfArriag as he was again in contact with his Communists friends, he would switch back to pro-Soviet views. HEDWIG MASSING considered HANNS to be very weak politically, being @ person who has always been strongly daninated by his brother. ‘These views of HEDWIG MASSING were furnished to the Bureau and Los Angeles Office by _ietter of April 10, 1947, This individual was interviewed by SA He advised that he knew HANNS EISLER as the brother of GERHART, and recalled that he had first met the former around 1923 in Berlin. At that time, he continued, HANNS was well knom for his composing, end he was writing msic for leftewing plays. Further, HANNS was quite friendly with an individual who directed, what MASSING called radical but not necessarily Communist plays, MASSING specifically re- membered that HANNS EISLER had worked on a play entitled, "The Merchant of Berlin", Another person whom MASSING recalled as being an associate of EISLER in Gernary and later in Hollywood, was one BER , CHT. He described ERECHT as being Jeft-wing and possibly a Communist. ith further reference to HANNS' activities in Germany, MASSING said he thought he remembered that EISLER had a son by a wife in Germany. This woman, he believed, had gone to Russia and MASSING never heard of her again. PAUL MASSING continued to advise that he again met HANNS EISLER around 1939 after EISLER came to the United States and at this time got to knor him well. Later on, beginning in around 1940, MASSING said that HANNS EISLER and his wife LOU spent two summers in Quakerstown, Pennsylvania at the MASSING farm. MASSING thought that also about this time HANNS had an apartment on the West side of New York but be was unable to recgll just where. ' . f t __ Ne ca . The EISLERS, WANS and “atGve to the West Coast in the car of CLLFPORP ODES after the sumer of 1940. They stayed in Los Angeles and the follow- ing spring drove to Mexico in arder to reenter the United States as quota inmi- grants. They again came to the MASSING farm in the summer of 1941. In Hollywood, HANNS EISLER first wrote msic for pictures. MASSING thought that his first was possibly a Steinbeck story and he suggested themGranes of Wrath" or a somewhat similar story. This first attempt hy EISLER was a success and consequently HANNS EISLER remained in California. There, MASSING related, HANNS EISLER associated principally wth BERTHOLD BRECHT, CLIFFORD ODETS, CHARLES XCHAPLIN and others of the German left-wing colony. i, MASSING also remembered that HANNS EISLER had formerly had a job teaching at the New School of Social Research in 1940 or 1941. In addition, he got a Rockefeller grant to write music for the motion picture. Sometime around COMFIDENTIAL