Today, Sunday October 29, 2023, the city of Antwerp unveiled the restored grave monument of the Austrian composer and conductor Arthur Löwenstein and his second wife Romana Bäckmann at the Sint-Rochus cemetery in Deurne. Löwenstein (1890-1939) was a student of Gustav Mahler and founder of the first Flemish Philharmonic. Löwenstein lived and worked for a time in Deurne, where he also died.  The event was graced with speeches by Marc Weyns (director of Buurtwerk 't Pleintje) and Jan Dewilde (coordinator of the Study Center for Flemish Music). This was followed by a song recital in the St. Rochus Church by mezzo-soprano Inez Carsauw and pianist Peter Oerlemans with music by Arthur Löwenstein and Gustav Mahler.

The Vienna-born student of Mahler enjoyed early success. He worked in Kaiserslautern, Saarbrücken, Moravia-Ostrava and settled in Berlin in the early 1920s. Löwenstein was a Jewish man and during the interwar period it became more difficult for him to survive in Austria and Germany due to increasing anti-Semitism and Nazism.  In 1936, Löwenstein therefore moved to Belgium in self-declared exile and initially led the Sinfonia da Camera orchestra in Antwerp. In 1938 he founded the Flemish Philharmonic. After the official divorce from his first wife, Löwenstein married the pianist Romana Bäckmann on June 21, 1939 in Deurne. He dies barely 14 days after the wedding.