“‘Please tell my friends in Philadelphia that I am not a sick man,’ and greeted the newspaperman effusively. ‘All this talk about my mental condition is absurd. I needed a rest, that was all, and the directors very kindly allowed me to come to the seashore. I will be all right in a few days, won’t I, doctor?’ “The concluding sentence was directed to Doctor Goodman in a tone of pitiful appeal. Dr. Goodman nodded good-naturedly, as he does to all the proposals and plans that the sick musician unfolds in his illusions, when he talks about purchasing several beach play-houses for great music festivals.” After conducting a last concert in Reading, Scheel was taken to a sanitarium where he died of paresis on March 13th, 1907. One of his last hallucinations was to write letters to prominent musicians in Europe, offering them large sums to come to Philadelphia and teach in a conservatory that he was about to found. During his stay at the sanitarium he organized the nurses and orderlies into a chorus and made them sing part songs, grouped about his bed. This was a unique occurrence in the conduct of sanitariums, and he was soon much beloved by the attendants, whose tears at his funeral bore witness to their feeling for him. “Fritz Scheel, Fighter,” would have been a good name for the first leader of the Philadelphia Orchestra. His death was generally attributed to overwork, but modern psychologists insist that no man ever came to his death by work. It was the strain of conquering, handicapped by the financial condition of the Association, that killed Scheel—conquering first his musicians, then the musical public, then the opposition to a Philadelphia Orchestra, and last the general apathy, most difficult foe of all to subdue. If he had not been a fighter, the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Philadelphia Orchestra would still be several years ahead. _Philadelphia Inquirer_, March 14, 1907: “SCHEEL, MARTYR TO ORCHESTRA HE CREATED, IS DEAD. CONDUCTOR KNOWN THROUGHOUT THIS COUNTRY AND EUROPE SUCCUMBS TO PNEUMONIA “Fritz Scheel, conductor and creator of the Philadelphia Orchestra, who during the seven years which he headed that organization won the affection of local music lovers as no other musician ever gained it, died shortly before one o’clock yesterday afternoon in Dr. Francis X. Dercum’s sanatorium, at 1929 Wallace Street. Double pneumonia was the direct cause of his death. “There is little doubt that the real cause of the sudden end of the brilliant career of Mr. Scheel was his devotion to the orchestra, of which he was the conductor, for had it not been for the nervous and physical breakdown of a month ago, brought on by overwork, his ordinarily sturdy constitution in all probability would have shaken off the pneumonia which conquered him in his weakened condition.