Viennese composer and conductor who fled to Helsinki in 1938. His life is a research specialism of Simo Muir.

Adolf Fleishner, who used the artist name H.A. Peter (1904-1977), worked as a chorus master of the Vienna State Opera before the Anschluss. He had studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna under the guidance of Franz Schmidt and became a close friend with his teacher Hans Gál. Peter arranged a lot of choral music and composed small orchestral pieces especially for wind instruments.

After the Nazi invasion he managed to flee to Finland before the country closed its borders for further Jewish refugees. Peter settled in Helsinki and was active in the cultural life of the local Jewish community founding a Jewish amateur orchestra. Besides working as a private music teacher in Helsinki, he composed some larger orchestral pieces, including his Fantasie für Ochester. In May 1944, fearing Nazi German take over in Finland, Peter fled together with other Jewish refugees to Sweden.

Fleishner settled permanently in Borås, near Gothenburg, where he worked as a music teacher and song pedagogue. He became known especially for the children’s operas he composed to Swedish texts.