Carl Flesch was an Austro-German violinist and music teacher. He was born in 1873 in Mosonmagyaróvár, then known as Wieselburg, into a Jewish family; his father was a physician. As a child, he learned to read and write in German and Hebrew at a Jewish elementary school and studied French with a governess. He began violin lessons at the age of six.
Flesch studied at the Vienna Conservatory with Jakob Grün from 1886 to 1889, then at the Paris Conservatory with Eugène Sauzay and Martin Marsick from 1890 to 1894. He made his Vienna debut in 1895 and toured Germany. In 1897 he became a professor of violin at the Bucharest Conservatory, and in 1903 he took a similar post at the Amsterdam Conservatory.
After moving to Berlin in 1908, Flesch taught privately and performed widely. His chamber music partners included pianist Artur Schnabel and cellists Jean Gérardy and Hugo Becker. In 1923 he published The Art of Violin Playing, drawing on his teaching experience, and undertook an extensive tour of the United States. From 1924, he led the violin department at the Curtis Institute of Music for four years, while also giving summer courses in Baden-Baden. In 1928 he became a professor at the Berlin Academy of Music.
Flesch taught briefly at a conservatory in Switzerland and died in Lucerne in 1944. His students included Shimon Goldberg, Ricardo Odnoposoff, Henryk Szeryng, Ida Haendel, Ivry Gitlis, Franz R. Friedl, Eddie Rosner, and Vladimir Alumäe. A violin competition for young performers named after him was held in London from 1945 to 1992.