Albert Weill

Albert Weill (born January 2, 1867 in Kippenheim , † December 30, 1950 in Naharija ) was a German choir director, cantor and composer . He is the father of the composer Kurt Weill .

Life

Albert Weill's ancestors, who had lived in Kippenheim for more than 150 years, were active in the metal goods trade in the 19th century. The young Albert Weill did not follow in the professional footsteps of his father, the businessman Nathan Weill, but decided to train as a religion teacher and cantor. This career aspiration was possibly influenced by the fact that Albert Weill's eldest sister Charlotte married Saul Eichenbaum, who was then cantor of the Jewish community in Kippenheim , in 1879 .

In 1887 Albert Weill started his first job at the Jewish religious school in Ettlingen . Two years later he moved to the small Jewish community in churches . In addition to his poorly paid teaching activities, he earned extra income as a cantor. In the spring of 1893 he took up a new job in the not far away community of Eichstetten am Kaiserstuhl . The quite wealthy Jewish community of Eichstetten was able to employ a teacher and cantor. During this time Albert Weill published his own compositions for singing in the synagogue for the first time . He also directed a synagogue choir in Eichstetten, which performed at the Upper Baden synagogue singing festivals.

Synagogue chants by Albert Weill

On March 8, 1897, Weill married Emma Ackermann, who came from a rabbi family in Wiesloch . Their first son, Nathan Weill, was born in Eichstetten in 1898. Then the family moved to Dessau, where his now world-famous son Kurt was born. Albert Weill was employed as a cantor and religion teacher for a large liberal Jewish community in Dessau. In May 1920 the Weill couple moved to Leipzig , where Albert Weill took over the management of a Jewish children's home. Albert Weill retired in 1931.

Due to the persecution of the Jews , all of their children had emigrated, so that Albert and Emma Weill finally decided in September 1935 to emigrate to Palestine . There they moved to Naharija as new settlers in 1937, where their eldest son Nathan had settled as a doctor.

Works

• Synagogue chants for cantor and male choir, AJ Hofmann, Frankfurt am Main 1892

literature

• Lina-Mareike Dedert: Through time and space. The Weill-Sonder family between emancipation and restitution . be.bra verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-95410-044-6 . (not evaluated)
• Bernd Rottenecker: Albert Weill (1867–1950) - The cantor of Dessau. In: Jürgen Stude, Bernd Rottenecker, Dieter Petri: Jewish life in the Ortenau. Verlag seitenweise, Bühl 2018, ISBN 978-3-943874-25-9 , pp. 214–215.

Web links

• Biography with photo at the University of Hamburg (accessed June 30, 2014)