Berta Geissmar

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Berta Geissmar ( September 14, 1892 in Mannheim - November 3, 1949 in London ) was a musicologist and author. She was Wilhelm Furtwängler's private secretary and had to emigrate during the Nazi era because of her Jewish origins .

family

Berta Geissmar was the daughter of the lawyer Leopold Geissmar (* 1863; † 29 July 1918) and Anna, born Hirsch (* 1868, † 1954 in London). Her ancestors included rabbis (e.g. David Geismar ), cantors and religion teachers. Berta Geissmar was Johanna Geissmar's niece .

Life

After graduating from high school in 1910, Berta Geissmar studied philosophy as a major and psychology , art history and archeology as minor subjects at the University of Heidelberg . She completed her studies with a doctorate in 1920 . From 1921 she was employed by Wilhelm Furtwängler as a private secretary and concert manager. This successful collaboration ended in December 1934, when Furtwängler gave in to pressure from the National Socialists and separated from his long-time Jewish employee.

At the beginning of 1936, Berta Geissmar traveled to meet friends in the USA as the first stop on her emigration . There she met Sir Thomas Beecham , whom she had known professionally for a long time, and Beecham now hired her as a personal assistant from April 18, 1936. So he helped her, the Jewish woman in exile , to obtain a British passport and a work permit in England. She witnessed the German air raids on London during the Second World War and was bombed out herself.

After the war she worked to Wilhelm Furtwängler one, because the intercession of Paul Hindemith , Yehudi Menuhin , Szymon Goldberg and his long-time secretary Berta Geissmar he owed it that he in 1947 in the denazification process as part of the denazification was acquitted.

Berta Geissmar died on November 3, 1949 in London.

See also

Works

  • Relationship between art and science in Conrad Fiedler's art teaching , Frankfurt am Main 1921, OCLC 80508992 (dissertation University Frankfurt am Main 1921, 118 sheets, 2 microfiches ).
  • First published under the title The Baton and the Jackboot, Recollections of Musical Life , with plates, including a portrait, Hamilton London 1944, DNB 992387442 , OCLC 753001276 American edition under the title: Two Worlds of Music , Creative Age Press, New York, NY 1946, OCLC 604392846 .
  • Richard Wagner, The Valkyrie . Boosey and Hawkes; The Valkyrie , Bonn 1948
  • Wagner, Siegfried . Boosey and Hawkes; also in German: Siegfried , Boosey and Hawkes 1948
  • Wagner, Götterdämmerung . Boosey and Hawkes, 1948; The twilight of the gods . Boosey and Hawkes, 1949
  • Wagner, Das Rheingold , Boosey and Hawkes 1948; The Rhinegold . Boosey and Hawkes, 1949
  • Two worlds of music . Creative Age Press, 1946

Web links

literature

  • Berta Geissmar . In: Baden biographies . New episode 4/1996. Pp. 87-90
  • Jewish life in the Kraichgau. On the history of the Eppinger Jews and their families . Heimatfreunde Eppingen, Eppingen 2006, ISBN 3-930172-17-8 , p. 106-109 ( Heimatfreunde Eppingen / special series . Volume 5).
personal data
SURNAME Geissmar, Berta
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musicologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim , Grand Duchy of Baden , German Empire
DATE OF DEATH November 3, 1949
Place of death London , England , UK