Bertha Dehn

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Bertha Meta Dehn (born November 23, 1881 in Hamburg ; † April 17, 1953 there ) was a German violinist , music teacher and the first woman to play in the Hamburg Opera Orchestra .

Life

Bertha Dehn was the sixth of eight children of the doctor Maximilian Moses Dehn and his wife Bertha. Bertha Dehn received her violin training in Hamburg at the Bernuth Conservatory founded by Julius von Bernuth and with Henri Marteau . After the early death of her father (1897) the family ran into financial difficulties and Bertha Dehn spent a few years with an uncle in England. By 1909 at the latest she was back in Hamburg and began to work as a music teacher.

From 1915 to 1933 she was the first and only woman in the Hamburg Opera Orchestra , where she held the position of first violin . In 1932 she was demoted from the first to the second desk, and in September 1933 she was fired. It can be assumed that their Jewish origin was decisive, but this has not been proven. The opera director at the time, Albert Ruch, succeeded in converting the notice of termination into early retirement for reasons of illness, supported by expert opinions, as he did for the other Jewish employees of the house.

After 1933 Bertha Dehn lived on a small pension and a few violin students. In addition, she took part in various ensembles at events of the Jewish Cultural Association , such as the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Hamburg founded by Edvard Moritz in 1934 and the orchestra of the Jewish Cultural Association Rhein-Main in Frankfurt as well as various private concerts.

Bertha Dehn on memorial stone of the memory spiral of the women's garden

In 1941 Bertha Dehn managed to emigrate to her brother Georg in Quito , Ecuador ; her deportation to the Litzmannstadt ghetto (Lodz) was planned for October 25, 1941 by a secret decree. Her name was already on two lists for the deportation train planned on October 25, 1941 (these lists are also the reason why she is described as missing in various publications). In Cuenca she was able to earn a living by taking violin and language lessons and became a member of a string quartet . For health reasons, she lived in Porto Alegre , Brazil , for the last two years before returning to Hamburg .

After her re-immigration in 1948, Bertha Dehn rejoined Hamburg's Jewish community, from which she had left in 1924, and moved into an apartment in the Jewish old people's home at Sedanstrasse 23. Despite a severely debilitating eye condition, she resumed playing the violin and allowed her great-nephew to leave her , the violinist Thomas Brandis .

Bertha Dehn suffered greatly from the fate of her relatives, especially that of her siblings (emigration, deportation). She died in 1953, soon after the death of her favorite brother, the mathematician Max Dehn , with whom a reunion in Hamburg was planned. Bertha Dehn's urn was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery , in the women's garden she is commemorated on a memorial stone of the spiral of memory .

literature

  • Rita Bake et al. a .: The women's garden - a place of remembrance with historical gravestones from the graves of important women and a final resting place for women. Hamburg 2009, without ISBN, p. 265.
  • Ute Schomerus: Escaped the deportation. The Hamburg violinist Bertha Dehn. In: Zündende Lieder - Burned Music. Consequences of Nazi fascism for Hamburg musicians. Peter Petersen, Working Group Exile Music (Ed.), Completely revised edition, VSA, Hamburg 1995, pp. 45–65.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Authority for schools and vocational training of the city of Hamburg: Bertha Dehn

Remarks

  1. ↑ Bernuth'sches Conservatory (1863-1902) in Google Books
  2. ^ Metadata Edvard Moritz at the University of Hamburg
  3. ↑ The Jewish Altenhaus am Grindel pdf at sub.uni-hamburgs.de
  4. ↑ Sister Marie Auguste, teacher, married to Heinrich Mayer , Stolpersteine: Marie M. , Heinrich M.
  5. ↑ Agnes Holthusen gave the funeral oration
personal data
SURNAME Dehn, Bertha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dehn, Bertha Meta (full first name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German violinist
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH April 17, 1953
Place of death Hamburg