Erwin Johannes Bach

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Erwin Johannes Bach (born October 13, 1897 in Hildesheim ; † August 9, 1961 in Berlin ) was a German musicologist, composer and writer .

Life

Bach grew up in Hildesheim and was confronted as a soldier with the horrors of the First World War . From 1921 to 1926 he studied musicology and philosophy in Berlin . From 1926 he worked as a concert pianist , music teacher and writer. Joined the KPD in the mid-twenties , he participated in the anti-fascist resistance after Hitler came to power . At this point in time he had already published his most important work, "The Perfect Piano Technique", which had a lasting effect in specialist circles. The production of a film with teaching examples and slow-motion recordings was stopped by the National Socialists in 1933.

Threatened by arrest because of illegal work, but also because of his Jewish origin, he emigrated with his wife to Prague in 1933 and to Moscow in 1934 . In 1935 he was appointed professor of musicology. Bach taught at conservatories in Moscow, Sverdlovsk and Odessa, among others . In the course of the Stalinist "purges" in 1937, he and his family (meanwhile a son had been born) were banished to Tomsk in Siberia , where he was able to continue teaching for a while. After a letter to Stalin he was banished again, this time to Michurinsk . As a result of a first wave of rehabilitation, it was possible to return to Moscow in 1941.

During the Second World War, the family of five remained temporarily separated. After the advance of German troops on Moscow, Bach was evacuated to Leningrad with his wife and a daughter born in 1941 , where they fell into the siege of the city known as the " Leningrad Blockade " and only barely survived it. The two sons had to be temporarily taken to a children's home near Yaroslavl . The renewed evacuation with the now reunited family developed into a dramatic odyssey via Gorky , Molotov , Rusajewka , Ufa to Tashkent in Uzbekistan . There he received a professorship for piano at the State Conservatory.

In 1947 the family returned to Germany, where Bach took over the management of the International Music Library in Berlin, taught master students from home and abroad how to play the piano and translated poems and humorous prose from Russian. His daughter Aljonna Möckel became a well-known translator from Russian in the GDR .

Bach created four symphonies, two of which had to be left behind in Germany and are lost. A third was lost during the Leningrad blockade. The fourth, symphonic fresco , with the subtitle Call to Humanity , was created in 1956 and was only premiered on November 13, 2016 in the Theater für Niedersachsen (TfN) in Hildesheim.

Works

  • The perfect piano technique. Wölbing-Verlag, Berlin 1929. (2nd expanded edition. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1960. Translated into Russian, Serbian and English.)
  • The hare herdsman. A German fairy tale retold in verse. Alfred Holz Verlag, Berlin 1951. (with wood engravings by Willi Probst).
  • The miracle of Leningrad. Published from the estate, supplemented and edited by Aljonna Möckel and Klaus Möckel . EDITION digital, Pinnow 2017, ISBN 978-3-95655-853-5 .

Translations

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 2nd symphony concert symphonic “stumbling blocks” ( memento from March 24, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) on November 13, 2016 on the TfN website, accessed on November 14, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Bach, Erwin Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musicologist, composer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Hildesheim
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1961
Place of death Berlin