Eva Hauptmann

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Eva Hauptmann , maiden name Eva Bernstein , (born November 9, 1894 in Munich , † September 23, 1986 in Würzburg ) was a German violinist and university teacher .

Live and act

Hauptmann, nee Bernstein, was born in Munich as the daughter of the writer, actress and librettist Elsa Bernstein (1866-1949, née Porges) and the lawyer, theater critic and author Max Bernstein (1854-1925). Her parents ran a Sunday salon here, which was attended by numerous well-known artist personalities. These included the writers Thomas Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke and the musicians Hermann Levi and Richard Strauss . The family had a close relationship to Bayreuth , since Heinrich Porges, her maternal grandfather, had acted as music director for the distribution of Richard Wagner's works .

Eva Bernstein was taught and educated by a private teacher, the high school teacher Hans Mertel, and did not attend a public school. Her lessons also included musical training with piano and violin lessons. Between the ages of 10 and 16, she was instructed by Heinrich Kaspar Schmid from the Munich Academy of Music, among others . She began to write poetry at a young age and was also gifted with drawing.

Her mother retired from professional life as a librettist in 1910 to devote herself to raising her talented daughter. Both moved to Vienna, where Eva began studying the violin with Otakar Ševčík at the Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna . She received theoretical instruction from Richard Stöhr and instruction in chamber music from Arnold Rosé . Together with her mother, she moved to Paris in 1912 to continue her training with Jules Boucherit (violin) and Nadia Boulanger (music theory). In 1915 she received further lessons from Carl Flesch in Berlin , whose études she later used for her own violin lessons.

She performed in public for the first time at the age of 14. She went on concert tours to Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Belgium, where she performed with well-known conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler , Arthur Nikisch and Felix Weingartner . Together with Bruno Walter , she performed at a chamber music evening at the Odeon in Munich in 1917 .

In 1918 she met Klaus Hauptmann (1889–1967), the son of Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946), in Bayreuth , whom she married in 1919. Their son Michael was born the following year and their daughter Barbara in 1922. From then on they lived as a family in the Allgäu. Eva Hauptmann no longer performed in concerts, but made music in a church setting or in a circle of friends, accompanying herself on the piano with self-written couplets . They moved to Hamburg when their husband started working in Hamburg . A year later she herself began teaching at the Vogt Conservatory . In December 1927 she passed the state examination as a violin teacher and founded a chamber orchestra, which she directed from the harpsichord or piano. In 1929 she appeared at the folk concerts of the Philharmonic Orchestra in Hamburg with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's violin concerto and gave concerts with the pianist Konrad Hansen and the pianist Vera Cassirer .

Occupational restrictions in the "Third Reich"

Since Eva Hauptmann came from an assimilated Jewish family, it was of little use to her that she was baptized Protestants. Despite advocacy and numerous contacts such as Winifred Wagner or Heinrich Kaspar Schmid, who in a letter dated September 8, 1935 to Peter Raabe , the President of the Reichsmusikkammer, had pointed out her "German sentiments", she was confirmed on August 22, 1935 (after § 10 of the "First Implementation Ordinance of the Reich Chamber of Culture Act" due to their Jewish origin) excluded from the Reich Chamber of Music. As a result, her position at the Vogt Conservatory was terminated without notice on September 4, 1935. She was also banned from training her private students. These included the future rabbi Zev Gotthold , who emigrated in 1936.

Because of this professional ban, she withdrew into private life. At house concerts she often gave concerts with the Hamburg composer and pianist Ilse Fromm-Michaels and made music for family and friends, playing works by Frédéric Chopin as a pianist or songs by Franz Schubert , where she accompanied herself. The time now freed up she filled by studying Greek or brushing up on her English.

Her brother Hans Heinrich Bernstein (1898–1980) had emigrated to the United States in 1933, but the Hauptmann family did not want to leave Germany and stayed in Hamburg. As Gerhart Hauptmann's daughter-in-law, she was largely unmolested, while her mother was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on June 25, 1942 . Towards the end of the war, Eva Hauptmann had to do forced labor at the tailor Max Scheelke, where from April 1944 she sewed Wehrmacht uniforms, costumes and coats under poor working conditions.

Post-war period and teaching

The captains stayed in Hamburg during the war years. After the Second World War ended, her mother Elsa Bernstein, who had survived the ghetto, also returned there. Eva Hauptmann gave lessons at the School for Music and Theater , the successor organization to the Vogt Conservatory. When this institution was converted into a state music college in 1950, she initially taught the training class and was then appointed professor in 1955 . Numerous well-known musicians received lessons from her, such as Thomas Brandis , Christoph Eschenbach , Justus Frantz , Bernhard Gmelin and Andreas Röhn . A request for redress made by her in the 1950s was granted. In 1970, Hauptmann retired from college at the age of 76.

Honor

On the 100th birthday of Eva Hauptmann in 1994, the Hamburg University of Music and Theater, in cooperation with the North German Radio, dedicated a memorial concert to its former violin professor.

literature

  • Marie Elisabeth Ranft: Eva Hauptmann. in: Working group “Exile Music” at the Musicological Institute of the University of Hamburg (ed.): Life paths of female musicians in the “Third Reich” and in exile. (= Series: Music in the “Third Reich” and in Exile. 8.) Von Bockel, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-932696-37-9 , pp. 127–141.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Among other things, she wrote the libretto for Engelbert Humperdinck's opera Die Königskinder .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Eva Hauptmann on lexm.uni-hamburg.de (biography)
  3. ^ Claudia Friedel: Women composing in the Third Reich. Attempt to reconstruct the reality of life and the prevailing image of women. in: Ilse Modelmog (Hrsg.): Women's research interdisciplinary. Historical approaches to biography and lifeworld. 2. (= Dissertation University of Oldenburg 1992, OCLC 722364233 ). Lit Verlag, Münster around 1995, ISBN 3-8258-2376-8 , p. 396f.
  4. ↑ Bernstein, Elsa . on dasjuedischehamburg.de
  5. ↑ Andreas Röhn 1st concert master of the symphony orchestra of the Bavarian radio and professor at the State University of Music in Hamburg on orchesterzentrum.de
personal data
SURNAME Captain, Eva
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bernstein, Eva (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German violinist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1986
Place of death Wurzburg