Ferdinand Jäger (singer, 1874)

Ferdinand Jäger (born January 19, 1871 in Dresden ; † January 12, 1954 in Goisern ) was a German singer ( baritone ).

Life

Born as the son of the singer Ferdinand Jäger and the singer Aurelie Wilczek , Jäger later attended high school in Vienna . He studied mechanical engineering for two semesters, followed by four semesters of medicine, but decided to give up his studies altogether and turn to the stage career. During his studies in 1890 he became a member of the Olympia fraternity . In 1893 he carried out a pistol duel with the writer Hermann Bahr in Neudörfel .

After he had received the appropriate vocal training from his father and sang rehearsal in front of the general music director Felix Mottl , he was engaged by him at the court theater in Karlsruhe in autumn 1897. He gave guest performances in 1900 at the Vienna Court Opera and at the Wiesbaden Court Theater and in 1901 at the Mannheim Court Theater. He then worked as a concert singer, mainly in Vienna until 1909. He then moved to the United States, where he was professor of singing in New York and Boston. Before 1914 he went back to Europe and fought in the First World War as a lieutenant and later as a company commander in the Bavarian Landsturm Battalion Landshut, with whom he was in the Vosges, among other places.

After the First World War he worked as a concert and opera singer in Munich. In 1921 he moved to Vienna, where he looked after his sick mother. He became secretary in the Vienna Konzerthaus and was committed to the Theodor Streicher community. In connection with a depression he lost his job in 1942 and lived on a small pension. He received support from his friends. He later moved to Hallstatt and then to Goisern, where he lived in seclusion and finally died.

His sister was the actress Elsa Jäger .

Honors

• Iron Cross 2nd class
• Bavarian Order of Military Merit 4th class with swords

literature

• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume II: Artists. Winter, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8253-6813-5 , p. 363.
• Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Published by Paul List , Leipzig 1903, p. 469