Gustav Kneip (composer)

Gustav Kneip (born April 3, 1905 in Beningen , † October 24, 1992 in Hamburg ) was a German composer , conductor and program designer for radio . The "Swallow Song" which he composed is known to this day .

Family and education

His grandfather of German descent was a civil servant and married to a French woman. His family was already in the second generation (since the war of 1870/71 ) in what was then the German " Reichsland Alsace-Lothringen ", which is near the border to what is now Saarland . Kneip's father was the postal administrator of his birthplace. The family lived in Saargemünd from 1911 to 1919 . Gustav's musical talent showed up at an early age; at the age of nine he worked as a temporary pianist in a local cinema. After Germany lost the First World War , the Kneips were expelled from Lorraine , which was now part of France again , and moved to Cologne . Gustav began studying music there in 1922 at the State University of Music , where he was a student of Hermann Unger . At the beginning of 1937 Kneip went to Saarbrücken , in 1943 he married the concert singer Maria Corbé († 2005) from Oberbexbach . In late summer both came to Prague via Berlin in 1943 and back to the French-occupied Saar area in 1945 . From 1951 the couple lived in Hamburg, where Kneip died at the age of 87.

Professional development

In 1924 he became Kapellmeister and conductor at the Theater Bonn , in 1927 he started as a composer and freelance worker at the newly founded Westdeutsche Rundfunk AG (WERAG) . The success of his radio Christmas opera "Christkinds Erdenreise" , which he staged ready for broadcast in record time, helped him to get a permanent position on July 1, 1930 as sound engineer under the artistic director Ernst Hardt . Three years later, after the National Socialists came to power , Kneip was advised to join the NSDAP - common and almost no alternative for permanent cultural workers in the Reichsrundfunk , which was switched to the same status . Among the new rulers, Heinrich Glasmeier was the artistic director, Kneip's superior department head for the music department was Adolf Raskin , both of whom were national socialists loyal to the line. Gustav Kneip himself became head of the entertainment department in 1934 at what was now called the "Reichssender Köln" facility.

"Happy Saturday afternoon"

Kneip played a key role in the development of the broadcast format The Merry Saturday Afternoon, one of the most popular radio broadcasts with skits and musical performances, which had almost 150 episodes between 1934 and 1939. From episode five, six other German channels were already connected, from the eighth episode all - except for Munich . Finally , after a listener petition in Bavaria, Joseph Goebbels himself ordered the high- rated format to be produced as a “Reichssendung” in the future.

Battle for the Saar

In Adolf Raskin, Kneip found a sponsor at WERAG early on, who also motivated him to set up his own folk music department . When Raskin took over the management of the “ West German Community Service ” in Frankfurt in 1934 , his work took on a new political dimension. The aim was to win a majority for the connection of the Saarland to Germany by the Saar referendum in 1935 . To this end, Kneip compiled German-language folk songs from the border region between Lorraine and Alsace (including from the collection of the song collector Louis Pinck ), which were intended to emphasize the German national character of the region in propaganda ring broadcasts by the Reich broadcasters Cologne - Frankfurt - Stuttgart and thus specifically target Saarland listeners. After the Saarlanders had decided in favor of Germany with a majority of over 90% on January 13, 1935, Raskin was commissioned to set up the Saarbrücken Reichsender and on December 4 of the same year its first director . Kneip, plagued by constant quarrels with his Cologne director Glasmeier at WERAG, did not hesitate and followed his mentor's call to Saarbrücken as the new head of entertainment.

“Sperling's colorful stage” and the Saarbrücken radio symphony

Kneip's experience at WERAG was already bearing fruit one year after moving to Saarbrücken. With “Sperling's colorful stage” he established a no less popular variant based on the leitmotifs of “Happy Saturday Afternoon”, with a suitable regional focus, but limited by the rather modest possibilities of the smaller and still very young broadcaster. The focus was therefore soon on replacing the small chamber and dance orchestra with a full-fledged radio symphony , as he knew it from the big institutions. The new orchestra made its debut on September 9, 1937 under the direction of Kapellmeister Albert Jung in the Saarbrücken “Wartburg” , a requisitioned hall of the parish hall of the Protestant parish Saarbrücken-Sankt-Johann . Traditional demarcations between “(serious) art” and “(light) entertainment” disappeared, this orchestra had to and could offer both.

Lehár in the Saarbrücken "Wartburg"

The possibilities of the large orchestra opened up completely new horizons for Kneip, who has been head of the newly created "Art and Entertainment Department" since 1938. He managed to win well-known composers such as Eduard Künneke and Nico Dostal as conductors for concerts in Saarbrücken. The climax began shortly before the war began, resulting from the recent era of Viennese operetta prominent Franz Lehár . “Lehár conducts Lehár” was sold out in Saarbrücken within three days. 144 international stations were connected to the radio concert, which was broadcast live on June 28, 1939 and was popular in six languages ​​- it was a “ Kraft durch Freude ” event. Marcel Wittrisch and Margarethe Pfahl appeared as soloists .

Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft Berlin and Prague

The circumstances of the ongoing war made the programming more and more difficult. Kneip left Saarbrücken in 1943 after a dispute with his administrative director. He was ordered to the Berlin headquarters at his own request. Since 1940 he has been responsible for the musical coordination of all Reich broadcasters and the military broadcasts there. In the summer of 1943 he was given a new position in Karolinenthal near Prague to set up an entertainment department at the “Reichssender Böhmen” and experienced the end of the war there with his wife, followed by his escape back to the Saar area.

Post-war years

After the war, Kneip first founded a private music school in Saarbrücken, where he himself worked as a piano teacher and his wife as a singing teacher. However, Kneip was unable to secure a permanent position in a managerial position with the successors of the broadcasters of the broken Reichsrundfunk. It was considered to be not unencumbered and therefore failed in Saarbrücken, Cologne and finally Hamburg. It was not so much his behavior, which he classified in his own retrospect as predominantly “apolitical”, but rather the popularity of the broadcast formats that he shaped, which would not have made him the main actor, but a pioneer of the National Socialist movement, as an obstacle. Even former employees and companions are said to have intervened against his attitude. This became particularly explosive in the semi-autonomous Saarland , where Kneip was assumed to have hostile tendencies against the " status quo " propagated by the Hoffmann government due to his stance in the Saarland vote in 1935 , everything pro-German was suppressed and Kneip was even banned from working in Saarland in 1950 . From then on, his work was no longer played on “Radio Saarbrücken”.

With no means of earning an income in the Saarland, the couple moved to Hamburg in 1951. There Kneip focused on composition and folk songs. During this time, an impressive number of pieces of music for radio drama and film, including Schlager, as well as demanding choral, chamber music and opera, which he served as a freelancer in the newly structured media landscape in the Federal Republic of Germany .

Only after the Saar plebiscite in 1955 it was again possible Kneip 1956, now public ARD -Anstalt "Saarland Radio (SR)" in by Josef Reichert groundwork as possible led unit "choral and folk music, home and church radio" again.

DKV and IDK

In 1968, Kneip took over the post of 1st chairman of the Hamburg section in the German Composers' Association (DKV) . In 1977 he left the dispute, in the same year he was a founding member of the Association of German Composers (IDK) and its chairman until his death in 1992. At the beginning of 1994, the DKV and the IDK reunited with the German Composers Association , the since 2000 called the German Composers' Association again .

Works

His compositions for various radio dramas in Germany between 1927 and 1951 were famous. He also wrote the music for four films: "Das Hermännchen" - No, no, what there is nich 'everything (1936), "Insel ohne Moral" (1950), “I'm waiting for you” (1952), and “The lucky charm” (1957). But less harmless titles also contributed to his popularity, such as the work created in the spirit of the Saar vote: "German is the country, the people on the Saar" - Battle for the Saar (1934, text: Johannes Kirschweng ) and his "Fliegerlied" - The engines thunder their iron song into the world ... (1941, text: Arnold Wiesmann). The greatest commercial success, however, was achieved with his "Swallow Song" - Mutterl, a nest is built under the roof ... (1936, text: Theo Rausch), which, as interpreted by Willy Schneider, was sold 300,000 times in the first year and many in the following years until the present time gecovert was (u. a. of Heintje , Heino , Cc Catch , Stefanie Hertel ).

Awards

• Appointed honorary citizen of his birthplace Béning-lès-Saint-Avold, May 31, 1983
• Louis Pinck Prize of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation FVS , 1991

Literature and Sources

• Karl-Heinz Schmieding : "The happy Saturday afternoon" and "Sperling's colorful stage" - Gustav Kneip's radio career from Cologne to Saarbrücken in: Der SR , Wir Über Uns , online (last accessed on November 22, 2017)
• Autobiographical : "Gustav Kneip - A pioneer of the sounding waves" , Maria Kneip-Corbé (Ed.), Hamburg 1995
• Heribert Schwan : The radio as an instrument of politics in Saarland 1945–1955 ; Publishing house Volker Spiess; Berlin, 1974; ISBN 3-920889-21-5
• Hans Bünte et al. , Axel Buchholz and Fritz Raff (eds.): History and stories of the station on the Saar - 50 years of Saarländischer Rundfunk ; Verlag Herder GmbH; Freiburg / Breisgau, 2007; ISBN 978-3-451-29818-9
• Zimmermann, Hudemann, Kuderna (eds.): Medienlandschaft Saar ; 3 vol .; Verlag R. Oldenbourg, Munich 2010; ISBN 978-3-486-59170-5
• Hans Jürgen Koch , Hermann Glaser : Ganz Ohr: A cultural history of radio in Germany , Cologne 2005

Web links

• Gustav Kneip in the Internet Movie Database (English)