Hanns Ander-Donath

Hanns Ander-Donath (born May 4, 1898 in Burxdorf , † October 27, 1964 in Ronneburg ) was the last organist of the Frauenkirche in Dresden, which was destroyed in World War II .

education

He was born as the son of the inn owner Reinhold Ander and his wife Auguste. After the early death of the father, the mother married Arthur Donath and the family moved to Chemnitz. Ander-Donath learned to play the piano at an early age and performed for the first time in public at the age of four. From 1913 to 1916 he studied in Leipzig at the " Royal Conservatory of the University of Music ". In 1923 he took up a position as cantor and organist at St. Pauli Church in Dresden.

Time in Dresden

He was also carried away by the boom in audio technology at the time. In 1923 he developed his own transmission system and acquired a transmission license (at least in the single-digit transmission number range). His one-hour programs were broadcast daily on the first public test broadcaster, Nauen. Around 1930 he began to design and improve his own device for recording on shellac records . Of the recordings made with it, several remained intact from the bombing raid on Dresden, which means that recordings of the bells of the women's and court churches, but also the Silbermann organ of the Sophienkirche survived.

In 1932 his mother in need of care died. In the same year he married u. a. Marianne Charlotte Weck, the housekeeper who takes care of them.

He cultivated a close friendship with Rudolf Mauersberger , who was Kreuzkantor at the time in Dresden; in Kreuzchor Vespers he worked as a harpsichordist and organist.

From around 1933 he worked as a lecturer at the Dresden Conservatory in addition to his obligations . In 1936, Ander-Donath was appointed organist at the Frauenkirche Dresden and organized a large number of concerts as well as the weekly organ vespers, at which the 3,000-person church was almost always well attended. From 1938 to 1942 his work there was interrupted because the Frauenkirche and its organ were being reconstructed. Ander-Donath played a decisive role in the planning of the organ's new layout as a three-part universal organ with 85 stops. During this time he was the organist of the Dresden Sophienkirche.

Time in Leipzig

After the destruction of the Frauenkirche, Ander-Donath moved to the Michaeliskirche in Leipzig .

In 1946 he met his future wife Elvira geb. Know Richter, with whom he later had three children. Since he was still married to his first wife Marianne at that time, a so-called breeding process was carried out by the church in 1953 and Ander-Donath was dismissed from church service. A year later, by decision of the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church Office of Saxony, he was banned from access to the organs in all of Germany, which amounted to a professional ban. Even after the death of his first wife and the successful marriage with his second wife Elvira in 1956, the church remained hard and a grace was given after intercession only in 1960. So it was only that year that he was able to take up a new position in Böhlen at the Donati organ there as cantor and also worked as a choir director in the community. In 1962 he succeeded in moving to a bigger position in Ronneburg / Thuringia, where he worked until his death in 1964 after a long and serious illness. Following his musical sense of humor, Ander-Donath improvised at the end of the service sometimes using well-known abbreviations, such as BACH, Es-ED or Es-CH-Eis-Es-Es-E.

His special knowledge in the field of organs also made him work as an organ expert. Around 1950/52 he examined the Silbermann organs in Fraureuth and Reinhardtsgrimma .

During his work, Ander-Donath was particularly connected to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach - who, incidentally, already played the Frauenkirchen organ after the organ was consecrated in 1736 - (which he always interpreted without notes), as well as that of Franz Liszt , Otto Frickhoeffer and especially Max Reger that he was able to get to know personally. His recordings on the Silbermann organ of the Dresden Frauenkirche from 1944 are of particular historical importance.

The estate of Hanns Ander-Donath is kept in the Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library.

literature

• Elvira Ander-Donath: A life for music: memories of Hanns Ander-Donath, the last organist of the Dresden Frauenkirche. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-374-01939-0 .

Web links

• Sound carriers and sheet music by Hanns Ander-Donath in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Hanns Ander-Donath in the Saxon Bibliography
• Hanns Ander-Donath's estate in the Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library