Hans Walter David

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hans Walter David (born March 26, 1893 in Munich-Gladbach ; † 1942 in the Majdanek concentration camp ) was a German composer . David was persecuted as a Jewish communist in National Socialist Germany, first emigrated to the Soviet Union , but was extradited to Germany in 1940 as a victim of Stalinist purges and murdered in the Majdanek concentration camp.

Life

David, son of a judiciary , worked as a freelance composer while studying law and music in Munich before the First World War . In 1914 he volunteered, fought as an artilleryman until the end of the war in 1918 and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class. In 1918 he suffered severe frostbite in Masuria . In 1919 David became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and began studying music at the State University of Music in Berlin . David was very involved in the communist student movement during this time.

In 1924 David was employed by the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf as Kapellmeister , where he worked until the Nazis came to power in 1933. In 1933, as a Jew, he was forbidden to continue working and he emigrated first to France and then to Italy . In 1935 David traveled with his wife Lina, née Nathan, to the Soviet Union at the invitation of the Soviet Composers' Union and settled there. In May 1936 David received a contract from the Committee for Art Affairs as state music inspector of the Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans , general music director and artistic director of the German State Choir in the city of Engels .

On November 5, 1937, David was arrested and severely tortured by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) in the course of the so-called " German Operation " . His wife was expelled and went to Belgium . According to some sources, David's arrest was due to one of his compositions, which was dedicated to Stalin as a birthday greeting, but was composed in the ostracized twelve-tone music . David was sentenced to five years in a labor camp for alleged espionage for Germany , but extradited to Germany in 1940. This was done in execution of the provisions of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 23, 1939, which provided, among other things, that the Soviet Union extradite around 4,000 Germans who had fled to the USSR - among them 1,000 Communists - to Germany.

Released from Soviet custody, David was immediately sent to the Lublin ghetto in German-occupied Poland as a Jew , where he was forced to perform various functions in the Jewish Council . In 1942 David was arrested by the Gestapo and interned in the Majdanek concentration camp, where he was murdered in the gas chamber that same year .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard J. Evans: The Third Reich. Volume 2 / I-II: Dictatorship . DVA, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-421-05653-6 . P. 840.
personal data
SURNAME David, Hans Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich-Gladbach
DATE OF DEATH 1942
Place of death Majdanek concentration camp