Heinrich Schneider (musician)

Heinrich Schneider (1992)

Heinrich Schneider (born on December 10, 1923 in Sălbăgelu Nou ( German  Eichenthal ), Kingdom of Romania ; died on April 26, 2000 in Stutensee-Blankenloch ) was a German musician , composer , songwriter and conductor .

biography

family

Heinrich Schneider was a member of the Banat Swabian ethnic group , a German-speaking minority in Romania. He was married since 1952 to the Eichenthalerin Susanne, née Wolf (1935–2016). This marriage resulted in two children: son Helmuth Schneider (1952–2015), himself a musician and composer, and daughter Erika (* 1954).

In Romania

After seven years of elementary school in Eichenthal, Heinrich Schneider learned the profession of carpenter and practiced it in his carpenter's workshop in Eichenthal.

Heinrich Schneider learned to play the accordion in elementary school with Geza Mayer (teacher in Eichenthal 1919–1935) and in 1937 became a member of the string orchestra for pupils and young people, founded in 1937 by Franz Grenzner (teacher in Eichenthal 1937–1941). For the string orchestra, Schneider transposed some dances and marches from the local brass band and took over the writing of the sheet music.

In 1939 he joined the Eichenthaler Blasmusikkapelle as a wind player in the Bb clarinet under the direction of Josef Altmann, who founded this band in 1926. During the Second World War, two other Eichenthal flugelhorn players were killed, one of whom he replaced in the well-established twelve-man village brass band. The momentous events of the World War - human losses through acts of war, kidnapping, imprisonment or captivity, emigration, the beginning of socialist transformations in the village - led to the completion of the activities of the Eichenthal String Orchestra.

In July 1943 Heinrich Schneider was drafted into the German army along with another twenty men from Eichenthal, where he was active in the military music formation. After being imprisoned in a camp, he returned to his home village in 1946. From February 25, 1947 to June 17, 1947, he and other Eichenthalers did forced labor in the Anina coal mine .

Heinrich Schneider then founded a small entertainment orchestra consisting of a core formation of six younger musicians who remained in the village, with whom he soon enjoyed success as a conductor and composer. His main line-up consisted of saxophone , accordion , trumpet , trombone , drums , clarinet and helicon and was in demand beyond the village borders in the whole Banat until 1960 . The repertoire consisted of waltzes, country folk, polkas, but also foxtrot and tango as well as modern dance music. On April 24, 1963 and February 13, 1964, sound recordings were made on the German radio station in Timișoara . Shortly afterwards a record appeared on which the "Eichenthaler Musikanten" could be heard with the sauerkraut polka .

Heinrich Schneider began to compose himself at a young age, but without having studied music. His most famous text and music composition, the Eichenthaler Heimatgruss waltz , soon became the anthem of all Eichenthalers. In it he describes his longing for his home village and for the old oak that gives it its name. The refrain of the five-verse song reads: "Greetings, you my home, / you beautiful Eichenthal, I greet you a thousand times / from far away, a thousand stars and the moonlight, / they should all be messengers of my greetings". Other of his compositions are: Eichenthaler Musikantenmarsch , Fern der Heimat , Schwabenmädel , Schwowebu (in Eichenthaler dialect), Heidenschwaben Musikantenmarsch and many more.

In 1967 Heinrich Schneider moved with his family to Timisoara, in the Mehala district , where he worked as a carpenter in a state-owned company. Since some of his regular musicians had emigrated to various Banat towns or abroad, working together in his brass band became increasingly difficult until it dissolved in 1970. Heinrich Schneider passed on his musical knowledge to Eichenthal children and his son Helmuth at an early age. After studying music at the Timișoara University of Music, his son continued the musical activity of the brass band master from 1969 to 1977 at the German State Theater Timişoara and later in Germany.

In Germany

Mayor Eichhorn honors Heinrich Schneider

In December 1972 Heinrich Schneider went to Stutensee near Karlsruhe , where his family also moved in 1977. Here he worked for Metz Feuerwehrtechnik Karlsruhe until his retirement in 1989 . He only devoted himself to music and especially to playing the accordion in his family or on a voluntary basis for the home community (HOG) Eichenthal, for which he played together with his son Helmuth at the home meetings that take place every two years in Asbach-Bäumenheim. At the 100th anniversary of the founding of Eichenthal in 1994, Mayor Eichhorn of the community of Asbach-Bäumenheim presented him with a certificate of honor for his many years of voluntary support for the HOG Eichenthal.

On April 26, 2000, Heinrich Schneider died of a heart attack at home. He was buried in Stutensee-Blankenloch.

Compositions (selection)

• Heimatgruss (waltz)
• Eichenthal Musicians March
• Far from home
• Swabian girl
• Schwowebu (text in Eichenthal dialect)
• Heidenschwaben musicians march

Works recorded between 1963 and 1964 are in the sound archive of the German radio station Timișoara (editor Astrid Weisz).

literature

• Anton Petri : ^Note Eichenthal. Home in the Banat. History of a small German community from Banat from its foundation to its decline . HOG Eichenthal, 1994.
• Elke Hoffmann, Peter-Dietmar Leber and Walter Wolf : The Banat and the Banat Swabians. Volume 5. Cities and Villages. Mediengruppe Universal Grafische Betriebe München GmbH, Munich 2011, 670 pages, ISBN 3-922979-63-7 .

Web links

• Video: Our home song
• Video: Our music band

Individual evidence

1. ^ Anton Petri: ^Note Eichenthal. Home in the Banat. P. 272.
2. ↑ Petri, p. 129.
3. ↑ Petri, p. 227.
4. ↑ Petri, p. 279 ff.
5. ^ Obituary for Helmuth Schneider .

Remarks

^Note Anton Petri (* 1928 in Eichenthal, Romania; † May 8, 2005 in Germany), teacher from Eichenthal; not to be confused with the Banat historian and local researcher Anton Peter Petri .