Heinz Alisch

Heinz Alisch (born May 14, 1917 in Spandau ; † June 20, 1993 in Berlin ) was a German composer.

Life

Heinz Alisch was born the son of a furniture dealer. He first went to a private school and then switched to the Kant high school . Later he switched to the Reformrealgymnasium in Hennigsdorf (Osthavelland). Between 1931 and 1933 he received piano lessons from the pianist Agnes Mosler-Sturm. In 1933 he attended a commercial private school and from April 1934 learned clarinet at the orchestral school of the state university in Berlin. The problem for the rest of his life was that he was considered a “ half-Jew ” due to his mother's Jewish origins . He could only be accepted into the orchestra school because his father had been a "front-line fighter". He graduated in 1937 and now played the clarinet and saxophone . It has already been mentioned in anti-Semitic publications Lexicon of Jews in Music and Judaism and Music . He had already been excluded from the Reich Music Chamber in 1935 as a “half-Jew” . After a short time in the Wehrmacht, he was released in 1940 as “unworthy of defense” and used for forced labor . Another application for admission to the Reichsmusikkammer was rejected in 1941.

While he was doing odd jobs in Berlin, he majored in saxophone at the State University of Music. Only occasionally was he able to work illegally as a musician because of the professional ban. In 1944 and 1945 he again had to do forced labor for the Todt organization . After the war he performed with Kurt Hohenberger , the Kurt Widmann Orchestra and the RIAS Dance Orchestra under Werner Müller . From 1948 he wrote arrangements for the orchestra and also conducted. From 1950 he accompanied many pop singers with his orchestra, including Willy Schneider in his evergreen If the water in the Rhine were golden wine (February 1950). He decided to become a freelance artist in 1960 and has now composed film scores and songs that have become famous hits, such as Red Coral and A Rose from Santa Monica . With his orchestra he accompanied artists such as Peter Alexander , Esther Ofarim and Robert Stolz . In 1972, after the death of his wife, he gave up the music profession. He died in his Berlin apartment and was buried anonymously in the Berlin-Zehlendorf municipal cemetery .

Web links

• Heinz Alisch in the Lexicon of Persecuted Musicians from the Nazi Era (LexM)
• Works by and about Heinz Alisch in the catalog of the German National Library