Helmut Winter

This article deals with the organist Helmut Winter. For the commercial artist and initiator of the “Pasinger Knödelkrieg” see Pasinger Knödelkrieg .

Helmut Winter (born March 16, 1926 in Siegen , † January 2, 1983 in Hamburg ) was a German organist and organologist .

Life

The son of a businessman attended elementary and high school in Siegen, from 1940 the Musisches Gymnasium in Frankfurt am Main and from 1943 the music college there. As early as 1937 he showed an interest in church music as a choir singer and organist representative in his hometown Siegen. In 1941 he became the permanent representative of the full-time organist at the Johanniskirche in Frankfurt. From 1942 he received further training in organ playing from Helmut Walcha . In 1944 he was accepted into the Church Music Institute, but due to the war, he finished his studies in March 1945 without a degree.

Winter had been working as a full-time organist at the Nikolaikirche in Siegen since October 1, 1943 . In the 1950s, the organs of the Nikolai Church and were Martinikirche after its scheduling by the company Emanuel Kemper & Son newly built (Lübeck). Winter was also a member of the church music committee of the Westphalian regional church, but resigned from its service on September 30, 1955 and has since been organist and organ expert without a permanent position. From 1959 he lived in Hamburg and worked, among other things, as a freelancer for the Norddeutscher Rundfunk . In addition, he also made a name for himself as an editor of works of early music. He has published cantatas by Pohle, Purcell, Keizer, Handel, Pez, Campra, Scarlatti, a Passion by Telemann, the organ fantasies by Johann Adam Reincken and the organ concerts by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach at Verlag Sikorski (Hamburg) . In 1966 Winter was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque of the Académie Charles Cros in Paris.

At the organ conference in Mainz in 1964, Winter took up the problem of too low wind pressure on historical organs and gave the impetus for a reassessment and change of the restoration practice, which was previously strongly influenced by the organ movement . Even he led in 1965 to 1967, the restoration of the organ of Altenbruch , one of the oldest and most valuable instruments in the area of Hanover church and settled in particular only a few years earlier by Paul Ott revise conducted disfiguring changes. He also played several records on the Altenbruch organ.

On May 1, 1969, Winter was initially employed on a fee basis as an organ expert for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover and was taken on as an employee with effect from April 1, 1970. While until then baroque organs were almost exclusively considered to be listed, he also ensured that organs from the 19th century were placed under protection and helped romantic organ building gain professional recognition. The restorations in Cadenberge (1970 by Rudolf Janke), Cappel (1975–1977 by Rudolf von Beckerath ), SS. Cosmae et Damiani in Stade (1972–1975 by Jürgen Ahrend ) and Lüdingworth (1981/82 ) fall under his aegis as a regional church organ expert by Jürgen Ahrend) and the Furtwängler organ in Gronau (Leine) (1978–81 by Gebr. Hillebrand ). In 1968 he formed the "International Working Group for Organ Issues" (Altenbrucher Circle), which pioneered the basics of restoration practice. He also earned merits through his meticulous research and documentation of organ building in Lower Saxony.

Records

• Nikolaus Bruhns. L'intégrale de l'oeuvre pour orgue (on the organ in Altenbruch)

Publications

• The Huss organ in Stade St. Cosmae . Hamburg 1979
• The Schnitger organ in Cappel. St. Petri and Pauli . Hamburg 1977
• The Gloger organ from 1744/45 in the Emmaus church in Neuhaus an der Oste (Land Hadeln) . o. O. 1973

literature

• Florian Hoffmann: Christhard Mahrenholz, Rudolf Utermöhlen and Helmut Winter. Organ building and organ monument maintenance as a regional church task (1928-1983) . In: Yearbook of the Society for Church History in Lower Saxony 113 (2015), pp. 314–328

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://www.arcinsys.niedersachsen.de/arcinsys/detailAction.action?detailid=b9247
2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.