Herbert Haag (organist)

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Herbert Haag's grave in the cemetery in Heidelberg-Handschuhsheim

Herbert Haag (born December 3, 1908 in Mannheim , † June 13, 1977 in Heidelberg ) was a German organist and church musician .

Life

Haag studied church music and organ a. a. with Karl Straube in Leipzig . In 1936 he received his doctorate in musicology with Heinrich Besseler at the University of Heidelberg on the organ work of the French composer César Franck . From 1931 to around 1942 he was a lecturer for organ at the Evangelical Church Music Institute in Heidelberg . He joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933. In 1943 he founded the “Organ Working Group Baden-Alsace” and was the head of the Reichsmusikkammer (local music association in Heidelberg). From 1943 he headed the municipal music school for youth and people in Freiburg im Breisgau , where, in the middle of the war, he implemented the expansion of the Welte organ in the Augustinian museum, which the music school used as a practice instrument. He was badly wounded towards the end of the war. His denazification proved lengthy and lasted until 1948. 1953 returned it to Heidelberg and took over the leadership of the Church Music Institute from 1956 to 1973. He was also a regional church music director and several years president of the Conference of Directors of regional church schools. Haag campaigned for a new building for the Heidelberg Institute (1971). He was very much appreciated as an organist and teacher.

In the Third Reich, Haag not only emerged as a musician, but also as a church music “chief ideologist” in the service of the National Socialist state power. He instrumentalized the organ for the "new tasks and demands" of the Nazi idea, played church services in SA uniform and traveled all over Germany with propaganda lectures: The organist, he announced, must not only be a church musician, " fanatics in the best sense of the word To be an organ because the organ is the denouncer in the National Socialist celebration, not just an instrument ”. In January 1943 he published the Upper Rhine Organ Book . In the foreword, Haag explained the importance of the organ in the celebration. The Upper Rhine Organ Book contains works by composers who were either born in the Upper Rhine region (left and right of the river) or who were mainly active at the time of publication and thus represents a landscape and generational cross-section of the work of contemporary Upper Rhine masters (HH in the foreword) After the end of the war, the Upper Rhine organ book with numerous blackened and therefore illegible passages was sold on for some time.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Dangel: History of the church organ from Welte & Sons in the Augustinian Museum . In: 100 years of Welte-Mignon . Pp. 150-153. Freiburg, 2005.
  2. ↑ Michael Gerhard Kaufmann: Organ and National Socialism. The appropriation of the instrument in the “Third Reich” ; Kleinblittersdorf 1997.
  3. ↑ Haag, in “Music in Youth and People” 1938, p. 432 ff.
  4. ↑ Upper Rhine organ book . Works by contemporary masters edited by Herbert Haag. Willy Müller, Süddeutscher Musikverlag, Heidelberg, 1943.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hague, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German organist and church musician
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1977
Place of death Heidelberg