Herbert Hildebrandt

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Herbert Hildebrandt (born July 14, 1935 in Adlig Kessel / East Prussia ; † December 24, 2019 ) was a German church musician .

origin

Hildebrandt comes from an East Prussian pastor's family; his father Helmut Hildebrandt worked from 1932 to 1939 as a pastor at the Adlig Kessel church near Johannisburgs. He spent his childhood in Königsberg , where his father worked at the Ponarther Church from 1939 . The escape from 1945 led via Sopot , Demmin to Rügen and finally in 1950 to East Berlin , to the interface of the Cold War in Bernauer Strasse , where from 1961 the father was pastor at the Church of Reconciliation, which was blown up by the GDR border troops in 1985 .

education and profession

Hildebrandt studied church music in Halle (Saale) from 1953 to 1958 . After successfully completing his degree, he came to the Church of Reconciliation as a cantor and, in addition to traditional oratorios and cantatas, devoted himself to cultivating a cappella music for worship services. The construction of the wall in 1961 made the church in the restricted area inaccessible. It was similar in the Berlin Cathedral because the choir singers, who mostly live in West Berlin, could not use the destroyed church. Hildebrandt had the saving idea and formed the new Berliner Domkantorei as early as 1961 from the singers of the reconciliation community living in East Berlin and other choir members who had become “homeless” through the division . Together with his brother Jörg and his wife Regine Hildebrandt , who also grew up on Bernauer Strasse and who later made a name for herself as Brandenburg's Minister of Social Affairs and “Mother Courage of the East”. Herbert Hildebrandt was then working as a cantor at St. Bartholomew's Church. Rehearsals and singing took place in other churches such as B. the Marienkirche . Bach cantatas were regularly performed . In 1974 he was appointed church music director. From 1983 he then acted full-time as head of the cathedral choir. For the cathedral choir, he composed choral pieces himself, arranged Christmas carols, edited works by old masters and took care of the cathedral's music library, which comprises 10,000 works. In 2011 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for his achievements . Herbert Hildebrandt died on Christmas Eve 2019 at the age of 84.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anniversaries 2017 in the Church Musicians Association: 82 years: July 14, 1935 KMD Herbert Hildebrandt
  2. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel of December 27, 2019: On the death of Herbert Hildebrandt , accessed on December 29, 2019
  3. ↑ Hans Huchzermeyer , contributions to the life and work of the church musician Ernst Maschke (1867-1940) and the history of the church music institutes in Königsberg / Prussia (1824-1945) , Paderborn: Univ.-Diss., 2012, p. 101.
  4. ↑ Proof of the Federal Cross of Merit , accessed on December 29, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Hildebrandt, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German church musician
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Noble Kessel , East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH December 24, 2019