Hermann Ludwig Blankenburg

Hermann Ludwig Blankenburg ( actually: Hermann Louis Blankenburg ; born November 14, 1876 in Thamsbrück ; † May 15, 1956 in Wesel ) was a German composer and is considered the German " March King" due to the more than 1200 marches he composed .

Contrary to popular belief especially in Great Britain and the USA , Blankenburg was never a military musician . After a short period of compulsory service, he had left the military music career even before his actual compositional work began.

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Born in Thamsbrück in the Prussian province of Saxony , the only son of a shepherd, developed Blankenburg already in his childhood and youth an extraordinary musical talent: He learned to play the fife and founded one he led student marching band . Although he was supposed to take over his father's farm, he was eventually allowed to pursue a musical career, and so he entered the military music service. After passing his exam, at the age of 18 he was accepted into the trumpet corps of Field Artillery Regiment No. 6 in Breslau .

However, Blankenburg left military service after a short time and moved to Kaiserslautern in 1898 , where he married that same year. Until the First World War , which Blankenburg spent in reserve units in Germany for health reasons , further moves followed, after a longer stay in Hagen (where he changed his middle name to Ludwig) he finally came to Wesel in 1918 , where he married for the second time . After he got his money v. a. as a bass tuba and double bass player , his fame as a composer skyrocketed in the 20s and 30s, and he became one of the most famous composers for marching music in all of Europe. He was on friendly terms with the famous Berlin composer Paul Lincke , to whom he dedicated several works. This time is also the high point of his creative period, even though his most famous works were created in the period before the First World War.

After the Second World War , Blankenburg largely withdrew from his compositional work; apart from a few honorary memberships in music associations and guest appearances as a conductor , he hardly appeared in public anymore. In 1956 he died a few months before his 80th birthday and was buried in Wesel, his adopted home.

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Today only a comparatively small part of Hermann Ludwig Blankenburg's extensive work has survived. The reason for this is v. a. the fact that his Wesel house, in which he archived most of his scores , was initially badly damaged in an air raid and then devastated by billeted soldiers and slave laborers after the war. Of the at least 1,200 composed marches (as evidenced by information from his music publishers or annual lists of newly published compositions), around three to four hundred have survived. From 1978 to 2018, the International Blankenburg Association endeavored to catalog the existing material and to retrieve what was lost.

Due to their very sonorous harmonies and an almost symphonic character, Blankenburg's marching compositions are for the most part concert, not marches. Particularly characteristic is the design of the trio , in which Blankenburg usually repeats the respective theme twice and then lets it flow into a sonorous finale after an increasing transition.

Today Blankenburg's marches are more popular abroad than in Germany itself. Examples of this are his works “Deutschlands Waffenehre” and “Adlerflug”, which were adopted as military marches for the Swedish army, the former for the Tactical Academy of the Army, the latter for the naval aviators.

His most famous march today is probably “Farewell to the Gladiators ”, with which he won a composition competition of the renowned British music publisher Boosey & Hawkes in 1905 . The march was originally called "Germany's Princes", but was then renamed with the circumstances in mind; may stand for the new title of the march Entry of the Gladiators by Julius Fučík Pate. In England the march under the title “The Gladiators' Farewell” became extremely popular and is still one of the most popular marches there today.

Well-known works by Blankenburg

• March to the quarters
• Farewell to the gladiators
• Action front
• Admiral of the Skies
• On watch!
• Towards the spring!
• The eagle of Lille
• The winner's laurel
• German greet
• German stenographers march
• Germany's Honor in Arms (Marche Victorieuse)
• The truth wins!
• Elkanah
• Up to the light
• Europe's unity
• Aviator Heroes
• Friendship
• Bonfires
• Peace and unity
• Spring children
• Givenchy March
• Greetings to Langensalza
• Greetings to Thuringia
• Greet me home!
• Halderner festival march
• There is a town in the Rhineland
• Youth spring
• Cavalry parade march
• Ready for battle
• Artist blood
• My regiment
• My Wesel
• With strength and fire
• With victory palms
• Nec Aspera Terrent
• Non soli cedit! (He does not give way to the sun!)
• Oerlikon-Zurich March
• Pilot courage
• Prince Eitel Friedrich-March
• Prince Ernst August March
• Sun children
• Under the Star of Liberty
• Under the peace banner
• Under the emperor's flag

literature

• Manfred Schustereit: Hermann Ludwig Blankenburg. Directory of recordable compositions . Edition Agenda, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-89688-150-7

Web links

• Article on Hermann Ludwig Blankenburg
• Information on "Farewell to the Gladiators" ( Memento from March 29, 2005 in the Internet Archive )