Hermann Stephani

Hermann Stephani (born June 23, 1877 in Grimma ; † December 3, 1960 in Marburg ) was a German musicologist and professor at the Philipps University of Marburg .

Life

Stephani received his doctorate in psychology from Theodor Lipps at the University of Munich in 1902 . He studied music a. a. with Felix Draeseke and became the first head of the "Felix Draeseke Society". After several positions as choir and orchestra conductor, he settled in Eisleben in 1906 as organist and church music director . In 1921 he was appointed to the University of Marburg as the first professor for musicology. He completed his habilitation there on November 12, 1921 and gave his inaugural lecture on the same day. In the following year he founded the Collegium musicum (instrumentale), reorganized the choir, in 1925 became director of the "Musicology Seminar" he founded, introduced musicology as a major in 1927, became ao. Professor appointed and soon promoted to state music consultant . Stephani remained a non-official ao. Prof. until 1942, when he was 65 years old, and continued to teach from May 1942 to May 1945 with a teaching position.

In 1932 he signed a call for the Kampfbund for German Culture by Alfred Rosenberg , after he had already written a pamphlet in 1926 against atonal music and its Jewish authors. After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he became a supporting member of the SS . He was also a member of the Nazi teachers' association. In November 1933 he signed the German professors' confession of Adolf Hitler . On May 1, 1937, he joined the NSDAP , and in 1939 the Nazi lecturers' association . He was also a member of the Reich Colonial Association and the German Society for Racial Hygiene . As a father of four, he was under heavy economic pressure.

The subject of consideration was “German” music from Bach to Anton Bruckner , with lectures on Bach, Mozart or Beethoven, on classical and romantic periods, on German songs, on opera and musical drama.

"My two predecessors [as university music directors] Prof. Dr. hc Richard Barth and Prof. Dr. hc Gustav Jenner came to Marburg through Brahms' intercession and established a stronghold of Brahms care here. I immediately began with an emphasis on Bruckner care, tried to build a bridge between Marburg's classicist attitude to contemporary music at the time and anchored the choral work in 4 major performances a year. The last German St. Matthew = Passion before the collapse sounded in Marburg during the [!] Air raid on March 11, 1945; with her I said goodbye to the official work that I have come to love. "(From the CV 1945)

Stephani's lasting importance lies primarily in his arrangement of Georg Friedrich Handel's oratorios . In doing so, he tried to change their Jewish-Old Testament character without being forced from outside. For “ Judas Maccabeus ”, first edited in 1904 under the title “Judas Maccabeus. Oratorio in three acts by GF Handel ”(published in Leipzig: Kistner & Siegel; 150 performances until 1933, including in the United States); edited a second time in 1939 under the title “Der Feldherr. Freedom Oratorio by GF Handel ”(published in Leipzig: Kistner & Siegel). Likewise for “ Jephta ”, first edited in 1911 under the title “Jephta. Oratorio v. GF Handel ”(published: Leipzig: Leuckart; a total of 150 performances until 1941); edited a second time in 1941 under the title “The victim. Oratorio by GF Handel ”(published in Leipzig: Leuckart).

Fonts

• The sublime in particular in the art of music and the problem of form in the musically beautiful and sublime , private print 1903.
• Handel's Judas Maccabeus. In: Die Musik 8 (1908), pp. 2–7.
• The character of the keys , Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag 1923.
• Basic questions of listening to music , Leipzig 1926
• On the psychology of musical hearing , Gustav Bosse, 1956

literature

Sabine Henze-Döhring: "He only lived his music ..." - Hermann Stephani as the founder of the Marburg Musicology Seminar and Collegium musicum ; in: German studies and art studies in the "Third Reich". Marburg Developments 1920-1950 , ed. v. Kai Köhler, Burghard Dedner and Waltraud Strickhausen. Munich: KG Saur-Verlag 2005 (Academia Marburgensis, Vol. 10), pp. 83-95.

Web links

• Music in biographies
• Works by and about Hermann Stephani in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 532.
2. ^ The Philipps University of Marburg under National Socialism: Documents on their history , ed. by Anne Christine Nagel and Ulrich Sieg, Steiner, Stuttgart 2000, p. 341f ( online )