Hugo Hartung (musician)

Hugo Hartung (born October 24, 1885 in Henningsleben , Kr. Langensalza ; † February 8, 1963 in East Berlin ) was a German music teacher and choir director .

Life

As the 5th child of a Thuringian farming family , Hartung lost his father at the age of 4. He attended the one-class village school, in the last school year the middle school in Wandersleben . Taught by his teacher, a cantor , to play the piano, violin and organ, he was allowed to play organs and sing at church services as a schoolboy . Given his talent, he should become a teacher .

Teacher

He received his training at the preparation institute in Wandersleben and at the Erfurt teacher training college. After he had passed the first teacher examination in 1905, he served as a one-year volunteer in Erfurt. After that he was a teacher at the village school and organist in Epschenrode , Kr. Worbis , for four years . He passed the second teacher examination in 1908. At that time he played Mozart's D minor concerto at a public celebration . Because of his good youth work, Hartung was hired in 1910 as a music teacher at the new state educational institute in Nordhausen and as organist and choir director at the Marktkirche St. Nikolai (Nordhausen) . He also studied singing and piano playing at the Princely University of Music in Sondershausen .

Contrary to the advice of his professors, he did not want to be an opera singer , but a music teacher. So in 1913 he went to the Institute for Church and School Music (Berlin) as a student . In the public concerts of this institute he gave concerts as organist, harpsichordist , pianist , singer and choir conductor. After three semesters he received an excellent leaving certificate. On the same day, August 1, 1914, the First World War broke out, in which Hartung participated until 1917. After surviving typhoid and sepsis , he was dismissed from the army in autumn 1918.

Tilsit

In October 1918, he bought the Conservatory in Tilsit . As the conductor of the Oratorio Association and the Singers Association and as the organist of the Tilsit town church , he founded a boys' choir, the Luther Choir, for the music service of his church. In 1920 he sold the conservatory and returned to school as a music teacher. After a city orchestra was founded, he conducted the symphony concerts. Since 1919 municipal music director, he combined the concert association with the oratorio association to form the music association, which annually organizes six soloist, six symphony and three choir concerts. Thus unfolded in Tilsit under Mayor Eldor Pohl a musical life as it had not known the "city without equal" sounded in Beethoven 1920 - Tilsit for the first time - the 9th Symphony and the Missa Solemnis by Beethoven, in 1921 twice Bach's St. Matthew Passion and Hans Pfitzner's cantata From the German soul . In the spring of 1923, Hartung organized a four-day Bach festival at which the B minor mass was performed (in Tilsit for the first time) . A two-day Max Reger Festival followed in autumn 1923 , at which the choir sang the Requiem , The Hermit and The 100th Psalm . In 1924 Hartung performed the Handel operas Ottone and Theophanu four times in front of a sold out house.

Koenigsberg

1924 Hartung was on the hooves school added and the teacher appointed. With the school choir he performed Joseph Haydn's The Creation in 1925 , Bach's Christmas Oratorio in 1926 and - with the girls' choir of the Bismarcklyceum - Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1929 . Erwin Kroll and Ernst Wiechert praised this performance with 500 students. Among other things, the mass in A minor by Kurt Thomas was performed on “new” music . Hartung founded a women's choir in 1926 in order to be able to organize large choir concerts in Königsberg with adults as in Tilsit . He performed Brahms ' Ein deutsches Requiem and Haydn's Die Jahreszeiten with the singers ' association . In 1931 he replaced the meanwhile three performance choirs of the Hufengymnasium with class choirs , in which every student could be trained in choir singing before and after the broken voice . He gave the regular surpluses from the school concerts to the parents' association for a school camp .

At the Albertus University in Königsberg he was involved in the new institute for church and school music. He directed their academic choir, the orchestral association Philharmonie and the singers association . The popular singing academy was left behind against better competition and chose Hartung as its conductor in 1927. In 1934 he united them with the Musical Academy . With the United Music and Singing Academy he performed many large choral and orchestral works. It was considered one of the best choirs in Germany. On behalf of Ostmarken Rundfunk AG , Hartung founded the funk choir in 1927 . He gave four to six radio concerts every month with many well-known Königsberg soloists.

Hartung sat on the examination board for church musicians . On behalf of the Provincial School College , he was a specialist advisor to music teachers at grammar schools in East Prussia . As a music educator , he became a role model and inspiration for a whole generation of East Prussian school musicians and many choir directors.

Hartung was a Freemason and from 1919 a member of the Königsberg Lodge Zum Todtenkopf and Phoenix .

See also : Music in Königsberg

Steadfastly sipped

Since 1932 Hugo Hartung was married to Annina Hartung (1909-2007), one of two daughters of the internist Leo Borchardt. Defamed by the National Socialists because of his Jewish origin and denounced by an envious person , Hartung was to be dismissed without a pension under the law for the restoration of the civil service . He lost the leadership of the funk choir and the singers' association as well as his honorary posts at the provincial school college. In order to prevent him from continuing his successful work at the Hufengymnasium, he was “transferred” to the Burgschule (Königsberg) . It also failed to relieve him from running the Singakademie because the choir stood in front of him. In order to eliminate him here too and to make his participation in the planned Reichsbachfest in Konigsberg impossible, he was transferred to Gumbinnen ; but he did not take up the position by applying for retirement, citing his war suffering. In addition, the New Bach Society made Hartung's participation a condition if the 23rd German Bach Festival was to take place in Königsberg in 1936.

After he was released from school, Hartung founded the Hartung Music School in his family home in 1936 . Just two years later he had to add classrooms and a music home for foreign students. Here children and music lovers were educated and choral conductors , band masters , singers , pianists , organists , violinists and private music teachers were trained. Although most of the professionally-oriented male students were drafted into the Wehrmacht during their training and the classroom suffered from wartime conditions, around 300 students attended the music school in 1944.

After he had to relinquish the direction of the funk choir in 1933, he founded a chamber choir, which since 1936 consisted mainly of the singing students of his music school. When the chamber choir was added, Hartung joined his choir of the United Music and Singing Academy . With her Hartung performed Bach's B minor Mass in Berlin in 1938 in the Garrison Church (Berlin) . He wanted to curb the Nazi attacks in the press. After reviews had placed the Königsberg choir among the best Berlin choirs, the Königsberg newspapers were able to loosen the shackles put on by the Nazi authorities.

Hartung advanced from managing director to head of the United Music and Singing Academy . With its 200 to 300 members, it ultimately consisted of four departments: the large academy choir, the junior or youth choir, the male choir and the academy orchestra , the former philharmonic orchestra . Hartung's chamber choir joined them in a concert community. While the academy orchestra and the male choir were severely restricted by the Second World War , the other departments were able to continue working and in 1943/44 celebrate their centenary with four concerts; two had to be repeated, a German Requiem and the Missa solemnis . With a concert tour through East Prussia, Hartung performed 23 choir concerts during this war winter. Between 1918 and 1944 he conducted many a cappella and orchestral choral works from all stylistic periods from the 16th to the 20th centuries.

The school had five full-time and eight part-time teachers. When it had to be closed after the air raids on Königsberg at the end of August 1944, the Hartungs left Königsberg. What remained were 16 grand pianos, 2 harpsichords, 1 organ (portative), 16 valuable string instruments, 10,000 books and sheet music and the entire school and home furnishings.

Thuringia

The escape initially led to Ufhoven , where the family was taken in by Hartung's sister. Less than a month as a music teacher in the German home school in Gotha , Hartung was denounced and - by mistake - arrested by the Gestapo . A little later, he was arrested again for “non-Aryan infiltration” and was sent to a forced labor camp run by the Todt organization near Weißenfels . Given his poor health, he was not sent to Wuppertal to clean up, but was drafted into the war in Gotha.

After the end of the war he became the City Music Director of Gotha. In autumn 1945 he gave the first post-war concerts with the municipal choir and the chamber choir he founded. In addition, he was a music teacher at secondary schools and the pedagogical college.

In the winter of 1945/46 in the Soviet occupation zone , he published his "Thoughts on the New Building of a Uniform Folk Music Education". Approved by the relevant Berlin authorities, they were postponed by the Volk und Wissen publishing house because they did not fit into the "Teaching and Learning" series.

In 1947 Hartung went to Erfurt to set up the national choir of the Volksbühne. With him he again gave great choral concerts. In addition, he was a music teacher at a grammar school, and in 1948 he took over the development and management of the music education college.

In 1946 Hermann Abendroth wrote to the Lord Mayor of Gotha:

“I can tell you that Hartung is one of the best and most productive choir conductors that we have had in Germany. You have to be born to be a choir leader - it is him! What he has achieved and achieved with his singing academy in 20 years of tireless work in Königsberg must be called exemplary. The reputation of this choir association and its leader was spread all over Germany, and when Hartung performed the B minor Mass with his band of singers in Berlin a few years ago - probably the most difficult and demanding work in all of choral literature - he was able to perform an unusual one Book success for yourself and your faithful. "

- Hermann Abendroth

Berlin

In 1949 he was appointed head of the Institute for Music Education by the Pedagogical Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin . On March 17, 1950, he was commissioned to hold a professorship . He gave concerts with the institute choir. 66 years old and suffering from a thrombosis , he retired on September 1, 1951 . Regardless of this, he was involved in the German Central Pedagogical Institute .

Because of another serious illness, he had to give up practical teaching; but also during the frequent hospital stays, he worked on suggestions for improving music education . He died on February 8, 1963 at the age of 77.

obituary

“Now music ceased to be a minor. Either - so said the new master - it grasps the totality of the human being, or one leaves it aside entirely. As also not only with the - mostly poor - voice, but with the participation of the chest and stomach muscles as well as being sung by the whole guy. In addition, active singing, singing in the community, i.e. choir singing, is the most original, purest, most legitimate music practice, because this requires the commitment of the whole personality ... If this man from the people, who has come up through restless study, is on solemn occasions in our auditorium Schule preluded on their gigantic organ and often let himself be carried away to improvised variations on some themes, a skill to which he himself attached little importance, no musical listener left the slightest doubt about his overwhelming genius, which branched out into the most delicate sensations. "

- Peter Ludwig Heller

Works

• Basic questions of the methodology of teaching music in the socialist school . People and Knowledge, Berlin 1964

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Annina Hartung (Kultur in Ostpreussen, 1993/94)
2. ↑ Chronicle of the Johannisloge "Zum Todtenkopfe und Phönix". Berlin 2009, self-published by the Lodge "Zum Todtenkopf und Phoenix"
3. ↑ The concerts of the Berliner Singakademie also took place in the old garrison church