Irene Meyer-Hanno

Irene Meyer-Hanno , born as Irene Sager (born September 27, 1899 in Bielitz , Austria-Hungary , † September 15, 1983 in Schwabenheim an der Selz ) was a German pianist , piano teacher and répétiteur at the theater.

Life

Irene Sager comes from the old Austrian part of Silesia . She studied the piano in Budapest and bought a Steinway grand piano from her inheritance , which was to accompany her throughout her professional life. In Berlin, Irene Sager continued her piano studies with Luise Gmeiner. During the Weimar Republic , Irene Sager had numerous contacts with the cultural and intellectual scene, including Egon Erwin Kisch . Over the years, she severely restricted her activity as a pianist, for example in the context of radio recordings, because she suffered from severe stage fright, and concentrated more and more on teaching piano students.

As a result of the seizure of power , the Jew who was married to the actor Hans Meyer-Hanno was barely allowed to work and mostly only taught private students. Instead, from then on she primarily took care of the upbringing of her two sons, Andreas , who would later become an opera director, and Georg, who would later work as a photographer at ZDF . As a result of the arrest (end of July 1944) of her non-Jewish husband, Irene Meyer-Hanno and her two sons were at considerable risk and had to go into hiding temporarily in Berlin. Immediately after the end of the war in 1945 she brought Gustav von Wangenheim to the Deutsches Theater Berlin , where Irene Meyer-Hanno worked as a répétiteur until the Wall was built in 1961. During this time, for example, in 1949 the pianist studied the music for Bertolt Brecht's mother Courage and her children , a production by Erich Engels . In later years Irene Meyer-Hanno worked again as a piano teacher in West Berlin, but also continued to work as a répétiteur.

Irene Meyer-Hanno spent the last years of her life with her son Georg in Schwabenheim near Mainz, where she died shortly before the age of 84.

literature

• Kay Less : Between the stage and the barracks. Lexicon of persecuted theater, film and music artists from 1933 to 1945 . With a foreword by Paul Spiegel . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938690-10-9 , p. 402.