Johann Daniel Elster
Johann Daniel Elster (born September 16, 1796 in Benshausen , Duchy of Saxony-Meiningen ; † December 19, 1857 in Wettingen , Aargau ) was a German music teacher and choir director. He founded the first choirs in Thuringia around 1830 and brought them together as a singing association for joint concerts.
Life
The son of a hammer smith received his first music lessons from the cantor in his home town. Recognizing the talent of his son, the father gave him to the Suhl cantor Bornemann for further training. He immediately withdrew from the strict teacher and fled to his parents' house, much to the displeasure of his father, who sent him back. In 1809, Daniel Elster moved into what was later to become the Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium Freiberg , where he got to know the educational methods, some of which were still medieval. The turmoil of the Wars of Liberation in the Kingdom of Saxony and especially around Freiberg did not allow any more lessons in autumn 1813 and Elster returned to his home town. He finally finished his school years with the Abitur at the Hennebergisches Gymnasium in Schleusingen .
Student in Leipzig and Jena
Elster first studied Protestant theology at the University of Leipzig and in 1816 became a member of the Franconia Leipzig corps team. In 1817 he was one of the founders of Thuringia II . As a deputy of Thuringia Elster took part in the Wartburg Festival in 1817 . Since he was often involved in student brawls, he got himself a blow in a duel , which made further theology study impossible and switched to the medical faculty. Ultimately, another brawl in the city - in which he was not involved this time - earned him the Consilium abeundi and the police eviction from Leipzig. He continued his studies at the University of Jena ; however, after the attempt by the fraternity member Karl Ludwig Sand against the poet August von Kotzebue (March 23, 1819) in Jena, he no longer felt safe. He and a friend decided to emigrate to South America and join Simón Bolívar's liberation struggle .
Foreign Legion
On their travels through the Netherlands and London they tried in vain to gain recruitment to South America . When they tried to reach it from France, they were picked up in Paris and pressed into the Légion étrangère . They were then taken to Corsica , where Elster was relieved of this agonizing time by his musical talent. He was able to excel here as the orderly of an officer in Rogliano (Corsica) as an organist, where it was achieved by the local council that Elster was given leave of absence from military service. Through teaching he improved his financial situation. Nevertheless, he risked an attempt to escape, which failed. After the arrest he was assigned to a music corps in Bastia as a flutist. There a piano concert brought him cheers, money and new students, including the wife of his colonel, who helped him to freedom. At the next medical visit it was written “unfit”.
Würzburg and Greece
He continued his studies in Würzburg ; but he got into a duel completely through no fault of his own. Since he thought he had killed his badly injured opponent, he fled again. He then joined the Philhellenes . With them he went into the liberation struggle of the Greeks against the Turks. He was able to use his medical knowledge and worked as a battalion doctor. At the Battle of Petas, his battalion was ambushed by treason and completely wiped out. Daniel Elster managed to escape together with 17 of his comrades. In Germany, however, the opinion was that no one had survived and Elster's childhood sweetheart Rosine Bohlig (nickname "Röschen"), the daughter of a wealthy Benshausen wine merchant, agreed to marry an Arnstadt merchant named Schierholz, which her parents had long been demanding . On his odyssey through Greece Elster ended up in Smyrna .
Switzerland
He came to Basel via Marseille and Geneva in 1823 and found his first job as a piano teacher. Shortly afterwards he received an appointment at the Lenzburg teacher training institute and joined the circle around Hans Georg Nägeli and Heinrich Pestalozzi. In close cooperation with his teacher and fatherly friend Hans Georg Nägeli, he worked on raising popular song . In 1825 he received a teaching position in Baden / Aargau and founded the first Baden male choir here in 1826.
return
After learning of the death of his father and Röschen's husband in two letters in 1827, he returned home, where he married Rosine Bohlig. His new circle of friends was formed from Meiningen's Ludwig Bechstein and Andreas Zöllner, the Benshausen superintendent Dr. Holzapfel, Ludwig Storch from Ruhla , the bookseller and publisher Conrad Glaser from Schleusingen and others. Together with his wife Rosine, he managed their father's property in Haubinda , in the Heldburger Unterland , and the post office in Hildburghausen , which they set up as the inn "Zum Sächsischen home" has been. In Haubinda he received a nocturnal serenade from village boys, which seized him and reminded him of his choir work in Switzerland.
In this memory he promoted a male choir in the surrounding villages. After six months of practice, a male choir of 360 singers came together on the Hildburghausener Stadtberg and put their skills to the test for the first time in the church in the village of Eishausen . The festive performance of the rehearsed chants took place eight days later in the city church of Hildburghausen.
Daniel Elster continued to work with the staid head teacher Hummel and soon had thirty village communities. On March 28, 1832 a performance took place in the main church of the state residence. The choir had grown to 600 men. The first tenor had 175 voices and the second bass had 200 voices.
On June 2, 1834, his beloved wife, Rosine, died of smallpox . In his grief, Elster began to complete the opera Richard und Blondel , which was preconceived in Switzerland and premiered in December 1835 in the Meininger Theater.
In an effort to compose further operas, he followed a friendly advice and got to know the opera practice as Kapellmeister. His first engagement took him to Bamberg , where, like his predecessor ETA Hoffmann, his life was made difficult by indiscipline and resentment. He then traveled through various cities in Saxony with a traveling opera and drama company. In 1839 he got a job as a theater conductor in Zurich . He met his former student Franziska Lang again and married her in the summer of 1840.
In 1846 Elster got another job as a music professor at his old office, the teachers' college in Lenzburg , which was moved to the abolished Wettingen monastery shortly afterwards (1847) . Daniel Elster published his Volksgesangschule in Baden / Aargau in 1846 .
From 1847 to 1851 he was the head of the large Freiämter-Sängerbund . In recognition of his services, Switzerland granted him citizenship in 1849. Already marked by a serious illness, he directed the Aargau cantonal singing festival in 1857. At the age of 61 he succumbed to liver disease in Wettingen.
Works
music
- Thuringia, lovely country , music: Johann Daniel Elster, approx. 1831 words: Ludwig Storch
- Richard and Blondel (1835), opera, world premiere in Meiningen
- The beggar's daughter , opera
- Six songs for male choir , (1833) Hildburghausen
- Schweizerische Volkgesangschule , (1846), a theoretical-practical textbook for teachers and learners ( digitized version ).
- Psalm 100 for male choir , (1845) Baden
- Motet for larger male choir
- The hunters (MCh)
- Sängerfahrt (MCh)
- Sunday song (MCh)
- Mass chants for male choir , 2 booklets, (1850–1856) Wettingen
Fonts
- The Philhellenic Battalion (1828)
literature
- Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I Politicians, Part 1: A – E. Heidelberg 1996, pp. 251-252.
- Journeys of a musician (novellas), 1837, edited and edited by Ludwig Bechstein .
- The errors of Daniel Elster. Student - Philhellene - musician , reworked and edited by Hans Martin Elster, 2 vols., Stuttgart 1911. ("Daniel Elster was not always satisfied with Bechstein's arrangement; we know it from his letters." The editor in the foreword, p. IX .)
- Adolf Haller: Freedom, which I mean. The life adventure of Daniel Elster. 1941.
- H. Jung: Daniel Elster - the Philhellene . Badener Neujahrsblätter 67 (1992), pp. 132-141.
- Albert Schumann : Elster, Johann Daniel . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 72 f.
Web links
- Works by and about Johann Daniel Elster in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Johann Daniel Elster in the German Digital Library
- Andreas Steigmeier: Elster, Daniel. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Audio recording of the piece Thuringia Du holdes Land
- Sheet music for the Thuringia song (PDF file; 47 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kösener corps lists 1910, 147a / 1
- ↑ Kösener corps lists 1910, 155/15
- ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 97/25
- ^ Bernhard Sommerlad : Wartburg Festival and Corps students. Once and Now, Yearbook of the Association for Corps Student History Research, Vol. 24 (1979), p. 36 (No. 22).
- ↑ https://roemerquartier.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/20190215_AZ-Badener-Tagblatt_E-Paper.pdf , Aargauer Zeitung from February 15, 2019, accessed on August 16, 2020.
- ^ Matthias Bretschneider: Johann Daniel Elster , Thuringian composer, accessed on June 10, 2020
- ^ Andreas Steigmeier : Elster, Daniel. In: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz ., Accessed on May 2, 2014
- ^ Thuringia, holdes Land , NationalAnthems.us, October 7, 2004, accessed on May 5, 2017
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Elster, Johann Daniel |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German music teacher and choir director |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 16, 1796 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Benshausen , Duchy of Saxony-Meiningen |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 19, 1857 |
| Place of death | Wettingen , Aargau |